「 From the Garden, to the Wood 」

There was quite the arrangement of exotic-looking plants, all carefully curated and arranged behind this land's palace of some notion. Hidden from the public eye, access to the coveted mazes of well-trimmed hedges and diligently watered grasses was an unusual, and no-doubt special occasion to any who may chance upon it. In this early autumn cool, what little dew clung to every leaf pronounced itself on scattered rays—drawing to itself a soft attention, taking in the raw light above. It was a sight to behold, especially if you were no taller than the stoutest of rose bushes, and hardly able to hoist and climb up the lip of a clear fountain—only surface tension and a divine blessing seemed to keep the water in, it looked moments away from popping, gushing outwards and tearing apart the delicate balance of this place.

A little creature of such height—or lack thereof—had chanced themselves behind the gates. To call them "wee" would be generous, a mere sapling of a child with a mess of milkweed silk seemed to sprout where hair should be—if you told someone of sane mind that the toddling beast were in fact a lamb, disbelief would suspend on sight.

Their keepers had been distracted in matters of gold and false philanthropy—leaving then, the babe, to wander under the untrained eye of a groundskeeper drowsy in their ale. The poor thing had only the stalks of tulips to talk to, though their bloom had long since withered.

And there, though not feeding the fountain, a gurgling brook half man-made in its perfect bends through the ringlets of foliage. O! The brook, it chimed with this pleasant hymn, as peepers croaked in harmonies with leopards, despite the coughing and dismay of a wary crow. Can you blame a pair of tiny hands, unrestricted, unobserved, for seeking the sensory bliss of water dancing over polished stones? Or perhaps how it quieted over the bend dominated by fine muds as it broadened in a curve, populated by polliwogs wriggling among mosquito clouds. Can you blame those hands for seeking the feeling, or the tiny bare feet for loving the cold? He took up such a cautious waddle down the centre of the stream, balancing with each flat stone that just barely broke the surface, calling out to every rock-hopper in sight. Further away from the voices of reason, the ones meant to protect—though misguided in their trusts—and down the curiously alluring snake of a creek he went.

He could hear it. Under the joyous song of amphibious and aquatic things, a careful, beckoning whisper. Perhaps he hadn't understood it, but each call he answered with yet another step down the slippery path. Further from the gardens, further yet from aid, the path growing unscrupulous as it dipped and wound—little hops turned to leaps as far as a lamb's leg could manage. Further, from the man-made care and landscaping, deeper, into the wild and feral nature of an overgrown wood tended only by fools and lost children.

Just as he thought, in what little mind has been developed, that the journey of unknown purpose or destination had become too adventurous even for one who wants nothing more than "new!" and for information yet consumed—a gnarled, fallen tree had broken the gamely course, and broken futures into still, swirling, quiet pools.

The babe, enthralled by what could be at the bottom of twin ponds, struggled to find ground on such a tree—its hands reached outwards every which way, grasping for whomever might wander astray and tangle in its grasp. Not the child, however guided by luck and the unexplained elasticity only one so small might harness, he managed to the rocky banks, to chance at seeing the other side of these pooling bodies. Nearly had the cloth he'd been so well adorned in been caught in the stray barbs—his mother's scarf nearly victimized, its bright hues attractive to the earth. It would have been a wonderful prize to keep.

It was quieter now. The chatter of streams had silenced with a the smooth hush of wind-blown leaves, as rocks were replaced by roots and cat tails, a dark and waterlogged mess of sand and rotted twigs to accompany the yet-swampier mash of solid grounds. Still through the rattle of the thickening leaves overhead, the shuttered sun unable to watch in its life-breathing care, that seductive whisper prevailed above all else. Louder, now. Louder than the nearby hacking of murders, and a stray songbird's prayer of warning. Deeper, closer, went the lamb. Following the tiny shore around, he ambled onwards towards what end he saw—the water found a near blackness in its depth, and in the lack of light to be had. There must have been fish there, thought the babe, as a flicker of white gleamed below the surface—gold, too, and red. Perhaps a koi had found itself astray from the gardens, had there been any.

Yet the water hardly even breathed, not a fleck of rippling on its skin, nor larvae jiving in the shallows. The kid, in marvel, sat pointedly upon a flat stone—its mossy overgrowth was a comfortable seat, though certainly to stain his trousers.

The water didn't breathe.

O! That fleck of gold hovered just below, in that dark, swampy obscurity for just a moment more—and forward the lamb leaned, up upon his knees, in that clumsy insecurity only a toddling one could have.

The water lived, it beat and spoke as from it rose a slender, furred and matted hand—roaming between its fingers, seamlessly passed form place to place, the shiniest of rings. Fibres spread now onto the water, an angora veneer amongst the grim and deep—it almost sparkled in its peculiarity, fingertips blackened like an inkbrush, the rest a shining white. It nearly produced its own glow, a lure, this was no place for the sun.

As the water lived, the murmur in the trees feel silence, the committees and murders tucked pleasantly to a recess in a newfound silence—it was only the lamb and the depths, and that pretty ring. The whisper, uncontested, rang true in a mischievous masculinity only a few steps off paternal.

"Do you promise?"

That daisy of a babe had no response of its own—how could it? Too infantile to understand its own eyes, distracted by the sights not yet seen—how to process? What to compare? Has there ever been a pond like this before? Instead, a parrot, he chimes this newfound word in muffled, uneasy sputters:

"Promise."

"You can have it, if you'd like."

A gesture, and offering, little claws obscured in wool would press forward with that jewel—a child, recognizing nothing more than the sparkle, and the brightly coloured, would of course take up the beastly, curious pond. In ignorance to the suspiring eyes of goats below, in clumsiness and poor capability, the babe did what babes do best: grab.

As all retreated, the child over their ankles in inspection of this treat, this inhuman manus receding into the inky mire—a crimson bled from its point of emergence, where the surface had been broken, silence, by furred tips.

It matched the scarf nicely.

「 © Kao Narvna, all rights reserved. 」