#ardene

Even outside, in the forest down below, I hear her, in this room, the silence asphyxiates. It is drowned out by gut wrenching sobs and desperate pleas and all the while she believes no one hears, no one listens. But I do. I hear and I listen and I go to the forest to hunt. I throw daggers into trees, pull poison from the creatures that slither and croak, bottle each one in a tiny glass, shove them in my trouser pockets. In the forest I build a bow. The day I kill a stag my heart radiates in my chest at the majestic being, its head bowed grazing. My feet sink into mud and my palms are sweaty, hands shaking as I move swift and silent. This is my gift to her. 

My arrow hits its eye and my hand strikes against the throat, like flint on stone, quick, easy, my strike extinguishing life, not sparking it. I’ll drag a slit across its belly and rest within tonight and tomorrow I will awake reborn. I squeeze inside, my toes curling as they drag along entrails, the steam billowing against the ice filled air. I lay within and I stare at its heart, on the frozen forest floor. When I wake, my hands brush across my chest and cup my breasts. 

“Mara?”

Sapphires peer down at me, her face stricken, but her eyes do not show the emotions that I know course within. She doesn’t know that I do this for her. 

“Oh Mara,” The Queen bends to one knee and reaches out her hand.

My hands are stained, dirty, full of grime and blood and I have water in my eyes, seeping into my lungs and when I open my mouth I am undone.

“Please, let me do this.” My voice isn’t mine anymore. It has betrayed me, exposed me. Everything that I have tried to hide has surfaced in a blubber of tear streaked words. I am lost, so lost and my heart is sinking to the bottom of her eyes. She has found me like this on each new moon, tucked in the skin of a beast, any beast that a man could ride.

“O’sweet Mara, my darling, how I adore you.” The Queen rises and turns, the forest bows to her as she walks. I concede to her and I rise from the inside of the stag that I have so desperately tried to consume. To walk with her in her forest forever is the only thing that I wish. To be with her until she returns to her land and I return to my bones. 

“I am lost.” I say as I stagger behind The Queen, her ringlets bouncing, strands of hair shining like the lake to our left, the sun is peeping through a bramble of blackberries. The Queen picks a few and kills them behind her sharp teeth. My trousers are thick against my skin as the stags blood dries, it crusts and flakes as I walk, my grey blouse is the same, a mess of life now dead. 

I am so lost in my need to save you, in my love for you. Lost that I can no longer find myself, no longer see who I am when I come to this forest that I love so much. When I kill the creatures that have never once known to fear man. So lost and blinded by this Ardenwealde and by you, my Queen, my sweet Ardene.

“I will find you, always my darling.” The Queen turns to me and bows her head. “When you are lost. When you cannot breathe, when you cannot see, when this world turns to darkness and you can no longer take another step. I will find you.” The Queen raises her head to look into my grey eyes, they are stones to her oceans. “Always, forever and to what lay beyond that. I’ll spend every waking moment, taking just one more step towards you, until I am once again before you, like I am now.” 

The Queen brushes her fingers across my lips and my toes curl into the dirt of the forest floor, I can see the tips of her ears flash into thick points as she stands and turns. She will flee from this place, the place in which her body betrays her and I will walk behind her forever. 

“Tell me a story,” I say as I fall into step to her right, but still behind her, just barely within her vision. The Queen sighs and I can see the corner of her lip pull upwards, the sun is no doubt envious of her shine. 

“Of the Queen and the stag, my precious one?” 

I nod my head at her words. I have heard this story a dozen times. She smiles as she reads it, long and lost she has told me. The Queen who rode her stag through the veil and lost Ardenwealde and her people. The Queen who built a kingdom amongst human flesh, The Queen who yearns to run through the blackberry groves, who placates her thirst on mortal wine. The Queen who fell in love with me and who finds me every new moon tucked in the skin of a stag, of a beast, of any beast a man can ride.