Autumn pauses and quivers in the cooling air, smells gunpowder and hears bird cries. She looks about herself and feels naked in the wavering dusk. She moves her muddied feet backwards a few paces and pushes the ferns from her eyes to better see her intended, moaning and half-conscious in the mud. She desires him most of all now, as he is most wounded and hopeless: most in need of her touch. But still she is silent and waits and knows that his ditchwater eyes still will not see her, just as they have never seen her in the past. He has been here before, and she has been here every time to watch him walk the path in tow of the old one.
The young one comes to as the light dims, and first believes his eyes to have failed him. He sits in soaked jeans and soaked socks and feels nothing but pain above and damp below. He is unable to turn his head, but feels groundwater seeping down his leg, and sap running down his forehead. Slowly, in shock, he moves his arm to touch his collar, to extract the liquid pooling there. It is sticky and warm, and he begins to notice that it is his head that is leaking and not the tree it contacted. His cry is muffled by the blood he spits from his mouth.
Autumn hears his cry and knows her time has come, and she silently steps through the darkened leaves to his side, pulls herself close to his warm and broken body. She places a dainty hand on his, but he shows no recognition, and she knows, as she has always known, that she must try harder for his attention. She nuzzles the wound in his side, where the sting of shrapnel caught at his shirt and buried itself in him, and she is heedless of the damp blood on her nose.
The boy feels her presence beside him and feels, finally, the pent up longing that followed him so dutifully down the forest path. He is calm and feels her tongue trace a circle on his neck. He laughs a small, gargling laugh at the sensation of her rough and sandy tongue on his fair skin.
And then his eyes widen as she moves lower, and he feels a dull tug on his jeans. First she tugs at the belt, then the buttons, and then.... The boy feels a tug at his cuff, low on the right leg where there was once a boot and now only mud and...
He feels a gnawing sensation in his gut that turns into simply gnawing. And then he sees her for the first time.
Her name is Autumn, and she hungers for him. Her tongue brushes his ditchwater eyes as they look into hers before closing.
The young one comes to as the light dims, and first believes his eyes to have failed him. He sits in soaked jeans and soaked socks and feels nothing but pain above and damp below. He is unable to turn his head, but feels groundwater seeping down his leg, and sap running down his forehead. Slowly, in shock, he moves his arm to touch his collar, to extract the liquid pooling there. It is sticky and warm, and he begins to notice that it is his head that is leaking and not the tree it contacted. His cry is muffled by the blood he spits from his mouth.
Autumn hears his cry and knows her time has come, and she silently steps through the darkened leaves to his side, pulls herself close to his warm and broken body. She places a dainty hand on his, but he shows no recognition, and she knows, as she has always known, that she must try harder for his attention. She nuzzles the wound in his side, where the sting of shrapnel caught at his shirt and buried itself in him, and she is heedless of the damp blood on her nose.
The boy feels her presence beside him and feels, finally, the pent up longing that followed him so dutifully down the forest path. He is calm and feels her tongue trace a circle on his neck. He laughs a small, gargling laugh at the sensation of her rough and sandy tongue on his fair skin.
And then his eyes widen as she moves lower, and he feels a dull tug on his jeans. First she tugs at the belt, then the buttons, and then.... The boy feels a tug at his cuff, low on the right leg where there was once a boot and now only mud and...
He feels a gnawing sensation in his gut that turns into simply gnawing. And then he sees her for the first time.
Her name is Autumn, and she hungers for him. Her tongue brushes his ditchwater eyes as they look into hers before closing.
