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12-17-2014, 08:07 PM
Kestrel when all other lights go out Voices here, but none she wants to hear. The road behind her disappears when she bothers to look. It has grown long, a serpent coiling in the snow at her back, dead now. The road ahead crawls with shadows and the echoes of strange voices. Why does her heart lift up at the sound? She doesn’t know them. Still, the heavy drum beat of her gait proceeds on past the forest’s edge. Pines rise high around her, like a field of spears. The echoes disappear now – strangers gone. Did she dream it up? A friend for a homeless wanderer? A perch for a flightless bird? Kestrel’s breath is deep and ragged in her lungs; her eyelids lie heavier with every blink. She understands the deep pull of exhaustion and its danger, but she is hours from collapsing yet and spring dances like sparks across her unshed coat. The world is waking up. The sun is out. She only tenses when the songbirds rush by overhead. Even if it’s not the destination she imagined, it is still an end. She catches the smell of horse on the trees, recent and varied, and her mind works over the fact. Maybe the forest holds answers. Maybe she will find them in the land beyond. The sliver of hope in her breast needles her thoughts. Move. Surely those voices she heard weren’t the only ones? Surely there will be more? Move. Her pace picks up despite the sweat now growing under mountains of black hair; her bowed face rises, and dark wreathes of forelock fall back to reveal black eyes, bright as gemstones. A single trumpet’s blast; her chest shudders like a bellows, and her voice, a brass horn, bursts through the branches, scattering birds. Under the winter hair, she is a bowstring, ready to loose, but soon enough the forest is quiet again. She lingers, wondering who will answer. |
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