One moment could pass, and her face was the shine reflection of her inner beauty. She could smile and her heart was as light as a feather. Her chest did not hurt, her arms didn’t even ache. They were ragged and torn but the fur was growing and soon enough the scars would be hidden. In those moments Mati found the heartbeat of the earth beneath her paws, the sun shone down on her back like a reassuring caress of a friend. She could close her eyes and see nothing but light behind her eyelids. Those were the good moments, and they were growing more frequent.
But they would pass, and Mati was left with something very different. The dirt colored wolf felt everything that had been missing, absent. The pain of her chest, the tightness and inability to breathe. Her thoughts would race, and the images behind her eyelids were dark, like endless pools of black that threatened to swallow her whole. She could not touch her arms, the scars like gnarled gashes across each forearm. A drawing of the night they first adorned her body. And they ached and stung. They were not rare, but growing less frequent.
Her legs were crossed, her body seating under a large tree that cast a shadow over her. Face down, absorbed in the only thing that was neutral, neither good nor bad. Her pencil was growing dull, the knife she used to sharpen it missing, Mati rubbed in against the tree’s root in hopes of reveling more lead. She scowled at it, closing the sketchpad and leaning back against the large tree she sat beneath. Closing her eyes, taking the risk of seeing either darkness or light beneath them Mati found relaxation, but not peace.
table by Syd
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