The Hunter

The hunter knelt in the clearing. “I have come,” he announced, “without my tricks and traps, without my gun and my knife. I lay them down now, and renounce them forevermore.” The weapons fell with soft thumps into the mossy ground.

“I am without my steed, my dogs, my armor. I come to you shorn.” Sweat glistened on his bald pate, speckled here and there with flecks of red.

“I am naked before you. I cast it all away as rubbish. I come to you born anew.” He fell silent. He waited.

But she would not appear to him again.