Hospitable
It tastes like midnight wind and canvas, but I'm too tired to confirm. I know for sure the canvas, I stubbed my toe on a tent post, my eyes aren't open wide enough to count the stars in the sky; there are many, it's late. Each step tells me so, the way I have to pull up before I pull forward, the way each hummock flattens more like a pillow than they usually do. I'm completely lost, and I know it, and I could have said yes to a walk to my tent, but I thought mine was just around the corner-straight down the middle-back behind-across the way, so I'm here and it smells like beorc.
If I trip again, I'm down for the count, I promise.
It sounds like sleep except for me and echoes from my empty, empty head and it sounds like twitchy ears and uneven steps. I swallow back a yawn and taste the strangers' sleeping heartbeats, humid and voluminous, fitful from war.
Waaaa…rrr…it's a funny beorc word that means, "I'm tired. I can't find my room".
Thinking is breaking down to scenting and my hands are hands in the patched mud grass. Each breathing maw to unconsciousness lolls my head to its sucking breath, but the foreign air is too warm, too wavering. As the earth smells increasingly hospitable, coolness jars my shoulder, cajoles my neck into turning, and my nose leads me into a precarious halt. The breathing comes clear and untainted save for canvas, something chill but familiar dissolves in the back of my throat. And I follow from head to tail, make a last forward tug to hands on bedding, leaving outdoor night for its indoor sister.
A slight presence, a resting pulse, steely scented at the hands, and tepid until the skin, the face, where a soft smile in repose rolls smooth against my tongue. I'm down and I'll stay, I promised. I nuzzle a thank you and a pardon to the shoulder and breath in the draw, the familiarity that convinced me. A beautiful pelt. And a cozy dormant warmth in confidence and peaceful sleep.
There's no war here when there is all around, and there is a beorc, but truly there's a room.