2 – 2

I'm making good time, I think. It's been some time since the rain stopped, and I've been following the sun as She sets. Through the leaf-sparse gaps in the treetops I can see Her burning golden light has darkened to a honeyed amber gleam. Her warmth has gone a long ways towards drying my damp clothes and guiding me forward. Without it, I would be hopelessly lost, wandering in circles until a hungry beast on the prowl found me and put me out of my misery. Even with it, I've managed to lose my way. For this guidance, I am endlessly grateful.

I show it by touching my open palm to my heart. The way my fingers splay across my chest approximates a sunburst. I can't say if She meant to guide me or if it was luck, and I don't think I ever will.

There's a deadfall ahead of me that I choose to circle around instead of climb over. Lots of stinging, biting creatures like to make their little dens inside or in the lee of these fallen trunks. They don't take kindly to intruders, accidental or otherwise. I only needed to end up to my ankles in an anthilll once to learn my lesson. Even though I have no allergy to the venom their tiny bites carry, my feet turned grossly swollen and red for weeks.

I feel an echo of that pain now, with them squished into their sodden coffins. My shoes and boots were soaked through by the rain and by my foolishly standing in that puddle. It's a price I'm paying now. Aches throb through the soles of my feet up into my legs, begging me to find a place to rest and free them from their prison. Worsening the matter is the fine layer of grit the mud left behind as it dried up and fell away. It's stuck to my skin and I can feel it grinding between my feet raw.

There'll be blisters, and soon. Big ones, most like, red and weeping. Another reason to find the road as soon as possible. I need to dry and clean my clothes and let my feet air out. I'll need medicine to keep infection at bay. None of that can be done out here. Or, if it can, I'm not someone who can do it. My knowledge of woodcraft extends to what is and is not poisonous, and how to find my way under the sun's guidance. It's possible to make the medicine I'll need from some plant out here, but I don't know what it is. Nor am I eager to experiment.

I wrap my cloak, long since dried, tighter around myself. The air's gaining a chill bite as the autumn's night grows nearer. I hope I can make the road before that. I don't know what to do if I don't. Father would, and if he somehow didn't, Mother would. Between them, they'd have known what to do. I just have me.

Now I'm thinking about them. I hadn't meant to. What I had intended was to take all that longing, love, and heartbreak and shove it down somewhere deep. To leave it there until time, distance, or some other miracle made its edges less keen. I gather the warm, thick material of my cloak between my fingers and miss my family. I'm still on the first day of my journey, and already I miss them. Father's rumbling laughter as I splutter and shriek to the surface of the water, having just thrown me in. Mother's harshly bitten off curse as my splash reaches her seat. Djan's endless competitiveness, and Tals' unashamed sweetness.

I could go back to them. It would be a hard time but, at the end of it, I'd be home. For a lingering moment, I consider.

Then, I don't.

I won't be going back. First and most practically of the reasons is that I don't know where I am, yet alone where the clearing is. Secondly, and most importantly, is what my failure would do to them. I'd be welcomed back, I don't doubt that, but in their eyes I would always be lesser. I couldn't bear to see that when they'd look at me. To imagine it now leaves a sour taste on my tongue.

Finally, even if I somehow managed to find my way back, it would be to an empty camp. After a Royah child leaves their family to walk their road, that family packs up and moves on. It's a practice as old as the komo'ka, but one I know much less about. If I had to guess, its purpose is to keep those like me, whose nerve is in question, from giving up. If there's no home to go back to, the only way I can go is forward. All I would find there is the empty space they once filled.

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I already have that.

Twilight deepens as I keep walking, chasing the last remnants of the setting sun. the sky darkens in a wave of deep purple from the east, leaving the first glimmer of stars in its wake. The nightly noises of the forest begin to rise: small, quick scurrying through the underbrush, the low whistle of an owl's hoot, the flap and flutter of bats on the wing. Fireflies dance between the trees, lighting my path with their little glows. Somewhere ahead of me, I hear the trickle of a stream.

I kneel at its bank to cup my hands beneath its flow. The water is cold and clean and soothes the tacky dryness in my mouth. I gulp down one handful, then another, before I realize that I am not the only one slaking their thirst. As the third handful of water trickles from between my fingers, I see an elk across the stream, head dipped to drink.

- - -

It's beautiful. It's enormous, and it's beautiful. Were I standing as tall as I could make myself, on the very tips of my toes, the crown of my head would barely peek over its withers. Its body is compact and short in length, round like a barrel, and covered in a deceptively thin fur of light brown color that darkens and thickens into hair as it reaches the neck. The antlers that grow from its head are huge and wide, enough for the span of my outstretched arms. One of its large, dark eyes is fixed unblinking on me as it drinks. If I move, or dare even breathe, it will be gone.

I don't want that. It is suddenly the thing I want least. The elk possesses some quality to it that I can't name, something that takes my breath and makes me feel small and quiet. I crouch at the stream's bank and watch it as it drinks.

What is this quality?

It's not size, for Soulful and Doleful are both larger than it. I've spent most of my life in the company of those mules and not once do I remember them drawing such feeling from me. So if not size, then what? Strength, perhaps, though I don't think so. The elk flicks an ear, chasing away some curious insect I can't see in the waning light. It watches me, not one bit afraid. In me, it sees no threat, which is curious. Maybe it's that. The complete lack of anything beyond recognition. With the mules, there was recognition when they saw me. Affection, I daresay, especially if I had an apple on me.

Yet, there were times when I would look in their eye and see nothing but that same lack of fear or threat the elk is now giving me. So what, then, is the difference between them? My legs burn from the effort of staying still. Soon I will either have to stand or fall over. I'd rather do neither, rather stay here until I can puzzle out what it is that strikes me so about this beast.

It lifts its long, large head from the water. Drops fall like rain from the hair around its mouth. There's a moment where both of its eyes are fixed on me, where the weight of its regard is doubled. It's then that I figure it out. The mules are animals. Strong, powerful animals, but that is the beginning and end of their minds. Their minds are full of mule problems and mule thoughts. This is why, I suspect, that sugary fruits work as bribes, and won't work at all on this elk.

Behind those dark eyes there is what I can only describe as wisdom. In higher and greater quality than animal should possess. There is more to the elk's mind than elk problems and elk thoughts. It sees me differently. Before I can do anything with this realization it turns and walks away, moving silently through the underbrush. “Wait,” I whisper. It does not, and is soon swallowed by the looming dark.

The last I see of it is a long, dragging scar down its rear left leg, gleaming pale and hairless in the rising moonlight. Once it's gone my breath returns to me in a gasp and I fall onto my rear. My hands sink into the muddy bank of the stream.

What in every moonlit hell was that? I scramble to my feet and strain my eyes. A beast of that size should leave some kind of trace of its passing. Hoofprints in the soft earth, the scrape of its antlers on the trunks of trees. Something. I look and find nothing, as if it were never here at all.

It's the lack of light, I think, that hides the elk's trail. I've lost the daylight, and while the fireflies are beautiful they aren't nearly bright enough to track by. Whatever feeling that came from locking eyes with the elk is gone, leaving behind a puzzled frustration. I wasted time, got into a staring contest with an animal, and now I'm where and when I didn't want to be: the woods at night.

I haven't any food, but there's water right here. My cloak is warm enough, and more importantly dry enough, that it could serve as tent and blanket for one night beneath the trees. If it rains again or the temperature drops too much, I'm in a lot of trouble. I'd be in worse trouble if I started walking blind through the night. Lots of hunting happens in the dark. By the light of the fireflies and what little starlight comes down I find a dry place at the foot of a tree and curl up. I pull down my hood and wrap my cloak tightly around me. It will not be a pleasant night's sleep. I'm surprised at how quickly I fall into it. Perhaps I shouldn't be. It's been quite the day.