Well, I cheated a little bit.
I come up with the prompts a day or so in advance, and as soon as I came up with them, I got an idea. I've been working on this since Thursday or so, but I was still a bit stuck when I made the post to the Bloc this morning. But as soon as I posted and had breakfast, lo and behold, everything came together. So I'm in early today!
This poem is very much inspired by the gorgeous PS2 game, Okami, and that much is obvious. But I'll be playing around more with the characters I introduce here. I want to do more with them!
And for those who are poetry-illiterate, don't worry. This is just a storytelling poem - there's no deep metaphor you're missing or anything. I'm not good with deep metaphor. XD
EDIT: Oh, durr. This was the gossip prompt.
***
The Mountain Sleeps
i.
The fog fell from the clouds this morning,
curled around the mountains like a sleeping
fox and constricted around hunters and hikers
so tightly that they lost their names to the choked air.
These are the summer days when thunder curves
through the valley, and lightning makes its nest
above the plains in the south, these are the nights
that drive villagers to the tavern to curl together
and mutter about their misfortune.
They speak quietly and glare at any who dare to sing –
footfalls are as muffled as stones rolling underwater.
Fear keeps their glasses empty and their eyes
at the windows to watch approaching silhouettes,
hands shaking even though nothing ever
comes for them.
The sun takes their trust for company when it hides.
ii.
He works best on these slow, hooded nights,
the young man who guides travelers
through the mountains and to the south.
His eyes and hair are dark and thick as ink,
with a willowy body of careful brushstrokes,
and a face that regards them evenly, but creases when they recoil.
They call him the familiar of the fog,
the demon of the forest,
they gossip when he banters with the empty air,
though not one of them ever leaves the valley
without him.
At his home, they’re always received
by the same smiling foreigner
whose missionary parents left him
in the woods years ago. (He laughs that they lost him –
he says lost as if he were a bead on a necklace,
unnoticed as he fell.) He does the talking,
their guide merely lets him work, waiting for a lull
to ask for their destination. When they return,
weeks later, they’re filled with more whispered stories:
that deep into the third night of walking,
they saw a line of figures stretching through the fog,
each holding lanterns made from flowers,
moving without rustling the leaves. He led
past them without acknowledgment, only smiled
and stated that his rates have not changed.
iii.
A reluctant prophet made sharp in the choked air,
he reads names in the web of branches,
murmuring words of the future no one remembers.
