lacking across the shale jutting from the mossy façade of the stream-swept hillside are hind’s hooves, a cadence intimating that barren souls ought not fashion a pursuit, nor the selfish, nor the shallow, nor the inept.* A crescendo of cloven limbs dashes through a pool ahead, accentuating the rubato and pulling the ardent nearer, but the flickering afternoon light and a grainy, gray ledge obscure the scene. The clamor of hooves diminishes.
Intermission; horsetails flick overhead and toy with merciless bands of bright, translucent gold.
Laying print to rest, I ponder the meaning of that fleeting image, which had cut a path through to my consciousness. What was I feeling at the time? I wonder, reflecting back on the nonthreatening chirping and calming trappings of nature, and then swiftly realizing that I had been feeling a bit adventurous and at peace with myself. My mouth curves into a grin, my eyelids touch, and instead of darkness, as one might expect, there is the confluence of emotion and fantasy.*
Write what you feel, I think to myself and anyone who happens to be listening. Then, furtively, as a warning, lest this take on too great a life, Figuratively, of course.
Rustling, originating in the brush and scrub higher up the hillside, disturbs the stillness of the setting that had slumbered for a handful of moments. Again, the clack of hooves, dislodging pebbles and scattering them so they tumble violently downward and into the short grass growing sparsely along a narrow plateau between two slopes. Hunter is there, listening and waiting, allowing the air to billow through his patchwork hood and his cloak. Hunter, not his name, but what those who see him call him by, much like the titles Father, Lord, and Murderer. All are familiar monikers.
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* Applicable to those contemplating joining Almost an Allegory
* How one should approach writing in this story.
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