01-28-2016, 02:26 AM
The blue girl is gone. That roar echoing in her ears. Running and running. Her heart is pounding, stretching the limits of her arteries and veins – oxygen depletion, she cannot suck in enough air to please her whining lungs. Her long legs ache, but she runs all the same. When she reaches the pinewoods and calls for mother, her head is swimming and she stumbles over every needle and stone.
‘Brother...’ She tells the red woman what she has seen. The impossible thing she has seen.
Aurane closes her eyes tight and leans her head back, her lip quivering. And then she touches the girl on her forehead gently, kissing the whorl in the middle.
‘Good,’ she whispers. It shivers over the girl’s forelock and she leans into it, her eyes closing too...
The tiger rounds his back. Curling in on himself.
He blinks. His eyes are bright and wide. When they open, they reveal enormously dilated pupils – fear. His tail coils tight ‘round his body, the end flicking against his inner thigh agitatedly. His paws worry in the dust, they are strange and sensitive. They are dangerous and untried – he unsheathes his claws and stares at them, scared of their potential because he has not yet recognized it as his own. He imagines his own haunches shred to the bone when he sees them, and he rakes one across the earth, flinching back from the angry furrows he leaves at his feet.
He does not know this second body. He feels petrified in its skin, stiffened and stuck in one place, bombarded with sight and higher frequencies of sound.
He has felt it, from time to time, just never understood it. Thought it just funny feelings and foolish games. The phantom way his shoulders sometimes seem to narrow and roll as he walks, powerful and athletic. In the way he often catches himself listening to those ravens rustle their wings, trying to track them with his eyeless head, licking his lips as he buys into the make-pretend. It makes sister giggle and call him ‘silly’, and he agrees that he must be. So he nibbles on grass and gulps mother’s milk, and forgets the curious appetite.
But, when he dreams, fitful and sweaty, of meaty things…
The grass swishes and crinkles, he cranes his head to peer over the islands of bromegrass, just enough to see her bobbing over them like a bouy in water. He sinks back down, his lips pulled back from his teeth, snarling quietly. He should not be scared of her. Somewhere he knows it. He feels encouraged to straighten his spine. To let loose the tightened spring of his haunches. He lifts a little taller, spitting between his bared, predator's dentition. But when she circles he lowers on stiff legs, spinning around on his heels to keep her in sight. Cornered.
He should not be afraid of her. But he is just afraid.
It is tiring. He lowers to his belly, keeping his feet squarely under him, his head lolling back and he roars again, a little weaker this time. A little more hapless in the way it stays on his tongue and reverberates mournfully. He realizes, suddenly, that he does not know how to get back.
He blinks. His eyes bright and plaintive. ‘I am stuck,’ he chirps.
‘Brother...’ She tells the red woman what she has seen. The impossible thing she has seen.
Aurane closes her eyes tight and leans her head back, her lip quivering. And then she touches the girl on her forehead gently, kissing the whorl in the middle.
‘Good,’ she whispers. It shivers over the girl’s forelock and she leans into it, her eyes closing too...
The tiger rounds his back. Curling in on himself.
He blinks. His eyes are bright and wide. When they open, they reveal enormously dilated pupils – fear. His tail coils tight ‘round his body, the end flicking against his inner thigh agitatedly. His paws worry in the dust, they are strange and sensitive. They are dangerous and untried – he unsheathes his claws and stares at them, scared of their potential because he has not yet recognized it as his own. He imagines his own haunches shred to the bone when he sees them, and he rakes one across the earth, flinching back from the angry furrows he leaves at his feet.
He does not know this second body. He feels petrified in its skin, stiffened and stuck in one place, bombarded with sight and higher frequencies of sound.
He has felt it, from time to time, just never understood it. Thought it just funny feelings and foolish games. The phantom way his shoulders sometimes seem to narrow and roll as he walks, powerful and athletic. In the way he often catches himself listening to those ravens rustle their wings, trying to track them with his eyeless head, licking his lips as he buys into the make-pretend. It makes sister giggle and call him ‘silly’, and he agrees that he must be. So he nibbles on grass and gulps mother’s milk, and forgets the curious appetite.
But, when he dreams, fitful and sweaty, of meaty things…
The grass swishes and crinkles, he cranes his head to peer over the islands of bromegrass, just enough to see her bobbing over them like a bouy in water. He sinks back down, his lips pulled back from his teeth, snarling quietly. He should not be scared of her. Somewhere he knows it. He feels encouraged to straighten his spine. To let loose the tightened spring of his haunches. He lifts a little taller, spitting between his bared, predator's dentition. But when she circles he lowers on stiff legs, spinning around on his heels to keep her in sight. Cornered.
He should not be afraid of her. But he is just afraid.
It is tiring. He lowers to his belly, keeping his feet squarely under him, his head lolling back and he roars again, a little weaker this time. A little more hapless in the way it stays on his tongue and reverberates mournfully. He realizes, suddenly, that he does not know how to get back.
He blinks. His eyes bright and plaintive. ‘I am stuck,’ he chirps.
![[Image: sAxX94g.png]](http://i.imgur.com/sAxX94g.png)