Reunion (Part I)

Sufjan Stevens: All the Trees of the Field will Clap Their Hands

The spruce had walked for three weeks until, in darkness, she paused and fell asleep. The sky offered no moon. The only visibility emanated from the nighttime, blue-whiteness of soft powder. Upon waking, her needles were snowcovered. She did not shake it from her branches. The cloaked warmth of its weight made her feel cozy and snug. A squirrel snaked its way over her limbs momentarily, then scurried off. She peered across the field. Perhaps her son stood hidden amidst these others?

A white pine broke above the tree line. He would be The Wise One here. She must approach with caution and great deference. He was at least a century older than she. She took a deep breath, inhaling her own scent, and flexed her needles...

Aurora

Message to Bears: Find Our Way Home

They thought she was part Inuit due to her cheekbones and bearcoat, but she'd been born in Spain of an Irish mother. She was a tracker who donned an amauti woven of moss and lichens. In it were housed the bones and tiny skulls of Arctic hares.

Her womb was like a dried fig, so she bore this makeshift shrine to the delicate shadows of babes she had lost. She sailed here because she'd read somewhere that 'tundra' meant 'barren land'. This Northern spot would understand her, she thought. Some kind of shared empathy to keep her endless wandering company. She spoke not a word, yet her silence deafened those who approached her. She tracked best at night, by the light of stars and newfallen snow.

It was rumoured she loved a Caribou and followed him in some nomadic trance. The truth was she sought a home that no longer existed and she was no longer capable of love. Her heart had been buried under Arctic ice two decades before. She would not look back. She looked up. Many a night she was sure she espied the face of The One She Had Loved in the Aurora, haunting her. The souls of the stillborn bundled on her back wept with her those nights, lulling her to sleep in the howl of winter winds. 

nightangel

Frou Frou: Let Go

Each night he awakens to the sound of great wings flapping. Of feathers, the weight of worlds, pushing against air. They beat exactly in time to the drum of his heart. Clouds part and in the blue of moonlight she appears, hovering over his crib. He moves to stand then, in silence; to gaze up in awe and what he understands to be the beginning of Love.

The room grows cold from the heights she's descended, her wings powdered with frost. From her downy undulation, the icey residue of meteorites and frozen stardust turn his cheeks ruddy.

Come the dawn, he will not recall her winged flight. Her face will remain but a dream.