Canaan

  The breeze is gentle – weaving through the tightly knit oak and pine and their spindly, wiry branches – rustling through bright, lively vegetation and rattling the dry and brittle bark. The usually vivid sky left dull and gray with a looming storm, and the atmosphere is dense with precipitation as the sun clashes with the boundary line of the heavy haze – letting only bleak, minuscule rays of light gleam onto the thicket canopy, and across the roaring water below. The woodland is quiet, dark – with no light to penetrate the unyielding shadow and the bristling frigidity, it is a serene respite from the humidity and heat of summer.

  Alas, he cannot bathe beneath its glow much longer – his body flinches beneath its draping light, and soon the rolling muscles beneath his golden skin are moving and shifting, propelling him forward and away from the barren plateau. He is soon nestled along the border of the dense foliage, his feathers brushing against the dry, brittle bark as the water moves seamlessly next to him – powerful, unrelenting.

But he is not alone.

A shudder traverses the course of his spine as a foreign source of energy presses close to him, and a wary gold-flecked eye spares a glance, searching the soft curve of her cheek, her glistening, crystalline eyes – her dark mouth, where hushed, hurried, and urgent words form; her voice strained to rise above the rhythmic roar of the rushing water behind here. He is momentarily stunned, quietly studying where the rounded curve of her jaw line meets with the slender crook of her neck, but there is nothing familiar about it.

  But then –

  I have just seen your mother, and for a moment, his heart ceases to beat at all, and in the next, it is nearly rattling out of its cage, pounding roughly in his chest. His own brow line furrows then, nearly missing anything to come before or after her hushed statement (come quickly).

  Come quickly.

  Come quickly.

  ”Go; show me – take me to her,” he breathes, a tinge of dread and uncertainty lingering in his tone – once more, he is a young boy with a love deeper than the sea, for a mother who meant more than the stars.