Falls

These lands are familiar to him but only in dreams. Hazy pictures flashing across his memory from a time long, long blown away by the ocean winds. He stands, a relic, nostrils open to embrace the warm smells of summer. Gnats circle around thin legs, in and out of his ears. There is only the slightest twitch at the corner of his mouth.

Around him the trees are alive with the sounds of birds, whose chatter is mindless and yet, a constant symphony. Music, if there ever was such a thing with beasts. Gael notes the subtle chirp of squirrels to each other while they gather, winter is ever present. It looms around the edges of the sunny forest, it twists itself into the cracks of bark and rock and even his chest. An icy spike driven right down the center.

He chews softly at the sparse bits of grass in his mouth and sighs softly, not even enough to ruffle the wings of a morpho rhetenor—she flutters aimless across the bridge of his nose, almost between the eyes.

Then she is gone.

Gael lifts his chin then, he breathes in and holds it. The Falls are close by, he can hear them churning and bubbling. Another melody altogether, he thinks, perhaps a sort of movement. Gael blinks, he stretches his thick neck around to nip idly at his own sides. For now, there is no ache in his stomach and he is grateful, if only for a moment. Her ghost has grown quiet, waiting, much like the first chill of winter she is always there. Hidden behind something, he supposes, or perhaps haunting someone else entirely.