come sing down the moon; Argo

[keeper]

throw me to the wolves & i will return leading the pack.

Keeper chased deer. Lost them. Found them. Chased them again. It was an obsession for her to follow them, tracking their faint magical trail through forest and meadow and back again.

Once, her grandmother had asked her why she chased after the deer.

The deer people are beautiful and distant, and I want to know the secret of their ways. They can disappear like smoke, make brown eyes shine yellow in the moonlight, and all with a flash of their white tails like pale warnings of secrets the trees swallow whole. Mostly, because I am not like the rest of you - I’m not like any of you at all.

That pained her the most. Even her sister had green skin to set her apart. But Keeper, she was as ordinary as a dandelion - as common as any branch on a tree. Grandmother told her that wasn’t true, not if the deer people had a hold of her heart because that meant that Keeper was something special but she found it hard to believe the medicine hat mare.

Keeper believed in secrets, and quiet.

She believed in snow falling on stars and a pair of deep brown eyes that look wounded, and looked right through her as if he saw her, just Keeper, and nothing else.

His name was something she had banished from her lips, no matter how many times it rose unbidden to them. It could leave her smiling, staring at a slip of sunlight through the leaves or a shadow that grew long in the grass. Most must think her daft when they caught her this way, remembering him and savoring the almost-taste of his name on her lips before she buried it beneath the continuous quest to know the deer and their secrets. Keeper longed for their slimness and their grace, neither of which she had - she was almost a pony in size, and much too lean to move like the deer did. She resembled a horse that has been run too long until it little else but gristle and bone, growing long in the whiskers, and much too unkempt.

There were bits of fur and bone in the knotty straggles of her mane.

There was the haunted look of wind moving through the trees in her black eyes.

There were thorny scratches on her thin hips.

Keeper could tell you which berries not to eat. She could tell you which grasses were good for digestion and could even tell you the best places to sleep if you followed the deer but what she could not tell you is why sometimes, she stopped and stared as if a ghost followed her. Or why sometimes, she woke up whispering his name to herself like a prayer as if that alone could call him to her or save him from the things in his eyes that had stayed with her, following her, like hounds hot on her heels.

Keeper also could not tell you why she picked the meadow on this night of all nights. Why she stopped her chase after the deer to tip her head back and look at the stars. All she saw was black and white, like the hairs in his coat, amidst the constellations and the night and his name rose unbidden from her lips like a whispered summons, “Argo.”

Keeper