12-12-2021, 06:00 PM
glean
‘Quiet, now,’ the deer murmurs, gentle, lyrical.
The sound makes Glean’s eyes heavy because every word the deer speaks is soft as a poem. She shuffles her feet, her mouth shut against the urge to unleash all of the words dammed up in her throat.
‘Look,’ the deer says and nods its fine head toward the clearing. Two fawns, their legs tangled, spotted in the filtered sunlight. Glean gasps softly, every inch of her humming with excitement as she watches them sleep.
‘They are mine,’ the deer tells her and smiles. And Glean smiles, too, because the fawns are small just as she is small and the deer has kept close to her for as long as she can remember. (A thing that had watched from the forest as the sprite had emerged from her mother’s womb, looking immediately to the densely wooded forest just beyond her line of sight, as if drawn there by magnets. A forest sprite, then.)
The deer had shown her these things, these forest things, laughing quietly as she’d learned the languages there.
She trembles with excitement, grinning wildly. And a branch snaps nearby and the deer looks around wildly, eyes rolling and there is nothing the sprite can say to settle the thrumming nerves. So she passes the deer a look and turns away from the clearing where the fawns still sleep, her purple flesh shifting to match the dense underbrush around her as she seeks out the source of the sound. She will head them off, she will protect the deer and her fawns.
When she spots them, she returns to her own flesh, visible as she steps out into the open. “Hello,” she says, head tilted, smiling with her secret caught between her teeth.
The sound makes Glean’s eyes heavy because every word the deer speaks is soft as a poem. She shuffles her feet, her mouth shut against the urge to unleash all of the words dammed up in her throat.
‘Look,’ the deer says and nods its fine head toward the clearing. Two fawns, their legs tangled, spotted in the filtered sunlight. Glean gasps softly, every inch of her humming with excitement as she watches them sleep.
‘They are mine,’ the deer tells her and smiles. And Glean smiles, too, because the fawns are small just as she is small and the deer has kept close to her for as long as she can remember. (A thing that had watched from the forest as the sprite had emerged from her mother’s womb, looking immediately to the densely wooded forest just beyond her line of sight, as if drawn there by magnets. A forest sprite, then.)
The deer had shown her these things, these forest things, laughing quietly as she’d learned the languages there.
She trembles with excitement, grinning wildly. And a branch snaps nearby and the deer looks around wildly, eyes rolling and there is nothing the sprite can say to settle the thrumming nerves. So she passes the deer a look and turns away from the clearing where the fawns still sleep, her purple flesh shifting to match the dense underbrush around her as she seeks out the source of the sound. She will head them off, she will protect the deer and her fawns.
When she spots them, she returns to her own flesh, visible as she steps out into the open. “Hello,” she says, head tilted, smiling with her secret caught between her teeth.
she moved with shameless wonder