05-28-2021, 06:15 PM
she looks like sleep to the freezing
And this, the natural progression of things.
She wakes one morning and knows that she can never return to Tephra, the den of sisters that await her there.
It is this she has waited her whole life for.
The ice she had found in the darkness. How gently it had crept across her skin, where it belonged. She had known then that it was only a matter of time. (And perhaps there is some level of grief in her heart -- if there is a heart left at all -- when she thinks that she should have gone to say goodbye, that she should have told them a time was coming when she would not be able to come home.)
But she had always been the coldest of the four, hadn’t she? If any of them were likely to leave, it was Camellia.
Now there is nothing left of Camellia but ice, glacial blue. It pulses and cracks when she moves. She is winter personified and, finally, she feels whole. (Though it is painful when the ice cracks and breaks, when it chips, when the skin underneath becomes brittle and chapped.) Because she can pull the snow around her, exhale blizzards, relax into the freezing. When the heat becomes too much, she can call on the cold.
Because no longer is it that she only belongs to winter but now it belongs to her, too.
Now, as she moves through the meadow, a flurry of snow follows in her wake. She thinks of seeking out the land of ice but, for the moment, she is content here in the meadow where she can blot out the sun with the bitter sting of a sudden blizzard.
She wakes one morning and knows that she can never return to Tephra, the den of sisters that await her there.
It is this she has waited her whole life for.
The ice she had found in the darkness. How gently it had crept across her skin, where it belonged. She had known then that it was only a matter of time. (And perhaps there is some level of grief in her heart -- if there is a heart left at all -- when she thinks that she should have gone to say goodbye, that she should have told them a time was coming when she would not be able to come home.)
But she had always been the coldest of the four, hadn’t she? If any of them were likely to leave, it was Camellia.
Now there is nothing left of Camellia but ice, glacial blue. It pulses and cracks when she moves. She is winter personified and, finally, she feels whole. (Though it is painful when the ice cracks and breaks, when it chips, when the skin underneath becomes brittle and chapped.) Because she can pull the snow around her, exhale blizzards, relax into the freezing. When the heat becomes too much, she can call on the cold.
Because no longer is it that she only belongs to winter but now it belongs to her, too.
Now, as she moves through the meadow, a flurry of snow follows in her wake. She thinks of seeking out the land of ice but, for the moment, she is content here in the meadow where she can blot out the sun with the bitter sting of a sudden blizzard.
camellia
