Faithful Pebble
Part Ninety-One
A branch moved.
A branch shivered. It wavered and parted, unveiling from the surrounding foliage a tattered gap. It swayed in the wind as tall as a tree and as thin as a fallen leaf. And through that shadowed hole entered a beast. It shuffled quietly illuminated in the meadow's ivory sea, in the bed of flowers hitherto the wanderer stood frozen. Its velvet light bleached the color from the beast's speckled fur turning its fiery amber red into a ghostly white, its soft chocolate eyes the sober lacquer of ebony ink. The wanderer licked his lips. They tasted alarm. They tasted grief. They tasted confusion, bewilderment and pity. He sighed, then held his breath.
Its steps were shy, the beast. Its path cautious and clumsy. It shuffled. It paused. It looked and then stilled. It was a quiet stillness, a cozy stillness like wool before a fireplace or a child before the dawn, that same feeling danced in its eyes, the fawn. It halted just within the ring of violets. It gazed at him. Muted with abandoned horror, it stared at the wanderer and his bow, at the flowers and their glow, at the sky lost behind the wind and the trees, the darkness and the night, the forest and its secrets.
At this, the wanderer froze. It was all he could do. His thoughts of danger or apprehension fell vaguely away forgotten like the rabbit he'd just killed, like the girl drifting in a stream not far from his reach, like the animals he had seen never quite this large, never quite this young, never quite this lonely. He had never seen the like, the fawn watching him quietly, the fawn chewing softly as its tentative nose twisted quietly.
It was shaking slightly, a thing he seen deer do. Its stillness he'd witnessed also, but not its bravery, its curiosity, its solitude. It reminded him of someone.
The wanderer loosened the tension of his bow. He lowered it, absently hearing the string hum as it bunched, the stick groan as it slanted to the ground. He straightened quietly baffled as the fawn took another step–one step, two steps, three steps, four—into his direction. Watching him openly, its neck stretched out, its nose peeked out, its tail pointed north towards the darkness, towards the forest's edge, towards the place where his Pebble had warned him to avoid, the edge of the meadow's border where the flowers parted into separate paths. He couldn't see where they led. He was too preoccupied to look. The fawn was now in touching distance. In curiosity, he too stretched out his hand anticipating the wetness of its nose, the soft pelt of its fur.
He never touched it. He almost did, nearly did when suddenly a branch snapped, a bird's wing fluttered and the sound of a crunch crackled through the forest's canopy.
The fawn stopped. The wanderer exhaled. They both looked up. They listened hearing one step, two steps, three steps, four echo throughout the wind and the trees, the darkness and the night, the forest and its secrets. They stared looking for broken vines, falling leaves or the wispy shadow of an errant squirrel. But they found nothing. Swaying branches shattered the mystical light, but its damp dimness divulged no one, no animal, no visible thing. The wanderer licked his lips. Again, they tasted alarm. They tasted grief. They tasted distrust, distain and fear. He frowned, the wanderer. After a moment, he fisted his bow.
Then suddenly, the deer turned. It leapt away over ivory petals, over violet petals into the darkness embracing it like a cloak. Then it cried. Alarmed, it bucked. It fell with a soft thud vanishing abruptly like a ghost in the dark, a leaf in the wind, a memory encased by time.
- Calla