something kissed by the wild
and loved by lightning
and loved by lightning
There is a boy chasing his cheetah along the fringes of a wild wood. He laughs as the cheetah cub yips and in the deep of the wood the forest answers. Its voice is a woman’s. It wails and it sobs. The cheetah stops suddenly, its head turning toward the noise. Her eyes are bright and wary, gilded gold like a hunter’s moon. The boy stops as she does, his posture mimicking hers. Each of them paused in their run, each of them gazing, head up and alert into the misty deep of the dark wood.
The forest speaks with a woman’s cry again and the boy’s sides heave with a wary breath. This forest smells of strange things. Mysteries dance like ghouls across his tongue and the boy’s nerves tell him to run, but he his his mother’s daughter and he is deaf to such warnings. Slowly he steps toward the trees and his cub bounds to his side. It trots forward, ready and keen.
Together they slip into the shadow of the trees as the woodland begins to laugh.
