I saw the moon today. All of it, with its pristine, silvery fingers, rounded, no edges, reflecting the light of brighter constellations from beyond. There was something in it that I wished to kiss, bewildered and bashful, like days of yore, when backmother and forefather would run through the trees, hind legs slashing past the grass, running to the reed field where the ferns cling to your knees and give your bones a little tickle. I was there with them once, my soft hands grazing the heads of dandelions, tiny aconites, scented mahonias, as if I were preparing them for the world, rearing them for lives like they'd never believe. They were my own babies in mine own hands, spirit-wrought as the day I found them.
Mossie slept heavy during the night. After a long day’s work with me hugging him by the neck like a blasted flesh noose, it was the least he deserved. I felt the low grumble of his heaving chest, speckled with figs and twigs that seemed like they were itchy but really just made him fuzzy. Hugging him was a monk-bear embrace, all hide and height, ghost-eyes glazing, nourishing me through the woods, building me a personal heaven. He never says much of anything, 'sides from the occasional formless grunt. He did a lot of that today as we hiked up Krafalgar Crossing, toeless feet plomp-plomp-plomping one after the other. Branches emerged in wooden river deltas, careening down to try and poke my eyes out. But I'm a crafty one, you see. No one's keeping me down.
Eventually, after a fork in the road and a few klick-meils along the westerlies, we found a nice resting spot - a big bark with loose shreds splintering off from the husk. They weren't sharp. They just bristled, Mossie liked the scouring touch as he sat. His big, black doe-eyes were fawning over this one little critter with white fur and pink eyes (they were called something in the old world were they were once multiple, but we have forgotten them now). Speedily he swooped down, scooped the cute thing up and nuzzled it a little like a crib-babe in the beginning days of bleating and bleeding. Amidst the aeon columns paving their shafts with light, this moss-creature was given weight, plight, sound, form, purpose, mettle, might, music, life. All the things on the grand scale of Yahg-wan, the tree who roots us all.
Before dawn died and dusk descended, we came upon a canopy overlooking the everglade. There it all was, I thought, sitting my worn legs down for retirement, Mossie joining me. Cuddling, we watched glass-surfaces rippling, starlight caught on every fallen dew. Here, there were no more dragons. Here, our monsters were asleep. Here, where pine cones smoothen on your tongue, wet musk ruffles the nose, with wind in your eyes and the sun at your back like the companion you never knew you needed. In that moment, we found what we had been begging at the altar for, what we had been praying for, what our forefathers and backmothers dedicated their long wyrld-root lives towards, without condition, without hesitation, without thinking of the end of what we be.
“Home,” I said, nuzzling Mossie’s beard of vines, the light tuckered out. “This is home.”
Dark and whimsical at once! I love the description of the moon in the beginning. Well done. I love flash fiction that truly gives only a glimpse to a bigger story, but enough to stand on its own.