Fall in love whenever you can, her mother had admonished. It didn’t seem cautionary, just a piece of wisdom thrown about carelessly like a handful of dust tossed to the wind. Love often and love fiercely, is what she also said sometimes when she stared off into the distance and she peered after, trying to see whatever it was her mother saw moving on the horizon. Usually all she saw was the scud of clouds or light so bright and beautiful that it hurt to look at it. Still, she looked and she listened and let her mother weave all manner of wildflowers and weeds into her hair and the rest the wind took care of.
In this way, she grew up. Wild and wanted, no less loved or nurtured but there was always a distance in it, a wistfulness that bordered on pain that pricked at her heart. If that was love, she almost didn’t want it. Not the gaunt look of malnourishment as her mother pined and paced for someone that wasn’t there. She understood that someone was her father. That the cave they dwelt in had been his and the thatch of forest beyond had been roamed over by her mother in bear-form. But if that was love, no thank you ma’am. She did not want it despite her mother’s tender admonishing to fall always and often as if love was the best thing that could happen out of everything else in the world.
Then, there came a time in which their paths separated and she watched as her mother’s shape changed from equine to ursine and it was a bear that lumbered off unconcerned of the offspring it left behind. The bear was better at compartmentalizing the mare’s tragedies and triumphs. Or the bear in her just did not care. But as for her, the daughter left on the verge of the wood and the world, she watched until the bear blended into the shadows and was no more and felt the smallest thrill at some newfound sense of freedom never before tasted.
Truth be told, she had not the fortitude to leave her mother on her own. It had to be done in this fashion - with Keeper the one to go and the daughter left behind to discover that she could act of her own accord now without pinpricks of guilt and shame. It was as if she awoke, came to life, with a shiver and an internal spark of elation as the next chapter before her began to unfold. She laughed then sobered, perhaps mad to be standing in the woods and laughing to herself but madness might help keep the undesirables at bay. Not that she was at all scared, just so elated to be free in a sense that she had never before comprehended and now…
The world was her oyster and everything in it a beautiful pearl to behold. Forget love, there was an abundance of it in birdsong and breeze, river and ravine, trails and time. Thistly smiled and struck off down some path that only deer took and cast herself into the hands of fate like a smoky blue stone.