09-19-2022, 07:26 PM
"I'm not lost."
She says it like an incantation--like if she could just pack enough conviction into each word, she could will it true. As if geographical clarity were merely a matter of manifestation. But in the slow-blinking expression of the bullfrog she's enlisted as audience, it's only her doubts that reflect back: the same parade of second-guesses and should've-dones that have nipped at her heels since she left the glade. Perhaps it took more to meet one's fate than a dream and a vague sense of directional north.
"I just don't know where I am, here. Which is quite a different thing--I could be exactly where I'm meant to be." The bullfrog's yellow eyes regard her with blank incomprehension. Her pacing has worn a shallow trench in the mud of the shore. The same black sediment cakes limbs, evidence of the morning's long journey around the lake. She'd lost track of her direction on the circuitous path: now, with the twin suns positioned at high noon overhead, she's not sure where her path continues. Maybe she'd mistaken her mothers' description of the Godwood. Maybe she'd wandered somewhere so far off the beaten path as to be irrecoverable: but she was not lost. (Repeating it felt almost like believing it.)
"Are you supposed to know when you've arrived where you're meant to be?" In stories, there's a moment of revelation: a hero's calling. She listens, but whatever whispers of fate might've carried on the wind are drowned out in the forest's symphony of birdsong, cicadas rustling a beat. A splash startles her back to the shore. The shadow of a bullfrog disappears beneath the lapping waves, leaving her alone, again, with only her doubts and dreaming for company. She tsks; kicks a glob of mud after him, but it's half-hearted, and doesn't quite clear the water.
"Some help you are."
She says it like an incantation--like if she could just pack enough conviction into each word, she could will it true. As if geographical clarity were merely a matter of manifestation. But in the slow-blinking expression of the bullfrog she's enlisted as audience, it's only her doubts that reflect back: the same parade of second-guesses and should've-dones that have nipped at her heels since she left the glade. Perhaps it took more to meet one's fate than a dream and a vague sense of directional north.
"I just don't know where I am, here. Which is quite a different thing--I could be exactly where I'm meant to be." The bullfrog's yellow eyes regard her with blank incomprehension. Her pacing has worn a shallow trench in the mud of the shore. The same black sediment cakes limbs, evidence of the morning's long journey around the lake. She'd lost track of her direction on the circuitous path: now, with the twin suns positioned at high noon overhead, she's not sure where her path continues. Maybe she'd mistaken her mothers' description of the Godwood. Maybe she'd wandered somewhere so far off the beaten path as to be irrecoverable: but she was not lost. (Repeating it felt almost like believing it.)
"Are you supposed to know when you've arrived where you're meant to be?" In stories, there's a moment of revelation: a hero's calling. She listens, but whatever whispers of fate might've carried on the wind are drowned out in the forest's symphony of birdsong, cicadas rustling a beat. A splash startles her back to the shore. The shadow of a bullfrog disappears beneath the lapping waves, leaving her alone, again, with only her doubts and dreaming for company. She tsks; kicks a glob of mud after him, but it's half-hearted, and doesn't quite clear the water.
"Some help you are."