the moth on your porch

[Naoi]

and miles to go before I sleep… Dawn. The shapes and colors of a new day materialized around her slowly, and at the moment, rather puzzlingly. Something was abnormal here, something about the mingled scents of transient horses, yet the general lack of company. And she, patient or stupid, lingered against the grey wall of stone, intently listening in total silence. Wildflowers dotted the green world in an array of colors, each of them too complex, too vibrant for a world so gray. Before the sun had fully risen, they were merely tolerable, such were most things.  Frustrated, she blinked up at the misty sky above, leaving sunspots burned into her eyes when they returned to the meadow below. She could see his silhouette in those violent hues, smell the sweat on his velvet skin, the decay and the decadence, everything that was terrible and wonderful in the world. Accursed thing, a captor and a killer, but she loved him nonetheless. And what punishment awaited her, when he found her? His eye was always watching, blinding and burning, even when he closed his grey eyelids. It’s possible there were other things for him to see, important man that he was… but no, she knew. His wrath loomed steady, coiled like a venomous snake and ready to strike at any moment. He waits for her to wear herself out, only to finish her off himself. It’s curious, really, that a god would wait for his prey to tire, but I suppose as much is to be expected for such a busy man and an insignificant girl. She knew very little of the world, but she knew her place. It is truly a shame that it wasn’t firmly twisted around his little finger, as he insisted, but even a god cannot change the laws of nature or the will of a heathenous woman, perhaps even moreso the latter. Regardless, his current plan was working; the girl was exhausted, as much from being suspicious of every shadow as from the flight itself.  Carefully, she slunk forward to dip her mouth to the water, wincing when a step on a small limb caused an audible crack. It wasn’t until the first sip that she realized how thirsty she was, and drank heartily, almost forgetting herself for a moment as she satisfied her thirst. For a few seconds, a new god was found in that rippling pool, but only until she saw him reflected in the water, grinning cruelly as he reminded her. She gasped when she felt his breath on her neck, and stumbled backwards- but it was only a memory, or he was already gone, and she was left alone and trembling to face the newest day of reckoning. naoi