Juniper
so i wait for you like a lonely house
First, she thinks, she's missed the swamp the most. Horribly, wretchedly, completely with every fibre beating in her sparrow-boned body, every cell screaming for the soft touch of the humidity that wraps her round and round and round like the vines on the trees that are twisted and strong. Second, she knows it is a long way still before she would reach home; oh, but adventure awaits and she does not shy away, how could she when it begs and begs for her to hold it, to taste it, to love it as dearly as she loves the mosquitos and snakes that would rather fight than give up their life? Third, she realizes that she is not alone, not at all, and never would be so long as she lives and breathes and moves, and the place she is the most likely to be the least alone is home, home, home in the Tinea Swamp that seems to buzz when she walks over the first fronds struggling to stay alive.
Winter holds much of the continent, grappling with Veneror, holding tight to Vitreus, skipping through the Illustor Meadows. Oh, but an ocean does not gobble up snow and demand more. An ocean melts and melts and melts that which would fall. Her swamp is too warm, too full of life that is teeming in every branch and pool of water and copse of trees, to ever let the snow fall so fully into it and blanket her world in white.
Juniper is the palest thing she's ever known.
Snow does not touch her skin, oh but it did, it did, it did when she went to the lake to skate and dance with Anandi. It tickled her sides and made her cheeks blush (but she would have blushed readily, easily, wholly) more than they already had.
Juniper did not mind, does not, but loves her swamp the most, loves that it is not cold.
Home, she thinks, should never be cold.
So she walks forward, not quick nor slow, high-stepping tangled roots eager to trap another's ankles but not hers, and delving into its depths without any fear to grace her heart. To be fearful is to have doubt, to let shadows walk in the daylight, to know darkness when she should know only light. And she does. Juniper knows light. Light is Moira Tonnerre who glared at her when she looked at Asterion. Light is the love her sisters give her to. Light is her heart given wings when El Rey sings and croons and traces poems into the valleys of her spine.
Today, as she goes home, there is no room for fear, no room for doubt, no room for anything but anticipation, but elation, but the wind (so warm and soft) as it blows gently, gently through her dove-grey wings.
Juniper aches for the temple as much as she aches for a body pressed hard against hers.
notes. A LATE START BUT I AM SO TERRIBLY EXCITED
