I am in no hurry.
The land is ripe with summer, fat days, filling days, where the sun is out early and lasts late into the evening. I have a place to be, and for the time-being it's enough just to know that. The humid air by the river is thick with scents of other horses and boggy, mossy earth. Mosquitoes swarm above stagnant patches of slow-moving water and buzz ceaselessly around my head, but they do an alright job of drowning out the voices in my head.
It has taken me days of practice to not flinch at every hateful whisper, to move with slow deliberation and not catch the spear in my breast on every bush and rock as I turn. It is a fine balancing act I have in progress now. My steps are a calculated dance out of necessity now, elegance in fear of more pain. But I am getting the hang of it, of browsing from tall bushes like the deer do, or else reaching very carefully to the side to reach grass. Frustrating work, but it's paying off. I'm no longer quiet as skeletal. Muscle is filling my bones again, though I'm still thin, I no longer look frightening.
In the heat of the sun I doze by the river's edge, the air moving across its surface cooler than the air away from it. It's quiet, as though even the birds and the cicadas are too hot to scream. I can't blame them. It's only in the shade of the long rooted cypress I find myself cool enough to be comfortable. Still, it's preferable to the ice of winter. There's no solace when snow hits the ground for a desert born creature like me. I'll take muggy heat over deep winter any time.
I try not to dwell on what others think when they see me. Shining, glittering in the sun, haunted and pierced. Like a cracked gemstone pulled out for the first time in years, I know I look more than a little deranged with my matted mane and bloody chest. How odd it is then that I feel saner than I have in ages.
@[Breckin] @[Linnaea]
The land is ripe with summer, fat days, filling days, where the sun is out early and lasts late into the evening. I have a place to be, and for the time-being it's enough just to know that. The humid air by the river is thick with scents of other horses and boggy, mossy earth. Mosquitoes swarm above stagnant patches of slow-moving water and buzz ceaselessly around my head, but they do an alright job of drowning out the voices in my head.
It has taken me days of practice to not flinch at every hateful whisper, to move with slow deliberation and not catch the spear in my breast on every bush and rock as I turn. It is a fine balancing act I have in progress now. My steps are a calculated dance out of necessity now, elegance in fear of more pain. But I am getting the hang of it, of browsing from tall bushes like the deer do, or else reaching very carefully to the side to reach grass. Frustrating work, but it's paying off. I'm no longer quiet as skeletal. Muscle is filling my bones again, though I'm still thin, I no longer look frightening.
In the heat of the sun I doze by the river's edge, the air moving across its surface cooler than the air away from it. It's quiet, as though even the birds and the cicadas are too hot to scream. I can't blame them. It's only in the shade of the long rooted cypress I find myself cool enough to be comfortable. Still, it's preferable to the ice of winter. There's no solace when snow hits the ground for a desert born creature like me. I'll take muggy heat over deep winter any time.
I try not to dwell on what others think when they see me. Shining, glittering in the sun, haunted and pierced. Like a cracked gemstone pulled out for the first time in years, I know I look more than a little deranged with my matted mane and bloody chest. How odd it is then that I feel saner than I have in ages.
@[Breckin] @[Linnaea]
