A while back I said I'd written a short story that I might share. I've thought of illustrating it to better explain the appearance of things, but at this point the reader will have to do the work. Hopefully there are enough clues so that things will be clear enough.
Here's the first half,
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You may think you’ve heard it all, but here’s a tale yet to be told.
It’s about an insignificant young girl. She was lost but thought that that was the only way to be, so she didn’t look to be found. She wandered around in the forest eating the food that she saw the birds eating - berries and seeds, but not worms. There was a nice brook to drink from and wash in, the climate was temperate, and pine needles and large pieces of bark made a nice sheltered bed. She didn’t have a name or know her age and had no one to compare herself to. She was not exactly a ferrel child as she did not think herself one of her forest friends. She did not know what she was, but she liked to hum tunes that were somehow familiar to her, and she even knew the words to a few songs. Her clothes were a simple leather tunic that she had found in a hole in the ground while she was collecting the stones that were covering it. She collected stones to outline pictures she formed on the ground. The tunic had been around some bones that were from something bigger than she.
One day as she was collecting darker stones for contrast, she found a crusty cube of white on the forest floor. It did not have much of a smell or taste when she touched her tongue to it, so she put it in her bark bowl with her stones, to see if it could be worked into her picture. Then a short distance away, she found another of a slightly varied shape and size, then a little further down, another, and another. Curious, she followed the white things in a direction she had not gone before. They lead her to a clearing in which was a very odd structure of more colors than she had ever seen. There were berry and flower colored stones on the sides and tops, and whole stones of colors she had only seen specks of in other stones, and on the more dramatic colored birds in the forest. They were nestled in white cloud-like stuff, bordering large brown shapes that could be much bigger rocks or smoother and bigger pieces of bark.
She started to get closer to feel these excellent stones when she heard loud and strange creature sounds coming from inside. She retreated into the thickness of the forest and saw part of the bark move as two beings with arms, legs, and heads like hers came running out across the clearing, then to return to break off some of the bark-colored and bird-colored dwelling, and then ran away like her furry friends sometimes did when her larger friends were hungry. Thinking that there must be a large hungry friend in its colorful den, she decided to leave it alone.
As she returned to her pictures, she saw the two escapees looking at some of them. They were pointing and chattering to each other like squirels. As she came a little closer to them, they noticed her and stared. She stared back. They were about her size. The one with shorter hair, who was slightly taller, started chattering at her and she smiled and held out her hand as she did with her other forest friends. The one with the longer hair came towards her smiling and doing the same. Her hand felt familiar. Then they pointed to the stone pictures and back to her with their eyebrows up as they continued chattering. She smiled back.
Seeing their interest, she brought her bark bowl forward and added more stones and the new white crusty cubes to the picture. The frame was a white circle, the field was light brown and in the center was a long line crossed by a shorter one. She used the crust to fill in some of the background quarters.
As she pulled out the crust, the short hair made a louder sound and pointed. He waved his hands at his friend as he chattered away. The long hair shrugged her shoulders and looked down.
The boy looked around as he continued to chatter, loosing interest in the pictures. Then he again addressed her but all she understood was that he was distressed. Sometimes when her forest friends were agitated, she would sing to them and stroke their fur. As she did this, he got a quizical look on his face, but seemed to calm down.
The sun was going down and the two friends continued to chatter with each other and then started to gesture with their hands toward her. When they put their hands together, closed their eyes, and rested their head on their hands, she gathered they wanted to go to sleep. As the sun was going down, she went towards a large tree, and made two mounds of pine needles under it. Then she searched for a fallen tree with loose bark to cover them with.
The boy smiled and nodded at her and chattered to his friend some more. The girl pulled out some of the brown material she had taken from the sides of the hungry creature’s den and offered it to her.
She smelled it and touched it to her tongue. It had a very strong fragrance that was unfamiliar. The other girl ate some of hers so she did too. It was too sweet and strong at the same time, so she put the rest in her stone cache.
After her two friends had eaten and chattered some more, they laid down to go to sleep. She did the same.
The next morning her two friends were still sleeping when she got up and gathered berries and seeds. When she got back, they were waking up. She offered her gatherings to them and they smiled and accepted as they offered her some of the colored stones from the hungry friend’s house. She excitedly put them in her bark bowl. She nearly choked on her seed that she had just freed from it’s casing when they put their beautiful stones in their mouths. She reached for the boy’s jaw and pried it open to see the beautiful bird colored stone all shattered in pieces in his mouth. He jerked back before she could remove the contents. She sat back remembering that she’d seen birds put small stones in their mouths before, so maybe this was the same thing.
After they’d eaten, she took them to the brook for a drink. The boy pointed to the woods across the water and then back at the girl and at her. Then he crossed the brook with the girl following behind and turned back to point to her and the trees beyond. Not wanting to go with them, she stood motionless. After a last bit of chattering, they turned and disappeared into the forest.
A bright stone caught her eye and she retrieved it, layed it on the grass, and commenced to wash.
A few days later, as she was replacing some of the duller stones in her pictures with her new brighter ones, she heard some rustling and chattering in the forest. She hid behind a tree until she recognized the boy and girl who had crossed her path those days before. She stepped a little closer and noticed a taller, but similar creature with them. His rugged, large frame indicated to her that he was male. Seeing that the children were not frightened, she did not seek to retreat.
He placed his hands on each of the children’s backs and rumbled to them from deep in his throat. They chattered and pointed to her. She smiled and reached out her hand to see if he would come to her. He did and respectfully but briefly took her hand, smiling back.
She understood that this was the father of the two children who took his hand and led him to a nearby picture. This one was of concentric color fields with the darkest stones in the middle, then a shade lighter, then colorless, outlined with more of the darkest stones as an eye is outlines with lashes. He smiled at her after he’d knelt down to get a closer look. He stood up rumbling slowly and loudly while waving his hands. She reached up and stroked his hair in response, cooing softly.
He chuckled and rumbled some more. She thought they might be hungry so she went to a nearby tree and scooped up some shucked seeds she’d been storing where the branches met above the trunk. She noticed some of them were scattered on the ground and smiled to herself at the untidiness of birds who’d been there since last time she checked.
The three visitors accepted them gratefully. As they drank at the brook, she set about looking for more stones. The parent and two children began rumbling and chattering again, so she looked up to see their faces. They were moving their hands toward the deeper part of the forest as if they wanted to go there. She moved in that direction, and they started walking together. She had not gone back to the large hungry friend’s den since that day.
When they got to the clearing, the brown bark that had been surrounded by white fluff was gone, and all that was left were piles of the brightly colored stones, and some larger shiny, hard, sun colored objects. As they drew closer, they saw that there were some bones scattered around as well as some tattered bits of clothing. The children were animatedly chattering and waving their hands at their father who nodded as he looked around, and occasionally rumbled in return.
The father went to another part of the clearing where some wooden sticks had broken apart. He produced a stick with a shiney hard, sharp end and walked toward the children as he rumbled to them. He then began making a hole in the ground in the clearing. As he did so, the children took two of the sticks, crossed them, and brought them to their father. He rumbled and pointed to the woods. After she’d spent some time gathering the colored stones into her bark bowl, which she always brought with her, she saw the children emerge from the forest with vine tindrels streaming from their hands. She watched them tie the sticks together in an elongated X and show it to their father. He gave a short rumble and nodded as he continued to dig the long hole.
After he finished, he climbed out of the hole and began to gather the bones. She neared the hole and recognized the pattern he was laying them in. After the bones had been aranged, she helped as he and the children put the dirt back in it’s place over the new inhabitant. After the X was put in the ground at the head’s end, they stood around while the Father rumbled and then the children joined in a song. The singing perked her ears with a certain remembrance, and warmed her heart.
When the children and the man had finished gathering the extra shiney sun colored objects and the remaining brightly colored stones, they turned back to where the girl dwelled. She directed them to her dark elongated X surrounded by the light circle and began to remove the stones to a pile. Then she removed a shallow amount of dirt which covered a large piece of hollowed out tree trunk. The father helped her lift it out and underneath was a similar arrangement of bones. The father looked at her with moist eyes and a turned down mouth. She patted his head and tried to tickle him while singing a song. He smiled and knelt down to look at the bones more closely.
When he lifted the skull from it’s place a tiny wooden picture fell back in the dirt through one of the holes. He showed it to her with his eyebrows up. As she looked at it, she sang and patted the gentle face on the wood.
Carefully she, the father, and the children replaced the picture, the skull, the tree bark and the dirt over the remains. As she turned her attention to the stones, her new friends hesitantly helped her put them back the way she had them. Finishing their task, the father rumbled in the same way he had at the other person’s grave, and the children and she joined in the singing.
She waited until they were gone to adjust the stones back to their original positions.
While she worked on another picture of light individual stones spaced apart from each other in a feild of dark stones, like the lights that shine in the darkness, encirled by a light outline, she heard a rustling in the woods from the direction her friends had come. She held out her hand, smiling, as she saw them emerge from the forest until she saw that there was another tall man with them. She dropped her hand and the corners of her mouth. She suddenly felt vulnerable and exposed. She crossed her arms across her midsection. The father’s rumbling was directed at the new man who responded with higher pitched jerky sounds. The new man then approached her and aimed his sounds at her. She remained silent and motionless. This did not deter him, and she felt that he was expecting her to make sounds in return. When she didn’t, he kept up his speech sometimes to her, then to the father. The father once responded by pointing to the picture she had been forming. The other man’s brows grew together with a line in the middle. The father then took him to the place of the field of circles, then finally to the X over the skeleton. The other man continued with his wrinkled brow and sharp speech which also made the father and the two children wrinkle their brows.
The father rumbled towards her and when she did not move or respond, he backed away and motioned toward the direction they had come from. She watched as they dissapeared into the woods.
Her heart felt heavy even after they had gone. She bent down by the picture and touched the light stones in the midst of the dark. She put some of the brightly colored stones in the dark field as well as in the light outline. Slowly she felt the weight depart and she smiled. She sat there until the light stones became the same color as the dark ones and she laid down and fell asleep with her arm across her picture.
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