Thanks to Alexandra Semushina for permission to use her beautiful artwork, "Winter's Child"!
Shalyanka lay at the deep cave’s entrance, breathing
shallowly in the heat of the early morning sun. He tapped his long claws
against the hard-packed cave floor and scratched lazy circles in the dirt with
his hind dewclaw. It was all the energy he could muster. The snow had melted,
even from the shaded rocks around the entrance, and the early spring
wildflowers bloomed in a riot of color across the meadow where he had frolicked
in the heavy snowdrifts, leaping after mice and rabbits with joyful abandon.
His eyes watched the swooping birds catching grasshoppers and caterpillars, but
he wasn’t tempted to chase them. He had eaten his fill and his stomachs were
quiet now, as they would be for the coming months.
His white fur, once glistening against the snow’s icy
glitter, hung in heavy patches along his sides. The thick mane that ran along
his back was bunched in a heavy thatch that would fall off while he slept. His
elegant whiskers that framed his eyes drooped in tired strands along his
cheekpads, now sunken against his bones. Soon his long, curled antlers would
fall off his head. This was the first year they had grown to their full length,
and he regretted losing them. But in honesty, they itched and irritated his
forehead so fiercely, that he would be a little glad of the relief.
His long curled tail stretched across the cave floor, the
brilliant white now caked in mud and covered in dust. He didn’t even have the
strength to groom it anymore. His eyes drooped closed and he longed for the
first snap of autumn’s chill. He blew out the faintest whisp of icy white
smoke, but it evaporated before it could curl in spirals into the morning air.
Time to sleep. Winter was over, the world warmed by spring’s
relentless encroachment. Shalyanka drank in the sight of the beautiful world
and turned slowly, curling along the length of his body until he slid down into
the deep recesses of the cave. There was no ice, but cold stone that kept him
cool through the long hot month’s to come. When he felt the first cool breezes
sweep down into the cave, he would wake, stir, stretch, and rise. Winter’s
child born again into the white world.
Dogs in house:
|
Houdini, Brindle
|
Time writing:
|
~20 minutes, interrupted
|
May word
count:
|
6,634
|
Prompt: Winter's Child
ReplyDeleteI started building it when the first flakes of snow fell--if you wanted to see winter's child, you needed to wait until winter started to build your hiding place. Otherwise the child would recognise it as a building of another season and stay away.
This is why, you see, that it is only travellers or those caught out in a storm that have ever seen the child. Many take this pattern to mean that winter's child is a tall tale, spun by weary travellers to entertain their hosts--in hopes of an extra serving or two to extend the tale--or told by the maddened after a cold, terrifying night away from home--who knows what it was that they truly saw, for even a humble squirrel could be winter's child in such eyes.
But ever since I was a little boy, trailing in my father's itinerant wake, I knew that winter's child was real. I saw him often enough, trotting behind us, looking at times like a white stag, at others like a snowy leopard, and at others like a large reptile--as I imagine a dragon might appear. I wonder if dragons, which everyone seems to take as obviously real even though I have yet to find someone who has actually seen one (and not someone whose brother's wife's childhood friend saw one), are actually tales spawned off winter's child.
My father explained that since we built our own shelters every night, we created a safe home for the child. The world is a scary place now for winter's child, as so many people stay in one place, building in the bright sun of summer. The child relies on us, he said. Those of us who travel must keep him alive.
But now I no longer travel. And I worry the child is gone. So I built, and now I wait.
Time writing: 15 minutes, sleeping lap baby
Nice idea of the once-traveling boy seeing it often, and the man trying to see if it's still there. I like it!
DeleteI like the idea of reverse hibernation. Lots of nice description here.
ReplyDeleteThanks, I was actually trying to describe the painting, since I often think I don't describe things in enough detail.
Delete