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04-12-2014, 07:26 PM
A vial of hope and a vial of pain in the light they both look the same I knew this pattern. It lay over a different map than it once had – hinged on new circumstances – but the skeleton beneath it all remained the same. Long after my first visit to the forest of Helovia’s Threshold, I ventured to those trees again. It was not duty – I went unasked – but the small act felt in some way predictable. Acceptable. I arrived in search of others like myself in hopes of bringing them home. Such a strange word. Beneath the stinging rattle of cold rain, my body moved forward at a languid stride. I held nothing against the weather, but with my winter coat shedding out I wondered after the warmth of the sun – cocked an eye up, every now and then, at the fleecy clouds high over intertwined branches. Spring chose an unfortunate day for weeping; disgruntled, I shook out the worst of dampness from my hide and trudged on. My path wandered between odd patches of conversation – the voices of those already engaged. Were I stronger, I might have felt my interest piqued, but still thin and ragged, I supposed my chances of enticing any away from the trees remained considerably low. I walked on, studying the old growth around me, until a lone shadow caught my eye: there, near the forest’s edge. He wore black and smelled damp, travel-worn – and slightly strange. Unable to place the off taste immediately, I hesitated near the outside of acceptable speaking distance. My eyes snapped the apparatus on his head: like old skin, worn and hard. I supposed I would know the texture exactly, were I to feel it. The memory of another black stud clad in leather shivered down my spine. ”Hello.” The word broke from my mouth in a dry bark; it was friendlier than it might have been, given the circumstances. This one’s build was clumsier than Roanne; I clung to this alone, and stepped forward to narrow the gap between us. ”Are you lost?” Perhaps he hailed from another place, one which also made some use of leather arbitrarily stitched across the head. I studied the contraption in silence, waiting for the stranger to speak – to lend me some new measure of his character. |
