02-21-2021, 11:03 PM
She is on the edge of sleep when the call finds her and builds a home inside her head. The plea is so faint, so weary, and it wakes an ache inside her chest that makes it hard to breathe past. She remembers the story her mother had told when Flower was just a girl, of a time when plague had darkened Beqanna from shore to shore and there was only death to look forward to. The fairies had asked for help then too, and Wonder had answered the call with every bit of heart and hope she had left.
And it had worked, the world had healed.
It is why Flower rises slowly, disentangling herself from the large red deer resting beside her. He rises with her, but with a gentle shake of her head and a glance sideways to where Warden rests in the dark nearby, she tells him, <I>stay here, please.</i> The stag looks offended, close to refusal, but he must see in her golden eyes the pain she feels in her heart, and he doesn’t argue. It is one thing to make this choice for herself, but she will not make it for him, too. She cannot trust that his compulsion to follow her is anything more than just that, a compulsion.
She finds her parents next, together as always because Wonder cannot stand to be apart from Nightlock for long, and she knows that Wonder had not heard the call because she is still curled around Leandre and beside the slumbering skeleton Flower knows to be her father. So many of them are like this now, reduced to bare bones whether they want to be or not - though none seem quite as hurt by it as Nightlock does. She is glad for a chance to go, glad for a chance to help heal what’s been broken. Glad that this time it was not her mother who heard the call. It hurts to watch the ways Nightlock fractures with each passing day that never knows the sun, but it would be nothing like the unraveling that would happen if Wonder never came home.
Flower leaves them - leaves Birch and Warden, leaves her parents and her siblings, and the choice not to say goodbye is an easy one. They would never let her leave, she is glass and fragile, made to be broken by almost everything around her. To her this call is little more than a death knell, but that is what makes her the perfect choice. She is already impermanent, already doomed just by existing, and the fact that she has known this her whole life makes it easier to face whatever comes for the sake of those she loves. She is a better choice than Wonder who has a family and is so needed. Better than Nightlock for the same reason. Even her siblings have futures to look forward to, lives to find and hold fast to, families to build. None of them are like her.
She is full of cracks and fissures, and broken chips cover her glass body like unrecognizable constellations no one would ever want to know. Only Warden had ever tried, and though it hurts most to leave him without saying goodbye, she reminds herself he’s always known he wouldn’t have forever with her. It is better for it to happen now before he has a chance to finish falling, better before they find themselves wanting a family.
She does not realize that there is already life growing inside her, impossibly.
The journey to the mountain is long and lonely, longer than it needs to be but she is careful to avoid the beasts that roam like squabbling dragons over newfound treasure. It is the only way she has survived any of this so far, being quiet and careful, being invisible. Maybe it helps that she is glass and not flesh, that she lives but only just barely. Maybe the creatures don’t find her worth their time, and she can hardly blame them. But she has never come face to face with one. Tephra had been somewhat spared from the deep black that settled over the other places, what with the gullies full of magma burning hot and bright like veins across the warm rock. They made pockets of warmth and pale orange light, and she and Warden had picked a home near one.
She is relieved when the mountain looms suddenly before her, sound disappearing behind peaks she cannot see in a world so dark. There are others here, and for an instant she feels impossibly small and unimportant, wishing she had let Birch come with her to chase away the lonely fear that wraps around her rubied skin just as the shadows do. But it is better that he stayed, better that he is safe inside Tephra where lanterns and lava breathe moments of light into the perpetual, starless dark. <i>I’m here.</i> She thinks, looking around at the faces nearest her, all unrecognizable, and then up the mountain. Fear prickles inside her, making her chest feel tight, but there is some amount of faith inside her too, and the same willingness her own mother had felt despite the weight of knowing the fate of a broken world rested on her shoulders. <i>I don’t know what you think I can do to help, but I promise I’ll try.</i>
And it had worked, the world had healed.
It is why Flower rises slowly, disentangling herself from the large red deer resting beside her. He rises with her, but with a gentle shake of her head and a glance sideways to where Warden rests in the dark nearby, she tells him, <I>stay here, please.</i> The stag looks offended, close to refusal, but he must see in her golden eyes the pain she feels in her heart, and he doesn’t argue. It is one thing to make this choice for herself, but she will not make it for him, too. She cannot trust that his compulsion to follow her is anything more than just that, a compulsion.
She finds her parents next, together as always because Wonder cannot stand to be apart from Nightlock for long, and she knows that Wonder had not heard the call because she is still curled around Leandre and beside the slumbering skeleton Flower knows to be her father. So many of them are like this now, reduced to bare bones whether they want to be or not - though none seem quite as hurt by it as Nightlock does. She is glad for a chance to go, glad for a chance to help heal what’s been broken. Glad that this time it was not her mother who heard the call. It hurts to watch the ways Nightlock fractures with each passing day that never knows the sun, but it would be nothing like the unraveling that would happen if Wonder never came home.
Flower leaves them - leaves Birch and Warden, leaves her parents and her siblings, and the choice not to say goodbye is an easy one. They would never let her leave, she is glass and fragile, made to be broken by almost everything around her. To her this call is little more than a death knell, but that is what makes her the perfect choice. She is already impermanent, already doomed just by existing, and the fact that she has known this her whole life makes it easier to face whatever comes for the sake of those she loves. She is a better choice than Wonder who has a family and is so needed. Better than Nightlock for the same reason. Even her siblings have futures to look forward to, lives to find and hold fast to, families to build. None of them are like her.
She is full of cracks and fissures, and broken chips cover her glass body like unrecognizable constellations no one would ever want to know. Only Warden had ever tried, and though it hurts most to leave him without saying goodbye, she reminds herself he’s always known he wouldn’t have forever with her. It is better for it to happen now before he has a chance to finish falling, better before they find themselves wanting a family.
She does not realize that there is already life growing inside her, impossibly.
The journey to the mountain is long and lonely, longer than it needs to be but she is careful to avoid the beasts that roam like squabbling dragons over newfound treasure. It is the only way she has survived any of this so far, being quiet and careful, being invisible. Maybe it helps that she is glass and not flesh, that she lives but only just barely. Maybe the creatures don’t find her worth their time, and she can hardly blame them. But she has never come face to face with one. Tephra had been somewhat spared from the deep black that settled over the other places, what with the gullies full of magma burning hot and bright like veins across the warm rock. They made pockets of warmth and pale orange light, and she and Warden had picked a home near one.
She is relieved when the mountain looms suddenly before her, sound disappearing behind peaks she cannot see in a world so dark. There are others here, and for an instant she feels impossibly small and unimportant, wishing she had let Birch come with her to chase away the lonely fear that wraps around her rubied skin just as the shadows do. But it is better that he stayed, better that he is safe inside Tephra where lanterns and lava breathe moments of light into the perpetual, starless dark. <i>I’m here.</i> She thinks, looking around at the faces nearest her, all unrecognizable, and then up the mountain. Fear prickles inside her, making her chest feel tight, but there is some amount of faith inside her too, and the same willingness her own mother had felt despite the weight of knowing the fate of a broken world rested on her shoulders. <i>I don’t know what you think I can do to help, but I promise I’ll try.</i>