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Wildflowers - Reverie - May 09, 2023
Days passed and Lestan did not return, in spite of his promise to visit daily.
Reverie's subsequent spiral was a quick and wild-burning thing. He had gotten hurt, he had gotten lost, he had found someone else, he — and the list went on. She flipped hourly between panic, rage, and a numb sort of acceptance, but hid it well from @Everett; the vibe she projected was perhaps best described as a little moody. Her brother's presence was her saving grace, ultimately. She even cried to him once or twice about Lestan and his broken promise.
She would have quieted eventually, but the stress of it all took its toll on her failing body. The first time she began to bleed in Everett's presence, she had looked to him fearfully and, before he could say a word, begged him never to speak of it. To her, to anyone. She clutched her wood-and-grass token as if it might save her.
Reverie promised in the same breath that she could fix it, if he would only watch Blossom for a time.
You must touch divinity.
Divinity. Had she ever bothered with such thoughts? It was true that religion had once ruled her life, but Reverie had bent only to the fear of it all, and in the absence of reasons to be afraid she had quickly discarded her belief. Yet the water still called to her like a song without end, and the birds went quiet for her, and the sky shed tears for her. She did not know what it meant.
Divinity. What did that mean? To be divine was to be a god, and Reverie could never be that; would never want to be. But that wasn't quite what the woman had said, was it? She only had to touch divinity. Touch a god. Reverie was not certain there was a god, any god at all! She mulled these thoughts as she parted from Everett's company, leaving him with her daughter.
She'd believed in Mother Rain and Father Fire, once. She'd thought there were rules, that the world made sense even if it was cruel and she did not like it, but that image had crumbled with age and with so many betrayals. Coming here was almost crueler, in a way; finding that everything she thought she knew mattered not at all. Finding gaps in her memory and certainties in her thoughts that had seemingly no explanation. Knowing things without really knowing them at all.
Reverie eventually found the plant, wondering now at what she would have done if she didn't already know roughly where to look. Maybe that had been the point, and the woman had hoped she would fail. She did have a dilemma now, though: which part of the plant was she meant to eat? In the end she settled on the green part, nibbling at it for a little while until her mouth felt as if it was on fire.
That didn't seem right.
But the panic never came. Reverie stood rather calmly, and after a time she began to wander. Her tongue didn't burn so much, really. She felt okay — no, more than that, she felt wonderful. The sky was bright and beautiful, the clouds turning to twisting silver prisms that glinted with subtle rainbow colors. For a long while she only watched the sky as she wandered, and contemplated the concept of divinity. The scene changed all around her, but she didn't notice until she found herself sitting in a patch of wildflowers.
That was when Rose came to her; the vision was wavering and too-bright, a product of her mind more than anything she could have ingested. To Reverie it felt more real than anything ever had. She tried to speak, but found that she could not. Rose only shook her head and smiled, but even so she seemed to hear her thoughts. "You know where I came from," she whispered in the voice of the trees, the ferns, the flowers.
The Garden, Reverie thought, and knew immediately that this name was wrong. A child's comprehension of something far too complex to be truly understood. "The flower world," Rose murmured to her. "And there are others, Reverie. You'll know them all in time. But never forget the flowers, okay?"
Reverie only blinked, and the vision was gone. All around her the flowers began to swirl and split and meld and dance. She felt them brush against her fur, cool like drops of rain. Her eyes closed slowly, and she remembered something: Daylily; a flower that blooms anywhere, but only for a day. Only for the sun. She would not forget the flowers, not ever.
When Reverie returned to Blossom and Everett, many hours later, she was calmer. Contemplative. Thinking endlessly on the nature of gods and flowers and the sun.