The forest rose like a dream
from the mind of Chaos’s lonely daughter
and the sun fell heavy and thick
The trees he might have found beautiful during daylight sprout clawed fingers and scream with the wind in their branches. The smell of soil that, after rain or fresh with morning dew would delight him reeks instead of rot, decay, things losing and lost. He is serenaded by the terror of it; he is subdued by the heavy darkness, a darkness so deep it lays upon him like a blanket.
In that moment, Aeneas is struck by how little he knows of the world and how deep a little boy’s fear can run. Thorns and moonlight and unicorns and wolves, all things he does not belong to and cannot yet comprehend; they are tangled in that darkness, intimate, until one at last emerges.
It will not help. You cannot hide.
For an incomprehensible moment, Aeneas believes it is the trees speaking, or the dirt beneath him. But it is not. It is a girl’s voice and when Aeneas glances up, he can see her silhouette--
There is a whining, like wind whistling through wood, or bone. Aeneas squints, with cold terror freezing him to where he lays. He does not know how to respond, what to say; and when he opens his mouth to speak, nothing comes out except for a sad, quiet gasp.
But then--she moves to leave him.
Somehow, the leaving is worse than her presence, chilling as it may be. Aeneas jolts upright; he finds his legs, bleeding and unsteady as they are. With sudden swiftness, he scrambles up the incline. It takes him longer than he would have liked, but that--that seems a small detail, in a steadily deepening scenario. He is still struck through with fear, but it seems far worse to stay.
“W-wait,” Aeneas says. His voice is too quiet, even for his ears. “Wait--please, don’t go?”
Even as he asks it, even as he steps closer, there is something whispering to him:
No, no, no
don’t, don’t, don’t.
There is a chill up his spine; a creeping acknowledgement that something is amiss. Something deeply, terribly wrong.
to warm the blood of a world
not quite ready to live
but so tired of its own imagination
