Pearl Before Swine ch 3: Humans

~THE PEARL~

Walking would probably not take so long if I did not stop to revel in the feel of every texture against my skin. Rough stone gives way to soft soil and pebbles that bruise my feet, then grass that bows before me, blades slick and moist with dew.

Bark scrapes my palms, but when pressed too hard, it peels, revealing a spongy, chilled interior. Fallen leaves speckle the ground in scarlet and gold and crunch beneath my toes. Their pieces tickle, stick, and itch.

I kneel alongside a mountain in miniature, gaze scouring the airy pattern of its sides. At my poke, the structure crumbles, and tiny bodies erupt from exits I had not even seen, assessing and repairing the damage. Their unified movements resemble the sea’s waves. If only I could probe that oneness of mind, experience its shape and weight.

Yet, when I try, nothing happens. A sense of emptiness grows from deep within, and I shy away from its cold. When I meet a human, I must ask them to show me how to combat this inner aloneness.

I have no idea where to go to find humans, however, and it is a shame that I cannot communicate with these ants. Intimate with the land as they are, they surely know the entirety of its layout and could instruct me in the best course. Our lack of mutual understanding instead makes me uneasy at their approach.

I step back, but they are swifter, swarming over my bare toes and up my shins. I have no way of explaining that I cannot assist them in repairing their home, even if it and I are painted the same. They cannot have any of my skin for their repairs.

They try to take it anyway, a hundred tiny mouths digging into my legs. I swat, yell, swipe, and finally just run, stumbling through the undergrowth, still with no idea which way I should be headed.

As I walk, the sun reaches its summit, tires of balancing on its throne, and heads for its bed in the mountains. Sometimes I can see its destination, but mostly, I perceive it only in the slant of the rays piercing the canopy. When these dangle nearly horizontal, warm but weak and yellow, a sound captures my ears.

It tugs, fast, then lingers, strong and sharp, like a shout compressed into a whisper. I turn toward it, and with each subsequent step, it seeps further into me, wrapping another loop around my heart. High notes dip into deep lulls, and I pause, breath held, waiting for the next pull, never disappointed.

The source nears, just on the other side of a line of saplings, when the song ends on a yelp.

I stop as if struck, hand rising to my chest, where it finds no blood, but I feel like I am bleeding out just the same, torn and in need of those notes to sew me back together.

“Give me back my flute!”

Now I find myself unable to move for a different reason. This is a human voice, mature but still young, male, nasally, and with an underlying squeak that shows a bit too much on the last syllable.

I have found humans. Now what? How do I make them feel love?

I smooth my hands over my borrowed clothes, noting the rips and crusty patches. They bunch in the most inconvenient places. Most of my shoulders show, a lot of my midriff, too. The pants might as well be a skirt below mid-thigh. Will the humans still find it beautiful?

“Seriously, your height’s no fair, man!”

“If I give this back to you, what will you do?” The second voice is lower and softer with an edge that could cut through rock.

“Okay, okay, I’ll put it in my bag, silently, since you’re so scared.”

I step forward, outstretched hand pushing just enough branches aside so I can see the clearing beyond.

“Call it scared if you want, but—did you hear that?” The taller one’s gaze cuts to me, a blue brighter than the sea and deeper than the sky.

I am stone, unmoving, part of the background. Beyond this line of younglings, even the grass is shorn, a sacred space separating the forest from a pair of rails on an altar of pebbles hashed with planks. Between the metal beams stand two young men draped in cloaks, sacks strapped to their backs. The air churns, heavy with smoke and steel. Is this the scent of humans?

While it is not as repulsive as Mare’s, I do not like it, but that clogged sensation shrinks in comparison with the scalding pinch that continues to tighten my chest the longer our gazes remain aligned. Surely, he sees me. Why does he not move, not say anything?

“For someone named after a tree, you sure seem scared of them.”

At these words from his companion, the blue eyes shift just enough for me to escape. I backpedal, and the branches swing to their former position.

“It’s not the trees I worry about. Stay here, Pike.” The zing of metal on leather sounds, and as he steps over the rail, a knife emerges from beneath the taller one’s cloak.

He heads straight toward me. What should I do?

My hands rise to my head, smoothing my hair and fanning it over my shoulders. With a deep breath, I lift my chin, fingers holding one another, toes nearly close enough to do the same.

When he crashes through the young growth, he finds only more trees and moss-covered, fallen logs. The rocky ground does not even keep a footprint to show him where I was.

Clothed in caution, his stance is one ready to spring, grip gloved in confidence on the knife’s bone handle. Its worn white matches what I can see of his attire beneath the cloak. His fallen hood reveals hair that mirrors the night tied just above his nape in a short tail and a face unrelated to any who visited Terra. Arrows form each feature, even his slightly crooked nose.

Before he can spot me ducking behind a seesaw of logs, Pike stumbles through the saplings. Branches snap before the press of his lanky body, and his green eyes shine bright with panic.

His companion straightens, shape hinting at broad shoulders and long limbs. “I told you to stay.”

“I was pretty sure you were just trying to leave me behind.”

“The thought isn’t foreign to me.” The knife disappears from whence it came, and the trace of a smirk highlights the off angle of his nose in an endearing way, almost enough to pull me from my hiding space. “I should have waited for the train.”

Pike points with his flute. “Tough luck scraping up the money to afford that hotel at the station. I certainly couldn’t, and we agreed, safety in numbers, right?”

“Not when half the numbers keep making noise that’ll attract dangerous beings. Put that thing away.” He shoves past the musician and trudges back toward the rails.

Pike rolls his eyes. “Mare doesn’t exist.”

The other stops, stiff as the ancient trees framing him on either side. “Do you know who my people are?”

“Just because your family’s superstitious doesn’t mean you have to be.”

The taller one whirls, a hurricane one moment, still as stone the next, fist tangled in the front of Pike’s cloak. Does the shorter one stand on his toes to make himself seem larger or because his comrade holds him? A slanted ray makes him squint.

Nothing moves aside from the dust dancing in the yellow swords of light.

When the other speaks, his voice is wind, cold, low, and distant. “I believe in the Essences because I’ve seen things. So have my people. My ancestors—”

“Your ancestors were killed by superstition, over and over again, right?” Despite the light shining directly on him, the shadows of Pike’s face are akin to the darkness of an abyss. “You’re here to change that.”

Slowly, blue eyes close, and their owner nods. He lets go and turns to the tracks. “We have to keep moving.”

Pike follows, flute clutched to his chest as they disappear through the broken foliage.

I rise, scoot over the logs, and flit behind the humans. I need to speak with them, so why is it so difficult? Why does my throat tighten the nearer they come? Why does thinking about that gaze on me again send chills into my deepest parts?

I trace a path parallel to theirs, ever a few paces behind and hidden by some plant or other.

“Even if Creatures of Essence did exist,” Pike grumbles, “this is a forest. It’s the ones of the Sea that lure you in with their song. The Creatures of the Land will steal your heart with their poems, which are only words, and I hate words, so I’d probably be immune.”

“For someone who hates words, you sure use a lot of them.”

Pike hunches further over his flute. “Silence makes me uncomfortable, okay? Where I’m from, music defines everything, and no task is complete without it.”

Does that connect him with the sea? It is not hard to picture him on a beach. Though not as tanned as his companion’s, his skin is no stranger to the sun’s kiss, and his hair resembles wet sand for color and texture, short and plastered down.

His friend’s stride lengthens and quickens.

“I really don’t see the harm in—”

A roar drowns the tail of the sentence as a mass of rippling, brown fur erupts from the trees beyond the tracks and charges straight for Pike.

Fear seizes my limbs, wrenching them in a run, and the same dose of motion explodes through him. For me, unseen in the trees, it is enough. My foot alights in the crook of a branch and launches me higher until I sit like a bird, twigs bowing beneath my weight. Pike’s rush is too little, too late. The bear already looms above him, black claws glinting in the last of the light as they slice down at his retreating back.

The air is a still sea, smooth as glass, and Pike’s scream cracks it, cut short as a massive paw tangles in his trailing cloak and he falls on his behind. Rolling, he leaves the garment and scrambles into the undergrowth.

The beast does not pursue him, attention yanked to the other by a thrown knife now lodged in his shoulder. If not for that, his first swipe would have snagged more than empty fabric.

“Bears are protectors of the forest,” Terra had taught me as he patted one’s head. “While not as wise as some, they aid me in guarding the land from those that would harm it and that which does not belong. Should you ever become lost within my realm, ask any local for the protector, and that one will ensure I hear you, always.”

The bear is not a villain. Neither are the men as far as I can tell. Yet, I recall the human who first carried me to Terra, how some bubble of otherness had surrounded him, warning all the creatures that he did not belong.

The bear is simply fulfilling his duty to destroy the wrongness that occupies his territory.

“Leave. Run.” My admonition is a whisper, unheard by any but the trees where I sit.

The blue-eyed human retreats too slowly, a second knife in hand and facing his adversary. Blood darkens the fur around his first blade. Cued by another roar, the massive claws swipe, and he ducks, somersaults, feet curling atop the downed paw. He leaps off it, weapon aimed to fall into the side of the bear’s throat.

As if a blade has already impaled the same place on me, I cannot breathe.

“Look out!” The cry flies from somewhere below me in this tallest of trees, so shrill, I barely hear the shape of the words.

A second paw swats the man down, and he crumples sideways over the clearing’s metal beams. Flipping end over end, his weapon retreats and stabs into the ground several body lengths away. He rolls, slower than before, feet folded beneath him. His cloak fans behind him, shredded like my not-skirt.

Crouched on the slanted lawn, he flips backward and stretches for his lost knife, but the bear scoops him up.

My eyes widen, tears leaking from their corners. I do not want either of them to lose.

The man grips the handle of the first knife and tugs, ripping it through the bear’s collar one agonizing hairsbreadth at a time. The rest of him writhes, kicks and strategic bending meant to keep his middle beneath the bear’s chin as paws aim to force him between open jaws.

His face twists, and though I cannot prod his mind, I feel the pain the expression conveys as if it is my gut the claws dig into, unseen somewhere within the cloth while crimson spreads outward.

I am falling, running. I am too close, one hand on the bear’s nose, other around the man’s wrist. Something greater than fear fills me. This must stop, or they both will die.

I extend my mind to them, a bridge to connect their understanding, but while I have enough will to build with, I cannot reach either side. Only an empty sea waits within me. The bridge leads nowhere.

Those blue eyes are on me again, scrunched and unfocused as if they look right through me. Questions are as prevalent as the tears in them. Then a paw blocks my sight.

I fold backward around it, pulling the man with me. He weighs more than I expect, but I must keep moving. This dance allows for no hesitation, a bent knee left, a leap right, a whirl, a backbend, a somersault. The blood of my rescuee flows over my arms, and despite its loss, he grows heavier.

Tightness leaves the muscles around his eyes, and they droop, half-lidded. A line of paler skin intercepts one brow and draws across his forehead—apparently his recklessness did not awaken only today. How I wish to be like Terra in this moment, able to give him the strength to heal as I saw my Essence do with those who brought him gifts.

We roll again, a tangled ball of limbs and strips of cloth, the bear’s breath hot on my face, deafening all other sound. As before, I lift my hand to place my palm against his nose, but this time, I stop short of touching him. The rest of me curls around the human as if I am any kind of shield, as if the claws cannot slice through me and into him.

A part of me believes they will not. I am favored by Terra, a child he keeps with him always. This denizen of his realm will not dare hurt me, and it will abandon pursuit of those I protect.

Either the bear has frozen or time has. All falls still, so quiet, I can hear the human’s gasp as his eyes open and flick to me.

Why am I suddenly so tired? His face blurs, the bear, too, and I cannot hold my own weight. Air leaves me in a sigh as I collapse onto the blue-eyed human, my hand the last to drop. As it greets the soft grass, the sun slips below the mountains, and my eyes close.

Continued in chapter 4: First Day

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