Moonspear stage 1: denial

Whale-eyed, for whatever that was worth between one good eye and one blank socket, both stretched as open as could be. Time had healed old wounds; he felt them now keenly, as if no time had passed, but where he thought his throat gushed a red ribbon of blood there was only the puckered, pink scar from where his sister's teeth had sliced and torn. As he ran he thought he saw shapes with both his eyes, but one was still gone. Darkness had dominated that empty socket for years now and yet, in this panicked run, the memory of ferns and brambles, of rocky hillsides, of a mountain missing its head, all roused to his vision as if he were truly there.

When the wind called to him, it was like a switch had been flipped that deadend his limbs. Where once he had been flying along the mountainside now he was stopped in his tracks, as if paralyzed. The venom of invisible snakes reaching up through those limbs and through the veins, to his heart, which stuttered. As Titmouse careened to the earth his legs mostly tucked beneath his narrow body; one leg was caught mid-stride and he tripped over it, rolling, and finding himself collide at once in to a pile of rotted leaves, cast down weeks ago by the forest in its first wave of shedding.

For a few moments there was stillness everywhere. The birds did not call to one-another. There wasn't even a breeze across the grass, and then — breathing a heavy sigh, Titmouse's head lifted from the leaves, and he shook his head violently - his ears flopping. The world kept on spinning after that, so he squeezed his eye shut and braced himself against the earth.

It was as if he was preparing himself for something.