Mother Horse Eyes: “Shadows Sneaking Between Trees”

Photographer Unknown, (On the Edge of the Forest)

“Sometimes late at night, I heard singing. It came from outside, out there in the far distance, from somewhere in the deep forest beyond the boundaries of my world. Some nights it was one voice, but usually it was many, singing a strange, aching song. It sounded like a haunted crying. When I was little, I had whimpered and cried like this to my mother. But who was crying out there in the night? What kind of dark mother was listening?

When I first heard the singing, I was filled with a blood dread. The hair on my back bristled, and I growled and barked at the darkness. Even after the night finally went silent, I trotted around for hours in vigilant anger. Later, as I heard it more often, I learned to accept it with a sullen unease. Of course, this singing was the sound of wolves howling, but I didn’t know this in the dream. In the dream, I’d never seen a wolf in my life.

One winter, I began to see them prowling in the woods. To me, they were ghost dogs, shadows sneaking between trees, eyes glinting in the twilight. I growled and barked at them, but didn’t pursue. For several months, they never encroached on my world.”

― Mother Horse Eyes, The Interface Series

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