Chapter Text
Sometimes, I fear the world is too small for secrets. Countless people, countless tools, combing the entire planet to find every little nook and cranny and precious pocket of intimate beauty until every inch of her is laid bare for every careless, prying eye. Some days, as I go hunting for my own private fold of the earth, I think with shame how very human I am. I want my piece of her, too--I want to expose some hidden flesh for my eyes alone.
I am covetous, at heart. I eat her, breathe her, step all over her as if it's my birthright. For two weeks, I intend to sleep in the palm of her hand, to steep in isolation. The woods swallow me as I climb a sharp incline, deep green pines towering overhead and brilliant bursts of blossoms freckled over the ground.
This path is not for me. It's narrow and winding, carved by hooves and paws and claws, by long, slow journeys and desperate chases. It brings its travelers, as I learned recently, past a hollow in the mountain, a scoop of shade and clover guarded by a dense ring of rhododendron, thick leaved and twisting tight except one perfect gap. A doorway. I felt it in my bones when I first came near, that this was a place worth entering, a place crying out for company, a place waiting for . . . me, perhaps.
Sometimes, I can swear I feel the earth at my back, nudging me off trail, left, right, forward, drawing my mud eyes and fresh-wood body to particular corners of herself. I once followed her into a cathedral of boulders and poplars, and into a pool tucked between willows where I could only hear birds and a lone frog, and onto a cliff, sharp and sudden and breathtaking.
Unsettling, some people might say about that pull. The only times I feel alive anymore. Little secrets she's willing to give me. Lovely things she leads me straight into, just like the rhododendron ring.
It's darker inside, several degrees cooler than the sweltering summer heat outside. Supplies from my previous two trips today sit undisturbed, waiting to be unpacked and given a place in this latest little secret. I intend to be reasonably comfortable while I'm here, and so I've brought quite a lot: firestarters and tarps, whiskey and treats that crumble sumptuously in my hands, blankets and books almost too thick to wrap my hands around, a single letter I've read too many times.
The sun is sinking by the time camp is ready. I light a lantern but make no fire. The doorway is dark. I think she's not ready for a fire just yet, so I eat my food cold and chase it with the false warmth of alcohol. I lie awake a while, listening to crickets volleying back and forth, back and forth, merging into a messy cacophony, volleying, merging.
The doorway is dark.