The cottage stood alone on the moors, a lonely island in a vast sea of heather and cotton-grass beaten low by centuries of scouring winds blowing down off the northern glaciers. A short, piecemeal stone wall ran around the place, dividing off a parcel of land indistinguishable from any other. A rough wooden gate provided access, banging and squeaking occasionally on its hinges in the gusty air. The door never opens, but from inside, as if from a great distance, puzzling sounds can be heard: the blast of a hunting horn, the roaring of a waterfall, or the buzz of an orchestra tuning up.

She painted ladybirds. She wasn’t the only one, naturally, there were far too many ladybirds for that to be practical, but she was certainly one of the more prolific. She always carried her brushes and paints with her – little pots of shellac in yellow, orange, and oriental red. Often in the middle of conversations she would wander off a little way, shepherd a small black beetle from a leaf or twig, and get to work with her brushes. At the time it mostly annoyed me, but after she left, I always felt a strange mix of nostalgia and regret when I recognised a ladybird as her handiwork.

You can almost see them sometimes, swimming through the air in a stray sparkling beam of sunlight, like after-images of the motes that dance unseen on the surface of your eye. Often, they crowd into cosy bedrooms on a warm summer’s weekend morning. Their natural environment is secret wooded glens – hollows filled with sweet smelling leaf mulch and fairy circles and mossy logs. They muffle sounds and dull the senses, bringing a sense of peace and comfort. When it rains, they wash out of the air and into the soil, laying dormant until the sun shines once more.

When she read a book, she would do the thing properly – immersed and in it for the long haul. She would respond with an “mmm” or “hmm” if spoken to, but not actually take any of the words in unless you got something between her and the page. If she was interrupted – work, or chores, or, god forbid, sleep – she would, however reluctantly, put the book down and go about her business, but the second her brain and at least one eye was free she would pick it up again. While brushing teeth or eating breakfast, in a train or in the bathroom, her attention would be consumed until those last words – “The End”.

As the afternoon wears down into evening, the heat of the day lifts out of the rough tarmac and warps the humid air. The hard-packed dirt of the shoulder gives way within feet to rice paddies of verdant green that stretch out to the low, forested mountains away in the middle distance. There is still some ground to be covered, then, and not in a straight line. She peers up from under a wide straw brim at a sky that is the light blue of day on one horizon but already the washed out navy of twilight on the other. It was time she was moving again.

When the bedroom lights go out, Sibble begins getting his brushes ready. Each is a tiny thing – eyelashes and sealing wax – gathered from cheeks and writing desks in the small hours. By the time your eyes are closed, he has strapped on his tiny paint pots and scampered onto the light fixture. From there it is tiny, precise brush-strokes of glittering phosphor spreading swathes of stars across the ceiling. Here and there he adds small flourishes – galaxies and nebulae that would seem to spin and swirl were your eyes open to see them. By the time the rays of dawn seep into the room the glitter has all but faded, and Sibble has replenished his supplies and retired to his snuggery.

The cobbled streets leading away from the harbour twisted and coiled like brambles. A left turn, then another, and another, and another, and rather than being back where they started, they would find themselves in an alcove off a passageway off an alley off a lane. “In here,” she would say, or “What’s down this way?” he would say, and they would find themselves in stores selling sugared candies in the perfect hand-crafted shapes of flowers, or delis stocking olives of every varied shade and hue. Soon their only sense of direction came from the smell of salt air or the excited murmur of people from the direction of the harbour, though that could have been the anchovies drying in parade formation on a balcony, or the pet store with parrots in cages covered with dark velvet hanging from every beam.

Hidden amongst the undulations of rock, the river splits in two. One of the branches winds out of the barren hills, and on to the sea. The other cascades down a cleft into the earth. Along its course a spray of plants has sprouted, starting with small grasses and flowers in tiny crevices. Just visible below, standing at the entrance, are the heads of small trees. Further down, in the deep, where the sediment of countless centuries has accreted, grows a vast subterranean forest. When night falls, the soft luminous glow of lichen lights the underside of spanning branches and thick vines. Through the caverns, birdsong burbles along below the splashing of water, and a soft, occasional snuffle permeates the undergrowth. No matter how still you are, no matter how long you wait, the only visible sign of life will be the twitching of leaves, and the sporadic staccato drip of water from the rock above makes even that suspect.

Inch by inch, hour by hour, his hammer and chisel turned the rock into tiny splinters that stung at his hands and face. What had once been a simple overhang was now a network of tunnels and chambers burrowed into the cliff face. Some rooms were small as closets – no more than alcoves in the tunnel walls – others were echoing halls, sumptuous bedchambers, or bathrooms atinkle with the sound of natural running water. Every time he finished carving out a room, he would rest for a day and wander through the other chambers, looking for signs of life. Every time, no matter how magnificent his workmanship, no matter how many times he checked, there were no people to be found.

After many moons aback his horse, the veil of distance lifted, and Ænor first beheld Yggdrasil, the World Tree. From eastern horizon to western horizon, its trunk cleaved to the Firmament with great gnarled knots unfurling into filament-thin roots drinking in life-giving draughts of æther. Far, far above, its vast leaves of cerulean blue whispered the soft murmurs of time. Under the shade of the boughs the luminous fruit could be seen to sparkle and shimmer. Somewhere on one of those worlds, along one and only one path of trunk and branch and twig and stem, she was waiting for him. He shouldered his pack and began to climb.