Larke does not feel like she has roots.
She was born in Loess, transferred to the East, and then moved here when her parents had eventually reconciled. So much of her young years have been a blur—so much of it has been lost within the details. She doesn’t know why so much of her home is burned and she certainly doesn’t know that there was a version of her mother before the woman that she is now—the woman with flowers in her hair and magic that sometimes seeps into her eyes, turning the hazel from greens and browns to molten gold.
But because she doesn’t know, she doesn’t mourn what might have been her childhood.
Instead, she just loves her twin brother and her other siblings. She loves her father who is different and yet the same as when she was born. She loves her mother. And she loves each land that she has been lucky enough to call home—but this one especially. Even with the scorched earth and the smoke, she loves the tiny marks of rehabilitation. The greenery that has begun to sprout through the hardened magma.
She is walking through it today—admiring the handiwork of her mother—when she spots the boy. Intrigued, she begins to make her way toward him. She is no longer the tiny girl of her youth, but she is still clearly a child; the wisteria in her mane is soft and falls ivory amongst the endless black of her, and her sage eyes are soft as she walks up to him. “Hello,” her voice is breathy and soft, a mark of her usually reserved nature as she looks at him. “My name is Larke. Who are you?”
as the vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet
@[midnight]