The Christening

Keria danced through the trees, moonlight reflecting off her midnight-black hair. She laughed and it was a musical sound, both high and soft. Her body moved quickly – spinning, leaping, waving in the November wind. The trees around her sang under the half-moon, waving as eloquently as she could herself, and singing tales of long-forgotten summers and winters. The forest was old, and the girl beneath the branches older.

Suddenly she sang as she moved, her voice low and languid in the darkness. Her words were not the words of man, but the ancient hymns of the trees and grass. The forest around her sang too, the wind pulling quiet notes from the boughs, and the rustling of leaves and needles creating a percussion.

Keria swept along the forest floor, her song growing higher, melting into human tones, fleshing out with human words. But Keria remained. Her hair long and black, flowing behind her, and her naked body dancing over river and forest-floor.

Suddenly she stopped and became silent. She had reached a wide clearing, trees surrounding on all sides, but with a round circle of grass and ferns remaining free of the taller growth. The trees all danced around in the wind as she grew still, standing in the center of the clearing. Then, from the darkness beneath the trees a doe stepped gingerly, followed by a shaking fawn, barely able to stand.

Keria knelt, her knees in a puddle of rainwater that hid beneath the grass. The beast came to her, unafraid. She bent down and stared into the baby's brown eyes, her own wide, brown eyes staring back. Starlight reflected from the dark shining eyes of the baby deer, and smiling, she bent down and kissed his nose. "Moia," she suddenly said in the language of the wood. "Welcome."

The doe came closer, nuzzling her baby and looking at the ancient nymph in front of her. Keria had named every fawn in the wood since fawns came to the wood, and every tree and rock besides. Keria was before the wood and she would remain long after the wood, singing to the earth and listening as the earth sang back.