IN THE PARAMETERS OF CANVAS, THE COFFIN OF THE FRAME -
the art of wreckage, how to figure ourselves in the ruins of what we can't traverse.
From the moment that Locust set hoof on the ivory sand of the beach (a rather lovely one, which she might have enjoyed under different circumstances), she recognized that this was a terrible decision, even for her, and she was hardly known for her stellar decision-making process.
That was before she spent several hours wandering the forest in the center of the island and managed to do nothing more productive than walk in a very large circle. She could navigate the open sea with ease, using currents and winds and stars, but forests? Forests remained a mystery, a real enigma. The only reason why she even discerned that she’d walked in a circle was because she found herself standing, for the second time that afternoon, in front of the ugliest tree she’d ever seen in her life.
It looked like, with very little exaggeration, the souls of the damned had gotten trapped in its trunk. The tree was pale and sickly, the limp, sparse leaves a mottled mash of brown and yellow. Of course, that was ignoring the gaping indentations in the tree’s trunk and curling branches, some of which were lined with bumps that looked, when she squinted, rather like blunt teeth. (Like a parrotfish, she thinks, if a parrotfish could unhinge its jaw.)
When she encountered the tree for the second time, Locust planted her hooves in front of it, glared profusely at the holes-full-of-damned-souls, and muttered a string of particularly creative curses. She’d been charmed to this island by the prospect of adventure, which was always appealing in her line of work, and the fact that she'd discovered that August (and most of the rest of the staff at the Scarab, but she didn’t really care if they pissed off a local god and got themselves eaten by some strange jungle beast) had presumably left to explore the bridge, and, if the boy had anything reminiscent of his father’s nose for trouble at that age…
Well. She wouldn’t think about where that could lead him.
But there was no sign of August, or adventure, or treasure, and, given that she was a pirate on an island, she’d worked her hopes up for a few shiny objects for her trouble...or a kelpie, while she was so close to the sea, if nothing else. (She had her knife, after all, even if she did prefer to have help whenever she found herself in trouble with one.) Instead, there was just an assortment of trees that all looked exactly the same to her, save for the tree of the damned. (Unnervingly similar, she might add - as though they'd never had time to grow differently, so they all looked exactly the same, down to each bob and weave in the texture of the bark.) By the third time she encountered it, Locust had decided that it was somehow cursed, not simply suffering from some sort of…fungal infection.
She stopped in front of the tree again, narrowed her eyes at the toothy divots, and pulled her knife from its holster, waving it threateningly. (Predictably, the tree didn’t seem especially intimidated.) “I’m going to come back with a saw,” she muttered, glaring up at the branches. She was reasonably sure that they had one, back on the boat, but that required crossing the bridge again, and, more importantly, getting out of the goddamned woods.
She turned her back on the tree, preparing to march off into the forest again, when she felt something rake against her spine. She froze. Shuddered. It felt like branches, curved like feline claws, dragging their way down her skin.
She turned, slowly, her eyes narrowing to suspicious slits.
The branches were curled at a different angle. She turned, taking a step back, and glowered at it. The next thing she knew, the godforsaken thing was going to be pulling up its roots and chasing her around. It didn’t move while she was staring at it, so, keeping her eyes trained on those gaping mouth-holes on the trunk, she turned, hindquarters to the treeline; she began to back away, still staring at the branches suspiciously, as though she expected the tree to reach out and grab her at any moment.
Fucking trees. This was why she spent so much time on the water.
@open || a slightly more humorous locust post. || "sea of ice," callie siskel
"Speech!" ||
