08-11-2016, 12:25 AM
“All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies,
and whenever they catch you, they will kill you.
But first they must catch you,
digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning.
Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.”
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Long before he speaks. She can hear him; she shapes the image of his approach in her head with the echoes of his familiar gambol off rockfaces and packed earth. She flinches.
(Panic!)
It is in her, so deeply hardwired – like his penchant for stalking, she is made to evade. But it is rawer here, she has always found this to be true. Here she loses some purchase, like she is the smaller of the two halves, ever in flux. Ever fighting and surrendering to one another. It has always been this way, though as she has aged, they have come to something of an accord.
They have come to accept each other in their bodies.
It can be a terrible violation, at first. A base kind of trespass, like unknown breaths tracing the queer seam where their beings were soldered to one so many years ago. Like a stranger fingering the oddities of that joint, looking for a loose stitch to pull and release the halves from each other.
(Hide!)
She scuttles sideways, away from him, breathing hard.
(Run!)
She flattens to the ground, gulping in the odd mingle of dog fur and horsehair. His scent, through and through. She can see him – his wild sable and bright, puckish eyes – and all the ways she could escape him. All at once, clearer further away than close up. A giant map of notches in the Meadow’s thicket, floral skirt and forest copses is etched in her mind. But she stays. Against her baser instinct; against the other’s insistence.
“Woodrow!” It is a diminutive voice. Distinctly hers, but made from smaller organs. She huffs, standing up ‘tall’ on her hind legs, brow furrowing, “what have I told you!” But she isn’t angry. She doesn’t hold it against him. She was raised to accept the nature of things, no matter how strange or different from her. And she knows he is harmless so long as she is her. This is their way. Her nose twitches, always in motion, and she drops to all fours, taking a loping step towards him, sitting back on her hind. Her other half does not approve, she can feel it every time she meets with him. They have their pushes and pulls – there are somethings that neither are willing to compromise on, and so she lives with the reprove that tickles her from her nose to her tail. “What have you been up to, then?”
She waits for adventure, watching him – trickster – intently. Too intently. She has been spending an increasingly boring and lagomorphic amount of time sitting on her cottontail. Waiting for her mother to show. Waiting for the wind to tug her somewhere. Waiting for the memory, like a burning ember, of acrid, junglewood smoke and fire to wash from her.
and whenever they catch you, they will kill you.
But first they must catch you,
digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning.
Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.”
------------------------------------
Long before he speaks. She can hear him; she shapes the image of his approach in her head with the echoes of his familiar gambol off rockfaces and packed earth. She flinches.
(Panic!)
It is in her, so deeply hardwired – like his penchant for stalking, she is made to evade. But it is rawer here, she has always found this to be true. Here she loses some purchase, like she is the smaller of the two halves, ever in flux. Ever fighting and surrendering to one another. It has always been this way, though as she has aged, they have come to something of an accord.
They have come to accept each other in their bodies.
It can be a terrible violation, at first. A base kind of trespass, like unknown breaths tracing the queer seam where their beings were soldered to one so many years ago. Like a stranger fingering the oddities of that joint, looking for a loose stitch to pull and release the halves from each other.
(Hide!)
She scuttles sideways, away from him, breathing hard.
(Run!)
She flattens to the ground, gulping in the odd mingle of dog fur and horsehair. His scent, through and through. She can see him – his wild sable and bright, puckish eyes – and all the ways she could escape him. All at once, clearer further away than close up. A giant map of notches in the Meadow’s thicket, floral skirt and forest copses is etched in her mind. But she stays. Against her baser instinct; against the other’s insistence.
“Woodrow!” It is a diminutive voice. Distinctly hers, but made from smaller organs. She huffs, standing up ‘tall’ on her hind legs, brow furrowing, “what have I told you!” But she isn’t angry. She doesn’t hold it against him. She was raised to accept the nature of things, no matter how strange or different from her. And she knows he is harmless so long as she is her. This is their way. Her nose twitches, always in motion, and she drops to all fours, taking a loping step towards him, sitting back on her hind. Her other half does not approve, she can feel it every time she meets with him. They have their pushes and pulls – there are somethings that neither are willing to compromise on, and so she lives with the reprove that tickles her from her nose to her tail. “What have you been up to, then?”
She waits for adventure, watching him – trickster – intently. Too intently. She has been spending an increasingly boring and lagomorphic amount of time sitting on her cottontail. Waiting for her mother to show. Waiting for the wind to tug her somewhere. Waiting for the memory, like a burning ember, of acrid, junglewood smoke and fire to wash from her.
“My heart has joined the Thousand,
for my friend stopped running today.”