endlessly, she said
Autumn's reign is colourful. Oranges and browns, crimsons and mauves. The treeline of the Gates, bares naked limbs, boughs looking like gnarled fingers beckoning me forth. The spires of burgundy light, from the dying sun, pierce through, falling like wine into goblets, in my path. I’m there, in the moist cove of bark and leaves, staring out into the vast expanse of the Gates. The mottled green and brown grass looking like a sea of foam, flickering in the autumn breeze.
They’re out there. I see them, their eyes, thousands and thousands of eyes, staring back at me. Wanting, needing. I lower my neck, my head resting on a nest of pinecones and gorse. I had made it, to make some warmth, for the lack of it from my mother was terrifying. She fed me, she watched me, but oh, there was no warmth. I did not think she was capable. Her blank stare, albeit her touch is soft, but is not motherly, needing, wanting. Thus, I hide, in the cove of birch and ash, hiding from those eyes, those prying ears.
They’re watching. They’re in the shadows, their eyes unblinking. I shiver against the wind, nestling myself deeper into the nest of gorse, the thistles poke in my tender cocoa flesh, knotting in my wispy silver mane. I’m a duplicate of my mother, a chocolate coat and a silver mane and tail, and as duplicates go, I am her parallel. We bear significance in the way the knots entangle, the way the pinecones leave their delicate indentations against soft flesh. We both look as empty and hollow was each other, if only there was the love, the warmth I had seen in the other children and their mothers.
But they, they did not have the eyes staring, ever present, they did not hear the creaks of doors, somewhere, everywhere. And they, they did not hear the distant cackle and whip of chains. In the woods, in the shadows. It was no wonder my mother was a wreck, they were everywhere, everywhere…
Then I spot her, the girl whom my mother talks frequently. Her copper eyes, they aren’t like the shadows that watch, that prey upon me. She’s resting, not far from me, her form nestling beneath the spires of dark tendrils. I watch, I watch like a hawk, like the crows that settle in a murder above, with the same sister stare, but mine, mine is long, lengthy in their observation before I finally break through the nestled gorse hiding I had made, and slowly, ever so slowly, make my way over to her.
I stand not far, and yet not close, my head lowering to the ground, where I snatch at a few weeds and thoughtlessly chew, they do not fill what my mother’s sustenance does, but it is a habit I’ve began, and will continue. To chew thoughtfully yet pointlessly, before spitting out the course weeds and watching them lay beneath my feet, forgotten. Much like me, and seemingly, much like Tioga, also. I shuffle gently, a smooth sound coming from my lips, yet nothing more.
K E R N I C K
khaos x reuen