Peace

[Alix]

It was a gold-green afternoon.

Although it was days before the beginning of bright springtime, the landscape was already overflowing with foliage - with black-eyed susans, lamb's ear, and wild, purple tulips; skirts of water spread from the roaring froth at the base of the waterfall. The cliffside did not quite blot out the warmth of the sun, nor did the plump clouds it wore for eyelids. The reeds flowed sideways with the breeze that stole across the shore.

A slender, pale-haired girl floated toward the reeds on her back like a small island; a wet hand was over her eyes, shielding them from the shreds of bright light that came down and reflected off the moving water. Her brow was creased with half-thought. This was where she belonged, far from the jostling and squalor of man. Days with a dew upon them. Days half-forgotten. Gold-green days. She dropped her hand and drifted, spread-eagled. Leaves on the high cedar branches rustled, murmured, and ruminated on the deep secrets of the earth.

A dragonfly hovered and darted from a daisy'd slope.

The birds overhead were heralds of spring, and her gaze was lifted to the cloud-filled sky. The softness of her hair waved and meandered around her head in silver tendrils. She often wondered what it would be like to fly; sometimes she could feel her heart soaring with the birds and she briefly had a glimpse of what she thought it must be like to have that kind of freedom. She hid her little dream, her little whim away from public view, nursing it only in the remote forest, in the long pastures, where she could carelessly fill her eyes with a sky as blue as this one.

The shadow of a cloud passed over her and briefly darkened the eye of the sun, and she knew that she had been in the water long enough. The girl turned over and swam to shore where she climbed out and picked her way over stones with tender feet. All her bare skin was darkened from time in the sun. She dropped down to a soft matress of grass and stretched like a lazy cat to be dried by the sunbeams, her pile of clothes in a nearby heap. Rather than tremble, she draped her arm over her head and nearly nestled into the cool wind that stole over the grasses, her face serene.

The breeze carried her cares and worries far, far away.

[Agustin]

It required such stealth, all the focus and ability of ages channeled into one moment. His whole life had been in preparation for this.

And it would be such a feat to accomplish, for this one coop belonging to this one farm was among the hardest to infiltrate. There was a sleeping dog to lie in his way and across the way a brooding rooster who slumbered so light. There were dozens of hens who would not hesitate to raise a cluck in alarm. But he was one who only seemed awkward, only looked sometimes the fool.

He barely breathes as he braces in the coop's doorway, raising a boot to step over the farmer's droopy-faced mutt, sprawled on the threshold and snoring from a wrinkled and runny nose. In silence, he steps down on the other side of this hound and leans out of the doorway, another step bringing him fully inside this well-swept, well-kept space. The blue calm before morning is heavy in this long coop, enshadowing the nested shapes of snoozing hens. There is silence.

Slow steps, a thief's light steps. No whisper of frayed pant-cuff here, no shift of garment to betray him, not even the murmur of a woven satchel coming open at his side, his hand lifting its flap with precise ease. A new nest for eggs.

Eggs.

He had studied these hens, watched them close for days, weeks, comparing them to other hens in other coops all over Myrken. He knew the heavy sleepers from the light, those who would not notice cautious fingers sliding beneath and lifting their eggs from 'neath them. One by one, egg by egg... and still he is undetected. He would call himself a master after this, thief extraordinaire.

But slowly, he will freeze. Feeling eyes upon him, disturbingly malignant eyes. Oh he knew this sensation well and feared even to turn his head, but turn it he must, drawn toward some hypnotic stare. The Rooster is looking his way. An angry monarch, the bird flings himself with a clipped fury of wings and groping claws, beak open in a gasp of rage. There is only the sound of those flapping wings in the moment, which is not enough to startle the dog nor waken too many hens. It is only a matter of moments, however, before an inescapable chain reaction occurs. One hen wakens after another, the light sleepers first. The coop descends into chaos.

It is a foolish dance, with arms bend above his hunched head, waving 'round in a ridiculous array as the fluttering rooster roosts upon him, clutching a shoulder, beating him with furious wings. The dog is up and baying, the hens are squawking, the sun is rising. A farmer is rushing outside in his night-clothes, his wife a tangle of gown and buoyant curls and worried shrieks in the doorway.

A fiasco.

It must be presumed that he is as good an escapist as he is a thief, the one talent must go with the other or a fellow might find himself always in the gaol. He dodges the dog, evades the rooster. Leaps onto the sill of an open window and tucks through it in a limber display. Once boots meet earth again, he is running, his satchel tucked up carefully in the cradle of his arm. And he could run, this one. There was no catching him, only the farmer's cursing and the dog's baying and the hens' chagrin follow him across the pastures and into the wood. A clueless cow raises her head to watch, blades of grass falling from her mouth.

He cannot rest, must not rest. A part of himself had a whim, keep running and never stop. Put miles between us and that place! We need not go back.

But the sun was warm now, high and warm and he was drowsy after so long running, beating feet on this spring turf, dodging branches and leaping over stones. There is the sound of water closeby, promising a place for rest and a cold drink for him, and as he steps out from among trees, the edge of a cliff presents at alarming proximity--so much so that he hesitates and teeters for a moment, confronted by a fall that does not come. He steps back; he breathes deep.

Below him, a pool is clean and blue, trembling and thrusting light like diamonds to dazzle his eyes of that color, a similar blue. And he blinks a little, squints as he skirts the cliff and approaches the stream that flows over, feeding the pool below. He did not know this place, but he liked it and crept closer to the edge for a gander--teetering curiosity prompting his look. And what is this but a delicate egg in his hand, a precious thing held as if for comfort. Smooth and brown and cradled among his half-gloved fingers, safer in his grasp than it was in its own nest.

As he is peering, as his free hand grasps the turf and stone at this cliff's edge, he sees something else to bait his eyes... something recognizable, with arms and legs and hair all damp and splayed. A body of lines and curves and painted well with sun. A girl-body--and naked. Guilt coils through him, so that he is dipping his chin and turning his head away, some old and battered set of manners, some old mantra trimmed by a mother's voice scolding him in memory. And yet... and yet. Blue eyes, blue like dense ice, like clear sky, they are drawn. They defy him; they look.

It is here that he and his egg meet an irreversible fate. Moss and turf, slick with vapor, give way under his hand and just enough to dislodge his balance. He pitches forward, sliding only a little--not enough to make him fall, but enough to cause tremendous alarm. And then he is watching in horror and fascination as his egg has taken flight. It is beautiful, soft and shapely and rotating in the air, tumbling into oblivion after completing a skillful arc. Blue eyes are wide as dinner plates, mouth hanging open for some sudden regret that is never voiced. Down it tumbles, down and down...