Woods Lovely, Dark & Deep

by the phenomena

A tale concerning the ones the Scythian left behind. Logfella goes on a soul-searching journey with Dogfella at his side. Girl stays home to tend to her flock of sheep, but she finds that though the time of miracles has passed, not all of the magic has left. Perhaps the magic they had desperately sought was not always so far out of their reach.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
but I have promises to keep,
and miles to go before I sleep,
and miles to go before I sleep.

— Robert Frost

He loved her.

It was as simple as that. Logfella knew from the moment he saw the Scythian that he was doomed to love and to lose her. She was beautiful. She was ferocious, she was brave, and perhaps she was a little foolish to take such a deadly task upon her shoulders, but Logfella loved her all the same.

Despite the fact that every bone in his body wanted to beg her to stop, he knew that the terrible errand must be done. If she did not do it, then who would? Would he? No, he was too much of a coward. He had always been a coward, hiding in his log cabin, trying to ignore what lay beyond the stone door in the forest. He was too afraid to go with the Scythian into Mingi Taw. If he had not been a coward, at the end of it all, could he have saved her? Could he have shared her burden?

The questions haunted him. They rattled inside of his brain like marbles.

It had been a time of miracles, a time of renewed life, but for new life to be given to the lands a life had to be taken. Logfella knew that this was the way of things. It was the way things had always been. It was the way things would always be.

Girl asked him, after the funeral pyre had been burned, why he had loved the Scythian. He could not answer. Why did he love her? Was it because she was their hero and savior? Was it even love or was it blind admiration?

He had to know. He had to find out. And to discover what the reason was...it meant that he would have to find himself, first.

Logfella left his cabin in the woods. Something stirred inside of him. There was something missing, something that he had to find. He didn't know where he needed to go to find it, but he knew that he just needed to start walking. Girl did not try to stop him and only insisted that he take Dogfella along. He placed a kiss on Girl's head and into the woods he went.

He had miles to go.