A Lone Poet's Bargain [Saga Anderson/Thomas Zane]
A deer wanders through the gloomy forest, seeking its way out, stopping only to sip water from a still lake.
“Saga!” Tentacles wags beneath the surface, and a face emerges. “Saga, please! I don’t want to be alone… you have been my only company.”
She looks at Thomas with stars in her brown eyes. “I don’t want to live here. This isn’t my reality and you know it.”
Blue eyes then weep between wet curls.
“And where else would we be our true selves? I thought…” His lower lip trembles. “I thought you were fine with what you became.”
Saga sees the reflection on the waters Tom dives in: instead of a woman with loosen hair, a deer of great filigree-decorated antlers with a sparkle of incandescent light stood, and there, she protected him with its grace and judged all the same.
“I feel free, but I also feel stuck,” she says without moving her mouth. “You may have made yourself comfortable, but… just look around. There’s nothing in the Dark Place. Only a loop.”
Tom raises himself to touch her jaw; the light in her forehead draws swirls on his pupils and reveals truth. This love he holds is too damaged to be bearable.
Her snout presses against the top of his head. “You should leave. For your safety.”
“And where else could I be?” He whispers, and his voice softens, and softens… “Will you remember me, at least?”
Saga raises her head, her sparkle obfuscating her reflection to draw the tentacles, carcasses and bare skin of a friend submerged in a deep lake of unseen bottom.
“I will,” she says, sincere with her own feelings, “but I will not stay.”