In the early hours of morning the sky is still rolled out above her like black velvet. The darkness permeates the air and envelopes everything; cradles it. Here and there the starlight breaks through in fragments, illuminating wildflowers and landmarks alike in fragile bursts. Eilidh lingers at the meadow’s edge, bathing in the river and the moonlight because she cannot bring herself to look at her mother’s grave anymore today.
She’s still thinking about the soft cheek that she used to kiss, and tired of wondering how long it took the earthworms to bring Moselle back to dirt.
She’s been here before, too.
Of course.
With Moselle, just before the last time. Though much of the meadow had changed over the years she remembers the oak with the twisted trunk that stands to her right; it had seen them then, bathing in river water and sunlight alike, witnessed all of it - the heat of the sun on their backs, and the way that daughters body fit perfectly cradled against mothers, and how when the both craned their necks at the snap of a twig on the shoreline they were nearly mirrored images. Briefly, Eilidh wishes that she could reach inside and pull those memories free and keep them for herself, but she wonders how many of the bad ones live there, too.
She was so small, and Moselle a god in her own right, both literally and figuratively. She’d looked into her large, soft eyes and said: “You are my light in the darkness, Eilidh.”
And she was trying to be that still, but it was harder somehow.
Because the problem with loving something so absolutely is learning to let it go when the time comes. Eilidh is afraid to let go, even a little - like letting go might mean Moselle was somehow less important, that it might mean closing her eyes and forgetting how to conjure the lines of her face in recollection. Moselle was the only home she’s ever known, and letting go feels like losing everything.
The river is lazy tonight, slow enough to reflect the stars, and so Eilidh watches galaxies drift past her into an eventual ocean.
And she holds on, with white knuckles and tightly clenched fists.
⤜ nobody's watching, drowning in words so sweet ⤛
@[Lydia]