04-14-2020, 01:44 PM
In the most proverbial sense, a layer is elevated, peeled away until he is left exposing the annual rings of his past. Somehow, she had lifted away his bark, pressed clean passed the phloem and plucked his inner truths into words.
For some reason, this convergence caused him to share something about himself, untainted by hatred or mistrust.
Deft hands.
She made him speak, this delver of the dark, and for the first time in a long time, he was willing to. Without force or coercion.
There are many forests in the world, he wants to tell her, but now it is her turn to confide; in whatever way she might choose.
A stillness takes over, causes the line of his lips to smooth and seal, then his ears to pivot towards her.
He should have listened Then, so he makes sure to listen Now.
Names, she knows them, Druid can only marvel at her familiarity with the trees of Beqanna. The many labels of each, slipping away from her as easily as sap, honeyed quicksand, and for a moment- he forgets himself as he listens.
Of them, there is only one he himself knows, Taiga, and it makes him feel uncertain once more. It is but a memory now, a good one, but he had slipped away as he tends to- a ghost to haunt the thicket.
“Sometimes, home is what you make it,” he says decidedly, wanting to alleviate the pain that threatens to steal her smile. “Home doesn’t have to be where you are, it can be who you are too,” and then, there is his own smile that creeps, shadowed by the dim light of the coppice.
Unfair words, coming from a man who has told so little, refrained from becoming wholly vulnerable and exposed.
“Do you like berries?” He wonders out loud, and gestures for a walk, tossing his sun-faded head. Should she be open to doing him the favor of her company, he would take her to the ripe fruit baring bushes.
druid
words: points: HTML by Call