Arrow

It juts from the log, nearly erect. Sad dismembered fletching hanging loosely, dismembered feathers in three flat peals, now limp and lifeless, once handsome and prim.

It remembers the fingers - his fingers. They touched lovingly, almost yearningly, the firm round flank of its shaft. Smooth, the smoothness fondled by his touch, as he gazed, stared, penetrated the foliage with his intensity. He loosed it, suddenly, without warning. There was nothing the arrow could do, once released from the agency of his hands. It flew where it was aimed, except the twist, the mottled bleched twist of it, that one feather had come loose. And it swirled, furled, unfurled, spiraled, and veered in its trajectory ever so slightly to the left. Or was it right? Was the direction from the viewpoint of the sender, the releasor, or, perhaps, from the target? That lithe she who galloped, cantered, hopped, blithely away from it’s tempered sting. Or perhaps from the arrow itself. Left then, left and left, until caught, the wethered shaft, the fierce tip, in wood, inches in, for the stump was rotted and accommodating, as much as the flesh of the victim so neatly absconded, so neatly spirited away, so neatly avoiding its taught disaster in the wind. 

It could feel the agony of His breath, as he turned, left it there quivering, yet not of the quiver, no longer. No longer of the quiver. Shame, it thought, but who’s? Again, the archer, the maker? He who shaped it, sharpened it, from a low straight branch, a high flying bird, a stone from the riverbed - or the arrow itself? Its face buried in decaying wood pulp, near the heart of the tree, but not quite reached it, just as the heart of the animal, the she, it so nearly kissed with death.