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11-14-2013, 12:22 AM
I was used to being cold. Long nights spent huddled against the wind, half-starved and (almost) utterly alone...I stopped feeling it. In self-defense, perhaps, I even learned to enjoy it. It was in my blood, after all.
I wandered across the steppes, scouring the jagged teeth of the mountaintops with a wistful eye and not quite seeing any of it. My mind was already far afield, racing recklessly along shale-strewn goat trails at the top of the world, courting death and deeper things with laughter on my lips and a flame in my heart. It was not always so bad to be unstuck in time, I thought, if only I knew enough to let the darkness in my memories die.
But what would light be then?
An observant sort might look at me drifting aimlessly through the steppes and guess that I was waiting for something. Gone were the days when I might wear a path in the earth with the impatience of my childish needs; age afforded me some semblance of subtlety to go along with my finesse. Subtlety, as it turns out, is boring.
A distraction presented itself in the form of a half-remembered voice: Well aren’t you a magnificent little thing? I turned, eyes widening automatically in surprise.
If I had said that I knew Alysanne, I would be lying. I knew of her, had met her, had the singularly odd experience of being both father to her child and not (actually not, though even science could never say), but that was all. I had not stood with her under cold starlight and groomed her feathers into careful order. We had never shared the night sky. That was fine; I knew her scent from the channel of Sasha’s neck. I knew her by accolades murmured to me in my ancestral tongue.
I entertained a nearly imperceptible smile before approaching.
“Why yes I am,” I replied with a playful flourish of my head. If I must wait, I thought, at least I needn’t wait alone.
I wandered across the steppes, scouring the jagged teeth of the mountaintops with a wistful eye and not quite seeing any of it. My mind was already far afield, racing recklessly along shale-strewn goat trails at the top of the world, courting death and deeper things with laughter on my lips and a flame in my heart. It was not always so bad to be unstuck in time, I thought, if only I knew enough to let the darkness in my memories die.
But what would light be then?
An observant sort might look at me drifting aimlessly through the steppes and guess that I was waiting for something. Gone were the days when I might wear a path in the earth with the impatience of my childish needs; age afforded me some semblance of subtlety to go along with my finesse. Subtlety, as it turns out, is boring.
A distraction presented itself in the form of a half-remembered voice: Well aren’t you a magnificent little thing? I turned, eyes widening automatically in surprise.
If I had said that I knew Alysanne, I would be lying. I knew of her, had met her, had the singularly odd experience of being both father to her child and not (actually not, though even science could never say), but that was all. I had not stood with her under cold starlight and groomed her feathers into careful order. We had never shared the night sky. That was fine; I knew her scent from the channel of Sasha’s neck. I knew her by accolades murmured to me in my ancestral tongue.
I entertained a nearly imperceptible smile before approaching.
“Why yes I am,” I replied with a playful flourish of my head. If I must wait, I thought, at least I needn’t wait alone.
