12 November 2012
Forest green eyes look into pitch black. The two sets regard each other, trying to register and interpret each minute change. A futile exercise, though neither knows, as the two are as foreign to each other as is imaginable. They have each heard tales of the others' existence, but this night in the deepest part of the woods is the first time these two disparate species have come into contact in living memory. Frozen, they stare, eyes exaggeratedly huge so that neither will miss any tiny clue that the other may involuntarily reveal.
Green eyes mind is scrabbling, playing a game of catch-up that was lost the second his heedless flight had brought him crashing into this clearing. An impossibility stood before him braced for action. No, this creature existed only in the tales of the old spinsters and in the imagination of children. It should not...could not...be standing before his eyes. His mind frantic now recalling those very tales, not a favourable image was painted. These creatures fed on the young, defiled virgins, burned the homes of sleeping occupants...a veritable jack-of-all-evils...his heart faltered and gut tightened. This was the day he expired. He knew this deep within his soul, he knew it like cracks on his front step, the freckles that graced his ladylove's nose. Death was here, a gruesome one at that. He swallows, tries to rally his mind in preparation for the action that is to come.
Black eyes is stunned, his mind lurching into wakefulness but failing in the fight to clear. This...couldn't be, they could not have advanced so far to be this near the heart. Dormant he had stood basking in the pulse and chatter of the life-eternal for centuries uninterrupted. These dangerous primitives had been confined to the shorelines, without a spark of intellect between them. To unimaginative by far to go beyond their half-cycle of eat, fuck, die. He tries to gather what he knows, strong, savage...murderous...even with kin. Most importantly, here! No time for avoidance, this beast was surely only a moment away from assailing it with iron nails and...there!! It swallowed! The beast intends to consume it! Terror, cold and hard grips it and its dark eyes narrow.
Green eyes sees black eyes narrow, black eyes sees green eyes swallow. For a moment all is perfect stillness, and then...with an explosion of noise and movement, both turn and flee screaming out of the clearing. They run from the fear of their impending doom, pursued by screams and the noises of the forest. Neither is the expert pursuing hunter it imagines the other to be. This was the meeting of two species as different from each other as the desert is to the lake. Yet what they felt and the tale they tell is exactly the same.
The Meeting • Opuss № I