“[Ships] slept on the abyss without a surge. The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave. The moon, their mistress, had expir’d before. The winds were wither’d in the stagnant air, and the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need of aid from them— She was the Universe,” @vierona.
Midges surveyed the lichen with cursory displeasure, burdened by wings too fragile to carry them elsewhere but the forest floor and he, burdened likewise by unfortunate circumstance, sat listlessly among them. He watched with dull envy as they filled their throats with the vestiges of dew and shimmied their hirsute backs with silent contentment, bitterly lusting for the simplicity in which they so seamlessly existed. Jesse drove the toe of his boot further into the sodden earth; and beneath his arid breath, cursed the land beyond the forests — nestled within the devil’s bosom.
A crimson rivulet ran the length of his forearm to the point of his elbow. A fearsome imprint of teeth lay where his glove had been removed; bits of fat and mortal carnage protruding from the punctured skin where his assailant had successfully wounded him using its many jagged teeth.
He lamented, deeply, the strife with which they had been introduced, though considered the consequential exchange to be one of fairness: he had emerged precipitously from the shadows and spooked the lone wolf-mother, prompting her to latch her powerful maw ‘round his forearm and tear. It was a fair price due toward nature; likewise, his firm kick to its frail ribs had also been fair. She’d fled with her pups and her life and abandoned him with only his blood and the midges and the faintest reminder of his futile own.
It'd fester before long, his wound; Jesse knew well-enough that his time to cleanse the laceration of its impurities would be brief and so, he kicked himself to his haunches and then to his feet, exhaling his pain through his nostrils.
He followed a haphazard thoroughfare laced between the dense alpines and robust firs until a lake materialized from the dark brush and illuminated before him like an eden. One foot fell before the other when the vague silhouette of a woman emerged beyond the rocks and lichen, dark hair draped behind her like the night sky. Her skin was fair, her limbs somber and svelte; her lashes were long and thick above her sultry stare cast downward at the rippling water.
Jesse's gait slowed to an awed saunter. He'd forgotten about the wound, the pain; he thought only of a woman.
