The Distant Prologue
Seed's Story: Chapter 1
In Which A Question is Asked Repeatedly and Our Hero Arrives in the Setting
Seed sat beneath the willow at the place where the river widened out into the pond, looking along the edge of the shore. He wasn’t composing a diary or a poem in his head – but he was hoping, a little. The water stretched out glistening blue, sleek as rain dripping off the soaking body of a deer. Seed’s eyes focused, scanning for a body that could appear. He focused on a group of rocks by the lakeshore, a depression in the mud. A collection of dragonflies circled over it casually. He sighed. Things were so much happier, once. But he had always said that, except maybe when he was a fawn. And if he had remembered then what he remembered now, would he have said it just the same?
“Were things so much happier then? Are you happy now?” A voice formed out of the rustling of leaves in the breeze. It wasn’t exactly a voice – it was just a pattern in the rustling, a feeling shaking its way down through his mind.
“I’ve been sitting here too long.” He stood up and began to walk his way through the forest.
“Are you…afraid of your answer?” The trees stood like enclosing walls around him as they asked that. It seemed to echo strangely, so he was asked again and again,
“Are you afraid?” “Are you?” “ Afraid?”
He paused his trot and looked up at them. His eyebrows, hidden beneath the soft near-velvet of his mask, lowered. He tossed his head, shaking loose a few purple flowers. Then he picked up his hooves and dashed ahead in a flying leap. At once, energy flowed into his body as he became, to the green landscape, an equally green flash.
