even after they have been stepped on
In the silence, the hidden garden seems to laugh. He can hear it in the way the leaves shiver against one another, in the sound of the water parting when a fish rises to take a breath. Around them the world goes on, and on, and on, and life reigns in all its tangled, wild growth.
This is what the roses become, he thinks to himself when he looks out across the still waters, when there is no one around telling it what to be instead. And there was beauty in it still.
He does not look at her when she finally speaks, not at first. He is still looking out across the water, into the darkness of the overgrowth lying in wait on the other side of the pond. It feels as though it is waiting for him, as if every shadow growing dark and deep were a hand reaching out to him. If Mesnyi were not there, he might have been reaching back to it.
“Maybe so.” There is nothing to fill the space between his words. No wind-song, or crickets, or laughter. There is only the endless reach of the shadows.
He turns to her, the mare turned silver in the moonlight, and regards her quietly. “Will you stay awhile?” he is not sure, for a moment, if he is asking her or her reflection. And when he stops to think about it, the difference between the two seems to grow unfathomably larger. “I don’t even know your name yet, and I think I could use the company.”
And he smiles, for the first time since being woken by the silence.
@Mesnyi
"Speaking."
