03-22-2022, 03:35 PM
Glean
Watch, she says to the woodland creatures and they watch while the color of her shifts until they cannot differentiate her from the forest’s backdrop. And then she leaps back out at them, all shimmering purple and silver brindles, and they scatter while she laughs.
Come back, she calls to the woodland creatures and they slink back out of the shadows, gather around her. She whispers secrets into the bent ear of a hare and recites tall tales to a slow-blinking porcupine and she tells each of them that she loves them so.
And when night comes, they retreat again. To their homes now, to hide from the night things, and she shrinks herself, too. Shrinks into the small thing, the glowing thing, the flying thing that hovers in the canopy and watches the night things move below.
She whispers a greeting to the owl that alights on a branch above her head, but it only blinks down at her, unflinching. (The owls were never particularly talkative things.) Then it turns its great, feathered head and peers into the darkness below. Into the darkness where something stirs and captivates the pair of them.
She is still small when she returns to earth, still glowing faintly, still winged when she looks up into the face of this new thing.
“Hello,” she says and then asks, “where are you going?”
Come back, she calls to the woodland creatures and they slink back out of the shadows, gather around her. She whispers secrets into the bent ear of a hare and recites tall tales to a slow-blinking porcupine and she tells each of them that she loves them so.
And when night comes, they retreat again. To their homes now, to hide from the night things, and she shrinks herself, too. Shrinks into the small thing, the glowing thing, the flying thing that hovers in the canopy and watches the night things move below.
She whispers a greeting to the owl that alights on a branch above her head, but it only blinks down at her, unflinching. (The owls were never particularly talkative things.) Then it turns its great, feathered head and peers into the darkness below. Into the darkness where something stirs and captivates the pair of them.
She is still small when she returns to earth, still glowing faintly, still winged when she looks up into the face of this new thing.
“Hello,” she says and then asks, “where are you going?”