Ellia

Breathing deeply
she leaves them sleeping
to dance atop Pater’s Hill
beneath the swollen moon


Fresh Spring grasses bearing
dew as the wine in the manor lord’s glasses
sparkling crystal from across the sea
dross to the wild grasses brushing at her knee

Night sky’s eye blinking slowly
dark eyelids piercing piecemeal with such gaze
she laughs
stars staring down around the moon

Pinpricks of pale needles
pull backwards through the black
blanket of the night

“Go away”
he says
giving her such a fright that she slips
and falls
grass stains on her hands
blades swishing as she crawls backwards

He looks her in the eye
beneath that moon bled sky
and gives her no more than a glance
no chance to see his eyes
from where he’d lain napping in the grass

Pale light wriggles and writhes
pouring down atop Pater’s Hill
she stares and finally breathes
scared and still

His cheek roughed with birthing beard
his hair a dark, wild, half curled beast chained to his skull
his limbs violent with the power of the brutality of living
but his eyes are closed

Resting he gave no chase
he made no move to hold
to take
to have
but she did not run

Crickets fiddle
calling to each other
from around the hill
as the owl stalks the shrew beneath the shadowy eaves

“What d’ye want?”
he asks,
to her dismay,
without opening his eyes

Still she stays
he lies still while faint motes of some fey flower’s pollen play
dancing above the knee high grass
owl hooting a gentle dirge of discontent
shrew panting at the pass
so she wonders (concerning life in the village)
of death

He leaps to bare feet
boots beside him atop his cloak and cowl
“Let me be!"
he demands with itching fury roiling behind darkly blue eyes

Soft footsteps whispering through the grass
the rough eyed boy shies away from the lass
as she reaches up
his face in her hands
staring into his eyes
drenched in the bared sight of the moon

Full and free of blinking time
passing as clouds in the night
as within the village beyond the trees
arose a frightful sound upon the breeze

Screams and howling such as these
of dying men and women’s wordless pleas

The eyes she stares ravenously into
the ones now yellow that were once blue
crease with hunger and a horrible fright
that his brothers’
cruel in their taunting
were terribly right
that he might indeed eat tonight

Rough eyed boy stumbling down Pater’s Hill
lass shivering in the sudden cold
Village burning thus alight
as he watches her from beneath the shadow eaves
tears dripping hot on fallen leaves