We are Like Stags

As she approaches the longhouse, she can feel his call pulsating in the earth — the vibrations of his musing push deeply under the frozen soil. His song and sound force roots beneath her feet, extending with such intent to reach and coil about the soul of their space and beat with relentless stomping — hooves hammering against the winter’s thickest ice.

Incantations and invocations. Music suspends in every corner; dripping from leaves and stems and breathing flurry and wonder into the settlement with its huts and straw roofs cast in sparkling snow, flashing light back to the sun in its celestial heaven.

Drawing nearer, she can feel his call shaking in the air — the exhalation of life in his lungs, pressed by his throat and fluttering on the inside of his cheeks; his tongue crafts words that deepen the colors of the season. Frost is indigo blue; evergreen needles sway on branches black as midnight — even the wind itself glows in shades of pink and yellow as blinding snow throws crystals down dirt paths and through cracks and dark doorways. Continue reading “We are Like Stags”

We are Like Ravens

The raindrops are gray ravens, their call resounding in his ears and brushing at his full cheeks with a feathery and woeful constant. He exhales spirit mists into the blue dawn and rests his tired spine against the slippery wooden bones of the hut’s exterior. There has been a sound in his mind since she left, something like a sigh, a whisper, or a wanting suggestion of desire on the wind, the kind that whistles through the trees and around mountain passes during the winter’s coldest chill.

He pushes his bare toes into the black earth and reaches, eyes closed, for the worn wooden lyre at his side. The sky’s weeping moistens and swells the soundbox and bridge, and like tears on lashes, it slips off the horsehair strings. He is a dark echo of Freyr, conjuring the day’s weeping with his existence, but revolving and drowning in this boggy domain so far in his mind from anything that resembles a shining sun.

Continue reading “We are Like Ravens”