HERE IS THE HOUR THAT HAS FORGOTTEN THE MINUTE
though the minnow remembers the stream.
I do not notice him until well after he has noticed me, I’m sure; and I am not so sure that I would have noticed him at all, had he not wished me to do so.
But I raise my eyes from the grey-coated lake – and I see him.
It is rather strange to see the boy, about the age of this form of me (I think; but there is something to him that seems older than his face), emerge from the trees. Not because he appears out-of-place; he doesn’t. Quite the opposite, in fact – he looks as much a part of this landscape as the lake or the stones or the withered forest. What surprises me is that he looks like he could just as easily be at home in my autumnal homeland. He is rich brown, dark as the wood of the most ancient oak in the forest, and gold, brilliant gold; gold that trails in his wake and fizzles away like dust when he moves. It is probably to my discredit that I did not notice him before he noticed me. (The knight, buried deep in my thoughts, whispers into my ear that it certainly is, that it suggests my instincts have grown dull, that I could be in some horrible trouble if he desired me to be – and I snap back that he is a feature of this landscape, and I am not one at all. I don’t know how to tread quietly among the branches and the leaves, to be so well-aware of the way that I move through these winding woodland passages to not even disturb their silence with my breathing. He does. He knows in the way that a bird knows, or a tree, or a drop of dew in the morning.)
I look at him, and I think that, if he has lived more lives than one, then he surely remembers his others.
Strangeling creature. You look like magic.
“You do not belong here,” he says, and, though his accent is wholly unfamiliar to me, there is something to the way he speaks that reminds me of another life – of the way my voice sounded when I was another creature entirely. I think it might have been the sound of me as a firefly, or as the vine. I nod my head a single time, slowly, and, for once, I do not send my hair spilling into my eyes.
“You’re right,” I agree, softly, “this land is foreign to me.” I am sure that it is obvious (with the way that I have been stumbling through this “Novus,” it would be more surprising if someone mistook me for a native), but even more so to a woodland creature like him; even as a vine or a firefly, or especially as a vine or a firefly, I could tell a foreigner from a native, and I suspect that he is more clever than either.
But – that is not exactly what he means, I think. I am not suited for this kind of wildness. Mine was always gilded; this is bare.
His eyes linger on me, and I raise my own to meet them. “A storm is coming,” he says, and I hadn’t even noticed – but I suppose there is a tension to the air, the kind that suggests some change is coming. “Do you have shelter?” The question surprises me, in my ignorance.
“You need to take shelter in a storm?” I feel my eyes widen, by fractions, with surprise. I suppose that it isn’t as though I know what a storm is like – my only point of reference is the winds on the beach, and, if it is like that, or worse, it might be buffeting or overpowering. (But I could not see the danger in falling droplets of water, or in bright lights in the sky or loud noises; but I can see the danger in so terribly few things in this land, and I am sure that it is more dangerous than I would like to imagine.)
He offers me shelter; I am still somewhat taken aback by the kindness of foreigners, in this land, and I smile gently. Gratefully. “I would appreciate it,” I say, and take a step closer.
If I were older, I might feel worried. More harrowed by kind offers. But I am still young – and my curiosity overwhelms every last vestige of my caution.
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"Speech!"
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
