where there once was love [mast]

[Camelia]

the ghost of a girl that i want to be most
the shell of a girl i used to know well

She can only think one thing: this used to be home. Used to be, is, was, will be – the Gates is a place holding both fond and unwanted memories. It is a place of her childbirth, her childhood, her adulthood, her job as a parent, and her disappearance. It is a place she survived and lived and loved, and it always will be these things.

Her heart is not tied down primarily to the nature or physical things of her homeland. Her heart aches for the things – the memories, the daydreams, the thoughts, the hopes, the wishes, the knowledge – that the Gates embodies. Her parents (with their achingly gentle yet comforting love for each other), her adopted siblings (with their struggling stories and unconquered endings), her Mother Tree (with its swaying branches ready to envelope her in a lulling hug), her woodland friends (the doe watching her from a distance, the birds chirping around her shoulder, and the friendly squirrels), and her Mast (her childhood best friend and her forever best friend).

She once used to govern the Gates. Once she used to walk around her kingdom with a crown of flowers tangled into her chocolate locks and murmur to the breeze and whisper to her kingdom-mates about life. Although her kingdom was quiet and gentle, it was also peaceful. It seems like such a lifetime ago, when it had really only been four years.

This Gates is not peaceful. She can sense it in the wind, in the lack of life in the tree tops, in the startling absence of the Mother Tree. Her heart breaks – for her kingdom, for her homeland, for the nature around her, for her dear lover somewhere. Something has happened, and recently, for she can smell the leftover ash of smoke and fire in the air. It brings back memories of the disaster, but she shoves it away.

She doesn’t rush into the scene with panic though (her years of training as a princess and then experience as a queen have taught her to be against such things) and instead grieves quietly and silently before entering the Gates. It is a long process, but she knows she must reach Mast soon – goodness knows he would be upset about the Mother Tree – and she’s also curious to know what happened.

So stuffing the broken bits and pieces of her grieving soul away, she steps into her homeland.

camelia