and the story folds again....

...So many months passed since the first chapter of the story...as the girl made her way down her pathway, through the trees and flowers. And she had many adventures. And as she travelled holding hands with two pairs of twinkly blue eyes, she found she learned lots about new ways of seeing the world... and she learned some new ways of walking on the pathway too... And some of these ways were wonderfully inspiring and made her heart burst into rainbow bird song... And some new ways felt odd and awkward, and she bumped her toes on rocks she hadn't seen before...
Sometimes she felt like dancing and the twinkly eyes danced with her merrily... and sometimes she felt like dancing but when she reached out her hands her little blue eyed friends were not there...and she missed them.
But she kept on walking, sometimes skipping, sometimes dragging her feet. In the times when she dragged her feet the trees around seemed very big and dark and frightening... but then the sunshine would break through... and she and her twinkle blue eyed companions would be vibrant in the warmth of its light. And around her along the path were her sisters too...old family and new... and on the days when the blue eyes would go dark... she would hold out her hands and feel them caught up by dear dancing fingers and the big hearts of her sisters would shine through the darkness to help her find her way...
Then the path became more bumpy for a while... and the girl found that she slowed down...that she stopped admiring the flowers so often because she had to watch for the rocks under her toes... and while she was on the soft silky smooth parts of the path her feet had softened and become sensitive... and now they bruised on the bumps. The girl kept putting one foot in front of the other... but she missed dancing.
And the girl saw her path turning and twisting... and then it branched. Which way should she go? And she saw her beautiful twinkly blue eyed friends disappearing down one pathway hand in hand... not looking back.... and she wanted to call out "wait"... but it seemed that they didn't hear her, not really, they were focussed on the path ahead.

And the girl stopped still and her heart wept.