have you ever thought about what protects our hearts?
just a cage of rib bones and other various parts
He had not come here purposefully—at least not for a while.
He had needed time to grow, to learn, to shape his own path. He had needed time to find out what was his own truth, his own gravity. And so he had. He had turned from his home, his family, and left the warmth of their embrace—and while he had left a young boy, he had returned a man. In the years since he had found ragged hoof on the twisted path, his body had filled out. His narrow chest had widened, his muscles had grown; he was no longer a spindly teenager. Instead, he was mature, maybe even handsome.
Not that he wasted much time thinking about that.
His thoughts were on much different things, the boy having grown serious and introspective in the years since he had left. Even now, walking what was once the path to home, he struggled to connect with the boy of his youth. The boy who had so affectionally bound toward his father and launched into him. The boy who had changed his spots to mirror his family. So much had changed within him since those days. He had to wonder if his family would even recognize him; if they would know his heart still.
A frown grew at the corner of his russet mouth as he walked deeper into the forest, the light splattering across the curve of his haunches until it died away, the thicket of branches above him blocking even that from reaching him. He sighed as the air turned cooler, the summer heat dissipating with the light, and he came to a stop beneath the boughs of a walnut tree, his flesh pressed into the bark. For a moment, he leaned into it and scratched, satisfying an itch he didn’t even know he had, before he stilled.
Gray eyes peered out into the woods as he waited silently for things he did not even think would come.
so it's fairly simple to cut right through the mess
and to stop the muscle that makes us confess
