Tossing a few steps away from the house you carry your gaze up to the old maple tree, its familiar silhouette marring the open, sterile fields. You had spent your summers beneath that tree, on the days too hot to get anything done, but too cool for your mother to think twice about tossing you out when she wanted some quiet. It had become an old friend of sorts, wide leaves to shade the sun, sturdy branches to hold you high, a thick trunk to catch paintballs or a thrown knife. To your young mind it had been castles, and spaceships, and towering skyscrapers. The best friend you could have in a place like this, one you remember being so very huge. But a shifting of weight blew through while you were away. That deepening blue of the sky far above no longer seems to float weightless and free. It instead bears down, looming toward those spindly green fingers in the center of this place.
Little could find its way this far into the sky, save for the house and that tree. A rusted down tractor perhaps, long far off in one of the fields, its metal bones slowly succumbing to the storms which roar from one horizon to the other. By now it could simply be a patch of red-orange dirt. How would you even know? It feels sometimes that anything which wanders too far comes back only a hypothetical cloud of possible fates, its old form swallowed by distance.
It's only natural to take a step aside, to lean against the maple's rugged bark and truly question why you came back. The house is long empty, nothing left to gather or reminisce over. The boarded windows doing little to keep the warm winds out. Every floorboard's cry a whimper. You had memorized all the soft spots, the places you could step without a sound. The spots are gone, or moved, run away to a more youthful home. Even the fields are incontinent with age, their pale earth scarfing down every drop from the storms but holding none of it.
It feels a bit as if you'd never gone elsewhere, but something else did. Ran off, became feral, forgot its past but left you to remember. The home, the tree, the sky and the fields. Wild animals now, wishing you out of their territory.
You would agree and leave. But the sun's caught in its early twilight, the land growing dark as the sky clings to the last hints of orange. It's too late to go anywhere. There is no bed in the house, and your two-seater car is hardly comfortable... Perhaps the tree will do, wild or not. The heated wind rolls along your shoulders as if promising to keep you warm for the night.
Unease aside, it should be safe enough to stay. The distance is honest, it gives nowhere to hide.
Settling yourself against the bark, it takes little effort to get cozy. The maple's ancient roots have burst forth from the earth over the years, winding themselves into an array of nooks for you to lean back on. The tall grass compresses beneath your weight, a natural cushion to do away with any aches. Raising your vision you find your eyes level with the swaying sea of green. Left and right they all move, tending toward the right, as the wind favors, crossing over one another, each following their own path in the miles-wide dance.
That's the part that hits you, only in this moment.
So many millions of blades, swaying each and every day. You have only found yourself here for a couple hours, what of the twenty years you have been gone? The twenty years of miles of grass swaying alone in the wind, back and forth, day and night.
The kinetic energy could move mountains.
How many nuclear bombs of force have swept silently across these fields, ensuring the grass never finishes its dance to an empty sky? Venturing a glance upward the swelling blue remains unchanged behind the veil of leaves, simply casting its silent gaze upon the performance. Such an insignificant place this, a house, tree, and a road stretching from one horizon to another, caught amid the power of hurricanes and earthquakes stretched across decades. Even in the places no one cares to see, great forces are still at play, only in the most hidden of ways. This sea of green has been raging alone since you left, and only you now remain to watch it once more.
Then again, you feel as if you aren't truly alone here anymore.
As you retrieve your gaze from the sky you catch it just above the grass. About sixty paces ahead, a silhouette stands stark amongst the green. That buzzing warmth and cold sweat of panic shrinks through your shoulders all at once, jumpstarting you to scramble back up to your feet. You had heard no car, and looking around there is no car, save for your own. The stranger hadn't been caught in your peripheral vision either, an unusual feat for a person, especially with something so large on their head. A hat that size would have blown off in the gentle winds. But these sharp angles defied the flow of air, sweeping and scanning as the ears of some great bat, hungering for the smallest of vibrations. Odd too was their figure, so gaunt and sleek. A shirt and pants would hide such a thin waist and ribcage. This person was not clothed.
It was hard to tell if they were truly standing there at all. They alone rested between you and the sun's last light, but the silhouette seemed just a little too dark amid its dimming orange frame. Darker than you'd ever seen. A strange hole in the air, sliced out in the shape of not quite a man, but something else altogether.
You could think of little more to do in this situation than simply stare at the back of its head. Even at this distance, those massive ears could likely hear your every little move, twitching to drink in each minute sound. And so you simply stand stock still and wait. For the sun to fully set? For the thing to approach? For your legs to grow weak and give way? You honestly can't answer, but you don't wait for long.
Those ears both shift, sliding to the right as a long snout appears on the left. A single brown iris draws to the corner, slitted pupil piercing you even across so much space. A moment lingers as you regard each other, neither daring to make a move. But when that moment flees the creature is the one to take action. Void lips part as a long tongue lolls, white teeth glinting in sourceless glow. You are met with a voice of firelight on stone, and muddy pools beneath the earth.
"This is a gift, you know. If you choose for it to be."
And it falls below the grass, with only distance to keep you company.