02-23-2023, 02:19 PM
Glean
How long?
Oh, how long?
So long now that she had only been a girl then. Before the upheaval. (Could it be called that? Certainly it could, with the way the sea had crested and swallowed up the earth. What else could it be called?) Before the sky splintered and became something else altogether.
And she had peered out at this new world from the dark wood where the creatures chattered, trembling. If she could have calmed them by explaining the way the world had changed, she would have. But even she did not know.
So she had kept to the forest because it was familiar. Because the woodland creatures bent close and she could still creep through the shadows there, giggling while her skin changed to match the surroundings. She called to the wolves and the owls and the elk, though these tended to be the most haughty of the woodland creatures. Together they had wondered aloud where things had gone wrong. (Had they gone wrong? Glean was not an intelligent enough creature to differentiate between wrong and different. All she had known, all she knows, is that her home had been one thing and then it had become something else altogether.)
There is another shift someplace out in the distance on this particular night like any other night. ‘Look,’ the rabbit whispers, big round eyes turned to the sky. And Glean looks, too. Glean turns her face to the stars but they are gone, the darkness flooded instead with some great light.
Her breath catches.
She swallows.
‘What is it?’ asks the squirrel and Glean doesn’t know. The only answer is a kind of pregnant silence. ‘Glean,’ the deer says, ‘you must go.’
Why her?
Glean looks to the deer and somehow, in her bones, she knows the doe is right.
She must go.
She has never been a particularly brave thing, Glean, if only because brave and foolish are not the same thing at all. Her breath shudders and she nods.
Out of the forest, then. She shimmers in the dark as she shifts from the horse to the sprite. She flies because it is quicker this way, though she is in no particular hurry to confront whatever it is that awaits her.
She sees them there on the shore. The dark figures lying prone there in the sand. But it is the sprites that call her attention. Smaller than her, more brilliant. Despite herself, she grins. The smell of death has not hit her yet. It does not hit her until she lands on the beach and sees that they are dead, the two figures. Her heart gives a violent start and she yelps despite herself.
She has seen Death.
Seen Death in the way that old age seized the creatures of the forest, the way sickness sometimes strangled out the life there. But this is something altogether different, therefore it is wrong. This is perhaps the starkest form of fear.
But the Sprites are welcoming in their halo of light. She scurries toward them because they are safe, they are familiar. She is one of them. She does not hesitate before she plunges through the center of their circle.
Oh, how long?
So long now that she had only been a girl then. Before the upheaval. (Could it be called that? Certainly it could, with the way the sea had crested and swallowed up the earth. What else could it be called?) Before the sky splintered and became something else altogether.
And she had peered out at this new world from the dark wood where the creatures chattered, trembling. If she could have calmed them by explaining the way the world had changed, she would have. But even she did not know.
So she had kept to the forest because it was familiar. Because the woodland creatures bent close and she could still creep through the shadows there, giggling while her skin changed to match the surroundings. She called to the wolves and the owls and the elk, though these tended to be the most haughty of the woodland creatures. Together they had wondered aloud where things had gone wrong. (Had they gone wrong? Glean was not an intelligent enough creature to differentiate between wrong and different. All she had known, all she knows, is that her home had been one thing and then it had become something else altogether.)
There is another shift someplace out in the distance on this particular night like any other night. ‘Look,’ the rabbit whispers, big round eyes turned to the sky. And Glean looks, too. Glean turns her face to the stars but they are gone, the darkness flooded instead with some great light.
Her breath catches.
She swallows.
‘What is it?’ asks the squirrel and Glean doesn’t know. The only answer is a kind of pregnant silence. ‘Glean,’ the deer says, ‘you must go.’
Why her?
Glean looks to the deer and somehow, in her bones, she knows the doe is right.
She must go.
She has never been a particularly brave thing, Glean, if only because brave and foolish are not the same thing at all. Her breath shudders and she nods.
Out of the forest, then. She shimmers in the dark as she shifts from the horse to the sprite. She flies because it is quicker this way, though she is in no particular hurry to confront whatever it is that awaits her.
She sees them there on the shore. The dark figures lying prone there in the sand. But it is the sprites that call her attention. Smaller than her, more brilliant. Despite herself, she grins. The smell of death has not hit her yet. It does not hit her until she lands on the beach and sees that they are dead, the two figures. Her heart gives a violent start and she yelps despite herself.
She has seen Death.
Seen Death in the way that old age seized the creatures of the forest, the way sickness sometimes strangled out the life there. But this is something altogether different, therefore it is wrong. This is perhaps the starkest form of fear.
But the Sprites are welcoming in their halo of light. She scurries toward them because they are safe, they are familiar. She is one of them. She does not hesitate before she plunges through the center of their circle.