Free-fall
A freedom I had long forgotten both made me ecstatic and fear for my life. I was released into the wild without a warning. The forest breathed a sigh of relief, welcoming any new visitor indiscriminately. Light tinted green sifted through the treetops.
There was no way to retrace my steps as nothing was left standing from where I used to come. In a world where animals could speak, I had no authority. Their breath held in an expectantly waited for me to take the first wrong turn. Power was accorded strength, violence rewarded with violence. Years of domestication had made me prey in their kingdom.
Water and food were my highest priority, but hunting meant being hunted. I would have to run forever, and I had already run forever. I resigned to walk and listened for the sound of water blending with the wind. Not far off, a stream of veins flowed into a river.
I yearned to bathe and forgot to drink until I sullied the water with my body. Cleanliness was an absurdity that I afforded myself as a luxury. I felt watched by benevolent eyes from above. Birds perched to behold my bath as I had done with similar condescendance. Surviving on the lowest hanging fruit, I started to forget of the sweetness in the trees I could not reach.
Light green became dark green before I knew it, the cold settled in my bones and the silence of the woods interrupted with occasional hoots after nightfall. By the next morning, I stood on the edge of an open grass field. I wanted to run and catch the sun, but the fear of preying eyes kept me in the dark for another day to live.
The morrow, I watched my first hunting game. The body left bare was abandoned, its wounds bled into dirt to be reclaimed. For all the cruelty I had to bear as an insignia of humanity, the deer's rotting carcass was most composed in its decomposition.
I was the last one they said. I was the lost one because I was the worst one. Redemption would be the end as this place let me live without pardon. In the days to come, I wandered and wondered of the irony through which faith kept me alive. Justice was done for, only a mind game I played before sleeping.
Dew drips drops down the leaves crowned trees.
I was proclaimed innocent by the rain that washed away the blood stains on my hands. The search for meaning outpaced the search for food. I struck in hunger against nature. Unyielding, it left me for dead, so I turned around and ate her. My sweet revenge rewarded with her Triumphant indifference.
