khier
The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.
T
he sailors always warned me to stay close to the ship. There were many islands with unseen, unknown dangers. The dangers were what I was most in love with, however; they were the very thing that drew me past the sands or rocks of the shoreline and into the mixed foliage beyond. The scene always changed, but the ethereal feeling never did.Entering the copse, I discover the same atmosphere. It is nearly like coming home, I think—more like home than any other feeling I have felt. That is why I seek the sensation out; the intangible, indescribable emotion of standing upon a cliffside and staring down into the the unknown, or upon the brink of redwood trees so high they pierce the sky like spires. The feeling of smallness; of being a man before majesty so great it steals from him his very breath.
That is what it feels like, to see her. To meet her eyes and take in the spire of her twisted unicorn horn. That is what it feels like, to see the brightness of the scythe at the end of her leonine tail.
“True,” I snap at the same time she asks the question. The dog breaks off his barking and returns to me, but barely. He eyes her with white-eyed distrust. I clear my throat, “My apologies. His name is True.”
There is no reason for it. It was Arne who told me dogs were the truest animals in the world, and I believed her. I supposed she named him, in that capacity; and I wonder if I should be more attentive to him now and his obvious dislike of the strange unicorn.
I should. I should listen to the bristling of his hair and the twitch of his lips. I should listen to the way his body stiffens and he eyes her sidelong.
Magic, Chara whispers with an almost-laugh. She has never been afraid of anything; perhaps it is because she is already dead.
(Perhaps, however, she has been afraid of one thing: of standing on a cliffside, the sensation of smallness, of staring down).
I do not listen to True's instincts. I listen to Chara. I listen to the high, bright voice of curiosity blooming springlike and endless.
“And my name is Khier,” I say, politely. “This is truly a beautiful land. Are you native?”
The sailors, they used to warn me. If you go too far from the ship, you might never return.
