TODAY, FROM A DISTANCE, I SAW YOU / WALKING AWAY, AND WITHOUT A SOUND / THE GLITTERING FACE OF A GLACIER / SLID INTO THE SEA.
☙❧
There is one memory that lingers inside of me like broken glass.
In it, I move through the woods like a wraith. My eyes ache. (I remember that, even though I don’t think that I should; I remember the way that they hurt so badly that they gave me a migraine, and, no matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to shake it.) My hair is matted, filled with brambles and broken-off twigs and dead leaves, not lilies, and my coat has caught on burrs. I am covered in ragged, shallow gashes and dust, like something out of the grave, or something out of the woods. I know, distantly, that I do not look at all like a Green Knight should – I know that because I cannot feel the burrs or the tangles or the gashes, but I shed my armor hours, maybe days ago, left it lying in an ill-fitting heap in my chambers. It wouldn’t adhere to my skin. When I tried to put it on, it cut me like a razor-blade.
(I should have patched those wounds, I know, or they’d heal wrong, or get infected, but they are still burning at my hip, and I-)
and I am looking for a tree that I cannot seem to find, no matter how deep or how far that I walk into the woods. I have never lost my way before, never, but all the trees looked the same, no matter how deep I strayed into the woods (towards, even, the places that I know that we should never go – at least without the king), and I could never seem to find the one that I was looking for.
Perhaps it is because I knew, deep down, that I was not looking for a tree. Perhaps it was because I had seen what I was looking for put into the ground – buried, like roots, beneath a thick layer of soil. Perhaps I simply didn’t have the soul-finding talent of a priestess, or the woodland connection of my lord-
He was the one who found me. I half-remember it – I remember there is no death, but that does not mean there is no grief, and sometimes I wonder how much he meant it. What I know for sure is that he was just as angry as he was consoling. I can only think of him being angrier once, when I put my mind to it, and that is more of an imagined anger than anything – because I was dead, and I never saw it with my own two eyes, but I’d made him promises, and then I’d never kept them.
(I hope he knows, wherever he is, whatever he has become, that I longed to. I hope that he knows that I-)
I still know very little of the sea. A few months ago, I didn’t even know that it existed; but by now, it has cemented itself in my mind as the physical embodiment of new beginnings. I think of meeting O on the shore, the first outsider I’d encountered in this lifetime, and Elena, who’d been kind enough to welcome me into her home, and of Caspian, who’d shown me wonders beyond all of my wildest imaginings. When I grind my hooves into the crush of sand and breathe in a mouthful of salt and kelp-and-fish sea air, I feel more like Nicnevin than usual; I almost feel right in this new skin, almost recognizable in this face that doesn’t always seem like my own.
I don’t know what drew me out to the sea when I heard the boy screaming – the crescendo of his voice louder, somehow, than the crash of the tide against the rocks. In the back of my mind, there is always the heir; and closer to the front, there is Elena, and Elliana, and all the friends I’ve made in this new land. (That is the part that worries me, sometimes, because it longs to find a place in this world, not simply stay as a visitor.) All I know is that I hear his voice, and I break into a sprint towards it unthinkingly, kicking up sand and saltwater in my wake until-
I can see him. He is a child, much younger than me, and standing at the place where the waves meet the shore, screaming for someone who isn’t coming.
For someone, I think, as I stand meters behind him and listen, feeling my expression contort – into something more like understanding than proper pity -, that will never come.
When his voice softens, I step forward, sand crunching beneath the weight of my hooves. I do not stop until the water rushes up to my hooves, until I am at his side, and it is only when I am there that I realize I don’t have anything to say, so I don’t say a word. I only extend a long, brown-feathered wing –
an offer, as it were, to come closer.
@Aeneas || ;~; || ted kooser, "after years"
Speech
☙❧
There is one memory that lingers inside of me like broken glass.
In it, I move through the woods like a wraith. My eyes ache. (I remember that, even though I don’t think that I should; I remember the way that they hurt so badly that they gave me a migraine, and, no matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to shake it.) My hair is matted, filled with brambles and broken-off twigs and dead leaves, not lilies, and my coat has caught on burrs. I am covered in ragged, shallow gashes and dust, like something out of the grave, or something out of the woods. I know, distantly, that I do not look at all like a Green Knight should – I know that because I cannot feel the burrs or the tangles or the gashes, but I shed my armor hours, maybe days ago, left it lying in an ill-fitting heap in my chambers. It wouldn’t adhere to my skin. When I tried to put it on, it cut me like a razor-blade.
(I should have patched those wounds, I know, or they’d heal wrong, or get infected, but they are still burning at my hip, and I-)
and I am looking for a tree that I cannot seem to find, no matter how deep or how far that I walk into the woods. I have never lost my way before, never, but all the trees looked the same, no matter how deep I strayed into the woods (towards, even, the places that I know that we should never go – at least without the king), and I could never seem to find the one that I was looking for.
Perhaps it is because I knew, deep down, that I was not looking for a tree. Perhaps it was because I had seen what I was looking for put into the ground – buried, like roots, beneath a thick layer of soil. Perhaps I simply didn’t have the soul-finding talent of a priestess, or the woodland connection of my lord-
He was the one who found me. I half-remember it – I remember there is no death, but that does not mean there is no grief, and sometimes I wonder how much he meant it. What I know for sure is that he was just as angry as he was consoling. I can only think of him being angrier once, when I put my mind to it, and that is more of an imagined anger than anything – because I was dead, and I never saw it with my own two eyes, but I’d made him promises, and then I’d never kept them.
(I hope he knows, wherever he is, whatever he has become, that I longed to. I hope that he knows that I-)
I still know very little of the sea. A few months ago, I didn’t even know that it existed; but by now, it has cemented itself in my mind as the physical embodiment of new beginnings. I think of meeting O on the shore, the first outsider I’d encountered in this lifetime, and Elena, who’d been kind enough to welcome me into her home, and of Caspian, who’d shown me wonders beyond all of my wildest imaginings. When I grind my hooves into the crush of sand and breathe in a mouthful of salt and kelp-and-fish sea air, I feel more like Nicnevin than usual; I almost feel right in this new skin, almost recognizable in this face that doesn’t always seem like my own.
I don’t know what drew me out to the sea when I heard the boy screaming – the crescendo of his voice louder, somehow, than the crash of the tide against the rocks. In the back of my mind, there is always the heir; and closer to the front, there is Elena, and Elliana, and all the friends I’ve made in this new land. (That is the part that worries me, sometimes, because it longs to find a place in this world, not simply stay as a visitor.) All I know is that I hear his voice, and I break into a sprint towards it unthinkingly, kicking up sand and saltwater in my wake until-
I can see him. He is a child, much younger than me, and standing at the place where the waves meet the shore, screaming for someone who isn’t coming.
For someone, I think, as I stand meters behind him and listen, feeling my expression contort – into something more like understanding than proper pity -, that will never come.
When his voice softens, I step forward, sand crunching beneath the weight of my hooves. I do not stop until the water rushes up to my hooves, until I am at his side, and it is only when I am there that I realize I don’t have anything to say, so I don’t say a word. I only extend a long, brown-feathered wing –
an offer, as it were, to come closer.
@
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
