AN EXTRACT

When Diana We’ard became conscious, she knew something terrible had happened but couldn’t think what – only that it had blown her whole world apart. Yet she lived; although frightened at being unable to account for finding herself in a giant-sized car with the huge body of a man on her right slumped over the restraint of a seat belt. She, herself, lay sprawled across the lap of a woman as enormous as the man.

Splashes of blood and the pebble-like glass of a shattered windscreen lay everywhere, whilst a continuous note blared with deafening urgency from somewhere nearby. She scrambled to her feet clinging to the bloodied material of the woman’s dress, as she sought a way of escape from the nightmare.

Above her, and somehow even above the noise, a light voice called: ‘It’s alright, darling, we can get out this way.’ She looked up. Someone, slim, golden skinned, distinctly feminine, and only nine-inches long and naked lay along the top of the dashboard. 
Diana stood, tiptoe, to reach the slender hand that stretched down her. ‘I can’t,’ she said.
‘Try jumping.’
‘But I’m standing on someone!’ she said, shocked.
‘They won’t feel a thing. Try.’
To Diana’s surprise, she found the jump effortless. She had no need of the other’s help either, but nevertheless discovered her hand held fast with the other getting to their feet.
‘I can still remember who I am, and it wasn’t either of them,’ they said in a voice tinged with wonder and pointing to the two bodies. ‘Nor was it the other driver—’ 
Diana tugged at her hand. ‘It’s coming back to me. I was – I am her! And that’s  – that’s my husband Humphrey. Please, please, let go – I can’t stay here!’
The clasp tightened. ‘Diana dear, of course you can’t!  Come – we’ll go together.’ Suiting action to words, and still keeping a firm hold, her companion leapt from the empty windscreen to the ground taking Diana with her.

Like the graceful, effortless jump, Diana’s sprint to put the scene out of sight behind them seemed to skim the ground and, calmed now by the other’s self-possession, she began to realise how alive she felt and to marvel at the world in which she now found herself; trees and plants glowing with life and vibrant colour. Snowberry that had escaped into the wild had formed thickets in which their small bell shaped pink flowers chimed in the slow movement of a faint breeze.

Diana pulled her companion to an abrupt halt, pushing aside a strand of golden hair that fell across her face as the rest flowed and settled around her like a mantle. She had brought them to a halt beneath a Cherry plum. Sunbeams slanting through the branches burned its scarlet fruit to brilliant jewels that spangled the open crown of the tree’s head and gesturing limbs like some elderly smiling giant.

‘Everything’s so beautiful!’ she exclaimed in an awed whisper.
‘It’s real real,’ the other assured her. ‘This is what mortals can’t see.’
Waves of exquisite joy thrilled through Diana’s being and a new wonder struck her. ‘I’m not even out of breath with all that running!’ she said. ‘In fact, am I breathing at all – or is it just my imagination?’ Then a more urgent question compelled her eyes to seek those of her companion. ‘Who are you? What’s your name?’
Her companion stood silent a moment before saying in a quiet voice: ‘I was – I am Ann – Ann Singlewood – and I shouldn’t remember that—’
Diana seized on her name. ‘Ann, are we breathing?’
Ann laughed. ‘Dear one, we don’t need to!’
‘Am I dead?’
‘Do you feel dead?’
‘I’ve never felt more alive in my life before—!’ She broke off to stare at her companion with a sudden realisation of how the other had identified herself.