The weight of her gaze is heavy on his skin; insistent, like the buzzing drone of summertime insects when the bird colonies are away at their summer homes. It occurs to him that it has been some time since anyone has seen him, let alone looked
at him so thoroughly, and he wonders what she sees.
tell me, father
According to his mother, he was grotesque. A flaw of nature.
'A mistake made flesh, if I've ever seen one,' according to her. Most horses that did see him fell into two categories. Those that looked away, as if frightened of him, and those that forced themselves to look anyway, as though looking at his scarred and pockmarked exterior somehow made them braver. Wulfric didn't think so; after all, he was no predator out to eat their brains or break their bones. Nor was he really worth of their pity; his disability was not so great that he could not sustain himself, albeit in the shade.
which to ask forgiveness for:
If the veins have moved, the shadow asks,
has the heart moved with it?He is silent for a moment, contemplative.
Does she have a heart? Wulfric thinks so, although he finds himself less convinced that a being as powerful as the Jungle holds only one. She is, after all, not bound by mortal constraints. Why would something as potent as she limit herself to a single heart? Surely it would be better to store pieces of herself everywhere, in small pockets that could endure the cruelties of this world more easily; places where the devoted could lay their troubles at her feet and hum songs of praise for her. Hearts were fragile, tender things, after all; as easily destroyed by words and intents as they were by physical blows and ecological disasters.
It would not do for the Mother jungle to make herself so vulnerable.
what I am, or what I am not
What then, would constitute something sacred enough to be a heart? His mind rushed immediately to the rare pools, where streams provided water that coalesced into small, quiet churches; their glassy surface forcing the canopy to part long enough to show a sliver of the sky above. That felt wrong though.
tell me mother,
Hearts were not quiet things. They were noisy, and loud. Their thrumming betrayed emotion both good and bad, and forced life into places that would otherwise be remarkable. The jungle's hearts were her waterfalls, he surmised, and smiled at the rightness of the thought. They grew strong when she grew strong, and weakened when she was tired; their banks swelled when she carried life and burst when she sought to renew the land.
"Hearts," he says.
"Her hearts are where they belong, still."
The shadow claims her mission then, and he says nothing, only watches. He does not understand what drives her, but he does not need to. It is enough that she is driven, and not fading. It was not her time to fade, not yet.
which should I regret:
I think that I know you. She says, her voice neither accusation nor question. He is quiet for a long moment, his sharp gaze locked on her contemplatively.
I do not think you do, he wants to say.
You would be the first to know me, he thinks to himself, still silent.
Not even I know me.
what I became, or what I didn't?
But the boy says nothing. He has nothing to offer the once-Queen save for the words the mother Jungle provides him, and even those are fleeing from his tongue.
"There is nothing to know," he finally answers, a sliver of his cheek pinched beneath punishing molars. Uneasy beneath the weight of her too-sharp stare, he tips his head inland, toward where the jungle hides her hearts, and offers an escape for the lithe shadow, now come back to life.
"She waits for you."