uvu
His favor for his Keeper comes as the sighing of the Orchard, ivory trees bowing before a wind like the breath of life. This is an an ancient grove, near its heart, old growths taken root deep in the alluvial soil. Boughs weep and bend with the sudden, pregnant weight of ripening fruits, juiced like fleshly organs. Petaled, flowering trees take leave of their flora so that the wet ground may be made ready for the passing of the divine, laden with the verdant oblations and choking sweetness of the air. Its God walks these woods, He who is older still.
His Presence is more real, more tangible in the nearness of Him, resolved beyond the physicality of the world around Him. He is embraced by the shadows between the dappling of light, in the filtered shade that always endeavors to cloak Him. The leafy canopy murmurs and groans to accommodate, to ease the stridence of the yearning sun; this, too, should seek to shine its face upon the deity, but He would not abide the harshness of its kiss but on the hungry cells of the living Orchard.
Time draws apart from them because He wills it, and the foliage gasps amber and brilliant vermilion and gold. The wind quickens, drafts catching the fallen leaves, vortexting them through the woods, through the unmarked path ahead that parts with the crackling of dried, plastic brush.
There is no world but this; only the endless, warm wood, deep and wide as a sea. Only the grace of His shepherd’s crook, the curving wooden eyelit a thing unblinking. It is the blessing of the shepherd’s ever-watchful eye, blooming with the cold, unyielding Sight of another world.
The last, lingering blossoms, uplifted from some far distant tree, light upon the glassy surface of a scrying pool so smooth it shimmers like lunar mercury. It is dark and still enough to catch the stars. Only His reflection streaks the quiet serenity of the pool, fed from the dark waters that seep offerings and magic from a dozen subsurface springs in the hearts of His brother’s temples.
Only His reflection, with all the clearness of a mirror, and it stares back with ocean eyes.
