It was dusk, the sun still lingering in the fall sky, but just barely. Already the sky was colored like a water color painting, bathed in pinks, reds, and purples. Already the Harvest Festival was well underway and Kibou had heard from around the court that it would be the best festival yet! His mother, his poor mother, had encouraged the child to stay home for now, to let her walk the grounds to make sure it was all safe. Kibou had groaned, knowing that his mother was far too protective. But he did as he was told, staying in the hut while his mother went out to search the area.
That was until his mother was finally out of sight.
And then the colt left the safety of his hut, Saki sitting quietly on his beck as the two of them took off at a trot towards the Festival. There was no way he was going to miss out on all the fun. His mother was being far too protective. He was a whole season older now, growing up so quickly. He would show his mother that he could be big and brave, that he could enjoy the festival and be safe while doing it.
Like a lot of the children, he was drawn to the corn maze. He was thinker, a puzzle solver. Just the thought that there was a maze for him to walk through, to try and navigate through, made him so excited. He finally had an opportunity to show off all that he knew. He would be able to show those adults just how smart he was.
And so, Kibou entered the maze just as the sun was about to set. His little orb of light followed closely behind him, the monkey on his back holding on a little tighter. She was scared, but he was brave! Steps were confident, his neck held high, his steps light and high. It did not take long for Kibou to lose his way, even the smartest had trouble navigating this maze.
The maze was covered in darkness now, his little orb of light the only thing that lit his path. With each step, his confidence began to fade. And then, there was a rustle of the corn. Kibou did a very quick 180 degree turn and backed himself up into a corner (though was there truly corners in a maze of corn?). "Who’s there?" His voice was a little high pitched, showing just how young the colt was. "I’m not scared, I’m brave!" However, his tone was hushed, his confidence low. Was he trying to show the stranger that he was brave? Or was he just trying to convince himself that he wasn’t scared.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
It is a wonderful thing, to be a child at a festival without supervision. Aster has eaten her fill of sweets, and the tang of spiced cider is still on her tongue; she has run wild through the marketplaces, and carries with her the smell of bonfire-smoke. At some point she has lost her brother, but she is unconcerned; though they have never been around so many people, tonight feels safe. Not like the island. Not like the wilds.
Maybe it is inevitable that she has come to the maze. Since the relic, when her heart beat a frenzy against her ribs, nothing has made her feel quite so alive. Here, though, this wide and whispering field with the stars just emerging overhead, and the rows and rows of corn that tower high above her - well, it makes her as curious as the cheetah at her heels.
It is dark in the maze. The shadows are thick and purple. She walks quietly, unheard amid those other sounds; she skirts others each time she hears them, tired of hearing you shouldn’t be out here alone. Sometimes, there is laughter. Sometimes, there are screams.
When she sees the boy, she follows him. Like her, he is young and alone. Aster stays a few turns behind, following the gleam of light. She might never have let him know she was there - until he speaks.
For a moment, she considers staying silent. Or telling him that she is a ghost, with the bone-colored white of her coat and the flat gold sheen of her eyes in the growing darkness. Instead, she only steps forward with her head high, her hooves soundless over the packed earth of the maze. The corn is still sighing in the breeze, dry leaves rustling together, an endless and toneless kind of music.
“Only me,” she says, and stands before the boy backed up into a corner, just beyond the light thrown from the little orb floating next to him. She regards him the way a deer might, or a wolf: with her head tilted just-so, with a kind of alien curiosity. “And my companion.” Teak winds between her legs, silent, watching the boy and his monkey with the same kind of interest.
Aster thinks that he does not look very brave, no matter what he says. There is a part of her that wants to scorn him, or scare him.
But she remembers what it is to be afraid (on the island, on the strange black-glass moat, with the relic flickering like a dying star and the scarlet juice of berries running down like blood and the bear with butterflies where its eyes ought to have been). Compared to that, this maze is nothing - an empty field she could fly over, if she were just a little older. No enemies but field-mice running small-footed over fallen stalks. Yet this boy with his monkey and his magical light might not know that.
“Which way were you trying to go?” she asks, trying to sound kind, the way a mother might. But still her eyes regard him like a wild thing, deciding.
His fear stems from only the unknowing. He has never really been away from his mother before, her large form always towering over him just a few feet away. She has always kept his close, kept him from experiencing the world. She says it has always been to protect him, to keep him from what happened to his father. He wants so badly to know and understand, but she has never explained just how he died or when. In fact, she doesn’t talk about him much. She says it’s because it is too painful. He doesn’t yet understand the painful emotions that death can bring. After all, nothing in his short life has died, other than an animal here or there. His mother had taught him about the circle of life, but nothing has ever affected him in the way his mother says it will. And so he doesn’t dare ask questions, hoping that she might explain it when he is but a few months older.
So naturally, this fear that he feels is more of an uneasiness. It’s that feeling where you know someone is watching you, following your every move but never stepping into the light. It is this uneasiness that makes his fur stand on edge. It’s what makes Saki hold onto him a little tighter. She can feel his uneasiness and it projects onto her. She tries to comfort him, but honestly, she is unsure how.
But when there is a voice that speaks just outside of the scope of his light, Kibou immediately turns his attention to where the voice had been coming from. It sounds young and immature, much like his own. And yet, he still cannot make out the individual who owns the voice. He can’t see her, but he knows she’s there. "Does only me have a name?" He supposed knowing her name would make her less scary. With a name he could associate something to her, something that did not make his blood pump faster or his hair stand on end.
She asks him which way he was trying to go and slowly, confidently, he takes a step towards the voice. First one step, and then another, and then another. He does this until she is bathed in the soft light emitted from his glowing orb. She is pale white, with gold accentuated all around her. Her antlers are quick to draw his gaze and he wonders how she grew them. He wonders why she is so beautifully colored and he is so plain. One look at his own skin and he is embarrassed around her. Why was he so plain and she so beautiful?
But he did not come forward to only wish that he could be something more. He stepped forward so he might know who he was talking to. It always makes meeting new people a little less terrifying when he can match a face to the voice. "I’m really just wandering…but I suppose I’m trying to find the end. Isn’t everyone?" He remembers that she has asked him which direction he was trying to go and he found his answer fitting. Everyone who entered the maze was eventually looking for the exit. Some would undoubtedly exit through the entrance, but at the core of things, he wanted to make it through to the end.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
“Aster,” she says to the boy, and though she says her name softly as a lamb the sharp consonants of it still prick the air like a burr. She is interested by the way he can’t quite make her out, but she can see him down to the whiskers on his chin in the pale floating light. “And Teak.” The cheetah cub makes a loud chirrup, then takes quick cat-steps until he is in the glow of that little moon, too. His golden eyes have not left the monkey.
If she liked the way he looked when he could not see her, she is just as curious at the way his gaze pans her when she is revealed. It is the way she looks at a snake, or an owl, or anything else beautiful and new. She blinks at the light as Teak tiptoes around the stranger, then darts in to bat as his tail. He looks like autumn, Aster decides; his hair like golden wheat and his coat like fallen leaves.
“What is your name? I know it isn’t Brave.” She doesn’t necessarily intend it to be cruel, though she has yet to smile.
Her ears prick up when he says that he is trying to find the end. The cheetah has abandoned his newest play-thing; now he prowls just beyond the edge of the light, pouncing on dried leaves that shiver in the dark. “I’m trying to find the middle,” Aster says. She takes a step nearer to the boy, and tips her face into the light. Other than Avesta, other than of course her twin, Aster has not been so close to another child. She and her brother are wild things, who keep to the forests and the glens, and though she has watched the foals playing in the markets and the streets she has never joined them.
“They say there is treasure there,” she says seriously, and thinks again of the Relic. Something makes her shiver, then, a little ripple all along her spine, but it is not cold and it is not fear. “Wouldn’t you rather find it?”
