08-12-2021, 11:56 AM
How long does it take for solitude to drive one mad?
Asterope surely must be halfway there.
An injured elk had staggered to the edge of the pond and there had been some vicious yearning in her chest to help it (something in her that said she could help it), but it had bolted as soon as she’d reached for it and she’d slipped beneath the water’s edge and had not surfaced for weeks.
Or was it months?
She stays below so long that the fish no longer fear her, but instead come to rest in the tangles of her mane and her tail. And she wishes she could speak to them, find some comfort in their company, but she sings to them beneath the water’s glass-still surface and they do not seem to understand.
She is tucked away in a grove of weeds when a ripple finds her. She watches it from below. No doubt another woodland creature come to soothe their parched throat, she thinks, and stays beneath.
But then she hears it. Her name is like a rumor from above and her heart stutters, stammers, twinges, and she moves slow, careful for the thin line between water and air.
First it is only the eyes that break the surface and she sees that it is only a woodland creature curled up there at the edge of the water. But there is something different about this animal and she remembers the color, the same color of an otter-turned-filly who’d found her once.
Her gaze flits heavy between the deer and the flowers as the rest of her surfaces and, finally, she grins.
“Sickle?”
Asterope surely must be halfway there.
An injured elk had staggered to the edge of the pond and there had been some vicious yearning in her chest to help it (something in her that said she could help it), but it had bolted as soon as she’d reached for it and she’d slipped beneath the water’s edge and had not surfaced for weeks.
Or was it months?
She stays below so long that the fish no longer fear her, but instead come to rest in the tangles of her mane and her tail. And she wishes she could speak to them, find some comfort in their company, but she sings to them beneath the water’s glass-still surface and they do not seem to understand.
She is tucked away in a grove of weeds when a ripple finds her. She watches it from below. No doubt another woodland creature come to soothe their parched throat, she thinks, and stays beneath.
But then she hears it. Her name is like a rumor from above and her heart stutters, stammers, twinges, and she moves slow, careful for the thin line between water and air.
First it is only the eyes that break the surface and she sees that it is only a woodland creature curled up there at the edge of the water. But there is something different about this animal and she remembers the color, the same color of an otter-turned-filly who’d found her once.
Her gaze flits heavy between the deer and the flowers as the rest of her surfaces and, finally, she grins.
“Sickle?”
Drops of dew from their hair
@Sickle