Willcombreed had no soul.  Yet the place where his soul should have resided did not feel entirely empty.  On the other hand, he could never be exact as to the degree of such emptiness, unaware, as all emptinesses were, of how much space they were called upon to fill.  In Willcombreed’a  case, the place-of-no-soul eventually was a shrinking, if tantalising, fallowness, fraying at the edges and sucking him towards the middle of his own tiny body—or, at least, towards where this body's centre of gravity appeared to be.

                A sense of absence—a sorrow without sadness—a wish without desire—a bereavement in a world where death was more by good luck than misjudgement—a pain that killed painkillers in ever-increasing circles—an anxiety for a loved one who was never to be born—a hope without faith—worse still, a faith without hope ... these were the various symptoms of Willcombreed’s missing soul.

                He did not know his own name, but someone else did.  She, this someone else, was Elspeth who, despite being a human being in contrast to Willcombreed’s own elfinness, was even smaller than Willcombreed.  Many called her petite; many more a midget.  She enjoyed that part of the day which was neither afternoon nor evening, but a bit of both, when the trees around her mother's cottage collected sighs for their leaves to articulate with their needlepoint of rustles. 

                Having left her mother to clear up after her own attempts at clearing up which her lack of height prevented her from perfecting, Elspeth wandered the place that, in her dreams, was her own garden with swing and see-saw.  But, now, it was a nondescript expanse of set-aside belonging to a local farmer.  Were it not for Willcombreed, she would probably only play there during her actual dreams.  Instead of which, she went there as often as possible – although she knew, in her heart of hearts, that Willcombreed was essentially a dream, but an insulated dream that lived autonomously in the waking world of reality.

                "How are you today?"

                As soon as Elspeth spoke, Willcombreed emerged from behind a vision of himself which he had planted as a prop in his unvanishing act, performed to amuse the girl.

                "I have no soul."

                His voice was spoken with confidence, as if it could actually be heard.

                "You don't exist?" she said, inevitably ignoring his words.  "But who wants to exist?  My life is nothing but trouble."

                There was a grain of truth in her statement, although it had primarily been made as a comfort, like a nurse with a dying child.

                The 'dying child' in question looked at the girl from his greater height and said in pining troubled tones: "At least trouble is something.  It's better than nothing."

                "You are a silly elf," she announced, suddenly aware of the paradox regarding the simultaneous awareness of Willcombreed’s predicament.

                At that moment, the sun performed its own unvanishing act, having earlier duped the pair of playmates with its version of Peek-a-Boo between some distant trees.  A shaft of gold penetrated their heads, causing their eyes to become torches playing Noughts-and-crosses, and, then, Who-Blinks-First.

                They played Touch-Catch, with nobody winning, until there was no longer any doubt that night had lost the need to cheat in its tenebrous game of Hide-and-Seek. 

After Elspeth, amid blown kisses, had departed for real dreams under cottage-thatch and cot-top, Willcombreed loitered in the now even more nondescript meadow, along with memories of their games.  Anxiety was something he could manage to set aside.  But love was something else altogether. 

His emptiness, still yearning for a soul, vowed to wish fulfilment of different thoughts tomorrow, one of which might make Willcombreed and Elspeth play Leap-Frog—instead of the ardently breathless chase involved in Touch-Catch.

Elspeth, meanwhile, was a wayward sleeper, stretching her legs towards the cot bars, to test if they were now long enough to reach the end.