02-23-2012, 05:39 PM
Siiiiiieeeeee! Hope you don't mind me! x:
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“Do you know why blood is red, girl?” she remembered Grandmother asking her, almost as if she stood by her side now, murmuring it in her ear. She hadn’t replied, but the woman had struck a match and showed her the flickering flame, continuing: “Because it is fire, child. Fire made water. That’s why, even when it’s cold, the body is warm. It burns from the inside out” She always thought that when she saw blood, when it would pool and dry black like coals and cinders. While skinning a rabbit for cooking this morning she had cut herself, watched the blood seep from the wound and knew it looked like flames licking around the border of a kept-fire. She had bound the wound and cooked her breakfast, feeling as though she had maintained the fires with a bandage and stoked them with warm food.
She had just now started to realize how the population of this area was concentrated. She would be frightened if she could fear at all. Strangers had never bothered her because she had been the strangest of all of them. They had allowed her to pass as long as she had stayed away. Some had visited her, curried her favor with gifts and in return asked for her boons and her curses on their enemies. She always left before she learned the aftermath, but she didn’t deny the effects. The cursed danced in pain in her dreams while the polite won the favor of their intended, hunted well and grew strong. She would watch, sometimes with her brothers looking over her shoulder, before moving on. She had been moving on since she had buried Grandmother in the grave they had both dug days previous to her death, and she thought she would never cease moving. No matter. It suited her fine.
Grandmother had taught her that most wolves had it wrong: hunting was something to be made sacred, and the real way to hunt was trapping. She had taught the girl the way to make snares, to find where the prey would walk themselves into her hands. It was automatic that whenever the sun would begin to fall, she would set up a camp and begin to rig the perimeter with traps. This was what she did this afternoon, having left her pack behind with rope and wire in hand. She made the loop, coiled the snare, whispered under her breath to every ghost, spirit, god that would listen that it might hold food in the morning. She stood from the trap and heard steps, heavy things that caused her heart to jump in rate. This confused her. She approached the sound, tasting an alien sweet smell on the roof of her mouth. It came to be that from a distance she could spy another, on the back of a strange animal. Foxglove had never seen a horse before, though the legs and form reminded her of deer, elk. The smell was sweet and it smelled of the earth and she liked it. She approached some, each step beginning to quaver slightly as her nerves frayed. Alone, she was poetry. Around others, she was cardiac arrhythmia.
She had no idea how to hail the other. Words often confused her; they cracked on her tongue and the meaning slipped out, filled other words and got mixed up. Her jaw clenched and then she lifted a hand that quaked once or twice to her mouth. She whistled, so piercing it stirred birds from the trees. She kept her hand lifted, gestured to him vaguely. She was interested and she could not keep herself from it. It was not just the beast, but the brown-toned man who hunched on his back like a hitchhiking bird. There was an aquiline quality to his features that resonated with her, and yet did not with others she had met. It could be said that Foxglove was not smart enough to fear, and that might be true in their minds, but in hers this was simple occurrence in her life: inspecting that which she did not know.
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“Do you know why blood is red, girl?” she remembered Grandmother asking her, almost as if she stood by her side now, murmuring it in her ear. She hadn’t replied, but the woman had struck a match and showed her the flickering flame, continuing: “Because it is fire, child. Fire made water. That’s why, even when it’s cold, the body is warm. It burns from the inside out” She always thought that when she saw blood, when it would pool and dry black like coals and cinders. While skinning a rabbit for cooking this morning she had cut herself, watched the blood seep from the wound and knew it looked like flames licking around the border of a kept-fire. She had bound the wound and cooked her breakfast, feeling as though she had maintained the fires with a bandage and stoked them with warm food.
She had just now started to realize how the population of this area was concentrated. She would be frightened if she could fear at all. Strangers had never bothered her because she had been the strangest of all of them. They had allowed her to pass as long as she had stayed away. Some had visited her, curried her favor with gifts and in return asked for her boons and her curses on their enemies. She always left before she learned the aftermath, but she didn’t deny the effects. The cursed danced in pain in her dreams while the polite won the favor of their intended, hunted well and grew strong. She would watch, sometimes with her brothers looking over her shoulder, before moving on. She had been moving on since she had buried Grandmother in the grave they had both dug days previous to her death, and she thought she would never cease moving. No matter. It suited her fine.
Grandmother had taught her that most wolves had it wrong: hunting was something to be made sacred, and the real way to hunt was trapping. She had taught the girl the way to make snares, to find where the prey would walk themselves into her hands. It was automatic that whenever the sun would begin to fall, she would set up a camp and begin to rig the perimeter with traps. This was what she did this afternoon, having left her pack behind with rope and wire in hand. She made the loop, coiled the snare, whispered under her breath to every ghost, spirit, god that would listen that it might hold food in the morning. She stood from the trap and heard steps, heavy things that caused her heart to jump in rate. This confused her. She approached the sound, tasting an alien sweet smell on the roof of her mouth. It came to be that from a distance she could spy another, on the back of a strange animal. Foxglove had never seen a horse before, though the legs and form reminded her of deer, elk. The smell was sweet and it smelled of the earth and she liked it. She approached some, each step beginning to quaver slightly as her nerves frayed. Alone, she was poetry. Around others, she was cardiac arrhythmia.
She had no idea how to hail the other. Words often confused her; they cracked on her tongue and the meaning slipped out, filled other words and got mixed up. Her jaw clenched and then she lifted a hand that quaked once or twice to her mouth. She whistled, so piercing it stirred birds from the trees. She kept her hand lifted, gestured to him vaguely. She was interested and she could not keep herself from it. It was not just the beast, but the brown-toned man who hunched on his back like a hitchhiking bird. There was an aquiline quality to his features that resonated with her, and yet did not with others she had met. It could be said that Foxglove was not smart enough to fear, and that might be true in their minds, but in hers this was simple occurrence in her life: inspecting that which she did not know.