Faithful Pebble
Part Ninety-Two
Alarmed, the wanderer ran. He raced through that encompassing light, through its white and purple gleam. That empty sea of moonlit violets parted unevenly as his body cut through their satin grasp. He rushed, the wanderer. He swam until his booted toes met rich black soil, his gaze the forest's foliage and sprouting branches. Its darkness smothered his eyes, whisked the vivid cyan from within their midst, like a child plucking a rose, like a babe's tender fingers ripping through silk, through beauty, through life itself. The wanderer frowned as his knee crumpled. He spied the deer and sighed.
At the edge of that looming darkness, his gaze descended. The fawn lay quiet, not quite still, not quite motionless but would be in time. Wet with blood and unshed tears, it blinked slowly from within a tattered worn pit, a hole in the ground nearly twice its size and four times its age. Its limbs shivered. A fore hoof lifted and fell, rising to the swell of its withering breath. It stared at the wanderer. Skewered between four spears made of blacken wood and harshly sharpened arrows, it was all the fawn could do. A hunter's pit, the wanderer inhaled. He leaned forward watching the life seep gradually from the fawn's frightened eyes. Their light seemed to vanish with each passing breath. He wanted to reach out and close them, but instead his fingers found tattered weeds, rippling grass, the richly soft dirt that expertly hid the pit from the creature's perceptions, from the wanderer's untrained gaze. He wondered, the wanderer. He pondered and questioned.
Pebble answered him quietly. From behind him, she whispered. Her voice was absent of true sorrow, but not completely devoid of understanding or pity. He suspected that was more for his benefit than for the creature frozen before him. She sighed. "The forest is full of them. My father's doing. He did it to protect us and to fulfill his obligation." The logs in her hands teetered roughly wrapped in the brown coarse fabric she refused to part from, the veil that still covered her face, her body and heart. Her fingers plucked off bark. She flicked it, pulled it and tossed it away one piece at a time. It fell slowly.
Pebble didn't look at him. Even with her veil, the wanderer could feel her shame. Somewhere, she bit her lip. "They made him do it," she whispered. "They made him kill all those people."
Thank you for reading! - Calla