Harvest Of The Garden Valley

Dead leaves were stains all over the ground when you finally came back. Much growing from me and now I get my return apparently. You walked with a tiresome posture, from over the steep dry mountains and into our lush valley here where I rest. I saw you, in some warped sense, and you looked, near exactly like the young man I met in my father’s halls, half a lifetime ago. Along the trail road with your sword at waist, your leather sandals strapped up to your knees, and your clothes; Finely dyed blue cloth, surely from our kingdom and repaired so well, by whom? You must be a soldier again, or believing yourself to be one once more. I could see the pure confidence strike your face each time your palm made contact with your blade’s handles, as though you’d instantly slay an army on your own, so reverse, eternity you now annoy me. 

The life within you and, which you display, I could not help but appreciate; Your eyes full of contentment and never again at me. As you take off your hood, I see your hair is still different than as I saw it back then, when we walked side by side. No longer short and black; You still have that grey, but now marked with streaks of white, mass of hair, all down and around your head! How no one has commanded you to cut it, or its long accompanying beard, you must really think yourself a veteran.

All of you, and this I saw, not through this rotting shelter housing my mind, and once a breathing figure that never failed to capture your gaze no matter how many times you thought I hadn’t seen; No, this tree, with branches like grasping palms, that you have buried me beneath, gives, then it takes, and then I play it the same routine back; Which must grant me access to its senses, how ridiculous, you’d tell me in your deepened voice, were I telling you any of this in life. The light which touch this tree’s leaves, winds carrying the most basic of organic scents and the vibration living things emit; All in combination, give this rooted living giant, and by extension me, a vision of your world above my corpse.

Perhaps a simple connection was all I sought, even in my death, something you’d never been able to admit yourself of seeking in your life. No, instead, too focused upon the shadows on the wall, non-reality; Your parents and their judgement of us, how your comrades’ laugh too much when we’d be together, none of it your true self, thrown off with a few lies. Perhaps that’s why, no matter how hard I try now, you seem to not notice my attempts to speak to you. Then perhaps I truly am ridiculous, to think, a dead woman speaking to a living man, though I know there are other ways to talk to you here in our valley. I’ve spent the last solar cycle of life apparently unnoticed by you, no different now I suppose. In your luck, I do still retain my patience I believe.

And yet, even now, in your return here, you refuse to give me priority. Once you’d made it down to this garden, an open plane of grass, the first thing thought was to sit on a boulder beside a spring and sip water? You must be stupid, fifty more steps and the trail left by you last time would have brought you straight to the tree, to me. And now, finally here, you rest one knee upon a mound of soil, just under which, I am buried.

You fall to both knees now and stretch your hands before me, this overgrown palm with dense foliage along its fingers, which give plenty shade. You close your eyes and then you go, in whispy breaths,

“Adora, I miss you eternity, a void it’s all been without you.”

There’s plenty of wind all about the valley, that you probably imagine are my whispers in your ears. My patience prevent it from becoming screams that you’d truly hear. I do miss you so much, but is this all you’ve come to say to me, an entire cycle gone, and this only? Then just before you resume speaking, you let the back, of both your hands, fall upon the cold soil and you feel even the dead leaves about. Again in near whispers,

“The boy has had his first full cycle of life, locks of his hair I’ve brought you.”

If, I had been told beforehand, that on your return, only this you would have to say me, your first and only love; I’d perhaps no patience and just killed you as soon as you had come over those hills. But no, that’s given me a deep aching sadness that truly stuns me. 

You go and reach from a small bag, tied to your waist and from it, you pull a handful of thin black hair; And then you place it upon the moist soil, that’s before you but entombs me. A twisted gift you offer up, from a child, made with some other woman, and you smile on in ignorance!

All you had to do was say that you love me, from deep within, with truth.

The breeze grows, as does the motion of all the living things and grasses it touches, this tree intertwined with me included. You lay flat on the soil, and curl into a ball centered around the bundle of hair. I hear those whispers of yours much clearer with you so close now,

“Would you do it all again? Even, knowing how it ends?”

To ask me that question, the one we would always throw at each other unexpectedly, the other always answering with a soft yes. We are to only ask that when we think ourselves finished, just as it was before my death, that I question if now has broken us. I cannot answer find an answer for that now, and I imagine you don’t even care for it, you feel you have done your part as I see the contempt manifest with that disgusting grin that washes away the tears you just let run for me a few moments ago. I know that’s not acceptance or grief, something else occupying your mind, when it should be, majority: me.

I think I’ve tired of this pulling and swaying on my feelings for you, even if you don’t know what you’re doing at all. Beyond this tree, I’ve access to the things it intertwines with, the things that feed on it, the things it feeds on and beyond even that. I use all that, as suddenly you feel a long thin grub, it’s many legs crawling along your face and you frantically rise in a panic. The sudden motion leading to sinking fangs into the center of your cheek, a sharp painful sensation. The tiny thing expands its wings and flees before you can swat it.You run back the way you came, up the hills and away from the tree; A few moments later and the substance within the little creatures bite gives effect. Your vision is a surge of the entire spectrum of color, then unconsciousness, and you crash into the soil, splitting your face open from a few angular pebbles on the ground.

It has been an entire days worth of sleep, and I believe you’ve now just begun to awaken. Your vision should begin to make clear, your position:

Tightly curled together along the wall of a smooth, stone cave wall and equipped with most of your gear, that you had prepared just yesterday for your walk here. You looked much the same as before I attacked you, only now much more soaked and dirty, your fabric stained with mud. It is just before sunrise, so dark in this cave, so I see less than what you likely do; Though I imagine your face reeks of misery, and I know the cuts on your face now bear shades of green, surely infection.

Just outside you hear the rain falling upon stones, mostly grass and splashes into puddles. I see in your eyes, the attempts to command your body to action, only for it to respond with delay, I imagine you need more effort from your muscles than usual. 

Despite how quiet the night had been, but for the rhythm of soft rain, suddenly, a swift strike of lightning makes itself known, and how monstrous its light; As it illuminates your bloodied and miserable face, just like a corpse pulled from a grave, honestly! Trailing the lightning, a deep boom follows, and it echoes throughout the valley, a force of nature far beyond my control, terrifying, ha! There are things worse than me out there, I assure you.

But no, you don’t see this place as your new refuge, you flee into the night just as you regain your base, did you even weigh your options? 

You run along tall grasses up to your waist, while you step into rocks, deep ditches, and puddles; Nonstop sensation tearing at your feet and yet you keep running. Though you surely see nothing ahead of you, besides void darkness, is that what you run towards? I don’t even know, you’ve let your most basic instincts command you, and I consider it embarrassing, in all honesty.

But, before you run too far, or collide with something in the deep dark of night, I intervene and send another grub. A small creature that looks no different than a blemish on the skin, it lands on your bare back and just after its bite; You again collapse into a sleep that overrides your mind, immediately followed by a suddenly limp body.

This same routine plays for a few nights and perhaps on your fourth morning here you realize, it is not some forgotten god of the wilderness, or bare nature itself, that traps you here. You realize a different force is at play, and you pray more to your forefathers for protection, which is all you do under your breath, since that first day I trapped you here.

You stop fighting, and try to live for a few more days. spending all of daylight, hunting for something to kill, and eat. Then with the darkness setting, you see the many eyes glowing in the darkness, that peer at you from behind trees, within the tall grasses, and even a few in the distance, at the tops of the hills encircling this valley. There are beasts present, some that kill and some that feed, but they all avoid you, stalking you from the edges of your vision. All they see is a corpse covered in tattered cloth, running through the valley with wooden sticks and poles.

You’ll starve here, for the plants become tainted when only you, try and eat them, you may as well be eating the dirt itself. You’ll see no creature running along for you to feed on, nothing. I want you to become a husk so that your propped up emptiness is on display. 

This whole valley has now become my l corpse and never had I stretched my ability so far. 

It’s the tenth night, and you sit in the cave, around a tender fire that I’ve allowed you to keep going. You lay on your side, curled into a ball, and you see just beyond the wall of darkness before you, which your vision not penetrate; There is a horned beast before you, nothing but the tips of it’s white horns visible. Upright and shoulders squared, at the edge of the fires heat and light, it’s just far enough to be a shadow, though it’s gaze is enough to instill real panic in you, I sense it. The beast has fed, on the many things growing from my tree, and if I so wished it; I could send chemicals to its brain, and before you could react, it would pierce and scrape your body up against that cave wall in an unstoppable rage.

You hear its heavy breaths and even its weight, as you hear it move amongst the grass and shrubs, with even its tail striking like a whip. You start to pray to your father, his father, and his father, a long line of old men that you expect to save you now? You then pray for our king, and his strength to imbue you. Then, even to the old gods, the elders would go on about and you said you never believed in, what do you expect to happen exactly?

You should be praying to me! Who else responsible for all this? Who else would try to bring you down to the level of a man! You are so stupid! I despise your inability to once in your life recognize who it is you should be listening to. You’re beneath it all, not even a grub on its belly!

The beast turns around, leaving you by yourself and your silent sobs as slowly fall asleep. 

I believe you’ve heard, dreamt, or at least felt, the pure disdain from my spirit itself; Due to your sudden action the next morning, as you go straight to my tree upon your awakening, and then you fall to your knees before me. The whole scene a mockery of when you first presented yourself to me those handful of days ago. In rags, and looking much like a beggar in the street, you pray to me,

“A- Adora…”

Your voice is beyond fractures, and in low breaths you resume,

“… I would… would do it all again, different, Adora.”

More breaths and your raise you head, as to look upon the tree itself as you say,

“I’d love you all over again, eternity!”

It means nothing now, all I waited for, and I’ve no idea how to respond now.

I believe my silence goes on for too long, and perhaps it’s madness, or pure insanity I’ve sent you into; As you stretch your palms out, and stuff your mouth with handfuls of dead leaves, then wet soil, then whatever grubs or else, lie between your hunger and my corpse. It all goes down your mouth in one feast for your impulses. Perhaps you’ll end this long dream of mine, if you get to feed on my body, but I believe I am much more now. I am this valley, and I believe you will join the many rotting dead things that rest here, my love.