07-08-2016, 06:05 PM
the universe seems cramped to you and me
The Forest has her secrets;Keeper has more of them.
Her dark eyes (family eyes, like two bright blackberries) shine out of her face as she looks towards the interlocking branches overhead; it is dark here, she thinks, not surprised that few strands of sunshine come slanting down through the trees. They stand too close, too thick, in their union between earth and sky - each one an atlas bearing the weight of the clouds upon his back. She decides that she likes it here; there is more quiet, a ceremonial hush. Yes, she thinks, she does like it here.
There is a sense of aloneness in the Forest, but not - things creep and crawl, slither and slide, and she smells their scat, and all the stories they’ve left behind. Her eyes track a beetle in his crawl across the bark of a downed tree, probably lightning struck. His pace is slow and measured, his back shiny green and black (almost like sister, like Ceremony, she thinks) and her eyes follow him until the bark swallows the beetle up. He has gone and she cannot follow, too large to fit inside that small darkness in which the bug has gone; more things creep and crawl, slither and slide, and she can hear them in all the Forest’s darkness.
Keeper has spent an entire afternoon there, in the cool dark of the trees. She thinks that maybe, it is time to see if the moon has risen. Her step is cushioned by all the stuff underfoot: fern, leaf, and moss; the hush moves with her, surrounds her like a cloak until the Forest spits her out into a clearing with the tiniest protest of one little twig that cracks underfoot, loud and explosive in the nearing night. Keeper almost laughs, she had not meant to disturb the peace of the place, it just happened accidentally - like the mare nearby that turns her head to look, not much older than Keeper is herself and she throws a smile the mare’s way. “Sorry.”
KEEPER
