Robyn

The blankets are soft and warm to suit a vulnerable chick amid weather. It rains on the roof shingles, finger-tapping and fiddling with the wood, water dripping down to windows to collect and further condensate on blued glass. A ceiling leak plinks into a polite wood bowl by the bed. She lies on her side there. Despite their warmth, she has the blankets apathetically disorganized and half-surrounding her, one arm splayed out uncovered in the dim room as she watches transparent light on the plaster side wall project rainwater descending the windowpanes.

 There is a letter from her friend laying open on the corner of the bed. Once-friend, more truthfully. Read and re-read into oblivion. She sighs, over the bad weather or the past or some combination of the two.

 An old stairwell creaks humbly outside her room, and it brings a soft knock to the door, opening just enough to reveal her mother. “I made orange tea. Would you like any?”

 She rolls to the opposite side of the bed, curling away.

 The door closes, knobby floor announcing her mother coming in. She sits on the bedside. The wood bowl plinks, and she strokes her daughter’s bushy hair, choosing her next words from the better part of a life lived. “… I know it hurts, honey. I know you must feel something awful. But you can’t stay in bed all day.”

 “I want to.” Muffling her face against her pillow.

 “Lying here and lingering on it is just going to drown you in bad feelings. You deserve to take your mind off things.”

 “No, I deserve to feel bad. The whole thing is my fault, I’m the reason everything went wrong.”

 “Mm-hmm. And I’m sure your friend senses you beating yourself up about it, all across the way, and really feels oh-so-sorry for your trouble.”

 She doesn’t respond.

 Her mother stops brushing her hair and sits up, sniffing, rain on the air carrying the votive smell of wet pine outdoors. “I know what you should do.” She turns back and puts a guiding hand on her child. “You should go find the Woods Spirit.”

 A snarky eyeroll goes unseen, for the better. “Load of good that will do.”

 “Nope! I won’t hear it. You’re disowned and kicked out ’til you find it.” She stands and pulls the bedsheets with her, ripping her daughter from avoidant shelter like removal of birth membrane.

 “Hey!” She tries to snatch the covers back, but her mom won’t yield. The daughter’s eyes are red-rimmed. “The Woods Spirit won’t have anything to do with me. And it’s raining, I’ll get pneumonia!”

 “Oh, you’re grown, you’ll be fine.” She folds the sheet along her breast. “The Spirit carries the weight of all our souls, and you’re too heavy with yours. Going will do you good.” And she tucks the folded linen under her arm, looking down at her despondent kid in caring. “I’ll warm the tea again when you get back.”

---

Tall woodland pines are dewy with shivering woodpeckers and chipmunks, huddled together against the chill in spite of their species. The woods are saturated with a haze of weather like a mind burdened by regret. She trudges a puddle-pocked trail; her cloak is damp, rain off her brow feeding into her mouth, her arms gathering up into herself against the world. The brown and pine-needle path ends at a riverbank of large stones. There, great, dark boulders are fashioned with mildewed moss and lichen, and a low roar betrays the local watershed overfull with runoff. Ferocious whitewater foam spits up the opposite bank. She has to steady herself as she scales the first of the boulders, and the intrepid gulf mists her cheeks as it churns.

 Across the impassable noise of the river stands a deer several times her size. Its antlers are the pattern of tree roots, and its vast body holds a glow like nightlight under a clouded sun. The Woods Spirit gazes at her, silent and still, engorged creek between them.

 She’s at first lost in the stare, enraptured by the Spirit’s stoic grace. It is very tall and beautiful. But then something grips her heart and digs a pit in her stomach, squeezing out emotions from the bottom up, and all at once her sadness and self-hatred pool up through her chest and out her eyelids and her knees turn weak as she falls to the stone. All of the feeling and limitless sorrow overcomes her, drawn out by the watching Woods Spirit. She cries and cries like the river and rain. It’s like her once-friend is there, in place of the Spirit. Evaluating her soul dangling between the points of its antlers, all her past failure and shortcoming brought to bear, pouring and soaking over her and choking out her lungs—

 “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

 And yet the Woods Spirit is not her once-friend. It has no forgiveness to lend. Magus of a nature impartial, it returns to its forest, leaving her back nothing but her soul.

 The rolling rush keeps with the water, and the umbrella trees hiss forlorn whispers, birds singing barely over the sound. It is the wet season, and this bad weather could last forever. She sighs over it, or the past, or some combination of the two. There is nothing to do but move on.