THE FOREST IS ALIVE WITH BRACKEN GRISTLE AND GREEN CANYONS COLORED A DUSTY MALLARD LIKE MINI SHAPES OF HIM. LITTLE BITS OF GNOME PASTURE AND WILD PEONY-THINGS GROW ON HER FLANKS; A VERITABLE VINEYARD CARVED NATURAL, PROTECTED FROM STORM, AND FEELING, IN MEANDERING LITTLE, SUN-GUIDED SNAKE TAILS, ACROSS THE WOODLAND FLOOR . . .
AND SOMEWHERE, THE SENSE OF ENTS WATCHING.
The scars run wild on him, in patchwork pieces clung dry to his muscle- he's a gogoltexture with ten years of history, the richest of his prime visibly mapped out as starry-web-shapes that wink out, pale, on his skin in the nascent dew light. The morning is all sweet and sylvan and made of soft rose, searching busy the thorned tips of things to catch on, and blink white from, settling temporarily on some smooth stone or patch of cotton grass growing thick along the copse with mountain grouse, chicks, and bounding seas of hare.
He has on him no notes or parchment papers to prove that he's here to teach, just an invisible memory bank alive with medical melody. If anything, his student's first task would be finding him, he (partially) jokes to himself, waiting beside a creekbed.
THE MOST FORGIVING TUTOR WAS WHERE NATURE RAN THICKEST, AND WILD, THERE, IN RICH AND RAW FLAVORS OF PUPPYGRASS AND FLOWERBEDS COMPOSED OF COLOR-CODED MEDICINE.
HE KNEW VERY LITTLE OF THE YOUTH NETWORKED INTO HIS CIRCLES, HOW EXPANSIVE (OR LACKING) HER EXPERIENCE WAS, BUT HE WAS UNDER THE IMPRESSION THAT HER MIND WAS ABLE, AND WILLING, AND FOR THAT- THAT WAS ENOUGH FOR HIM, REALLY, TO GET HIM TRAVELING FROM HIS HOMELAND TO THE SOFTER FREELANDS.
WE HAVE DREAMS, YOU AND I. AND THEY'RE NOT LEAVING, NO, NOT UNTIL THE DAYS ARE GONEBY. WHERE'RE YOU RUNNING TO? WE'RE HEADED THIS WAY, FAR FROM PLACES WARM AND COMFORTING. THERE'S TOO MUCH TO KNOW, TOO MUCH TO FEAR, HOPING FOR BETTER DAYS, SOFTER WAYS. I'M LAMPLIGHT FADING, AND YOU'RE TWISTING CANDLEFLAME: WE'RE BURNING BRIGHT, AND GUTTERING FAR TOO QUICKLY- BUT NEVER PUT OUT BY RAIN. IF YOU'RE HOPING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE, NEVER FORGET THAT WE START TODAY.
And it only hurts when I'm breathing
My heart only breaks when it's beating
Meet him, by the creek in the free lands. Aye. They knew she was scared of travel - having traveled for so long and only having some hazy memories of the encounters. All of the hazy memories had bad vibes, and she truly had lost the desire to start to repeat them or unearth them. Really, it just didn't seem intelligent.
So, as nervous as she was, she forced her way out toward the creek and the living animals. It was a sweet morning - the gorgeous colours easily reflecting in her eyes. Aye, at least it was a good morning, a calm morning. Now... now she just had to find this stag from the day court. He was supposed to be littered in a patchwork pattern. Almost grotesque in her eyes (at least according to the vague description she had been given. But, he is said to know much about the healing arts - something she had never had much time to learn with her parents thanks to them hiding her away from the world. And now... now that she was alone... well she knew that this information would be vital to keeping her alive. It would be vital so that she could allow her mind to work as it needed to and go toward helping others.
As she ends up near the creekbed she starts to follow its path upstream until she begins to see another creature in the distance. The random patches of pale green hues scattered across his body, and the shortened mane and tail are what catch her eyes first. Then, she caught sight of the bed herbs he seemed to be standing in. An abundance of herbs that she recognized vaguely from the herb garden she had tended were richly placed around his feet - still rooted into the ground. So, she moved in closer. "A-are you.... Oz?" she inquired, eyes flickering across his frame - taking in all of his scars and the way his pelt seemed to be put together in a Frankensteinian manner. "I-I'm Noxia. Some of the Night court told me to meet you here..."
Dear Caligo... please let this be Oz. Please don't let her be making a fool of herself...
@GUESSWHO -- sorry for the wait! And for some reason I can't tag your Oz account (?)
AS THE OLD WOOD BOUGHS, WITH THEIR GOUGED EYELETS AND GREAT, KNOTTED LIMBS, PART FOR HER AS WOULD REEDS FOR A SVELTE MINNOW SPECK, SHE FINDS HIM AS A SHADE CUT AND CAMOUFLAGED IN THE SOFT GREEN-GREY, STRIPED PINK IN DAYLIGHT AND CROWNED, AS DESCRIBED, WITH SUCH STRONG MEMORIES OF RAW WOUND AND BRUISE THAT IT WAS A WONDER HIS LIMBS WEREN'T SIMILARLY HEWN TO TORTURED SHAPE.
He is surrounded by the smalltalk of animals, a sparrow here, a fiery oriole arguing there by a flank, sun motes swirling around his head in that way that leaves behind the breath of him, (which is just rain odor, earth smell;) clean haziness scarred to the point of facelessness . . . surrounded soft by forest sounds, and pastel, leaf-filtered morning.
"I am," he says.
"So they did," he adds,
bemused,
letting a little round-cheeked bird wander up his head, to settle in the copse between his ears. He lifts a forelimb and points at the aster-flecked basins glittering below them, corrugated by thin lines of duckweed. "Even the pond scum has its uses," he says, "that's your first lesson of the day."
The words are sonorous, clipped, rich with barrel-aged politesse but none the old growth and moss decay befitting his age, sharp as rust as steel nails as hiding knives that prefer, desperate, to be sheathed-- a brutal, hard tenor squeezed and scored with glass shapes, and colored iron with experience, with long dead anguishes gone dry, shriveled up as summer plums, wet, pinkish, vulnerably soft at the seams. (And that was the sound of him, paternal without the memory of children.)
He waits for her to speak, already seeing the white, wine color her voice makes. It was the sound of sweetness and fluttering.
WIDE WITH POSSIBILITY, THE WORLD WAS, WITH ALL ITS LIE-WAITING HURTS, TRUSTLESS SHELTERS, ANGRY HOPES, INEXPERIENCED DESPAIRS, TIME AND LEARNING. WE HAD ALL THE HOURGLASSES IN THE WORLD TO TURN, WAITING, FOR THOSE MOMENTS YOU'D HAVE SOMEDAY, THE ONES THAT WOULD GROW YOU, AND WATER THE JUNGLES YOU'D ONE DAY BE.
