Sequel to the
previous one. For
31_days.
Listen to the shiver of wings at your side--it is my desire, and
still, still, I am shaking with it.
Confinement
*
Other herds have returned to the abandoned Vale. The deer are everywhere. The cave in which you slept as a weanling is den now to foxes, who stare out from the murk with bright grimaces and restive eyes. You cede the ground to them, gallop uphill at a clatter to the heights above the valley floor. The running is still easy. The one you wait for alights from his surveying, having spied you as he always does, from the sky.
A high place is better for a nest, he says.
A sheltered place, you answer.
A high and sheltered place, then. If there is no such place he will make one. In his proud urgency he flexes wing and claw.
The promise is not idle. You have seen the mountain temples to the wind-god, raised beyond the treeline by flocks of the devout. In your seasons among them you witnessed tercels straining midair to heft timber for crossbeams, formel overseers hovering parallel and above. If a tercel faltered in his flight, the formel would swoop screaming to seize the beam, to bear the weight before it fell.
Once raised, the gates hang forever open, framing the holy peak called Idachishi, Ishi's Crest, or tracts of unabated sky. The temples themselves are gates, gates on gates strung into epic corridors, invitations to the immanent and ceaseless presence to pass through. They were and are a wonder to the daughter of a people who never build.
There will be no temple here, only a byre. Your hooves stir leaf-litter on the scattered ground. The valley ramps below in its autumn coat of amber, burnt umber, brilliant scarlet, yellow dun. They are unicorn colors. It may be that your heart will grow heavy as your belly, wintering here apart, but in your uncertain state you could think of no better course.
Illishar stands with wings half-mantled. His people at least have given their consent. You will be shepherds through the snowy months to fallow deer, watch them move in dappled quietude from drift to drift. Now and then Illishar will take one as he must, to feed himself. No way of knowing whether those that last the winter will feed what you bear in spring.
*