Sleepy Fox Hollow Kumbricia

@Ambrosius <3 forward-dated some!

02.04.2025

"To the grim poor there need be no pour quoi tale about where evil arises; it just arises; it always is. One never learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her — is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil?"

— Gregory Maguire

Days slid into blackness; each second seemed another century in itself, every minute an agonized exercise in forbearance. Begging for an end, stepping mulish and melancholy into the future anyway, regretting it, reveling in it. Thoughts formed only in wild clumping spurts: snow gathering, melting, gathering again into muddy banks of despair. What was she but the bittersweet end of it all? What could she ever be if not this?

The lone wolf was a waking horror now: a nightmare spun into flesh and blood, all gaunt and pale and feral eyes too focused, too fogged. The dark and damp had rendered her furs limp and brittle. When she stepped into the light, she flinched from the sun as if she'd never known its touch. Then she fell, weeping, while the many failures of her life flurried around her and filled her lungs: daughter; mother; wife; lover; murderer.

Perhaps the hunters had taken him by now.

But it wasn't him she saw in her mind, no, not that wretched creature. She saw who she had always seen in every bright thread of joy, always, always since the day they had met. She saw her love, saw him laughing and embracing his children, saw him growing old and fading into memory and earth and moving on. Wasn't it time to move on? Didn't she deserve that, too?

And the whispers of loss were lifting from her lungs, far above her head, moving on. And the last of the snow was melting, and the sky was darkening, and the world was moving on. It never had a choice.

…

When Marina finally woke, the sun was harsh and hot on her face. Water, she thought, and lifted herself with a little cry of pain. She couldn't quite remember how she had gotten so hurt. It didn't matter. The hunt for water was all-consuming; Marina flitted between the dark skeletons of sleeping trees in a frenzy.

But she felt relief, at least, when she could plunge her face into the icefanged slurry of a half-frozen pond. Her face, then her neck and shoulders, all of her into the water. She couldn't even feel the cold. For a few long moments she thought that, perhaps, she would stay there forever; let the water have her soul, too, and the hateful child she felt warping her body already.

Then she stepped from the water and shook out her fur into sodden silvered silk. It clung to her flanks when she'd settled, highlighting the thinness of her body and the subtle swell of her belly which might have otherwise hidden for some weeks yet. Reclining against a barren tree, she started to groom her wet fur, and chased every errant thought from her battered mind with a single promise to herself: it is time to move on.

the man is a specter in the pale of the woods. it had been many days since he'd last eaten; not for lack of ability to hunt, but for lack of motivation. his life had become a torrent of... nothingness. walking. drifting, from land to land. and it was not because he did not want to eat, or because he wished for death; no... simply....

he had forgotten.

it is during his walk now through the snow-packed hollow of trees that he realizes he is hungry. perhaps he can scrounge up a small critter to tide him over until he traveled back over the mountains and into open lands. lands to be seen, but not to be claimed. he was not a man of those ambitions.

he simply existed. plying his trade for shelter, sometimes. thoughts drift when he finds himself coming upon a pool of water. a pond half-frozen over, but as he gets closer, he sees the mangled form of a woman. a woman looking worse for wear, and his aquamarine eyes flicker with some sort of pity.

some people simply couldn't survive on their own, could they?

The mountain air seemed toxic to her, somehow; Marina too was entertaining thoughts of gentler terrain when her solitude was disrupted. She lifted her head to take him in, chin tipped up in defiance of the pity in his gaze. Her own thalassic eyes flashed with the dark pride of a creature long-accustomed to skimming along survival's razor edge. She did not need his pity.

For the barest moment her lips slicked back from her teeth, a simple reminder that even a wolf brought low was a fanged and feral thing. Can I help you? Marina asked, her voice a touch more acidic than she'd intended. She wouldn't apologize; he was staring, rather rudely, and she was pregnant and hungry and miserable.