"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
It is silent in the deeper, murkier parts of the forest. Even the crickets do not play their nightly melody among the dense parts of the underbrush, their voices hushed as the evening begins to grow richer and darker. The chill of winter has scrubbed away the once bright green of the forest, bringing forth the dull colors of dead trees and branches, with mounds of brilliant white snow. A mist, lazy and unmoving, hangs near the trunks of the towering pines, creating a scene that is both beautiful and haunting. Beneath the thick cloak of dried, brittle vines and the harboring cloud of mist, shrouded beneath the heightening obscurity of nightfall, the scattered boulders and rocks give way to a great, yawning blackness. The cavern is small, hidden by the thick bracken and foliage that surrounds it.
Within the looming darkness, he stirs. A rattling sigh can be heard as he exhales, his breath clouding before him as it leaves the blackness of his lips. He lumbers forth, from somewhere deep within the caverns’ stone cage, carefully emerging from the darkened world around him with slow, yet deliberate steps. His hooves click against the smooth, damp stone beneath him, accompanied by the soothing sound of water dripping rhythmically.
Drip, drop. Drip, drop.
He still lingers within the protection of coiled darkness that surrounds him, his figure barely traceable within the shadows that soothingly press against his blue mottled skin – but he is there; his searing blue gaze attempting to stare out into the world beyond, though his pupils do not allow him to see much. Even within the night sky, the world outside of the cave it is still too bright, and he is far too vulnerable.
A breeze alights against his face, the cold and frigid air entering his dark tomb and running quiet, icy fingers through the tangled mass of his thick mane and tail. He closes his eyes and inhales deeply, the scent of the forest and crisp, outside air filling him. Memories flood him, distant and blurred ones, of a forest – they’re almost unfamiliar in his mind, like they were someone else’s memories all together. He attempts desperately to place the distorted faces that flash in his mind, but the details are all too hazy.
All he knows is the darkness, is the caves.
His memories fall away as the breeze dies. He is met with the darkness once again, crooning shadows that are like family to him, twisting and turning lovingly between his legs with soothing strokes, coaxing him to stay. He wonders what the sun feels like. What of the ocean’s salty spray? The stinging rain of a thunderstorm?
The warm touch of another?
It’s been so long…
His distant gaze clicks back into focus, a single ear flipping backwards to listen to the stirrings of another behind him. The black stallion, his companion, lurks somewhere in the darkest parts of the cavern, uninterested in standing at its mouth and dreaming about lakes and meadows and mountains, too preoccupied with their need for darkness and the magic that billows from each rock and tree, to even consider how the sunlight might feel like against their damp, cold flesh.
Every night, the blue roan stands at the great opening, still completely enshrouded by the darkness that the cave brings him, but close enough to stare out into the forest, longing for something that he cannot even put a name to.
-- once the king of beasts but now they feast on thoughts beneath his vacant crown.
Keeper knows the Forest inside and out. She might be one of a select few who know it well from the tiniest acorn to the stoutest oak. Usually it is because she is on an endless chase of the deer that run through it. The deer know that she follows them, has since she was let loose of her mother’s teat and cast out to mix with secrets and shadows and the deer. She always follows the deer as much as she can and learns from them, the things she cannot learn from her own kind because she is not like them - she is… odd. There is no other way to explain it but that she had the shape of a horse and the soul of a fleet-footed doe.
Grandmother always said she ought to have been born with a fawn’s spots or a buck’s horns but Keeper had nothing so special about her but the very skin she wore - that mix of dun and buckskin that allowed her to blend in. She was as ordinary as the curl of bark on a birch tree from where it peeled away from itself and the mother-wood. Perhaps that is why she has come to know and trust the Forest in ways that few others do. No path has ever led her astray and no harm has ever befallen her when a pack of wolves ran by. She even knew which berries to eat and which ones could poison her stomach, and she knew where the streams came up from underground between the thick roots of trees as old as the earth itself. Keeper knew these things more than she knew the ways of her own kind. Sometimes, Grandmother said she was more tree than horse.
It comes as no surprise that she moves through the mist as if it were a lover, leaving tiny damp kisses all over her skin. She liked these times in the Forest when it was so quiet that not even a bird trilled or a branch broke in a creak and groan of severed wood. Here, she could hear only the hush of her own step as she moved slow and sweet through the places she thought only she knew about - places so deep that even the snows of winter did not fall here, despite how cold the wind might come whistling around every bark-bend. One thing Keeper did not know about though, was the cave nearby that the mist hid. She had been this deep and gone deeper still into the Forest but it seems that she has never come here.
Keeper would have walked on by had it not been for the sigh she thought she heard, or at first, imagined.
She would have walked on by had she not turned her head and saw a brilliant blaze of blue from within the misty dark.
Keeper would have walked on by had she not opened her nostrils and smelled him, cave and stallion mixed up together like nothing had ever been more natural than that blend of mustiness and musk.
If it had not been for those three things, Keeper would have kept to herself but as it was, a curious flame came to light in her breast and she crept forward, slow and sure of herself as much as she could be in the Forest. The cave-mouth daunted her though, because she is a creature of tree and shadow (and wide open spaces as no horse likes to be penned in by anything) and this was a different kind of cathedral and shadow unlike any she had ever known. Her eyes were as black as that cavern, and as depthless it seemed as she tried to peer further into the gloom - enough so, that she could make out the shape of him and she called to him in greeting, first through a whuff then with voice, “Hello.” She meant no harm, how could she?
Keeper had meant to hunt for mushrooms this deep within but the mushrooms were forgotten in the face of her discovery of the cave and him.
09-19-2017, 04:32 PM (This post was last modified: 09-19-2017, 04:32 PM by Balto.)
Tonight, however, is not like every other night.
Snow and ice drip from tree’s branches in the distance; he enjoys watching the glittering mounds slowly melt down to nothingness, their brilliant white illuminated only by the light of the moon. Small blossoms are blooming within the branches, beneath the small heaps of the leftover ice and snow – perhaps they are white, or maybe cherry blossoms, but the darkness will not allow him to see, nor will his near pupil-less eyes.
Vines drape themselves from the entrance of the cave’s gaping maw, and sometimes the gentle sound of the wind will caress the greenery and flow through the damp, chilling tomb of stone. He is just close enough to allow its warm fingers to tenderly wrap themselves in the tangled mess of black forelock and mane, to brush gently against the musculature of his jawline. Suddenly, the spring breeze shifts, and his sharp blue gaze watches as the vines twist in the opposite direction, parting just enough for him to see a little bit clearer.
The stallion becomes tense almost immediately; he sees her beneath the shadow and darkness, bright and almost blinding compared to the world that he is so accustomed to living in. He nearly takes a step back, but his hooves would rack loudly against the smooth stone beneath him. She has not seen him yet, and perhaps it would stay that way; he would be merely a shadow looking on from another dimension and she would move on, leaving him behind in the world of darkness that beckons him in deeper.
His heart races and he could feel the sweeping darkness around him pulling him back, to hide away into the shadows and to remain unseen and protected. But his hesitation, this mere few seconds he remains motionless, gives her the time to realize she is not alone.
Balto holds his breath as she creeps closer, her dark eyes searching the depths and hollows of his catacomb, trying to find his figure within the darkness. He falls back deeper into the cave’s mouth, his hooves clacking on the damp cave floor, not necessarily frightened but unsure. He glances over his shoulder for merely a second, his nostrils flaring as a soft snort leaves his lips. His companion, the dark and twisted stallion that lingers in the even deeper and darker parts of the caverns, is still sleeping amongst the shadows somewhere deep in the cave’s belly.
Her voice finds his ears and his head straightens with a snap, his forelock cascading over his wide, blue eyes.
Hello.
As crisp and clear as daybreak, her tinkling voice whispers through the damp air. It’s nearly angelic, the sound of a woman’s voice for the first time in nearly a decade. He dare not speak, he can’t, for he knows the sound of his voice would only rattle compared to hers; nothing but dust and rock and emptiness will come from his throat.
He does, however, take a single step towards her.
-- once the king of beasts but now they feast on thoughts beneath his vacant crown.
Clouds move away from the moon, long enough for Keeper to crane her head upwards and look at it as if to say, oh there you are. The light of the moon flooded the clearing before the cave and she could make out the curtain of creeper vines that fell across most of it that she had not noticed beforehand. It almost seemed like a magical grotto tucked away in a forgotten part of the forest as if she had walked right into a fairy tale, albeit a possibly sinister one for how dark the cave mouth looked to be even with the moon out now to brighten it.
She balked at the dark maw of it despite how intent she was on looking for those blazing blue eyes that seemed altogether too bright to belong inside such darkness. It was like finding a bit of summer sky where summer sky had no right to be and it intrigued her. Made her forget all about her mushroom hunting and she had desired a nice mycelium snack this night. In the distance that was no distance at all but mere paces from her, she could hear the plop of snowmelt and ice that came off the branches of the trees. She thought she had felt a bit more balm in the breezes that evening.
But these are nature’s dalliances meant to distract her from the task at hand - finding him in the cave that she now turns her full attention back to the moment his hooves scrape hard against the stone in what she takes to be a fearful scurry backwards. Keeper is surprised, stopped dead in her hunt for him by the realization that he might be afraid of her - nothing has ever feared her before and it is a new and haunting sensation that she loathes. It roils like bile in her gut and Keeper can feel tears come to her eyes, but she refuses to cry - not in the light of the moon, not before the dark cave-mouth and certainly not in front of the one lurking inside, just out of sight.
Keeper takes a deep breath, regains her modest composure in time to hear a snort so soft she thinks she almost imagined it. Or could blame it on the wind that toys with the vines and the snarly mess that is her hair that never just lays flat against her neck but hangs thick with knots and bones and sticks. That sound, imagined or not, emboldens her and Keeper takes a step closer to the cave. He has retreated far enough back that she cannot make out the intense blue of his gaze but she thinks she hears his hooves on the stone floor, was that a step? Forward or back?
Further emboldened, or else just daft and lacking all manner of sense, she takes another step closer. Close enough to poke her head in between the vines that seem to have a life of their own and seem to have pulled back just a bit. She can feel a nubile tendril of vine curling outward, tickling her ear and she almost laughs but holds it back - laughter seems at odds here, with the dark and him breathing somewhere inside it. “Hello?” she beckons again, still just as sweet.
He cannot remember the last time his heart had rattled in his chest as it is currently doing.
He’s sure she can hear it, thrumming wildly and violently – but, in what? In fear? In excitement? He couldn’t place the word, unable to describe the exhilarating emotions that crash through him.
Later, he might find himself lucky (or perhaps she would as well), that she is the one to have stumbled upon him first – as seconds turn into minutes, the blue roan stallion can tell this uniquely patterned mare means him no harm, a blessing he does not yet realize he has received. Balto realizes his careless mistake – Faulkor had told him, time and time again, that the mouth of the cave was no where to linger and dream. Anyone could be out there, especially in this magical world that he has just now been brought into, and now their secret hideaway has been revealed.
Nothing stirs in the blackness of the cave, save for the soft spring breeze that still filters through the creepers’ vines, the moon illuminating the muscular curve of his neck and the wild, curious blue of his eyes. Faulkor has not heard her – not yet – and suddenly the cavern prince is worried for the stranger, for the black stallion that hides away into the blackness is not exactly fond of visitors. Balto had been the first to be accepted into his den of stone and blackness, and he doubts that no other will be acknowledged.
She speaks again, the same word but this time a question, and his frazzled thoughts quell for a moment, and almost without hesitation, he responds with a quiet shush, as if her voice is too loud, for he fears that the deathly quiet that billows behind him will be soon filled with the rasping hooves of Faulkor’s weary stride.
Though she may have seen small glimpses of blue and black through the vines thick drapery, as she pushes through their tiny strands, she is far closer to the stallion than she previously realized.
In shock he stares at her, unmoving and still, his eyes a piercing blue beneath the veil of his massive ebony forelock that nearly reaches the end of his darkened muzzle. For a moment (though it seems like an eternity to him), he merely stares into the abyss of her irises, surprised to see such a familiar color in their depths – as endless and empty as the cavern behind him.
And finally, with a breath barely audible and a graveled texture rough from disuse, he merely repeats her:
“Hello.”
-- once the king of beasts but now they feast on thoughts beneath his vacant crown.
Caves are secret things and Keeper likes secret things.
She has never really explored caves though. None of the deer herds she followed had ever chosen to wait out a storm or birth their fawns inside them. They preferred thickets of crushed grass that held the shape of their bodies long after they had gotten up and moved on. Or trees that dripped fat raindrops passed their noses until the clouds cleared and the sun came out again. Deer did not take kindly to dark places like caves.
Keeper has the barest knowledge of caves but never once has she explored one.
Something about the press and the hush of the dark around her makes her think she ought to. If she strains her ears enough, she thinks she can hear a constant drip of water from somewhere within. There might be an underground river that bubbled up cold and clear from between the stones. Or maybe the cave held an underground lake in her dark arms - the possibilities were endless! But also enticing enough to almost pull her forward another step through the vines until he shushes her from the nearby dark, nearer than she realized.
She could not hear the beat of his own heart because hers has begun to thump just as wildly inside her pale dun breast. It hammers hard enough against her ribcage to drown out all other sound in her ears until she practices slow breath after slow breath and her heart starts to slow down again. It had sped up in a mixture of fear and surprise to realize that he had been so close to her this whole time. So close! Close enough that she can make out the thick rumple of forelock down his face - long hair to match a long nose, and the blue of his eye nearest to her that seems more bioluminescent than brilliant. That blue has a glow to it that is unearthly and beautiful, something she has never seen before except in the green fungi that creep slow along the trunks of trees and over the humped hard backs of rocks.
Then -
He answers her. No, echoes her. It is enough though, a beginning of sorts that she leaps on like a cougar hungering for more though her smile is anything but predatory as it finds her lips in the dark and the smallest shred of moonlight that throws itself across her face and his. Her smile is kind, stretching from end to end across her mouth and there is a hint of happiness in it that he has responded back to her not that she ever considered he might have been a mute. However, he seems a bit… nervous?
No, she’s seen no eye-roll, no flare of nostrils, nor does the white of his eyes show - only that blue, brazen and bright, but she senses that he is far quieter for some other reason than she can discern. It makes her tilt her head to the side as she considers him, considers saying something else that makes her mouth open then close back up in the tiniest of frowns. The quiet he keeps seems not to be one of reverence for the cave but for something else, someone else mayhap? She lifts her head up higher and sniffs the air, there is another scent - another horse! He’s not alone here!
That surprises her further and her head falls back to be level with his as she looks him then gestures with a flip of her nose over his shoulder as if to say you’re not alone? It strikes her that that might be why he is quiet and nervous. Is the other unkind? Keeper has never had an encounter like this before and she is not afraid for herself but perhaps a bit afraid for the repercussions he might suffer for her coming here and having discovered him - no, them, and all of this. Her face grows apologetic and she gestures towards the space just outside the cave-mouth. Would he dare follow her there? Just outside, where it might be safer for conversation in soft tones?
Keeper can only hope so.
She wants to know more about him, wants to uncover the secret that he is.
The caves are secretive and so is he, hidden for years by the darkness that plagues each yawning tomb, shrouded by the blackness that he has learned to call family. Even now, with a stranger peeking into his shadowed home, he can feel the comforting twist and turn of the darkness at his charcoal legs, hissing and crooning a sweet lullaby in his black-tipped ears. Caves are not a place for doe-eyed and gentle creatures such as the one that now stands before him, her curiosity permeating any sense of caution she may have had previously. Run away, he wants to tell her, but the words do not come. The darkness is kind and gentle, and had been quick to pull him in and never release him, those many years ago when he had found Faulkor, lost and abandoned. Faulkor had cared for him and accepted him, just as the darkness has.
It’s enchanting and hauntingly beautiful, but it is a tomb and it is not meant for her.
His eyes, however bright and blue and crystal-clear they were, are accompanied by the blackest of pupils, large and nearly all-encompassing as they seek out any trace of light. His stare, unbroken and unblinking, never leaves the little golden woman as she lifts her dusted muzzle to inhale – he watches her as the scent of the damp, cold cave fills her and when her eyes snap back to him at the realization of a third (lingering somewhere far behind him) in their midst, he remains the same – stoic, yet still slightly surprised at her presence.
It is funny, how without barely any words the blue roan stallion has learned to communicate – years of darkness has trained him well, he and his companion both. With an ear flicked behind him, trained on the deepening blackness that is unendingly rolling out from behind him, he curiously tilts his head a few degrees when she gives him an apologetic expression, and he silently considers how unfitting the tiny frown looks on her features.
Another breeze billows through the cave-opening, and though it is warm and sweet with the air of spring, the stallion finds a shudder running down his spine.
He had been outside, just once – and that was when Pangea fell into the sea and the cave rocks crumbled and fell, spitting him up into the forest, both Balto and Faulkor. They had crawled back into the darkness as quickly as it had spit them out, licking their wounds from both the sea and the sunlight. He remembers the blinding light and the pounding in his head, and the memory causes him to shake his head slightly at her, his jaw slackening with fear as he remembers the pain of being outside of his cave walls.
But she is encouraging, this unnamed mare, and he hesitantly takes a step towards the cave opening, eyes wide with fear of the unexpected. He lowers his head, trying to peer through the creeper vines still from beneath his cave’s shadow, his large and blue eyes glancing upwards from beneath his brow to look up at her. A gentle snort, tentative and unsure, leaves his ebony nostrils.
If Faulkor finds him, precariously perched between the outside and his cave, he might call him foolish for attempting to step outside of their haunting catacombs, but perhaps not – perhaps the only way Balto can give his companion the magic that he craves is to learn to step out into the open air, to live as he once did, back in a daydream that he can barely remember.
He has now taken another step, the vines falling across the flat bridge of his face as his muzzle peeks through, a quiet and strained whinny vibrating in his throat. Even here, at the mouth of the cave, it is already harder for him to see as clear as he can in the pitch black behind him. He snorts again, nostrils flaring as he searches for the gentle stranger – his guide into this new world.
-- once the king of beasts but now they feast on thoughts beneath his vacant crown.
@[keeper]
started writing and i couldn't stop. i apologize ;_;
Keeper cannot imagine what it is like to always be sequestered in shadows and secrets. However much that she likes secrets, she is not one of them - never has been, though she has oft been overlooked because of her ordinariness. She had known the strains of familial love that come because it is an expectation but that love was sometimes marred by a strange pity she did not understand. Perhaps because she could not mourn what she had never had - horns like her father, or wings like her half-brother, or even the beautiful green skin like her half-sister.
Besides, Keeper had the deer and their liquid looks as she stood nearby in stern patience and quiet observation of their furtive ears and careful munching. Deer did nothing rash unless it was running away. This much she had learned in her studies of them and her need to belong, a thing that she herself barely understood because her own equine instinct insisted that she belonged in that small familial herd of her upbringing but Keeper swore that something else insisted not, that she did not belong or else, belonged elsewhere in a niche that she had yet to carve out for herself.
Sometimes, one has to find their way through the brambles and the mud before finding a clear flowing stream and sunlight to warm the back. Maybe others needs caves and darkness, as her eyes never leave his - blue and unblinking to match her black, blinking gaze. Though she thinks that if she blinks too much, he’ll just disappear - become a neverwas, a shadow and a trick of the cave that yawns big all around them. He is far too quiet but Keeper knows that she cannot press him for sound or much else; he is like a mole unaccustomed to the sunlight or in this case, the light of the moon the shines down just outside the cave-mouth. She wonders if it’ll hurt him like sunlight does a mole, will he shrink back from it and flee?
Fleeing is more deer-like and she likes this strange blue-eyed stallion all the more because of that sudden thought in her strange brain. She catches the slight shake of his head, the sudden slack in his jaw, the pause and the hesitation in his step as he moves forward at her quiet persistent beckoning. Looks on as he achieves the smallest measure of success by poking his head out between the creeper vines and giving her a snort of uncertainty. Keeper backs up a step to keep pace with him, not at all surprised by how brave the blue roan is. She had seen the spark of fear in his eyes and would not have blamed him for shaking his head no and drawing her further into his shadowy domain.
Instead, he dared to face her world full of moonlight and forgotten mushrooms. Because of her. Which thrilled Keeper to no end! She encouraged him with a gentle chuff of breath through her nostrils as the strained whinny reverberated up his throat and reached her ears; she even stretched out her muzzle to him as he snorted, searching for her and she could tell that it was getting hard for him to see her or much of anything in the bright moonlight. Her nose found his, then moved back to his shoulder as she pressed up against his side. Keeper was small next to him, still encouraging as their heads poked out of the creeper vines but she let him take his time in reacquainting with the night, figuring that even the stars could do some damage.
Odd to think a star could hurt someone.
Odder to think the moon could, but she could smell his fear as much as she could almost taste it in her mouth and it made her sick to her stomach.
“We can go back inside,” she ventured in the barest of whispers as her gaze slid sideways and sought his.
He reaches out to her, a sort of subconscious gesture, and he does not have to wait long for her to find him. Her muzzle touches his own, the charcoal black of his nose twitching unfamiliarly against the mousy brown of hers, inhaling deeply the smell of damp forest floor and deep earth. She guides him, a crooning to him in a hushed whisper of encouragement as she falls against his side, as if she had known him all of her life. Though unafraid of her - this quiet and gentle doe - he cannot help but feel the uncertainty prick at his skin, his blue mottled flesh drawing tight over coiled muscle. Tense and nearly quaking as he feels the coolness of the cave’s blackness brush against him, gentle fingertips coaxing him back with their icy touch, he finds satisfaction within the foreign warmth at his side.
It is unfamiliar and nearly uncomfortable, her being such a stranger and so close to him (when was the last time he had felt the warmth of another against his skin?). He wonders for a moment if he emulates the same kind of warmth - or does he feel cold and musty from the darkness that he calls home?
“We can go back inside,”
Though her voice is nothing but gentle and quiet, it nearly causes him to shy away from her at its closeness. He jerks his head away, but only momentarily, unused to the sounds of quiet conversation. As if apologizing, he settles back in beside her, bumping her shoulder with his own.
“Not yet,” he replies with determination, his voice a graveled whisper as it grinds against his throat.
He squints as another step brings his head and neck from out behind the tangled vines, ever curious but ever cautious as he emerges. He stops here, the broad muscle of his shoulders and haunches still hidden comfortably beneath the cloak of darkness. He can make out the shapes of the tall, thin trees that create the forest, their shapes familiar from his previous night spent outside of the cave - he had no time then to take in the scenery, as Faulkor ushered him quickly to the nearest cavern, like a father guiding a child to safety. Now, however, he inhales deeply, the scents of the darkened world around him overwhelming his senses.
He dares not look up in fear the moon’s light will cause him pain, so instead he merely closes his lids over the blue of his irises.
“It smells so clear,” he breathes. Perhaps it didn’t to her - perhaps it was dank and grim or even musty, but the forest is much, much different than a cave. “Describe it to me,” he asks as a single black-tipped ear flicks towards his new companion, a generous being that is still nameless as he savors the feeling of starlight on his skin.
-- once the king of beasts but now they feast on thoughts beneath his vacant crown.
Keeper finds him. Will always find him. Realizes that in a matter of moments that somehow, this cave-dweller has tunneled into the very heart of her being. She is not stupid enough to believe it is love but it is something powerful and consuming that has taken root in her. It is nurtured by the mousy twitch of his nose against hers, encouraged by the coiling of his muscles that she can feel against her own side as his uncertainty mounts and rides him hard to go right back into that cave.
But he is so bold and brave! That she likes him all the more for that quiet persistence he shows as he stays. Stays tight against her side like a small shaking babe and Keeper keeps her breathing light and pacified, a tender smile on her lips, and pride enriching the dark shine of her eyes as she looks between him in tiny covert glances and the outside that she leads him into. He never balks for all that he trembles at each step taken, but he remains warm in their union of shoulders and hips and matched steps because she keeps pace with him, slow and steady as a heartbeat by his side.
For just a moment, their shoulders part in a quick cold severance that she feels as keenly as a thorn in her skin. Her offer has caused him to shy away momentarily and the briefest look of regret flashes over her face. If she had only kept her mouth shut… but his shoulder comes bumping back into place against her own and Keeper’s initial bubble of distress bursts inside her. “Not yet.” he concedes, voice gravelly but determined and she can only nod her head to that. He controls how many steps they take, how far from the cave-mouth they go, how deep into moonlight and madness he’ll let her lead him.
He halts; head and neck poke out of the tangly mess of vines that shroud the rest of him from her. She is a little further out than he is, can feel the vines sway against her shoulders but on him, they are like a robe and he looks kingly in his halting emergence from the cave. It is enough to take her breath from her and she has to remind herself to inhale and exhale, slow as not to startle him as he begins to breathe in of the deep intoxicating smells of night and forest that lie just outside of the cave’s musty reach.
In the moonlight, she can see him close his eyes against it and she does not blame him - while not bright to her, it would be painful to him who has known nothing but near-dark and dark for most of his life, so she assumes. She is caught up in looking at him, in what could almost be a blissful look on his face as he communes with the night and the forest, that she almost doesn’t hear him mention how clear it smells or ask her what it smells like to her. There is an anxious flick of her ears, back then front and back again before they settle on him in curved upright alertness.
Keeper is not poetic. She does not know how to describe to him how the night smells, how the forest smells in a manner that would make him like it as much as she does. But she tries. Because he asked it of her. She clears her throat and remembers to keep her tone soft and whispery;
“The night is clear. It doesn’t smell of rain or snow or fallen leaves. Just good wind and I like to think the stars have a smell to them, a bit like magic I guess not that magic has a smell I’d imagine.” Oh, she is bumbling already! But she presses on. “Starlight and moonlight mix, soft but sometimes bright enough to blind. Only for moments, then the night opens back up to you like a flower, inviting you to look within. I guess the night smells a little like a flower too, full and new but no night is ever the same.”
Keeper pauses for a breath then resumes.
“Same with the forest, but that has sharper scents. Of bark, leaf and moss. Of roots that break up the dirt and leave a loamy taste in the air. Makes you think like a worm, of good deep dirt and snuggling up in it. Oh! And mushrooms, they’re my favorite. They smell like earth and rain, rich and heavy. The forest smells fertile, like a mare just come into heat. But sometimes like death, full of rot and ruin. It gets in your nostrils and won’t come out, can make you sick and dizzy but it’s part of life too. To smell how even the earth dies, from tree to leaf to squirrel.”
She cannot describe it further. Has prattled on enough, she thinks for the moment. Lapsing into a silence with him that is fast becoming familiar to her and even just a little bit comforting. Her nose, always of its own accord as if detached from her brain, moves to find his neck and brush against it, filling her nostrils with the scent of him and the cavern at their backs, as if she needed to clear it of the memory of rot that has filled it just from her telling of it.
