05-01-2020, 12:29 PM
echis
“ I will love you until we run out of mornings. Then I will love you in the dark. ”
She wakes, covered in morning dew and shivering. This is not the first time and so she lifts her head to scan the meadow with wide, green eyes. Her mother always glows like the morning sun but the day is still dark in every direction she turns to look. Echis rises onto spindly legs and swallows the lump building in the back of her throat. A soft, timid cry leaves her lips as she stumbles forward a few steps, then back to where she slept. It isn’t like her to be loud and demanding. Not yet. The small girl tucks her chin downward as she spins.
“Wh-where did you go…” she whispers as the tears build in her soft doe eyes. Her pulse quickens until her knobby knees begin to quake. Echis takes a deep breath and tries to gather some semblance of courage around her hummingbird heart, and then she takes a step forward. Mother smells like warmth and sleep, and she does her best to follow that scent. She peeks up above the tall grasses. She cranes her neck as tall as it will go. But her unsteady legs grow tired so quickly already that she resigns herself to wading through the grasses.
Echis gives a small snort at the bugs her wandering summons from the dirt, which fly in her face and frustrate her further. When she nearly collides into someone’s shoulder, she startles back and tumbles into a heap of slender legs with a yelp. The dark girl untangles herself from the stalks of wild meadow grasses and rolls onto her belly with a hushed grunt of effort.
“I’m sorry. I’m just.. I’m lost,” she explains as she lifts her chin to pout up at the stranger. “Have you seen any angels around here?”
She begins the daunting task of rising up onto her still shaking legs with bits of grass and dirt clinging to her body. She doesn’t mean to, but she blinks and sends the tears she’d been fighting back rolling down her cheeks.