deepwaterwritingprompts:Text: If no soulmate appears to you before you reach adulthood, the woods wi
deepwaterwritingprompts:Text: If no soulmate appears to you before you reach adulthood, the woods will send one. They will wander out of the trees, confused, but happy to see you. If you haven’t found true love by the time you turn eighteen (sixteen, twenty-one, depends on the jurisdiction), go looking in the forest for your soulmate. Leave the path behind, disappear into the trees. Walk in deep, and you’ll find your soulmate there, naked, leaves still tangled in their hair, studying you with an utter lack of understanding and a wild, unfettered delight. It’ll be rough. I won’t lie to you. You’ll have to give up the comforts of civilization. Your new soulmate won’t understand indoor plumbing or the internet, will never be able to see a car pass by without bolting away in fright. But hey, has the internet found you a soulmate? Has modern society made you feel any less alone? Or is it all just an unnecessary complication of unwritten rules, hierarchies, awkward advances, rejections, misaimed affections, unrequited love, quiet and not-so-quiet desperation? Why’d you come into the woods to begin with, if not to cast aside your failure and start fresh? So sleep beneath the leaves. Drink from the river. Spend hours crouched, motionless, until your soulmate finally creeps over near enough to sniff at your face, playfully lick you. Lick back. Bite. Breathe in their scent. Rut, out there in the wilderness. Pick ticks off each other’s skin. Lie tangled in the grass afterwards, listening to the birds fluttering above you, the woodland creatures darting through the undergrowth, all the teeming life around you. You think any of them had problems finding a soulmate? No, you understand it all now: it’s instinctual, has always been, just as natural as breathing. Abandon civilization! Embrace apehood. Fulfillment was waiting for you in the woods all this time. Of course, it may be that you encounter your soulmate later in life. It’s not uncommon. You’ll have come slouching back into civilization to stock up on supplies (look, hunter-gatherer subsistence is more difficult than you’d imagined), wearing the dirt-stained remains of your clothes. You’ll meet in line at the convenience store. There’ll be that immediate spark of interest, with them naturally curious, asking polite questions, you responding in rudimentary gestures and grunts. Even then, you’ll feel that connection, the culmination of all those lonely years spent longing rising up in you. Ooh, but you’ve got your other soulmate back in the woods waiting for you. Pretty awkward. Hey, maybe you’ll manage to make a poly relationship work. It’s not unheard of. It’s been done. Otherwise, though, you’ll have to make a decision. Maybe you’ll stay the course, nod and grunt a farewell forever, and retreat back into the wilderness. It’s fucked-up, but apes can feel regret. You’ll have your contemplative moments hunched over in the branches of a tree, wondering what could have been, dimly imagining the life you’re missing. And then there’ll be a spray of rain, a flash of sunlight, something rustling through the grass, a distant growl, and then you’ll be yourself again, in the moment, alert, aware, vibrantly alive, reaching out for your soulmate’s arms. Or maybe you’ll want to put your wild days of youth behind you. Return. Reacclimate. Give this whole civilization thing another try. You’ll have a terrible gap in your resume, but at least you won’t be all alone in navigating adulthood. You’ll have someone alongside you. You’ll start dating, get serious, start discussing finances, move in together. Get married. Get a mortgage, maybe. Talk about starting a family. Settle into middle age. You’ll fall into routine (not tediously, routine is often a source of comfort), but at times you’ll putter around your home looking out the window at the trees, reminiscing. You were so young back then, so awkward and desperate and alone, just barely into adulthood, imagining love as a wild thing that appeared suddenly in front of you, instead of something that you had to build together over a lifetime, brick by brick. And yet …And yet, you weren’t wrong, were you? Young and inexperienced as you were. You went looking in the woods, and you found it, knew in your heart that it would be there. That wild thing. That unconditional animal love that prowls the borders of civilization, scales fences, knocks over trash cans, stares glowing-eyed in the darkness. Your soulmate, still. Even now. Even after all these years. -- source link
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