Les Animaux Confeiture
Les Animaux Confeiture
The sun had settled once again, and most of the creatures inhabiting Paris park were preparing to do the same, another long summer day ending, dashing its brilliance across the thawing mountains and bleeding the still warm light through the canopy of redwoods. One prime opossum stood against the comfort of the dying day to find some flesh for his own warmth, warmth that could only come from that sweet animal, that elusive, well protected animal that only the glory of summer could provide, the blackberry. Truly the most coveted of animal flesh, this particularly brave opossum found the night a little earlier than any other creature, a time when in all the forest only he was in the twilight. Poetry is lost on him, having spent the majority of the day trying to find his game, irony abound in his quest to hunt he has only caught himself in an unfamiliar territory wherein the verses of the wildlife were silent and he could not find his way back home even if he had wanted to.
New dangers present themselves in the twilight, obscured through the scarlet mist of the still-dying sun. Dangers so sweet that they cloy the unwary into the musky sleep of death, dangers so exotic that entice the brave into the arms of rapture, and dangers so unreal that even the anarchist priest begins to doubt his unbelief. It is this special twilight that we find our hero. It is unbeknownst to him that the world would conspire like this, the peril that his destiny will lead him. But for now, let us journey with him for just a short while longer to find his prey.
The scent. It smells green, with the life of the day caught on its dewing thorns. It is a picture, more than a scent, an olfactory message, one that says "glowing thorns, prickly leaves, berries that are still pink with their journey into adulthood, and those almighty of animals, the bearer of our hero, so connected are they. Black, but with a blueish hue that silently speaks of the wind, of the ground and of the heat, a silent poetry that our opossum is hearing clearer and clearer with each passing footfall. Then the wind stops, the breath of the world caught on the meeting between these two lives, destined to meet one another yet an un-passable eternity between the intertwining of fate.
Two golden eyes blink for the last time before taking his first mouthful of these nighttime sweets, a tongue as expectant as the brush underneath for the juices of this nighttime passion. A sound louder than normal, a break in the air causes the brush to scatter and the berries to taste like iron. The red, virgin fruits bear witness to the harshness of the world for denying destiny, and to the dirt beneath their bottoms painted the color of twilight. There is no more light for our would-be hero, but a gloved hand grabs him by the tail and leaves the blackberry animal bereft of that primal passion.