01-12-2017, 11:34 PM
Love hurts, says the heart.
I know, mumbles the brain.
He cannot reconcile the land and love; they are two thorny tumors that prick his heart and turn it cancerous and black. If possible, it is shriveled and shrunken, like yesterday’s apple picked fresh from the orchard and then carelessly tossed away after a single bite.
Love is foolish, says the brain.
I know, sighs the heart.
Look ahead, he reminds himself, as his eyes start to stray towards the ghosts that spin themselves into existence out of the snowfall. They leap and twirl, and he is afraid to look at them in case they bear familiar shapes - lover, mother, and child after child. It is cruel how memory claws at his gut, hungry for acknowledgement but he turns his face away from it. Memory holds no power, he thinks, if he does not give in to it.
His hoof knocks against a submerged root and he nearly sinks to his knees in the snow. Once, he was never this careless! It catches him in a halt, momentarily surprised as his dark eyes find the culprit that tripped him - a wizened thick leg of an oak snaking underfoot. He snorts, shakes his head, and stumbles onward; his knees feel bruised (what part of him doesn’t?) and in time, they’ll heal unlike the other parts of him that stayed black and blue, becoming a memory in the membrane and tissue of him. (Cut him open, he just might bleed bruises, not blood.) That misstep makes him hate the forest that much more, even as he tries terribly to break from it but the trees seem endless, like everything else these days.
When he does break from their stranglehold upon him, he does so near another that gets no look from him. He does not see her for the space around him that is suddenly gratifying in its openness and freedom, and because of it, he sucks in a great rattling gasp of air that scalds his lungs and he coughs up that first taste of something other than forest from his throat in a phlegmy hack. Still, even that cannot chase the shadows from his face, almost rendering it gaunt and fierce in the way that it has ravaged his flesh - he may look strong, but looks are decidedly deceptive, and though the muscle is not weak in him, it thirsts less and less for stamina and speed, begins to deteriorate until he is but a brown pathetic shadow of himself.
Mandan snapped his head around at the sound of snow sliding over hooves trying to be quiet and creeping; but as it happened, she was too small - too quick - too close, and her face is already buried in his neck before he can do anything about it. He cannot help it, but his lips lift away from his teeth as she pulls back and turns that delicate face up to him - he longs to bite it, rend it to shreds, leave only bone to show for it all. Except, he does nothing but sneer and look down his long nose at her because she is too small to harm, too reminiscent of his own daughters who used to press themselves against him like she does. Maybe it is something in her smallness that undoes him, softens the sneer until it is a ghost of a smile lurking in his black lips.
Friend?
She is so certain, it almost breaks his heart all over again. He has never been a friend to anyone - not his brothers or sisters, not his lover or those he mounts in the midst of their frenzied fits of animal passion, but almost maybe to those small coltish beings that gamboled around him, impish smiles on their faces and pure adoration in their unchanged eyes until the world seized them in her harsh grasp and in the end, even they left him. Just like she will, thinking him a fair enough whim for now as the two of them stand alone in this snowy corner of the forest, just looking at one another. It is the press of her nose to his shoulder, the offering of her name from that little mouth that makes him blink away the thoughts that steal through his brain.
“Mandan,” he says gruffly, shrugging her off of him in a careless but somehow benign (as if he tried to be gentle, for her sake - only, for her sake) way.
I know, mumbles the brain.
He cannot reconcile the land and love; they are two thorny tumors that prick his heart and turn it cancerous and black. If possible, it is shriveled and shrunken, like yesterday’s apple picked fresh from the orchard and then carelessly tossed away after a single bite.
Love is foolish, says the brain.
I know, sighs the heart.
Look ahead, he reminds himself, as his eyes start to stray towards the ghosts that spin themselves into existence out of the snowfall. They leap and twirl, and he is afraid to look at them in case they bear familiar shapes - lover, mother, and child after child. It is cruel how memory claws at his gut, hungry for acknowledgement but he turns his face away from it. Memory holds no power, he thinks, if he does not give in to it.
His hoof knocks against a submerged root and he nearly sinks to his knees in the snow. Once, he was never this careless! It catches him in a halt, momentarily surprised as his dark eyes find the culprit that tripped him - a wizened thick leg of an oak snaking underfoot. He snorts, shakes his head, and stumbles onward; his knees feel bruised (what part of him doesn’t?) and in time, they’ll heal unlike the other parts of him that stayed black and blue, becoming a memory in the membrane and tissue of him. (Cut him open, he just might bleed bruises, not blood.) That misstep makes him hate the forest that much more, even as he tries terribly to break from it but the trees seem endless, like everything else these days.
When he does break from their stranglehold upon him, he does so near another that gets no look from him. He does not see her for the space around him that is suddenly gratifying in its openness and freedom, and because of it, he sucks in a great rattling gasp of air that scalds his lungs and he coughs up that first taste of something other than forest from his throat in a phlegmy hack. Still, even that cannot chase the shadows from his face, almost rendering it gaunt and fierce in the way that it has ravaged his flesh - he may look strong, but looks are decidedly deceptive, and though the muscle is not weak in him, it thirsts less and less for stamina and speed, begins to deteriorate until he is but a brown pathetic shadow of himself.
Mandan snapped his head around at the sound of snow sliding over hooves trying to be quiet and creeping; but as it happened, she was too small - too quick - too close, and her face is already buried in his neck before he can do anything about it. He cannot help it, but his lips lift away from his teeth as she pulls back and turns that delicate face up to him - he longs to bite it, rend it to shreds, leave only bone to show for it all. Except, he does nothing but sneer and look down his long nose at her because she is too small to harm, too reminiscent of his own daughters who used to press themselves against him like she does. Maybe it is something in her smallness that undoes him, softens the sneer until it is a ghost of a smile lurking in his black lips.
Friend?
She is so certain, it almost breaks his heart all over again. He has never been a friend to anyone - not his brothers or sisters, not his lover or those he mounts in the midst of their frenzied fits of animal passion, but almost maybe to those small coltish beings that gamboled around him, impish smiles on their faces and pure adoration in their unchanged eyes until the world seized them in her harsh grasp and in the end, even they left him. Just like she will, thinking him a fair enough whim for now as the two of them stand alone in this snowy corner of the forest, just looking at one another. It is the press of her nose to his shoulder, the offering of her name from that little mouth that makes him blink away the thoughts that steal through his brain.
“Mandan,” he says gruffly, shrugging her off of him in a careless but somehow benign (as if he tried to be gentle, for her sake - only, for her sake) way.