The Forest

Fiction

He was a boy in a man’s body when he entered the forest.

He did not know he entered until he was deep inside.

He had not become aware of the totality of his journey until after many years passed. He was now far away, and only the memory of the essence of the forest remained.

He had felt the forest was alive.

It was daylight but could have been nighttime.

When he arrived at the campground, time, as it’s dictated by the Earth spiraling around the sun, had ceased.

The first sign of life was the pond flowing into a creek, even as it was a motionless mirror. Trees formed a tapestry of canopies, closing in around and over him, he was now inside.

There was a dark fluorescent verdure in the night full of sounds, with the ever-present sound of water that would only be interrupted by the morning wind. He had arrived at the campground in which he met her.

He did not immediately notice her when he arrived. His attention sequestrated by the all-encompassing forest.

As the night advanced, they sat together talking, mostly to drive away any unknown spirits lingering in the night. Their souls mostly inebriated by the exuberance of the forest than by wine.

Their hair follicles erected by the crisp cold of the early evening. Light jackets away in their respective tents, and the electricity flowing through their skins. They delayed the return to their tents.

He felt his body gravitating towards hers.

They continued engaging in conversation, looking into each other, exploring the world of the ideas.

Her eyes were clear and transparent, looked beyond them into her soul. Or so he thought.

They were sitting close to one another.

He was holding the weight of his upper body with his arms extended behind his back, one of them intersecting her back. He did not possess muscular arms, like the ones he wished to have, like those of action movie stars.

He noticed his hand sliding towards her back.

‘My arm seems to be slipping behind you,’ he announced. ‘It’s that OK?’

She answered yes, and grabbed his arm, crossing hers with him. He lost his balance and gravitated towards her.

‘Do you mind if mine wraps yours?’ She counteracted.

There was a smile beyond them. Beyond lips and eyes in both of them, as the fire trickled sparks from the embers.

‘Since we are asking, do you mind if I continue looking at you? I feel I’m going beyond what I’m supposed to.’

‘We are going.’ She paused him. ‘I want to go, wherever this place is,’ she continued.

‘I don’t know if it is a place where we are going.’

‘It doesn’t matter: I’m willing.’

He felt his heart quicken. Like a child going into an excursion for the first time. The anticipation of the unknown. Lips not yet touched, a humidity not yet explored. Her presence and his, now becoming part of the weave of a tapestry greater than themselves.

They had been alone in the forest, and he had never seen her since. It does not matter how long they stayed. Sharing the days with other campers, but the nights were theirs.

It was not her physical appearance that had occupied the memory of her ever since. Regardless of what was the shade of her skin or the color of her hair, she remembered her green and fluid like the creeks and humid like the pond, wrapping him with the forestry of her limbs around his hips, his phallus becoming hers.

His legs wrapping around her hips. His pelvic limb not belonging to him anymore, as if it was her who penetrated him. Emitting guttural sounds, vowels swishing as the canopy of trees above them, both ululating and singing and banging as hearts drumming.

The humidity of their bodies felt reptilian. They consumed the flowing saltiness of their skins with their tongues with devotion and hunger. They absorbed one another and each other’s fluids as they evaporated. The forest’s animals had no choice but to stop their nocturnal rituals, to witness in awe.

Those nights in the forest were beyond the two of them. It was as if they would have gone to a different place away from time and space. A place to which it is only possible to go when the body and soul surrender.

He was a boy when he entered the forest. And he was probably still one when he left.

It was difficult to say if he had achieved the path to be a man or not. However, he felt that he had transcended his manhood. His being human.

He became something else. Maybe not even with his lover, but with the forest.

As if the lover was an instrument of the forest to love him. Or as if he would have been an instrument of the forest, so it could love his lover.

©Pablo Pereyra 2020. Thank you for reading.