11-06-2024, 08:18 PM
I open my eyes to near darkness, and it takes several long moments and a few deep breaths that taste of cool, damp wood and salty sea to remember where I am.
We’d been playing hide-and-seek, and I’d found the perfect hide, tucked beneath a piece of driftwood. It was hard to hear anything over the crashing surf, and if Luvi had called for me I hadn’t been able to hear her, and eventually I must have drifted off for a bit while waiting.
I wriggle out into the light from where I’d been resting beneath the rotting wood, and dislodge some of the sand in my feathers with a quick shake. The sun is much higher than I remember, though is barely discernible through the hazy clouds that hang low in the air. I call out for my sister a few times, but she does not answer, and I suspect she’d gone back to the more central meadows and whatever game she’d been playing with herself before she’d pestered me enough to join her.
This wouldn’t be the first time I’d used a game of hide-and-seek to ditch her.
She doesn’t like to be out here along the shore by herself; says the ocean is too large and gives her the creeps. I glance out at the grey winter waves, and think only of the distance that they put between us and the rest of Beqanna. I decide in that moment to travel to the Forest, and am striding east along the shoreline before I really even think about why.
Ruhr had said something about being careful with ‘adolescent recklessness’, but the memory of that is hard to hear over the ocean and the adolescent recklessness. I am old enough to go alone, I reason, and if I should have told someone that I was going, well…I’m surely big enough to take care of myself. I’m nearly as tall as Ruhr despite not being quite a year old, and surely showing off a mouthful of sharp teeth would scare off even the worst sort of monsters in the world.
The farther from the Gates I go, the colder it feels, and I am grateful for the trees that block the wind when I arrive in the Forest. Now that I’ve come, I realize I had no specific destination in mind, and wander through the woods, pausing now and then to ensure that I’d heard a natural noise and not an eerie spirit calling from the heart of the Forest.
We’d been playing hide-and-seek, and I’d found the perfect hide, tucked beneath a piece of driftwood. It was hard to hear anything over the crashing surf, and if Luvi had called for me I hadn’t been able to hear her, and eventually I must have drifted off for a bit while waiting.
I wriggle out into the light from where I’d been resting beneath the rotting wood, and dislodge some of the sand in my feathers with a quick shake. The sun is much higher than I remember, though is barely discernible through the hazy clouds that hang low in the air. I call out for my sister a few times, but she does not answer, and I suspect she’d gone back to the more central meadows and whatever game she’d been playing with herself before she’d pestered me enough to join her.
This wouldn’t be the first time I’d used a game of hide-and-seek to ditch her.
She doesn’t like to be out here along the shore by herself; says the ocean is too large and gives her the creeps. I glance out at the grey winter waves, and think only of the distance that they put between us and the rest of Beqanna. I decide in that moment to travel to the Forest, and am striding east along the shoreline before I really even think about why.
Ruhr had said something about being careful with ‘adolescent recklessness’, but the memory of that is hard to hear over the ocean and the adolescent recklessness. I am old enough to go alone, I reason, and if I should have told someone that I was going, well…I’m surely big enough to take care of myself. I’m nearly as tall as Ruhr despite not being quite a year old, and surely showing off a mouthful of sharp teeth would scare off even the worst sort of monsters in the world.
The farther from the Gates I go, the colder it feels, and I am grateful for the trees that block the wind when I arrive in the Forest. Now that I’ve come, I realize I had no specific destination in mind, and wander through the woods, pausing now and then to ensure that I’d heard a natural noise and not an eerie spirit calling from the heart of the Forest.