2021.4 Bristle

She waves in zir peripheral vision, and ze lifts zir head with a hum, frantically palmed down into bemused silence, finger to her lips. Ze frowns. She smiles, a twinkle which ze always finds undeniable, if mildly confusing right now. And ze’s casting for a way to make the query silent, when the answer comes at the end of a pointing finger, as her torso leans unbidden warmth towards zirs, and a fleering, familiar, fleet fear flutters over zir and is gone. They watch, breaths matched in shallow, humble hush as their guest wanders lopsided, hip-hopping, a bobbing blessing about new territory, sniffs, shakes itself, and hobbles off before they can draw phones from pockets for the shot, forever to be dismissed as tricksters in anecdotal earnestness.

Two hearts stuttering

A symphony of near miss

A glimpse of the wild.

From the Day 4 prompt, whereupon I got the creature I’d been hoping for: the Wild Haggis, the subject of many a childhood holiday in Scotland (though I regret I never came as close as these two to seeing a live one). The form is a haibun.

A left-legged haggis, as captured by Margaret via Flickr at the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow.