[open] hello, my old heart, any

[glean]

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?”

[Stendarr]

Winds howling...
 

Mother doesn’t know. Not yet. There are many things she does know. Like how many of his blinding white stars cover him, mimicking her own crimson ones. Or how, when he looks at her through red and silver in that certain way, he is hungry. He even suspects that she knows he is talking to the few ravens that had lingered since his birth even if he never opens his mouth to speak.

There are many things Mother does know or at least suspects. He can tell by the way her stars shoot across her eyes when she is worried, when she is afraid. The first time he had accidentally thrown up a shield made of galaxies and stars, he had sensed it in her the same way he had sensed it when she looked upon his dark feathery friends. There was more to Stendarr than what met the eye. He was more than just his stars

It is only when she leaves him behind, alone, in the forest where he belongs that he reveals exactly what he is. Whenever she goes to check on the Isle, whenever she steals a few hours in the meadow to bathe in her starlight, whenever he is quite certain she is not around…

He shifts. He is but a newborn but he moves through the woods as if they had always belonged to him and its creatures never bother him. Those that might, unfazed by the way he can slip into their minds and command their actions, avoid him simply out of the dark haze of fear that radiates from the exposed bone of his skull. The twisted roots of his limbs that claw into the earth and rip it out as he walks. He is only a whisper of what his Mother had faced in the Underneath. For now.

The small Leshen, whose tiny deer skull has yet to produce the nubs where antlers will grow, moves today though the Forest unseen by others. Wrapped in his invisibility, just in case Mother returns back earlier than expected. The ravens do not follow, he does not always desire their company. It is just him, an ancient thing in its infancy, as he stalks through a forest that was meant for the likes of him.

He has yet to master the subtle art of silence. In time, he would. For now, the night creatures look to where he passes. Sensing his presence even if he can’t be openly seen. Leaves rustle in the shadows where he brushes uncaringly against them. His invisibility flickers and then leaves him entirely, still something he had yet to master. In doing so, he becomes exposed and if his skeletal expression could twist from its everlasting grin to a frown… It would.

Disappointment doesn’t last for long. Something glowing and small seems to approach him and he is curious if this is a new woodland creature he had yet to discover. He tries to reach out, to see if the mind of this being is one he can touch, and then stops when it speaks to him. The skull tilts down at her, fascinated. Bony jaws clack together as he tries to speak and then stops. It was still a difficult thing, vocalizing in this form. There is nothing but the soft rush of shadows and then his stars return as one eye of silver and the other of red look at the small being with open curiosity. “Through… My…. W-Woods.” He finally stutters, for talking in general was not something that came natural to him despite Mother’s encouragement.

Carnage x Ciri

love, dante

@glean