05-17-2021, 03:12 PM
There may be hell to pay when I get home, but for now the sunlight bathing the springtime world makes up for it. There is warmth and color in every direction, the air only just cool enough to remind that winter was recently here. Patches of ice linger on the far sides of shaded hills, but where the sun hits, it's magic.
There are flowers in the forest of my birth. Small things that reach for sunlight wherever they can, shrubs that populate the edges with tiny sprays of white this time of year. But nothing so spectacular as the blooms already spilling down the landscape as I run. My world is perpetutual autumn, the constant verge of death and decay. It gets to the point where you forget that there's anything else, until you stumble headfirst into it.
That is, as it happens, how it found me. You don't run much in the forest, there just isn't room. So when my legs stretch as far as they ever have, it isn't long until they make a mistake. Slip and fall on the glossy leaves of some sprawling weed. One moment I'm going full tilt, the next my legs have shot out from beneath me, and I am catching my breath surrounded by the green scent of crushed plant matter,
I'm laughing and crying, knees scraped from my fall. Intoxicated with the energy a fast and hard run can give you. So I roll, long and luxurious, just because I want to. Just because I can. When my head finally pops up over the breezy blooms and grasses, my breath has settled and the tiny bones knotted into my hair have been joined with scraps of plant matter.
That's when my eyes are drawn to the only patch of darkness in the landscape. A horse, watching me with bloodstained eyes. That's all it takes for me to shoot to my feet, the burst of carefree energy cloaked immediately shuttered eyes and a meek demeanor.
It's an instant and thorough transformation. I've had a lot practice, after all. Be small and quiet and don't draw attention, and more often than not they'll leave you alone. There's exceptions, but in my experience, being boring is being safe.
@[Obscene]
There are flowers in the forest of my birth. Small things that reach for sunlight wherever they can, shrubs that populate the edges with tiny sprays of white this time of year. But nothing so spectacular as the blooms already spilling down the landscape as I run. My world is perpetutual autumn, the constant verge of death and decay. It gets to the point where you forget that there's anything else, until you stumble headfirst into it.
That is, as it happens, how it found me. You don't run much in the forest, there just isn't room. So when my legs stretch as far as they ever have, it isn't long until they make a mistake. Slip and fall on the glossy leaves of some sprawling weed. One moment I'm going full tilt, the next my legs have shot out from beneath me, and I am catching my breath surrounded by the green scent of crushed plant matter,
I'm laughing and crying, knees scraped from my fall. Intoxicated with the energy a fast and hard run can give you. So I roll, long and luxurious, just because I want to. Just because I can. When my head finally pops up over the breezy blooms and grasses, my breath has settled and the tiny bones knotted into my hair have been joined with scraps of plant matter.
That's when my eyes are drawn to the only patch of darkness in the landscape. A horse, watching me with bloodstained eyes. That's all it takes for me to shoot to my feet, the burst of carefree energy cloaked immediately shuttered eyes and a meek demeanor.
It's an instant and thorough transformation. I've had a lot practice, after all. Be small and quiet and don't draw attention, and more often than not they'll leave you alone. There's exceptions, but in my experience, being boring is being safe.
@[Obscene]