I felt myself a pure part of the abyss / I wheeled with the stars, my heart broke loose on the wind.
I love spring. I know it as soon as I see it—as soon as I woke up this morning, looked outside and saw the sunlight streaming in through the window, bright as beaten gold.
Below me, the fields of Susurro roll out to the horizon. I can’t hear it, but I know a breeze is rushing through, because I see the long tawny grass swaying in the wind, rippling smooth as waves and flashing light-dark, light-dark as it rolls. But it’s not all gold now, the way it was last week. Now the grass is speckled with bright flowers, tulips blooming in pink and red and purple, so vibrant I feel like I’m buzzing when I look at them, swaying in clumps of acrylic color.
I gasp when I see them, pressing my forehead to the window so I can look closer. No, I’m not imagining things: seemingly overnight, my home has turned into a fairytale. The sky is a clear and perfect blue. The field is a patchwork of flowers, so lush I can’t help but think Delumine’s king helped work on it, using his magic to pull up bloom after bloom from the ground. From here they are as small as bugs, but I see many of my homeland’s people wandering the festival, filling their baskets with tulips, tumbling through the fields; and as I watch the scene play out, my heart grows light and warm.
I am… happy. Giddy, even.
Where’s Aeneas? Our room is empty. I can hear the silence, settling over me like a warm blanket in the dusty sunlight. He must be gone on some adventure already; I glower at his messy bed, offended that he dared to run off without me.
But there’s no time to waste. The day is half-gone (Mother might scream if she knew how late I woke up today). Snow-white hair streaming loose behind me, I blow out of the bedroom and go racing down the stairs: so fast that the cook going up chastises me for it, so fast that I hear a screech when I hit the floor and go darting off to find him. I want to go way up to the top of the castle, stand on the parapet and look at the flowers with him; I want to do the things normal kids do.
She finds him in the small courtyard on the side of the estate, where the pine trees create a quiet alcove. Aeneas kneels before the small statue of Vespera at the center of the courtyard, where the sunlight streaks him in the slender shadows of pine needles. In his mind he repeats the virtues of Terrastella, a sort of mantra: Modesty. Empathy. Caution. They are words one of the priests told him to recite, again and again, to encourage control of his magic. However, Aeneas finds the task difficult this morning—his attention keeps straying to other thoughts. He thinks of Elliana, and how he would like to take her to the tulip festival—and he thinks of his mother, and how he cannot stand how sad she has been. Her sadness feels more unbearable than his own. Aeneas thinks, also, of how loud the birds are in the courtyard, and how if the priests truly want him to meditate, they should let him go elsewhere, where its quiet—
Aeneas!
He jumps, surprised. Aeneas is often the early riser of the two, and did not expect to see her until breakfast—but he turns around, grateful for a reprieve from the chore. He smiles. “Hilde!” It does not take much encouragement for Aeneas to abandon his position of prayer and trot to where she stands at the opening of the estate. “You’re up awful early,” he teases, and snaps the tip of his wing playfully at her haunch. “Where you looking for me?”
Aeneas casts a glance over his shoulder, distastefully, to the courtyard he spends far too much time in. "Please," he whispers, in the voice of a conspirator. "Save me, Hilde. Let's go do something fun."
i am throwing my anchor back into the seas of history, men who give birth to their children in the middle of a cold night, women who go to war with daggers in their belts
I felt myself a pure part of the abyss / I wheeled with the stars, my heart broke loose on the wind.
I would like to say it isn’t true, but I know: my brother has the worst of it.
Everything, I mean. Or almost everything. He is my mother’s firstborn son, and he lives with the terrible knowledge that one day he might be king. Somehow he looks just like both of them, and I don’t think he could ever get away with saying he is not their child. Perhaps the worst things is his ergokinesis, an offshoot of my father’s magic which contains all of its power and none of its nuance. I know that must be a heavy burden to carry. Of course, there is still a part of me that envies him for being magical at all, especially because he is magical the way my father was, and sometimes I worry that that magic—what Aeneas has of it—is the only thing left of him in our world.
Don’t I deserve something of his? To keep for myself?
But then I see my brother like this—on his knees with his head down like he has done something terribly, terribly wrong, when I know his whole being is dedicated to goodness—and whatever jealousy I feel is pushed out by relief, that I don’t have to carry that weight.
He jumps when I call his name. Despite myself, I let out a little laugh. (His focus amazes me. The only thing I can ever get myself so entranced in is watching Sitri braid my mane in the mirror: three over two, one over two, three over one… it is always very early in the morning when she does my hair, and the halo of light around her head is always rose-blush and gold. This scene is the only thing I’ve ever fixated on.)
“Of course I was,” I answer, in a tone of fake hurt, as if I’m offended he would think I was looking for anyone else. Really we don’t spend any more time together than the average pair of siblings—maybe even less, between all the classes and fancy dinners—but we are still twins. I don’t think there’s ever been a time I wasn’t, in some secret way, looking for him.
I giggle again at his tone when he leans in close to me, as if he is a conspirator agreeing the betray his side in battle. “I was thinking we could go to the festival. If you’re not too busy doing… um… whatever thrilling things it is you’re doing.”
![[Image: hilde_pix_f.gif]](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/456101258424483840/792280247688101918/hilde_pix_f.gif)
