She floats like a feather on the breeze. The bite of her arrows is the scorpion’s sting. Her laugh is birdsong.
All the land tells tales of her, the wild outlaw in the forest, roaming the branches with a bow of yew and a tigress’s smile.
They talk of the Sparrow.
Everyone has their own story.
A butcher tells how a friend wandering in the woods was suddenly beset by Sparrow’s strung bow. She demanded of him his purse, his boots, his clothes, and his horse. Laughing she left him, frozen and half-naked in the forests, flitting into the branches like a fay of song.
A farmer tells how a tax collector was strung up from a branch, her mouth stuffed with an apple like a hog laid upon a lord’s table. For two days and a night she hung there, till she was cut down by a passing woodsman. She swore never to take an honest farmer’s coin again.
But there is a story nobody tells of Sparrow.
Each night she lies in the shadow of the trees and weeps for her loneliness, her cries soft amidst the rustling leaves.
There are none to hear her save the beasts.
Word Count: 200
For Sunday Photo Fiction. Thanks to Eric Wicklund for the photo prompt!
