It was the rambunctious joy of youth, the exhilaration of the wind through your tendons. We danced and chattered and wove our endless battle against boredom and reality. We could not be human for we were gods. I am a fairy, a spirit, a ghoul, something terrible and dark, at once an enemy and ally.
I am a bear and I'm hunting you. I am vast, large, muscles and strength. I can smell your weakness, your fear. You twitch in distress and the chase roars to life, my tongue thundering as I growl inhumanely and swipe at your heels. It is the way we dance now, a back and forth, trading blows, trading little kisses of death.
It is the thump thump of footfalls in the soil, adrenaline flowing. Your eyes dart, barely identifying each shallow indentation that holds your frail feet before you lunge into them, never slowing or stopping. Time seems to hesitate as you hang in the air, then you hit the log and you're up again, one foot on stone, one on a root, jumping over the puddle. Arms outstretched, you grab a branch to aid your hairpin turn. The air is fresh and overpowering.
At the shores of the lake, we laugh and we cry and we hold each other. We push each other in, tussling on the beach, muddy sand dissolving beneath scrabbling feet, purchase failing and we're done, a twisted tangle of bodies, the two of us as one. The water, clear and pristine, roiling with the secrets of the deep stirs near us. Tentacles erupt from it, dragging down the countless ships of the marauding fleet, the skeletal crews desperately fighting the oncoming storm. It must be meaningless to struggle against me and I pull you down with, into the infinite blackness, drowning us both.
We are birds through open skies, darting from perch to perch. We steal what we can take, hoarding sticks and worms and shiny treasures. I take your shinies and you push me out of the tree. The spirits must be laughing. Your push me into the mud, my beak gasping open, the mocking laughter of your caws above me. My wings flutter and splinter and break, shattering bones and feathers and flesh. It is a blow well made. I'll let you kill me this time.
It is the dull noise of the knife chipping patterns into wood because wood has memory beyond our own. I am limited in many capacities, and not at all in others, but the dull wood isn't. We lie still on the floor and watch the sun come up, cradled high in the canopy, safe from all. The day is marked off, a stripe, a scar, a wound that echoes back in time. Our nest was covered in them when we arrived. We leave it the way we found it. Untouched by human hands but touched by human hearts.
But the stars are up and you point out the constellations to me, only they're not the actual constellations I think. But that's okay, because I also see spaceships and monsters and gods and the two of us at the centre of it all. Every limb in my body aches, bruises bursting with every colour, a dappled pattern on my skin to show your love. It's dark now, the flashlight off to preserve our nightvision.
I am a moth, fluttering through the darkness, seeking illumination. I drift through shadows. Your smile is all I seek, all I need. I move in the air currents left by your passing, dizzy in the turbulence, fighting your wake. Your voice channels down antenna small, booming and cacophonous, too large to be understand, too powerful for a little thing.
We are trees in the open wood, standing still for centuries, always supporting each other but never touching. We are leaves drifting in the wind, dancing around each other for the barest moment before we go. In the darkest, in that single stillness, I extend a finger carefully until the sharpness of your untamed nails finds mine. You pause, hesitant, before reaching back, our fingers nestling together cautiously, wild animals with a temporary truce against the storm.
We are ourselves. We are each other. And then you laugh, and I tap you, and you shove me, and the chase begins anew, each of us trailing laughter and delight as we run the myriad trails. We are the forest. And we will never stop.