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.
K
hier does not think to watch the world around him die; he is forever fixated on the living of it, the vibrant green of the canopy above, the steady panting of True by his side. “It is,” Khier agrees, abashedly. “I was told once there is nothing truer than a dog’s heart, and—anyways. Why name anything what it is?” There had never been a question. True, in Khier’s life, had always been meant to be just that.
Then she says, I am Isolt and Khier smiles above the wilting dandelions, the grass grown limp, the flowers colorless. He smiles above it with eyes like gems and steps just a bit closer.
(Because this, too, smells of inevitability. Just as the breaking of the grass stalks had been when True ran through them—just as the fading of leaves in autumn. Because this, too, feels of fate and gravity and Khier has never been afraid of either).
And Khier smiles back.
He has always been a mirror.
A smile with teeth, not joy, and yet Khier possesses no dangerous edge, no suggested blade. She says she is from the forest, and he falls a little in love with her, this girl with a spiral for a horn who is from the forest.
(But that is Khier—falling a little in love with all that exists around him).
He can tell, though.
He can tell she is from it.
The same way the pagan god, carved into the tree, is from it. And the dead sparrow’s bones. The flowers, both before they wilt and after.
“Tell me something about it?” Khier asks, and she is stepping closer, removing whatever distance had remained. Her horn drops and he watches her curiously as it points to his amulet.
He supposes, however, that one must exchange a truth for a truth. He wonders if she deals in such fair measures and so, daringly, answers: “The daughter of an almost-goddess.”
You’re going to speak of me so easily? Chara asks him. Her voice should be chiding, but instead sounds impish. She is delighted to be spoken of—she always is. “From a land far from here. A jungle, grown up around the ruins of fallen heaven.”
He almost says, they grow back, of the flowers, and the grass, and the sparrows.
They grow back.
