It said only one thing, over and over, a repetition of inescapable anguish
They are running in a melody they have not spoken for so long. Each claw is a chorus, each whisper of root trailing from their teeth a tune. When their jaws clack, and their bellies snarl instead of gurgle, the sound is not discordant but harmonic. The forest bows around their sound and each bough is a throat echoing their notes up into the mouth of the moon. An owl flies overhead, a whisper of sound instead of a bellow of it, and even that is nothing more than the hush, hush, hush of pages full with notes rubbing together like cricket wings.
We are running. We are running. We. Are. Running. The moonlight is iron and ice on our tongue. Beneath our paws the dirt dimples and trembles like flesh caught in a hungry smile. Each stride is longer than the last, each jump more full of violence and wrath than the last. If the forest is moving around us it is only to fall to its knees and bow its head before the return of us. And if the forest is making a sound of rejoice is it only the sigh of a blade sinking into a rusted door on the eve of war.
Before them, around them, through them, the trail of a mountain lion blooms quick as a root of thistle weed. It is thick with the copper tang of hare blood, and vole blood, and flesh caught between teeth that has started to fester. They drop their noses to the trail, like hounds trained instead of risen forest-gods, and their run turns to a weaving, infinity pattern through the trees. Over and over they loop: chase and retreat, chase and retreat. The thrill of it, the distant roar of that hunted lion, is enough of a gift that they do not want to rush it.
Our hunger-- no, not hunger-- our starvation feels like the press of a million thorns into our holly liver and our raspberry spleen. The spore in the center of our chest feels like a sun instead of a flower, a nebula around which every constellation of us flickers. The bowing forest turns from rejoice and settles into prayer. We can hear rabbits whispering a prayer of "not I" to each sparrow bleating "not I" to each fox curling around their kits begging "not us, not us, not us". But we are them too, all of them, where our roots bleed into their dens, and nests, and holes dug in the thicket. We tell them all, as we run after that mountain lion, "not you, tonight is not for you."
They do not relent as they follow the blood trail into the dark-soul of the weeping forest.
All three of them do not relent. They cannot relent. They will not relent.
We are starved, and desperate, and as empty as a hole void of color and life.
We are running. We are running. We. Are. Running. The moonlight is iron and ice on our tongue. Beneath our paws the dirt dimples and trembles like flesh caught in a hungry smile. Each stride is longer than the last, each jump more full of violence and wrath than the last. If the forest is moving around us it is only to fall to its knees and bow its head before the return of us. And if the forest is making a sound of rejoice is it only the sigh of a blade sinking into a rusted door on the eve of war.
Before them, around them, through them, the trail of a mountain lion blooms quick as a root of thistle weed. It is thick with the copper tang of hare blood, and vole blood, and flesh caught between teeth that has started to fester. They drop their noses to the trail, like hounds trained instead of risen forest-gods, and their run turns to a weaving, infinity pattern through the trees. Over and over they loop: chase and retreat, chase and retreat. The thrill of it, the distant roar of that hunted lion, is enough of a gift that they do not want to rush it.
Our hunger-- no, not hunger-- our starvation feels like the press of a million thorns into our holly liver and our raspberry spleen. The spore in the center of our chest feels like a sun instead of a flower, a nebula around which every constellation of us flickers. The bowing forest turns from rejoice and settles into prayer. We can hear rabbits whispering a prayer of "not I" to each sparrow bleating "not I" to each fox curling around their kits begging "not us, not us, not us". But we are them too, all of them, where our roots bleed into their dens, and nests, and holes dug in the thicket. We tell them all, as we run after that mountain lion, "not you, tonight is not for you."
They do not relent as they follow the blood trail into the dark-soul of the weeping forest.
All three of them do not relent. They cannot relent. They will not relent.
We are starved, and desperate, and as empty as a hole void of color and life.
