02-22-2018, 02:47 PM
She has loved too many dangerous things.
(The most dangerous thing, he once told her, in an effort to make her feel protected. And it did. He always did.)
She has been between too many worlds; she has felt each of them revile her, pushing her out in yet another uncomfortable and unclean birth. Se mistook hunger for loneliness, once.
(She pities him, still, to this day because in truth, that man-headed beast had been lonely and hungry in equal measure – and perhaps the way he had sunk his lion’s claws into her had been just as much an embrace as it had been an assault. A way to sate two of the angriest beasts.)
She has faced death – or almost-death – and came back an incomplete whole, mostly there but for the eye she had sacrificed to the unending and physics-less navel of the multiverse.
So it is strange that, after all this time, she is still so naive. Still so willing to mistake hunger for loneliness.
So willing to confuse beasts for the imaginary friends that flit around her periphery. She is childlike in the way she can be both afeared and enthralled at the same time – loneliness itself has grown teeth in her. It is keen and searching, always.
If he is a hunter, than she is bait, caught in the snare of time and space – a perfect prey.
Her ears twitch. She can hear him above the fray (the nattering, gekkering, trilling, orchestrating) because he is solid. (Real?) Because each paw that rasps the earth does so in a way that none of the colonizers can – it displaces. It marks. He is dangerous sounding – but he is here. Near. Somewhere, near – the scent of dog-fur and blooded-breath sending signals of run! and stay…
So, of course, she stays.
Silent. Still, but for the heavy, jerking way her quickened breathing rocks her and spreads her nostrils open. She waits. (She is good at waiting – she has been waiting most her life.) There is a way to feel being looked at, being hunted. It crawls across her body in the strange and ominous way that only ancestral impulses feel like – like worms.
His are nascent – fragile – because he is young. And, perhaps, because she makes him feel protected.
Invulnerable.
Her head (one side of it; there is only one side of it) jerks to them, her mouth thick and clumsy, catching for the briefest second that observative (maternal) gold eye with her own. “H-hello,” she responds, her body jittering and stiffening in panic. “I’m afraid,” she mouths finally, almost numb. Almost excited. “Do you feel that?” (Is it real?)
There are so many things to be afraid of.
One day, he will learn, when she is not there to protect him anymore.
(The most dangerous thing, he once told her, in an effort to make her feel protected. And it did. He always did.)
She has been between too many worlds; she has felt each of them revile her, pushing her out in yet another uncomfortable and unclean birth. Se mistook hunger for loneliness, once.
(She pities him, still, to this day because in truth, that man-headed beast had been lonely and hungry in equal measure – and perhaps the way he had sunk his lion’s claws into her had been just as much an embrace as it had been an assault. A way to sate two of the angriest beasts.)
She has faced death – or almost-death – and came back an incomplete whole, mostly there but for the eye she had sacrificed to the unending and physics-less navel of the multiverse.
So it is strange that, after all this time, she is still so naive. Still so willing to mistake hunger for loneliness.
So willing to confuse beasts for the imaginary friends that flit around her periphery. She is childlike in the way she can be both afeared and enthralled at the same time – loneliness itself has grown teeth in her. It is keen and searching, always.
If he is a hunter, than she is bait, caught in the snare of time and space – a perfect prey.
Her ears twitch. She can hear him above the fray (the nattering, gekkering, trilling, orchestrating) because he is solid. (Real?) Because each paw that rasps the earth does so in a way that none of the colonizers can – it displaces. It marks. He is dangerous sounding – but he is here. Near. Somewhere, near – the scent of dog-fur and blooded-breath sending signals of run! and stay…
So, of course, she stays.
Silent. Still, but for the heavy, jerking way her quickened breathing rocks her and spreads her nostrils open. She waits. (She is good at waiting – she has been waiting most her life.) There is a way to feel being looked at, being hunted. It crawls across her body in the strange and ominous way that only ancestral impulses feel like – like worms.
His are nascent – fragile – because he is young. And, perhaps, because she makes him feel protected.
Invulnerable.
Her head (one side of it; there is only one side of it) jerks to them, her mouth thick and clumsy, catching for the briefest second that observative (maternal) gold eye with her own. “H-hello,” she responds, her body jittering and stiffening in panic. “I’m afraid,” she mouths finally, almost numb. Almost excited. “Do you feel that?” (Is it real?)
There are so many things to be afraid of.
One day, he will learn, when she is not there to protect him anymore.