COLOSSUS
I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Silt dampens the bare knuckles that drag through the sandy delta. With a pelt dark and brown as that damp ground, Circe is somewhat hidden. But a machinery of sharp curves and linear limbs give her away in the muddy water. She is tired and the delta is miserable to move through. Mud relentlessly sticks and sucks at each step. Her movement is slow and deliberate. Circe does not know where she is going but knows which way to go. North. Then South. Now East. Possessed by some deep seeded instinct of migration the girl has returned to these primordial grounds. Of which she has little and vague memory. Of which she has found no solace.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
She has failed to fatten the sinew which had survived her soul this winter. Now she is too weak to hunt and is watchful in her travels for the chance carcass that will save her from this slow death. A small pot belly gives the illusion of fullness. Within it sloshes the dark water beneath her very feet. Jowls are dark with from her long and desperate drink. A feeble attempt to calm the fire of her otherwise hollow stomach. Regardless of hunger her temper is mild. A placid expression breaks only with the fluttering of her ears and the whip of her tail to keep away the flies.
It's worse than a barnyard.
Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
There is a disturbance in the dark waters and the hair upon the girl's neck feathers while she turns to seek the disturber with an unfriendly grin of immaculate teeth. Flies settle and bite bitterly into her flesh as her body grows rigid. Orange. It is an unwelcome pigment. Her last interaction with a similar creature being rather unkind. Starving and hapless as she was, Circe was never lonely. She was a child of solitude and there had been nothing but interruption in her primordial quests. A vicious bark erupts from haggard lungs. Fuck Off.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
Black lips shine as spit overcomes the walls of her teeth, another maleficent bark echoing in the thin emptiness between the wolves. Bloodshot eyes fall bitterly upon the hare between the stranger's jowls. Quivering but sure her forelimbs strike the mud hauling the girl forward. Not quite a trot her step is deliberate and quick. Skin folds delicately across her muzzle as she approaches. It is a false stampede for Circe will be no victor in such a fight. She knows not her intent but her desperate desire to be alone. In her flight the flies have alarmingly dispursed. It is action, Circe is learning, that rids one of their pain.