The Dark

Lucif and Penny Rose made their way carefully in the dark, the basket lighting their way with a low, steady light. They had passed through the murky undergrowth that surrounded their clearing, and now were picking a path through boulders that lay at the bottom of a small waterfall. Penny Rose slipped on the slick moss, and the basket seemed to bob upwards to help her. Lucif glanced back limpidly, and then without a word continued on, setting a pace that was, perhaps, only a slightly slower.
It was another mile of walking, but through less unwelcoming terrain, beside the edge of the river, to reach the marshes. And Penny Rose wondered quietly where the Unfriendly Creatures slept, her heart beating faster, feeling by turns warm and cold. If Lucif called them unfriendly, the word meant more than it possibly could on any other tongue.
Suddenly, the marled silver coat stilled ahead of her, and she nearly ran into it, nearing her shoulder as it was, she steadied herself with a touch of its fur, and waited. The silver eyes turned to her, and a slight shaking of its head told her to be quiet and still. Lucif moved slightly to shield her from the darkness to their left - the blackness of the forest, and also the unknown to their front that only it could see. Penny Rose, trapped in the low light of the basket, felt like a bird in a cage. The basket faded out in response, as if it could feel her fear. In her pocket, the box began to glow ever so slightly, and she took heart in its little warmth.
There was a sudden darkness ahead of them. A blacker black in the night, a large thing, a thing with reflective eyes. And Lucif, so calm one moment, suddenly left her side with no noise - only the whisper of air of its immediate departure. Penny Rose's eyes were still adjusting, and the darkness was so profound they would never see the detail, but she realized when she heard the thud of fur against something solid and alive, the strangled roar of something in the dark, the crunch of teeth against bone - a sickening sound - that Lucif was killing something. And it was doing it with quick, lethal force and absolute efficiency.
The sound of something falling to the ground was quickly followed by Lucif's warm fur beneath her hand, reassuring. "Don't light the lantern-basket," said the kind voice. "We shall move without it's help. Put your hand on my shoulder."
Penny Rose took the long, strange fur in her hand, and moved blind past the fallen beast. "Was that an Unfriendly Creature?" asked Penny Rose, her voice shaking ever so slightly.
"No - not of the kind I was speaking. That was a denizen of the caves, and it was strange that it should wander so far from its home. Passing strange."
"Does it hunt by night?"
"It hunts always," came the quiet reply. "We shall not use the lantern again tonight."

Unfriendly Creatures

Penny Rose awoke feeling damp and still a little chilled. The fire that was the basket still, burned demurely on one side, and Lucif lay, awake motionless as a statue on her other side. She didn't want to wake up, but go back to the soft velvet of sleep. But she knew it was time, and curiosity was eating away at her...
"Lucif," she said, and the mirror eyes turned toward her, from the point they had been fixed upon deep in the trees behind them.
"Ah, you've awoken," said Lucif, not moving. Penny Rose struggled to sit up, feeling strangely sore around her body.
"Who was that woman?" Penny Rose asked, still a little angry from the blaze that had brought her to shore.
"That, my dear, is a rare creature of this world. She only appears when she feels she should; and her gifts are sometimes not just dangerous, but fatal. Your choice was good, however."
"Good? But she pushed me into the river and I couldn't swim!"
"Yes, but your basket saved you. Sometimes they are not so kind. Your choice likes you, and as such, is extremely useful. See how it burns?"
Penny Rose watched it, merrily crackling away, yet staying whole nonetheless.
"It does a great deal more than that, when needed."
Penny Rose looked at it in wonder and concern. She remembered the moments in the river, the way it bore her down first, then up. "But not always."
"No, it is a somewhat mercurial gift."
"Perhaps it depends on me," querulously, Penny Rose reached for the basket, whose flames strove toward her hand like a pet.
"Yes, and it likes you, so all is well. It has burned there to keep you warm for some time now, and that is no easy feat. However, I'm afraid we'll be asking it to do much more before the end of our journeys."
Penny Rose looked at it, and smiled.
"Are you hungry?" Asked Lucif, glancing at Penny Rose's bedraggled form.
"No," said Penny Rose, realizing it for the first time, "I'm not."
"Yes, it is the way of this place - food and drink are not necessary, but sometimes they are very pleasant. What would you like, my dear?"
Penny Rose looked at her feet. "Milk and biscuits."
The basket stopped burning for a moment, and closed itself into a little ball. Then, with what looked like a small effort, it opened up like a flower in the sun, and in the curve of its belly was a mug of milk and a small plate of buttery biscuits.
Penny Rose smiled, and giving the basket a little pat, she gratefully took the plate and the mug of milk. "Would you like one?" She asked Lucif.
It looked at the biscuits strangely. "No... what I enjoy to eat is quite different."
Penny Rose ate the biscuits with great appreciation, the sugary blandness of them giving her a moment of homesickness and strengthening her resolve. There was something sinful about eating a whole plate of biscuits, but Penny Rose did it, in part, to keep the basket happy - she would hate to offend so strange a thing.
Lucif rose and stretched, it's long, graceful body seeming longer and more strange as its paws brushed the earth, its head arching up. Penny Rose's feeling of dissonance grew, as she munched the last crumbs of the biscuits. The basket rolled on its side nearer her, and the flames died to a contented set of embers. She put her hand close to keep it warm, for the afternoon was drawing to a close.
"It will be time to go soon," remarked Lucif, off-handedly, as it looked around solemnly at the darkening forest around them.
"But it's getting dark," replied Penny Rose, "can we travel in the night."
"For our next journey, we must," replied Lucif, its eyes shining light and brighter in the gloaming.
Penny Rose nodded. "Where do we go?"
"We go to the sea, but we must get through the marshes to get there. And in the day they are swept with the gaze of unfriendly creatures."
"Unfriendly creatures?"

Windless

The heat from the plains seemed to crouch over the city, the sun beat like a drum on every possible surface; the whole city was paralyzed under the brightness that was not so much light as presence - close and tight, slow and terrible, a sadistic kind of heat.
She worked in a cafe. And the place behind the counter was hottest. How warm it was, the machines working and whistling behind her. The door propped open was nothing but a gesture toward the idea of coolness. Her cotton dress was stuck upon her like a strange children's project with papier mache. She had long ago stopped trying to straighten it. The large collar fell to the side, limp, and she let it stay. Her hair hung about her face in strands of determined perversity against her will to keep it properly set up. No one expected a cafe girl to be coiffed, but in her mind she was not a cafe girl. She was something more. She didn't know what. She didn't know where. There was nowhere, actually. But she refused to listen to reason and pushed her hair up every day in front of her cracked mirror, dreaming of the freedom of Natalie Wood and the wildness of Gatsby's parties, humming a tune that sounded like 'Moon River.' The milkman who heard her could never quite be sure, and usually ignored it even as it issued upon the still, quiet street through the shamelessly open windows of summer.
She took a hot breath and kicked off her shoes. The wood of the floors seemed strange against the skin of her feet, white and damp as they were. She ran a pointed toe around in a circle, letting it touch the wood on all sides of her, making a witches' circle around herself. How she wished for wind.
The wind had come when she was young. The great wind of storms, and they had swept away her calm, her father had said. She had been a very young girl, really, curls still golden, eyes innocent, and she had watched as the clouds gathered, the winds began. Ever since it had been a sort of sense memory that burned insider her - wishing again and again for that sweep and carry of the black-cloud, dark-rain, dust-cloud day. What others feared she signed for. And so she swept the toe of her foot around her again, enclosing herself entirely in a circle of protection, a circle that would keep her safe from this eroding stillness.
But it did not. And her heart burned with a kind of restless anger she couldn't name. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, prickling even in the heat. Oh god.
She had wondered if it had been a dream, but it was happening again. Her mind was twisting against its own confines, it was in darkness, and darkness had come. She gripped the counter for support, even as the room stayed still, it was as if her mind was seeing something her eyes could not. The emotions swept through her uncontrollably. She felt the past and the future of her own life surrounding her, pressing on her, misunderstanding her. A cacophony of experiences she couldn't understand. Of a life half-lived, of a life of middleness. A life that was still.
A fly buzzed above her, breaking her out of her fantastic consumption. For a moment she was as grateful to the fly as any sinner is to reach to the unknown god for salvation.
Against this great wave of life, against the past, and the future, she was small. But, and her fists clenched, but, against this moment, she was king. She unbuttoned her dress. She let it fall from her. In her few underthings, she made that strange circle around her again, this time in reverse, and as she did so, she felt the stirring of a breeze. The dress lay in a crumpled heap upon the floor, a small pile for so much clothing. Insignificant. She kicked it away. The breeze blew on her again. And as it did so, she began to hum, matching the breeze for strength. Her hair fell from its moorings, it stretched to touch the air about it.
The winds came that night. And the storms.

Alone

It was a dark night, it was a green night. The trees were verdant and full, lushly whispering words of their own coming death, of the falling to come. The stars were bright; too bright. The sky the deepest blue of the velvet cushions in the bordello across the way. And soft, so soft. Soft enough to absorb even the longest sort of pain. It was a night when she walked alone. It was a night when alone was the only way for her. And as she paced through the thick, thick night, the darkness thick like rope is thick, her spine was straight, her brow cool. Her neat, light, cotton dress moved about her, wafting waves of lavender into the evening scented of lilies and cinnamon.
She looked straight ahead, but now and then her chin tilted, she saw the stillness around her. She saw the movement within the bellies of the houses. She walked quiet, silent by, her feet making no noise. She felt the breeze shift to notice her, and then move away, uncaring. She watched the silhouettes in the burning windows with luminous, unjudging eyes. Only the night watched her.
She saw the white smoke from a cigarette float into the slightly rotting orange light of a streetlamp. Her gate smooth, she continued on, looking forward steadfastly. Her eyes did not waver. Her hands were relaxed beside her. A cigarette butt lit like the flash of a neon sign for a moment and then faded. She saw the fade drop to the ground, she saw the ground devour it in darkness.
A hand shot around her neck, another around her waist, and she was pulled into the shadows, the deep, eating shadows.
But her white, careful dress still gleamed out like a pearl. It seemed to light around her. It was the luminosity of a fish in deep, deep water. Suddenly, the white of it, like the waving of seaweed, straightened. The dark lines that had bound her faded, a sigh of death escaped the shadows for one moment, but was quickly absorbed by the pillowy night. She moved back into the light, and kneeling suddenly, gracefully, she picked up the cigarette butt and it turned to ash in her white hands. She let the ashes fall without expression; the breeze sniffed them, carried them away. She was alone again.

The cat and I

The cat and I had fallen out of love.We had been dear to one another, but now, after so many years, she hated me and I was short with her every meow. In her days she wanted a sort of stillness I couldn't muster - I wasn't ready to be old! My mind could not understand the wrinkles, the gray. Beneath that all I was a young man still. But the cat knew.
The cat was awake to every whisker that curled, and contentedly lay herself by the fire, relishing the rest that tired bones can demand. She licked her bowl clean, and herself, with stiff, practiced ease. But I could not contain myself in my old wing chair - I could not content myself with the silent, unnoticed, imminent immobility as I began to put myself to my final sleep. So I walked and paced and grumbled and drank, and the cat - the cat watched, blinking sleepliy from a middling perche near the warmth of the hearth.
Perhaps I had had a little too much to drink on evening, but I found myself stretched out in my favorite chair, my head quite fuzzy, and the cat close at hand, looking curiously at me. "How do you do it?" I demanded, my voice hoarse form my own quasi-stupor. I put out a soft fingertip and tapped her lightly on the nose.  "How - do - you - make it all so easy?" and I fell back a little in my chair, surprised at how the impact bothered my old shoulders.
"Harrumph," I said, and then reddened at the thought of how old my own behavior had become. I was a walking... I was interrupted by a polite mew and my cat's dainty foot on my lap as she stepped, still graceful, on my knee and then quickly lay down and began to lick a paw.
"You know," she said, nonchalantly, "it's really not as bad as all that."
On a dark, colorful gust of liquor fumes, I tried to compute her words. The dreaminess of my alcoholic hze took the edge from my surprise, and I looked at her bitter rather than shocked.
"My life isn't over," I stated back, slurring. I realized my nose was running slightly, and moved a sleeve to swipe it clean.
"Of course not," she scoffed, among a mouthful of fur that was particularly recalcitrant. "But you aren't dead yet, and you're not dying tomorrow." She stopped her self-bathing and, purring rustily, lolled back in practiced ease. "Just enjoy it," she said quietly, "You've earned your rest."
I looked at her, despairing. I didn't think I had. My life had been, ultimately, incredibly dull. Oh, the odd excitement, but for the most part, what had I done?
"You've lived, Charlie," she replied, her eyes half-closing. "That's enough for anyone."
I frowned. It wasn't enough for me.
She sighed and then, suddenly, her bright eyes, those eyes that had been closing slowly for years, burned into mine. A strange purr echoed in my ears.
I must have fallen to sleep. It was a drifting sensation: perhaps the alcohol had overwhelmed my aged nerves. My dreams were real and surreal as I had never felt before. Transported through times and spaces. I was in Paris, 1920, drinking absinthe. I was in Berlin, in Dublin, in Istanbul. I walked through a harem, I felt their sadness. I killed a man and watched the life leave him. I drowned. I climbed the peaks of Nepal, flew through the jungles on the waves of river wind. I toasted the great, toasted the wicked, and felt myself turn from bad to good to bad again. Again and again, the colors of life threw their panoply of activity about me; again and again, I saw the shadows, the light. I stood, exstatic, among the ruins of Greece, and as my body thrummed with a song to the gods, I spied the tail of a cat.
I never truly awoke. I surfaced on the carpet, the dying embers of the fire glowing by me, the cat curled by my side. How glad I was to be home, to be at rest. My heart still raced and my chest was tight. I reached to stroke the cat's small, curled spine. She looked up at me sleepily, and I started, realizing her eyes were completely white. She had gone blind. I stroked her gently, and then scooped her up tenderly in my arms.

"Time for bed," I said. "I am tired."

Summer/Passion

Long summer days
Sleepy in the afternoon
Of their season.
Hot and tight words
Languish when the sky is blue.

Clouds come out to dance
At night, under the stars.
My heart warms and bleeds,
I miss you.

The leaves are still dry
On the long grass - still green,
The green never dies here
It holds strong and true - like time.

Planes overhead
Tell the stories of
Passing action,
But passion is too strong
For days like these.

The Tree

There was once a Tree. It lived in a forest, and it was just like all the other trees. Together, they were young saplings, and in the morning the sun would rise on them, their heads nodding in the golden light, and in the evening, the breezes would blow on them, and small birds would call to one another joyfully from within their young, green leaves.
The Tree was just like all the others. And it was pleased.
But in time, the rest of the trees grew. They grew tall and broad, and the Tree grew only a little. In the day, the sun's warmth dappled it through the screen of others, the night breezes caressed it only in small, stolen breaths, and the birds built there nests in loftier places.
The Tree, now wakeful and unhappy, could not rest at night with the dreaming forest. Instead, it stared ever at the moon when that silver lady rose and fell in the sky. It strained to see her through the broken sky it could see, and every evening when the pale light fell upon it, it sighed a soft sigh, a small sigh, a sigh of relief. It didn't know why.
The days were raucous with the noise of the forest, the tall trees rustled mightily, and the Tree was lost. But in the night, only the silent moon lit the leaves and branches, and only the Tree watched her.
There came a night when the Tree was gripped with a great sadness. It had been sad before, but this sadness was like waves, this sadness was like floods. The pain within it rent and tore, it burned. The moon had not yet risen, and the Tree feared it might never rise - it might never rise again. In that moment, it knew it must find the moon, that if it didn't, it would perish and become yet another part of the forest's story, a story of the dead that fed the living.
It cried out in the way a Tree can, waving its branches, rustling, creaking, straining, and little by little, it felt the earth release it. First the root that was not quite covered was allowed free, and then the roots that spanned around it. Beautiful, they came up from the ground like vines, living and breathing, freed from the moist earth, free from the darkness. Until, finally, the Tree's heart root also was free, and the Tree, transcendent, terrified, beautiful, moved from its home, the place it had always been, and slipped from the forest, its roots like a thousand living ribbons, carrying it quietly and effortlessly out.
The Tree reveled in the joy of it, in movement and elegance and the freedom. It flew through the sleeping woods, and finally came to the openness on the edge. The place it had never been. Without fear, as if in a dream, it stepped onto the long grasses, its roots playing and dancing around it. And then it saw the moon. She had risen from the East and it had not noticed her pale, perfect light in its journey.
It stood, perfectly still except for the ever-moving, ever-undulating roots. It soaked in the silver of the moon, the brightness of the stars, and felt freed again.
And then it began to move - to dance - across the field, this way and that, spinning, leaping, stretching. The great moon above it seemed to get closer as it did so, the Tree, free, the moon, pouring out its love in white waves.
Today the Tree stands alone in the field. It is not a tall tree, but it is a beautiful one. Birds come to roost in it, as it stands alone in such a place, and it is happy. Each day it stands green and good under the sun, but it waits truly for the night, when the darkness shows the silver of the moon.