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Apr. 6th, 2009 09:43 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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kh_drabbleChallenge: [182] Puzzles
Title: Riddle Me This
Word Count: 572
Notes: Once upon a time, there was an enchanted forest... nah. :D
He is about to leave the forest when he feels it. As his boots crunch over the stale, dead twigs of the dying earth, there is a light tug at the bottom of his coat. It takes him a moment to pinpoint where it came from.
She sits beneath a tall cypress, her legs a grotesquely-crumpled mess beneath her form. A child- no more than six or seven, he guesses, judging by the small stature and round, unfinished features. Her eyes are a dull, transparent shade of gray.
"You must be lost," she speaks to him, "for nobody comes to this forest anymore."
He notices that her gaze slides uselessly around instead of focusing on him. She must be blind, he thinks.
"I am naught but a traveler," he responds, intending to continue on his way.
"You can speak?" she asks. The genuine surprise in her tone stills him, and he turns to look at her once again.
"How peculiar. You sound like a human, yet I couldn't sense you coming. And you use words, so you can't be a beast. Perhaps you're a talking beast?"
Her statement jars him, slightly. The clarity of her observation intrigues him, and he wonders at the notion that she can know such things. Curiosity gets the better of him. Her hand reaches out to grasp at his coat again, and he obliges when she pulls on it by getting down on one knee.
She fumbles around for a moment before finding his hood. Her hand disappears inside of it. He studies her carefully as she runs her fingers along his jawline, over the arch of his eyebrows and down the bridge of his nose, deliberately, as if to sear his face into her mind's eye.
Her voice is steeped in wonder, light and clear between them in the decaying air.
"You can't be a ghost if I can touch you. You look like a man, but you aren't. I wonder what you could be."
The ground is hard and dry underneath him. This place is dying, devoid of any kind of civilization as far as he can tell. The sun doesn't shine; the sky is a barren slab of slate overhead. Had the Darkness forgotten this world? Or perhaps it had passed already, and this girl was a remnant, cast aside by either chance or fate. Something faint stirs within him at the thought of the latter option, too distant to pin down. Destiny is something he's not sure he believes in. The sensation is gone in an instant, however; the lack of clarity might infuriate him, if he were something other than what he is.
"You are correct," he tells her, "in that I am not quite a man and not quite a beast. Not a ghost, either, though I suppose you could call me something along those lines."
He stands to leave, not caring enough to pursue this game any further. There is nothing useful here to him, nothing more for him to see. He supposes it doesn't matter much what becomes of this world. The child will die either way.
"But you must be something," she replies, shifting her head slightly to where she thinks he should be, and then in the direction of his form when he begins to move away.
He leaves her alone with her pondering, her utterance of 'how very strange' reaching his ears as he departs.
"Indeed," he murmurs, and the sound of his own voice is lost to the stillborn wind.
Title: Riddle Me This
Word Count: 572
Notes: Once upon a time, there was an enchanted forest... nah. :D
He is about to leave the forest when he feels it. As his boots crunch over the stale, dead twigs of the dying earth, there is a light tug at the bottom of his coat. It takes him a moment to pinpoint where it came from.
She sits beneath a tall cypress, her legs a grotesquely-crumpled mess beneath her form. A child- no more than six or seven, he guesses, judging by the small stature and round, unfinished features. Her eyes are a dull, transparent shade of gray.
"You must be lost," she speaks to him, "for nobody comes to this forest anymore."
He notices that her gaze slides uselessly around instead of focusing on him. She must be blind, he thinks.
"I am naught but a traveler," he responds, intending to continue on his way.
"You can speak?" she asks. The genuine surprise in her tone stills him, and he turns to look at her once again.
"How peculiar. You sound like a human, yet I couldn't sense you coming. And you use words, so you can't be a beast. Perhaps you're a talking beast?"
Her statement jars him, slightly. The clarity of her observation intrigues him, and he wonders at the notion that she can know such things. Curiosity gets the better of him. Her hand reaches out to grasp at his coat again, and he obliges when she pulls on it by getting down on one knee.
She fumbles around for a moment before finding his hood. Her hand disappears inside of it. He studies her carefully as she runs her fingers along his jawline, over the arch of his eyebrows and down the bridge of his nose, deliberately, as if to sear his face into her mind's eye.
Her voice is steeped in wonder, light and clear between them in the decaying air.
"You can't be a ghost if I can touch you. You look like a man, but you aren't. I wonder what you could be."
The ground is hard and dry underneath him. This place is dying, devoid of any kind of civilization as far as he can tell. The sun doesn't shine; the sky is a barren slab of slate overhead. Had the Darkness forgotten this world? Or perhaps it had passed already, and this girl was a remnant, cast aside by either chance or fate. Something faint stirs within him at the thought of the latter option, too distant to pin down. Destiny is something he's not sure he believes in. The sensation is gone in an instant, however; the lack of clarity might infuriate him, if he were something other than what he is.
"You are correct," he tells her, "in that I am not quite a man and not quite a beast. Not a ghost, either, though I suppose you could call me something along those lines."
He stands to leave, not caring enough to pursue this game any further. There is nothing useful here to him, nothing more for him to see. He supposes it doesn't matter much what becomes of this world. The child will die either way.
"But you must be something," she replies, shifting her head slightly to where she thinks he should be, and then in the direction of his form when he begins to move away.
He leaves her alone with her pondering, her utterance of 'how very strange' reaching his ears as he departs.
"Indeed," he murmurs, and the sound of his own voice is lost to the stillborn wind.
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Date: 2009-04-07 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 03:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 09:45 pm (UTC)and you're welcome~! aha ^^'♥