Forest Born

I hate them," Enna said. "Whoever is responsible for making me sleep outside without pillows, I hate them." Mmm-hmmm...," Dasha said. Rin had noticed that the Tiran girl often had trouble remembering how to speak in the morning. If Finn were here," Enna continued to mumble as she rewrapped her head cloth, "he'd let me rest my head on his chest at night. Or leg. Or arm. And then he'd find whoever was responsible for the whole sleeping outside with no pillows situation and hold him while I kicked him in the shins.

Dasha!' Rin yelled, 'Dasha!' A face looked up, then two. They started walking toward her, then running. Dasha was in front, her eyes set on Razo, her face caught in an expression of desperate hope. 'Razo,' she said, .... 'Razo, it had better be you. If it just looks like you, I am going to kill you. It had better-' He'd reached her by then. They embraced, and he swung her around, her legs lifting in the air, her tunic swirling...Then Dasha was kissing Razo's face and crying and smiling and declaring all his perfections. 'Well, this isn't half-bad,' said Razo, 'I think I'll die more often.' Dasha embraced him again and squeezed until Razo had to admit he was injured. 'Love the lips, not the ribs,' he said, and pulled her into a long kiss.

The to Cathal was battered and only one wagon wide, with swells of hard earth where mud had frozen during cold ad rainy seasons. Enna tripped often, and cursed each time she tripped, until Dasha said, "Enna, you might watch your language." Enna grimaced. "I was. You should hear my thoughts.

You've been quiet lately...but it's not so much the quiet as something inside the quiet.

Enna leaned back her head and laughed at the sky. 'Of course he wasn't! Who could kill Razo?

I'm the sheen on water, Rin thought. I'm a looking glass. I'm not real.

Finn leaped from his horse to greet Enna, and she entwined herself into him, their arms around each other, their faces close. Thoug they did not kiss, Rin thought that the way they looked at each other was even more intimate. 'Let's get married,' Enna was saying with yearning in her voice. 'Please, let's get married right now.' Finn put his face into her neck and whispered something that made her hum.

The three girls were sitting and lying beside her, holding one another, weeping, their arms and legs and hair tangled like the roots of close trees, sobs shaking them like leaves in a high wind.

No one had ever called her wild before. She wanted to be wild now, for him. Wild seemed more enticing then a bowl of berries.

Rin slept inside the oak’s thought. Its own memories of weather and growth continued to hum, and like a pond, its stillness reflected back herself.

..giving into despair was like eating poisonous berries to keep from feeling hungry.

If it had been a color, it might have been green. If it had touched her ears, it might have sounded rhythmic, like the creak of a rocking chair or drone of a bee. If it had a scent, it might have been sweet and drowsy, like fresh pine on the fire.

It's good to cry a bit, 'cause that helps us get through the rough parts. And the winter is though, there's no doubt. But we just hang on until spring when that ache will be all but swallowed up.

The boar, the stag, and the eagle met on the last craggy peak of the world, look down, and sighed at what they saw. The boar was a king, and he said, "There is not enough people." The stag was a poet, and he said, "There is not enough beauty." The eagle was a cleric, and her said, "There is not enough mystery." Then the wolf, arriving late, looked up instead of down and said, "There is not enough hunger," and promptly ate them all. If the boar was king, the stag was poet, and the eagle was cleric, then what was the wolf?

We see the surface, blue or silver or gray, and waves hitting the shore. But we know there's so much we can't see, so what we love about it becomes in part what we imagine it is hiding.

Then Rin was hugging him. Relief and joy swelled inside her till she thought she would burst. "Uh . . . ," Razo said, patting her head as if she might be crazy. "You were dead," she mumbled against his chest. "I was? Well, I wish someone had told me. Would've been nice to relax on my back for a while. Um, how'd I die?