12-02-2018, 10:00 PM
She has no idea that this man is not a tree. That he is flesh and bone and sinew, soft and warm and with a heart beating so steady in his chest. There is too much sick in her mind, too much fever turning the blood in her veins to sticky fire, slowing her thoughts and her words and the stumbling motion of such small, rust legs as they stagger beneath her.
He is a tree. He is vast and brown and beautiful, missing his leaves and those beautiful greens, but trees did that when they got too cold. Dropped their leaves because their fingers got too cold to hold them. He is a cold tree. But that seems okay because she is a ball of fire burning so bright, she is the sun plucked from the sky and shaped into equine in her molten softness.
She will keep this tree warm.
But then the tree pokes her, nudges her firmly in a direction she is far too tired to go, so she plants her tiny little hooves and sways wildly, lifts her gaze to the face that is not a face so that she can scowl at him so loudly. Except for a moment the grumbling, childish anger tempers the fever and face does swim through her vision, a shark in deep waters when she doesn’t know how to swim.
Then it’s gone again, no face, no shark, no anything but her tree sleeping sideways and the dark root he keeps proding her with. She could go with him maybe, if only she could remember how to lift her feet off the ground. Were they always so heavy? She struggles a little, fights her feet until her legs buckle at the knees and she’s swaying again, falling sideways against something that catches her. But she’s made no progress that she can tell, still in the same place except it’s night now. So dark and no stars, no moon, no anything to tell her where she is. Just something solid against her forehead. Solid and warm and so she leans into it, sighs with a huff that is somehow both relieved and offended.
“Imma tree too.” She mumbles, lifts her nose a little so her face rubs against the soft skin behind his foreleg. “I ‘ve roots an’ ’m stuck.”
He is a tree. He is vast and brown and beautiful, missing his leaves and those beautiful greens, but trees did that when they got too cold. Dropped their leaves because their fingers got too cold to hold them. He is a cold tree. But that seems okay because she is a ball of fire burning so bright, she is the sun plucked from the sky and shaped into equine in her molten softness.
She will keep this tree warm.
But then the tree pokes her, nudges her firmly in a direction she is far too tired to go, so she plants her tiny little hooves and sways wildly, lifts her gaze to the face that is not a face so that she can scowl at him so loudly. Except for a moment the grumbling, childish anger tempers the fever and face does swim through her vision, a shark in deep waters when she doesn’t know how to swim.
Then it’s gone again, no face, no shark, no anything but her tree sleeping sideways and the dark root he keeps proding her with. She could go with him maybe, if only she could remember how to lift her feet off the ground. Were they always so heavy? She struggles a little, fights her feet until her legs buckle at the knees and she’s swaying again, falling sideways against something that catches her. But she’s made no progress that she can tell, still in the same place except it’s night now. So dark and no stars, no moon, no anything to tell her where she is. Just something solid against her forehead. Solid and warm and so she leans into it, sighs with a huff that is somehow both relieved and offended.
“Imma tree too.” She mumbles, lifts her nose a little so her face rubs against the soft skin behind his foreleg. “I ‘ve roots an’ ’m stuck.”