Pre-dawn quiet rested upon the forest like a shroud. The darkness among these trees was absolute, their canopies impenetrable by the waning moonlight. The stillness was broken only here and there by the careful footfalls of a man, who picked his way methodically through the underbrush. His eyes, cat-like in the darkness, perceived the forest in delicate lines of etched silver, and allowed him to traverse the uneven ground with ease.
By no stretch of the imagination could the man be described as slight. His bulky silhouette was incongruous with the silence of his movement: wide shoulders somehow slipped between narrow trunks, and footfalls that ought to have borne weight enough to snap branches trod silently over the earthen debris.
Clutched close to his chest, wrapped in linens and furs against the clinging cold of the pre-dawn air, the man harboured a bundle. His breath clouded as he brought it closer to himself. Drawing one arm away from the precious cargo, he pressed his palm to gnarled bark. The still black of night transitioned gradually to the muted greys of dawn, as the first of the morning songbird trilled a call.
At length, the forest gave way to broader wood. The trees, once hulking, ancient things pressed in close, were here much smaller, much straighter. Leaves beneath the man’s feet were now crisp enough to crunch. Hesitant bands of sunlight wound their way through the canopy to rest on the hungry leaves of low-lying shrubbery. And even these sparse woods slowly gave way to the gentle incline of a hill: grass covered, open to the sprawling sky above.
The enormous globe of the sun sat languid on the eastern horizon as the man crested the hill. His breath clouded in the early morning air. Before him, still as a glass surface, lay a small lake. It occupied a shallow basin at the summit, formed eons ago by the death-fall of some cosmic pebble. Surrounded on all sides but one by the encroaching forest, it lay entirely secluded.
The man knelt. His knees pressed into the soft earth of the bank as with a fragile sort of reverence, he unfurled his arms. The bundle he lay gently on the grass before him. For a moment, he was motionless. Then, a release of breath. And reaching forward, he dug his fingers into the earth.
The slowly rising sun and the dawn chorus alone bore witness, as the man methodically unearthed a small trench on the shore of the lake. He washed his hands of dirt in its shallows, clouding its mirror-like perfection. Then he reclaimed the bundle, and held it close to him. Kneeling on the earth, his great body curved around the small armful of cloth as if now, in these final moments of farewell, he couldn’t bare to give it up.
Eventually, he uncurled himself, and lay the bundle in the small trench. A fox, undisturbed by his presence, approached the shore some yards away and bent its head to the water. The man scooped a handful of soft earth and lay it ever so tenderly about the furs before him, as a gentle hand might tuck in a blanket. Another handful followed, then another, until the bundle lay fully embraced by the earth. The fox lifted its head and turned bright eyes upon the small mound.
A cluster of birds darted overhead, chasing the minute insects that hovered above the waters of the lake. In the distance an animal let out a keening cry. The sun, having breached the far horizon, was beginning its laborious trek across the cloud-streaked sky. The fox, its attention caught a rustle of leaves, sprung down the bank and was lost in the underbrush of the encroaching forest.
The man, bent low, pressed his forehead to the turned earth, and whispered a single word of farewell.
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