Pale,
golden light streams askew, splayed crookedly as it trickles through the
branches. The shadows dominate the leafy ground cover. This is a backwards place,
beautiful but deadly, like the animals that reside in its splintery embrace.
Through
the cloying musk of fungi and decaying leaves, through the darkness made even
thicker by the narrowness of the fingers of light bold enough to reach deep
enough into the forest’s body to reach its thrumming heart, they dart and
dodge.
A brief
glimmer, a breath of air disturbed, the presence of the floaters is felt as a
weak reflection of their reality. When the sun falls beneath the swaying arms
of the naked pines, they rise. Intricate dances of scale and flesh and fin and
tail.
Swimming
through the waves of frost, the smoke of cold breath billowing forth, they
ride. The ground arches up to meet them, yet proceeds to shrink away as she is
shunned. They feel no need to be linked to the ground, held as prisoners linked
by the shackles of gravity, held captive as we are by our own mortal holdings. This
backwards place, this home of true wilderness, this is the forest of dreams and darkness.
