"Nightwalker" by Holly Meade

Image posted with the permission of the artist. More of Holly Meade's work can be found at her website.

As I move through the forest, all the branches, leaves, buds, and blooms in the foreground expand and disappear, leaving room for more and more of the same. Dry leaves crunch under my feet. I look down at uneven layers of bark, twigs, and soil, and it occurs to me that I'm walking on eons of broken down corpses. I think of the multitude of small rodents, bugs, and roots that make up a whole other dark, squirmy and moist underground world. I'm walking on that, too. It's night now, and the only reason I can see anything is the beams of moonlight which criss-cross from surface to surface. It's so easy to get lost here. How much times has passed? Ten minutes? An hour? I just don't know. I've become so divorced from this sort of experience, I feel like an alien visiting another planet. But really I'm from here.

Suddenly, out of all the blue-black debris and into the most brightly moon-lit spot steps a deer. I stop and cautiously look up to examine this native inhabitant, and to my surprise encounter a familiar face.