01-20-2017, 03:40 PM
The forest seems eerily quiet while she waits for an answer, the kind of quiet she would expect from being submerged miles beneath the ocean. She can hear her pulse in her ears, soft and steady at first, and then thrum deeper like a hum the longer the silence lasts. Her eyes narrow, an amber so pale they look like spun-gold, like the echo of her father’s magic, and then sift through a damp fog that is suddenly full of ominous shapes that feel carved out of her worries.
She is about to turn and disappear into the trees, to flow out and away like his river between innumerable trees, but a voice in the silence stills her. Sorry, she turns back, uncertain, that delicate blue face like turquoise and faded sapphire, I did not mean to frighten you. He peels away from the trees then, and she can see how she would’ve missed him in the close and dark of the shadowy forest. His skin is the color of deep earth, smooth and brown like the rust of the pine needles and the bark of these ancient trees surrounding them.
For a moment she wonders if he is a ghost of the clay, a creature born of Taiga itself.
But when she drifts closer, eyes wide and soft and faintly uncertain, she can see the places where bones form beneath rich skin, can see the rise and fall of his ribs with each breath he takes and the way fog forms like small ghosts around his nose.
She stops before she can reach him, pulling to a hesitant halt just a few strides away, and tilts her face up at him imploringly. “That’s okay,” she says, and her voice is as whispery as the tangling of pine needles in the breeze, “maybe it will help if you don’t stand in the shadows watching strangers pass by.” Her mouth is soft now, dark and beautiful, and there is a small smile that etches itself delicately from corner to corner. “It is very misleading.”
Feeling braver she slips closer still, extending the soft of the velvet nose to his in quiet, tentative greeting. When she speaks again she is breathless, shy, and the words are like snowflakes caught in the wind. “My name is Ava.”
She is about to turn and disappear into the trees, to flow out and away like his river between innumerable trees, but a voice in the silence stills her. Sorry, she turns back, uncertain, that delicate blue face like turquoise and faded sapphire, I did not mean to frighten you. He peels away from the trees then, and she can see how she would’ve missed him in the close and dark of the shadowy forest. His skin is the color of deep earth, smooth and brown like the rust of the pine needles and the bark of these ancient trees surrounding them.
For a moment she wonders if he is a ghost of the clay, a creature born of Taiga itself.
But when she drifts closer, eyes wide and soft and faintly uncertain, she can see the places where bones form beneath rich skin, can see the rise and fall of his ribs with each breath he takes and the way fog forms like small ghosts around his nose.
She stops before she can reach him, pulling to a hesitant halt just a few strides away, and tilts her face up at him imploringly. “That’s okay,” she says, and her voice is as whispery as the tangling of pine needles in the breeze, “maybe it will help if you don’t stand in the shadows watching strangers pass by.” Her mouth is soft now, dark and beautiful, and there is a small smile that etches itself delicately from corner to corner. “It is very misleading.”
Feeling braver she slips closer still, extending the soft of the velvet nose to his in quiet, tentative greeting. When she speaks again she is breathless, shy, and the words are like snowflakes caught in the wind. “My name is Ava.”
Ava
sahm x newton