The cold had become knitted into my skin, strewn into my sinew and even deeper then. The cold bit into the marrow of my bones, the strings of my torn soul. I had been standing in the snowstorm, body rigid like stone. My weakened frame, scarred, healing skin, was berated by the winds, the gales that stung with icy bullets. The piles of snow had started to mound my hindquarters, as gaunt s they were, the snow still managed to settle. Sort of like the stalagmites that hang from tree branches, the icicles that sing in the morning sun as the crisp winter morning brings a new horizon.
There is no sun today, just the grey, the endless monochrome skies that overhang the gates with a sense of sorrow. I feel it, I feel the trepidation, the pain as sharp as needles, driving deeper and deeper inside of me. The memories are just as sharp, like the snow that drives against me. I'd been standing like the statue since dawn's first light. In the heart of the Gates, I was as sturdy as the magic tree. never shifting, even when the gales forced me from my feet occasionally. I was steadfast, but wish so much my eyes had been as steely. They were like clear marbles, grey as the skies, and as hollow as the endless cloud.
It was the eyes that spotted the russet figure as he strolled, knee deep through the burrows of snow. I watched him with a keen eye. Listened for any sound, for any form of threat. Not that my bony frame could do much. All out of proportion. A rounded barrel, that I was certain was not coming from grass (I had lost my appetite long ago and survived on nothing more than picking at the brambles and mint, occasionally the honeysuckle that decorated the summer brush.) Now winter's harsh season had hit and with it, Jack Frost's unfavourable rule. I had lost the condition I had gained. If my skin were not healing as much as it was (Thanks to Wichita and Jason.) I am certain you could see the white bone beneath, sharp angles jutting out from my skin. My weedy neck twists and I shake away the mountain of snow that had collected for the hours.
Frostbitten and numb, I moved each limb, mechanical and achingly. My cocoa body, like tree bark, stands out against the winter white. My creamy tresses, matted with forgotten leaves and burrs, remains limp and lank against my lithe neck. I travel like a ghost, ethereal and hauntingly across the loam, until I meet up with the stranger. My worn ears capture the trailings of his voice; he sounds like the lonely owls that call in the night, lost, alone, wanting company. And like how I accept the lonely creatures and mimic their lonesome cry, I pull to a halt just by the stranger, tilting my head just so to the right, to observe him, twisting my nose, flaring my nostrils. All is such a mechanical action, I feel as robotic as the iron beast that had jumped me, taken from me something, something as precious as rain in a drought, and as sought after as green grass in winter. He had taken and yet had given, and I was still unsure as to what.
I say nothing, the wind insists on berating me, frostbitten fingers striking my flanks, entangling my limp mane. I watch him, all silence and mystery, all hollowed grey eyes, as empty and lost as the cloudy sky above. My lips purse tightly, dry and course, cracked from the cold, the ice. But always a mess, and always a mystery, I stand as silent and bearing as a tree, yet as weak and fragile as a weed lost in the wind.
Reuen
the little ruined girl
resident of the gates |
