Betwixt

The Pilgrimage

THE GRASS MOVED LIKE WAVES ACROSS THE FIELD. THE SOUND cascading and crashing on crescendo, hissing as the North blew it forward once more. When she would lie within the sultry, warm embrace of the land it would feel like drowning and she welcomed that sensation. Supine across the earth she wrapped her arms and legs in the long flat switches as if tying her body to the field so her feet couldn't wander. She might stay like this for hours. Beneath the blue-green prairie, watching the sun dip lower behind the trees of the grandfather forest.

This was the land her ancestors had provided, nurtured for their children and their children's children. She could hear their voices in the wind, all the creaking subtleties of ancient riddles and songs of times long passed. She wondered if she could distinguish her mother's voice among all of the others and for a moment she could. It was the sonorous tone that fluctuated like the throbbing of hummingbird's wings. Thumping against the air in the sound of a mother's heartbeat from within the womb. The light sound lifted her spirit within the mellifluousness of the forest until it seemed she was above it all, drifting and watching her body below as the grass curled it's filaments around her prone form, pulling her body further beneath the surface as if to clasp her possessively within the moist, fecund earth. This was her safe heaven.

She opened her eyes and her frame uncurled as her ears picked up the sound of trotting paws against the damp soil and the enthusiastic bark of a familiar creature. Sitting up she watched as the shadow bounded through the tall grass, diving up and beneath the surface mimicking the grey, cackling beasts the boatmen had christened Selkies in their songs of the sea. When the warm, wriggling form collided with her own it lunged for her face and covered it in warm breath and licks of damp drivel. She ran her fingers through its midnight fur until it bounded away only to stopping an arms length away before darting once more towards the dense trees. She lifted her heavy body and followed the mutt on a sigh, it was high time to return to the village.