I meet myself

There is someone else in the wood. Someone like me. Sleeping in a bag.

They have made a camp not far from mine. Bending leafy branches to hide it but I know that way too well. It had all the signs of a newly purchased house to me. Almost a car on the driveway thanks to the way they have driven their feet through the glass. They overlooked that.

I slipped into the bag under the leaves. It smellt of liquorice. That won't last long. I wanted to lie there a long time. It is so much dryer than mine. I could have slept there. I think I did. For a moment.

I woke in confusion to the smell of a child's sweets. And twigs cracking. Had they seen me there?

But a grown fawn from that summer stumbled away as I slithered out the way I came in.

Nobody was there.

That was a dream. Days later I found the bag sodden and the branches bowed with rain. It was a one night stand.

They never came back.