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Date Posted: 15:57:26 07/06/11 Wed
Author: celtgirl
Subject: Snippet #1 inside.>>>>
In reply to: celtgirl 's message, "Pick, pick, pick......" on 15:48:37 07/06/11 Wed

copyright 2011 Cindy Brandner

Gregor did not answer the question at once, but looked long into the cup of his big hands, as though he held the past there within them and could read and understand the lines of it if only he looked long enough. “Nothing, just echoes in my head, but only half heard, a snatch of a song I think she once sang, a long story that she never finished telling about a boy who was born of a mother but had no father at all. I think, Yasha, even if I do not know, that boy was me. But how is a boy born without a father?”

Some men wore the protective clothing of quiet citizenship, of belonging to one tribe or another, but in their hearts they were fugitives and always would be. Some men had never known how to find, nor wear that protective cloak that hid their inner life from the prying eyes of others, those who would hunt, who only understood the chase. Gregor, despite his bravado, was a fugitive and was naked in the world. Jamie knew this, because he was one too.

“I remember the forest- it was my first friend. I remember how the mosses whispered to me- did you know that lichens only grow when a human voice is near? And that some flowers, the most beautiful grow only in the rot of dead things or that some curl their petals up like a young girl ashamed just because of a man looking at them?”

“No,” Jamie responded quietly, “I did not know that.” He took Gregor’s hand, judging that it was safe enough at this point. The cut across the palm was deep and ragged, with the glisten of exposed tendon, pearl white amongst the rubies and garnets of torn flesh. It was not however life threatening, and there was time for Gregor to say what he needed to say.

“I can still tell you what the light was like on those days, how it rippled and ran before me, and was a living thing, like a playmate that you could never quite catch. How it fell in the hollows and slid over the hills, and how it seemed to point out to me what I could eat- the gleam of it on a berry, so that it shone like a jewel and attracted my eye and tongue, how it sparkled like a dance on the water, so I would stop to drink. I look back and remember those days as if they are film, a strange story of a changeling, like the ones you told us about. I don’t know though, Yasha, if I was the real child or the strange one left by the fairies.”

“The world is so vast and strange at night, especially to a small person. There is nothing familiar, nothing to which one can hold. I would sing myself to sleep, lisping the words out, my own voice seeming too small to be of much use to me though. I remember the strangeness of the night sky, and counting the stars I could not name. But it was not long before the forest became home, before I could smell as the wolf does, and know as the deer when the rain was coming. I could spend hours watching fish swim in ponds, and then kill one with my hands and eat it raw. I knew which mushrooms were poison, and which were not. I never made a mistake, how I do not know, only that the earth was my mother, the forest my guardian angel. You learn to live in your body, rather than your head, you listen to your ears, but also to what your skin tells you- you understand what the birds are saying and can talk to a wolf merely by looking her in the eyes. This happens after a long time with the land, and no human being to talk to, to hear. Language becomes something far more than words. It becomes everything.”

Gregor stood and threw the bucket of water onto the stones, now heated to a deadly temperature. The steam billowed out, the stones hissing violently in protest. The heat hit Jamie in a wave and he felt sweat bead up immediately across his skin. Gregor sat back down beside him, and leaned in, grasping the back of Jamie’s neck, putting his forehead, slick with heat, against Jamie’s own. Jamie could feel the man’s pulse pounding against his temples. The smell of blood and vodka rose between them like a musk, steam floating around them in thick tendrils.

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