like flowers
we can also choose to bloom
we can also choose to bloom
B
oth of them are rendered down to their individual pieces now. Bits of bone and blood and muscle held together by their magic, their immortality barely holding together a thing that wants only to fall apart. He wonders how many pieces of themselves they’ve lost — how many parts they’ve lost along the way, all those chips and tears and fragmented parts of their soul they were too busy to notice slipping away. How many had they given away when they were learning to be brave, and fierce, and wild, without knowing they were only so many threads away from unraveling entirely? He had not realized at the time that they were changing the shape of him, changing the sound of his name, of his heart, of his soul. He had not stopped to ask what the cost would be —
he hadn’t thought it mattered, at the time.
But oh, now he wonders if there had been another way. More fireflies are gathering along his cracks and oh, it makes him wonder what it would feel like to be made whole again. If he could have chosen which pieces to give away, if he could have fit the rest of them back together into a different shape.
The thought is what makes him smile, and beg those wilted flowers waiting in their bones to rise, rise, rise and bloom, because there is still a part of him that remembers how to be fragile.
And a part of him wonders, when he’s pressed cheek to cheek, rib to rib, hip to hip with Isra, and fireflies fill the hollow spaces in their hearts, if he could teach her how to be soft again. Or maybe it would be her teaching him, or the fireflies and moonlight that gild her horn in gold and silver. Maybe they could find those pieces of themselves or forge new ones from the stars that did not grant their wishes. Maybe it was better that way — to make their own dreams come true instead of relying on already-dead things burning up thousands of miles away.
She could not save them all but oh, she saved more than their gods ever did.
“But there are thousands whose hearts are learning how to beat for themselves, and you taught them the song to,” he whispers back. When he closes his eyes he can almost see it, that distant shore with its city burning (don’t all burning cities look the same?) But he knows the look in her eyes — the look that shatters him, that chips away more pieces of himself that fall away into the river, and he wonders why the fireflies aren’t chasing them down.
Again he begs the flowers.
Again he tries to catch the pieces of himself before they drown.
Again he presses a kiss to her cheek and feels his soul whispering to her’s, feels his heart trembling, and hopes to see her smile reach her eyes this time.
He breathes out against her skin, and there are a thousand things he wants to tell her. There are a thousand things that have changed since she left their shores, a thousand ways in which he has wilted, and withered, and rooted, and bloomed again. And yet he says none of it — he doesn’t tell her about the blood, and the winter that felt as though it would last forever, or how he’s afraid this winter may be even longer than the last. It’s there in the scars of the trees for her to read; and yet —
And yet it’s not the violence that feels important. It’s what they carved with it.
“Come and see.”
He sees the monster lying just beneath her skin — it looks like his. But his smile still feels almost-soft again, when he presses into her skin and turns back to the festival, where his home is learning again how to breathe and sing.
@isra "speaks" <3
