Beretania (Follower Fiction)

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She was the sunshine of an old soul. She met the moon in the morning and bid it ado at night. She was eternal and everything real. Beretania was everything natural and everything that once was. She was warm and kindling with kindness.

She walked with pride and glimmered with her own sun rays, not afraid of the dark, for her light was too brilliant for it to swallow it—her voice honey under her apricot skin.

This was how she appeared from the outside to everyone that peered into small glimpses of her life. She felt this way about herself too, although rare to ever admit it. But the sun always seemed to greet her differently. It was inviting and recharging her as one of its own, rather than just a small being on a planet that passed around it.

Beretania walked with grass webbing up between her toes, freshly dewy and staining the souls of her feet. She let her eyes fall forward on a distant tree line, expecting nothing yet still searching, the feeling that her eyes belonged here persistent.

Just as she accepted the fate of her set gaze, a deer fled from the tree line, brilliant in the way the sun glistened against its short hair coat. It ran, startled, then stopped. It watched her as she stood and watched it. Its slow stare was challenging her as it began a dedicated trot in her direction.

Beretania awoke from her dream then. The vision of being the sun, a yellow cherub, walking barefoot.

The deer.

She rolled to her side and sniffed in the scent of her sheets, fresh and warm. She traced patterns in the patternless bedroom wall before her and revisited the deer in her mind. She felt less angelic about it than she had in her dream. Now instead of longing and warmth, it left an empty gap inside her soul. A crevice so deep she could reach into and never find the ending of it.

A hole black with anxiety just behind the flesh and bones of her chest cavity.

She slipped from her bed and dressed. As she wrestled her socks over her feet, she saw the stains of dew-wet grass, forest dark and staining as far up as the in-betweens of her toes.

She went to the window and looked. Across her small urban lawn stood a deer.

It was the sunshine of an old soul. It met the moon in the morning and bid it ado at night. It was eternal and everything real. The doe was everything natural and everything that once was. It was warm and kindling with curiosity.