suzu

Suzu, young lady with a scornful eye and heart of resentful bitterness, sits rigidly at her dear friend’s wedding. It’s at the rim encircling a sweet, yellow-green forest that makes his suit look particularly shiny. Soft music fills the reception, light like a spring’s chiffon breeze, but her eyes are squeezed tight, trying to avoid making eye contact. Not with a guest, but with the buck standing at her far peripheral. You would wonder if it were dead, standing by the sheer power of muscle memory after a lifetime of freeze instinct, but it is alive, it is breathing.

She knew it was waiting for her, like some twisted impulse a girl would have once chancing upon her soulmate- like there were little bells on its hooves tinkling her name in quiet vowels. Bride and Groom exchange their vows but when she strolls the damp grass she finds her deer gone, galloping somewhere far into the woods in a path feeling like breadcrumbs and summer wine.

The forest dirt is plush under her feet, tampering firmly in vague shapes that escape her understanding. Before her is a small circle of murky water, where two antlers gently break the water’s gelatinous surface. She can see its eyes, unblinking and beckoning with its slanted pupils.

Suzu places her shoes by the bank, and slowly submerges her head underneath the water.