Leaves fall around her like coloured raindrops; red and yellow, they settle in the small of her back, and she wonders if eventually they’ll bury her alive if she is still for long enough. If it were possible she might lean into her fate, she might, on a whim of superstition, hold her breath for fear that the ebb and flow of her ribs would destroy it. Because in the veins of these leaves she sees the roads she could have taken when instead she stood still. Because in the colours of these leaves, red and yellow, she sees sunsets instead.
Because she has spent all of her existence trying to be a part of hers.
Because she has spent all of her existence trying to be a part of hers, but she can’t anymore.
Because she is so beautiful, but her heart is so fragile.
And she knows that her resolve is as fickle as the leaves on the small of her back. They lift with the wind, like Spyndle lifted with her whim. If Cordis asked the world of her, she would have found a way to take it. She might still, because she is not as strong as her words pretend to be, or as quiet as the leaves across her back are swearing. She is capable of tangling. She is capable of folding. She is capable of breaking.
She isn’t wild anymore.
She’s proven it. She has already, tangled and folded and broke, because she wants to be loved so badly and he held her like he didn’t mean to let her go. Of course she couldn’t stay. Of course she left him, too. It is easy to leave things, she’s learned. It’s far harder to stay.
So, she lets the leaves build cities on her bones. So, she closes her dark eyelashes tight against the tops of her cheekbones. So, she holds her breathe and remembers the way their skin felt touching hers.
spyndle
you are the prettiest thing that I will ever know