{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/fiction/aurora/flash03",
  "path": "/posts/fiction/aurora/flash03",
  "publishedAt": "2023-09-03T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "A cloud passes in front of the moon.  A shadow rears up behind Aurora.\nShe lashes out, a fist thrown with weight behind it.\n\nShe impacts hard against tree bark.  There's nothing there.  Jumping\nat literal shadows.\n\nAurora sighs, and advances deeper into the spirit-haunted woods.\n\nRunning through this domain, one can't say Sus made no attempt to trip\nher.  Sus is these woods, and the roots beneath her feet had every\nintention of pulling her to the ground; the vines and branches clearly\nintended to slap out in front of her stride, and the only paths\nallowed to be worn in the underbrush were those that twisted like a\nmaze.  But having spent over ten years wandering these woods, she can\nweave through at a jogging pace.\n\nOn and on she went through the dark of night.  Far enough to be alone\nfor a bit, to feel peace and solitude, to cool off from how hot\nshe'd gotten.  (Some would be afraid in these woods; of wolves and\ngemfiends and wild spirits; but Aurora had easily wrestled dogs and\nfoxes, and she had the measure of Sus; she didn't trust them, but\nshe trusted her safety in their woods.)\n\nWhen she finally slowed to a stop, it is not out of caution.  No, it's\nstill so hot.  Sweat slicks her face like she's melting.  She keeps\nmoving, but it only gets worse.\n\n(The shadows look like visual snow.)\n\nAurora knows the feel of Sus's woods, familiarity to the point of\ninstinct.\n\nSo she knows something is different.  It's off, it's wrong.\n\nThe paths are too straight, the trees too tall.  Are those cypresses?\nNot willows or oaks.  If she was being watched earlier, now she felt\nten more eyes on her.  The shadows are sharp.  Were those bones?\n\nThe moonlight --- the moon is brilliantly full --- filters down\nbetween the branches.  Sometimes she blinks and the needles are gone,\nthe boughs bare and every too-tall tree now skeletal and\nspirit-haunted.\n\n\"Sus?\"  She's not sure if she speaks the words as a reproach, an\ninvocation, or a quiet cry for help.  There's no response of any sort.\nThe wind blows locks of too-colorful hair in front of her face.  Her\nlong-sleeved coat is fluttering around her.  It's a strong storm's\nwind, and it chills her.  She doesn't shiver.\n\nAurora isn't running anymore.  Cautious steps forward, head swiveling\nand double checking every shadow around her.  Those shadows shift when\nshe steps near a tree's shade; they disappear when she gets near.\n\n\"Who are you?\" Aurora speaks, steadying her voice.\n\nThere's a presence, sometimes felt in the twisting of a cypress's\nsharp leaves.  Sometimes echoed in a fallen twig.  Always distant,\nfragmentary indications, like a moon viewed from glinting dewdrops.  A\nspirit.  So close, so far away.\n\nAurora grits her teeth.  \"Come out! I'm not afraid of you!\"\n\nHer head is still swiveling around, gaze impatient for motion, true\nmotion.  The wind is knocking rocks and sticks around and making the\ntree limbs groan --- it meant there's so many distractions to look\npast.  But if she saw something---\n\nThere! A hundred feet away! Eyeshine behind a dead tree leaning\nagainst its fellows.  The body is long behind it, like it moved on\nfour legs.  But a glimpse is all she gets.\n\nThere's a tremble in her legs.  She would run, but she wasn't afraid.\nThis spirit would show itself, and Aurora was going to punch it for\nscaring her like that.\n\nA tree moves.  The eyeshine is piercing light out from two holes in\nits bark.  Above, two boughs split and split again, a crown of dead\nfingers.  After glimpsing for a second, Aurora breaks eye contact\n(there is a mind behind those eyes, she knows this in her bones).\nIt's still there, she can feel it watching her.\n\nYet it seems wise to drink no more than a moment's glimpse of that\nsight.\n\nAurora's eyes stare at the ground.  She crouches to pick up a rock.\nAnd then, eyes closed, hurls the rock to where she feels those eyes\nwatching her.\n\nWood cracks as if under strain from snow.  Is that the sound of her\nhitting the mark, or the spirit making sparse? The skin-prickling\nstare is gone now.\n\nAurora roots herself to the spot.  She's not afraid.\n\n\"Aurora?\" The girl suddenly remembers the sound of her father's\nvoice.  \"Aurora! Please come back here!\"\n\nShe runs.  Not now, not when he wouldn't tell her anything. She\nwouldn't go back yet.\n\nUnder the cold light of a full moon, Aurora never finds refugee of\nshadows to hide.  The storm wind seems to blow boughs out of place as\nsoon as she steps under them.  The way even dark overhangs grew\nilluminated leaves her wondering if, somehow, the wind is blowing the\nmoonlight itself.\n\nMore than Aurora is running, tonight.  She sees mice darting, foxes\nignoring them to crawl into burrows, owls nestled still in the hollows\nof trees.\n\nAurora still feels hot, a coal in a smith's forge, burning with the\nheat that fueled action, the sort of action Father has rules\nagainst.  It's that heat which keeps her from feeling cold --- her\nbreath is a cloud leaving her mouth, and she swears there's gleaming\nflakes of frost in the night air.\n\nBut all of the animals stowing themselves away --- did they feel like\nwinter had come early?\n\nThe eyes appear anew, fifty feet to her left, then forty feet to her\nright.  Aurora dropped the pretense; when her path would take her near\nthose glowing, hollow sockets, she ran the other way.  As they watch\nher, she sees it more and more fully.  It wasn't a tree with two\nboughs --- those were antlers upon its head.\n\nIt felt safer to glimpse the body.  She had seen hunters kill doe.\nShe had seen wolves kill a buck and happened across the carcass.  She\nremembered it now.  Skin still covers these bones, but barely.  The\ndeer is thin and taut, like it had grown larger than a man without\never eating.\n\n(Was it hungry? Would she be its first meal?)\n\nThey were so long --- deer didn't have eight legs.  Deer didn't have\npair after pair of antlers upon their back like wings of velvet and\nbone.  Deer were prey, they didn't chase.\n\nThe wind blows again, and above her she see clouds rolling in so fast\na fisherman of the sky must have reeled them.  Now the moon is\noccluded from the ground by clouds colored like the fringe of a\nrainbow.\n\nSo why did the shadows still light up when she steps near?\n\nThe deer spirit manifests, twenty feet away right in front of her,\ncloser than it ever has come before, like a shadow given flesh.  This\nnear, the hide appears a shade of deep blue.\n\nAurora gasps, terror choking her breath.  (What color was strangled\nflesh?)  She falls to the ground, coughing.  Trembling, she makes to\nstand, falls again.  But she has to get up.\n\nHow long has she been running? Twilight had long given way to true\nnight.  Aurora is tired.  She can't keep this up.\n\nTrapped in the domain of a malevolent spirit, unable to move.  Would\nshe melt from the heat still building inside her?  Freeze with the\nunnatural cold of this storm?  Or would the winged deer devour?\n\nGet up, child.\n\nAurora mumbles.  It's not words.\n\nRun.  Escape.  Give me a hunt.\n\nThe shadows seemed enchanted with the words.\n\nAurora rasps a breath, and scrambled to her feet.  The shining, hollow\neyes are peering at her, deep and evaluating.  Eight legs crush dead\ncypress leaves underhoove.  The spirit circles her.  She has to time\nto stand shakily, then get steady.\n\nGo. The deer's mouth yawns upon and there's something within and\nAurora starts running anew.\n\nThe hunt is different, now.  Those eyes are behind her always, and\nnever leave.  Earlier, the trees sometimes flickered, looking leafless\nand dead.  She can't banish the images no matter how many times she\nblinks.  She can feel its falsity, a ghostly illusion.\n\nA fox sleeping in a low tree branch looks like a crow-picked skeleton.\nBut it's not.\n\nAurora had delved too deep into this spirit's domain.  In each tree,\nit was no longer a distant presence; every plant here sung with the\nslow, faint pulse of a spirit's enchantment, a will-song.\n\nSweat soaked her underclothes.  Did she smell terrified? Even as her\nfear deepened, she feels ever hotter.\n\nShe is being led, that much is obvious.  Earlier, brief appearances of\nthe spirit had nudged her this way and that, and now she must be\ngetting close.  The deer-thing pushes her exactly where the spirit\nwants her.  Each long, cantering stride of those eight legs brought\nthat stare closer and closer.\n\nJust up ahead, there's a gap.  The trees break into a sudden clearing.\n\nBut Aurora trips again.  Her balance tips forward, and her hands catch\nher.  She doesn't want to stop moving, she can't fall again, so they\npush off the ground even as her legs keep moving.  For that moment on\nall fours, she truly feels like prey animal fleeing in mortal terror.\n\nA leap brings her out of the forest.  Before her now lies the banks of\na pond so round cartographers would draw it with a compass.  The banks\nrise up toward the edge.\n\nAurora strides twice near the pond's edge before leaping again.  She\nwas so hot.  All she could think, seeing those cool waters, was how\nthey'd feel washing over her skin.\n\nSailing over the waters, she looks down, and understands.\n\nWhy the shadows kept shifting, why the forest was illuminated, why the\ndeer's gaze looked so much like eyeshine and she was afraid to look\ntoo deeply.\n\nAurora is light.  Her skin glows; her hair sparkles; her eyes radiate.\n\nShe really was like a coal in a forge, so hot she burned bright.\n\nTime to be doused.  Her arc reaches a peak, and now she falls toward\nthe clear waters.  The pond had no fish or scum, and even the bottom\nlooked smooth instead of muddy\n\nShe should have splashed.  But Aurora sinks into the waters like sand,\nand it's not a ripple or wave that flows out.  It's a crackling sound:\nthe waters freeze to ice around her, ice glowing with her light.\n\nFrost coats her skin when she emerges from the depths, and the\nfreezing happens so fast that, when lifting an arm out of the ice, it\ngoes from covered in frost at the wrist to chunk of ice at the elbow,\nand when her shoulder emerges, it's near-immobilized by the mass of\nthe iced",
  "title": "Flash iii: A Freezing Summer's Wind"
}