The Bone Doll's Twin
I went bone hunting today. The bones I have are beginning to rot. I suppose that autumn is not the best time of year, the hunters' refuse and the deer that stumbles away to die in the woods from a poor marksman's shot may provide ample fare, but the leaves covering the ground make them too difficult to find. So alas, I found nothing. I shall have to look again, to find enough to provide for her through the winter.
This all began, as far as I can remember, on a summer's day years ago. I had gone swimming though we had been told not to, and ventured into the woods to dry. I stood among the old trees, clothesless, barefoot, looking around me. On the log where I had laid out my wet garments was a luna moth, huge, beautiful, and dead. Beneath her on the ground amid the fallen pine needles and moss lay the bones of a deer. I searched for more of the remains, but found only the few that lay at my feet. I didn't know then that they would become her totum of the wild.
It is better, I suppose, that I found nothing this day. There were more people around than usual, and I can just imagine being watched, faces twisted in amazed disgust as someone so small and female as I picked through the remnants of some creature like a starved, depraved heathen. Or a dog. I wish they would stay out of my woods, the civilized and heartless. They do not belong beneath my trees.
This all began, as far as I can remember, on a summer's day years ago. I had gone swimming though we had been told not to, and ventured into the woods to dry. I stood among the old trees, clothesless, barefoot, looking around me. On the log where I had laid out my wet garments was a luna moth, huge, beautiful, and dead. Beneath her on the ground amid the fallen pine needles and moss lay the bones of a deer. I searched for more of the remains, but found only the few that lay at my feet. I didn't know then that they would become her totum of the wild.
It is better, I suppose, that I found nothing this day. There were more people around than usual, and I can just imagine being watched, faces twisted in amazed disgust as someone so small and female as I picked through the remnants of some creature like a starved, depraved heathen. Or a dog. I wish they would stay out of my woods, the civilized and heartless. They do not belong beneath my trees.