even after they have been stepped on
Once, before the trees had settled down to sleep the long winter away, they would have warned him that someone was coming. Once they would have cloaked him in their leaves and crowned him with their branches, and the forest and the meadows would have welcomed him as another part of the wild earth. He wonders if they had always known where he came from; could they smell the desert on him, beneath the flowers? Would they care if they did? He had never known an aspen to be jealous, but now as he presses his skin to their bark and feels nothing but emptiness, he thinks that even the trees can still surprise him.
Some days he still isn’t sure if it is he who has changed, or the forest; it’s far too easy to blame it all on winter and to wait for spring to wake them all back up for him.
As it is, only the soft murmur of quick steps over soft soil alerted him to the others presence. He turns, seeing Callynite hovering at the edge of his vision, and lets out the breath he had not realized he was holding. It was easy to feel tense when the trees were quiet and the blood was bright against their white bark; Ipomoea has to remind himself to relax, loosening his shoulders as he greets the antlered girl with a nod. But he can’t stop from scanning the forest surrounding them quickly, wondering what or who else might be out there that the trees were not disclosing.
“The trees are not upset with me.” When had his voice started to sound so distant, so hollow? He almost adds I hope to the end of it. It feels wrong as soon as the words leave his lips - he feels like he should smile, to add something kinder as if to mitigate the previous sting - but he doesn’t. He can’t. The girl’s own smile is warm and easy on her lips, as bright as sunlight streaming between summer leaves. He envies that, the way she can smile even while hunting death.
Ipomoea turns, and his sigh is lost in the sound of his hoof beats against the fallen leaves.
“And it is not childish to be afraid of death. I do not blame them for that.” Even if sometimes he wondered which death they feared, and by whose hand - and how much they might blame him for his role in it. He had invited rot into the forest, selfishly thought he was enough to heal whatever disease she brought. But replacing dead leaves with new ones was not the same as saving them, he had seen that demonstrated already in a golden sapling.
He stops, tilting his head back. Overhead he can see the beginnings of new leaves budding along each of the slender branches, and beyond that, the sky. For a moment he is quiet, staring quietly into the canopy. ”How go your patrols? Is the forest as quiet as it seems?” he asks her, never taking his eyes from the hint of green peeking down at him. But there’s another question hiding in the first, one that’s begging to know what the trees are telling her, and if it’s all the things they are not telling him.
@Callynite
"Speaking."
