Autumn is waning, and still Kune is alone. On some level he has made peace with this, for it’s become a mundane, trivial aspect of his everyday reality, like waking and breathing. The sun rises, and he is alone. The sun sets, and he is alone. It’s cyclic: almost comforting in its predictability.
If only he could stop himself thinking of her.
Kune’s sleek black pelt is starting to thicken as the nights get colder, and he is putting back on the weight he had lost to stress before, plus extra. He has little to do these days but eat, and think. And he thinks a lot: about his past herd and old traumas, his regrets, his hopes for the future, and, of course… her.
Yet the encounter he’d had with her lookalike in the Peak had, in his mind, been a sign from the spirits, solidifying the conflict he’d been battling in his heart for months. He cannot go back. He cannot be what Bozena needs him to be. Likely she has already moved on from him already, anyway, and if she needed him, she would have sought him out. He must let her go.
He cannot stop himself from imagining the possibilities of what could have been different, however. They could have had a family by now. She could have bore him a child, and helped delay the inevitable extinction of their people a little longer. Together, they could have made the mountain their forever-home, and been noble guardians to the women of the Peak.
Kune isn’t sure what his life will become now, but at least he is no longer fearful of the possibilities. His encounter with the kind one-eared stranger some time ago had awoken him to the fact that there was still hope, and that he could still potentially find his place somewhere here on the isles. He need only listen to where the fates call him.
He stands grazing in the heart of the meadow, enjoying the cool breeze carried inland from the sea, and watching as a handful of dead brown leaves is blown, tumbling, across the grass. Strangers come and go, some pairing up to take advantage of the season, but Kune feels no desire to join them. His purpose is elsewhere.
He just needs a sign.
|
