Every night was the same as the last. We congregated in glittering troupes around the hills, our bare feet, cloven hooves, and clawed paws pounding out a drumbeat on the hard-packed earth. We never slept, we never cried, we only danced. We were dangerous in our beauty, for we feared no one and bowed to no king. Our rules were our own, and human lives were of little consequence to us. Sometimes, we would dance the humans to death by accident, forgetting that they had not our lungs of leaves and hearts of wood. They were fragile things, flowers fading in the winter. We were oaks that needed no blood in our veins.
We were an odd collection of pieces, some of us with antlers, others with wings. Some were blue, and others were green. Some even grew flowers from their skin and thorns in their hair. The humans were frightened of us, and they would scatter like beetles when we appeared on the crest of the moors. But if we could catch one, it would dance until its bones fractured and its feet bled. An odd thing, blood; so red and thick. An odd thing to keep an entire being alive and dancing. We didn’t bleed. We didn’t breathe. Tears were a mystery, and sorrow was something we had never felt.
     But then, they changed. The humans, that is. They stopped being afraid of our crooked teeth and clawed hands and green skin. They stopped seeing us. Stopped dancing.
        They built cities of iron and lived locked up in their metal cages. We couldn’t touch them there, beneath the trees of steel and flowers of rust. So we faded, falling softly onto the pages of children’s books with gossamer wings and magic wands.
       We were relegated to fairytales and myths, forgotten by time. We still danced about the hills and across the moors, but we could all dance forever. Without the humans to break and bleed, our days and nights became monotonous. They were playthings to us, delicate and fascinating, but no less expendable. We never dreamed we’d miss them. It was an odd feeling for us, loss. But we continued to dance, because dancing was all that we knew.