Saxifage on the Wind
“I’ve been in love with you since the beginning.”
I whispered the words to myself as I looked out over the dunes, hand resting in an inner pocket of my vest where I kept a small slip of paper. It was barely the length and width of my finger, with the tiny, intricate handwriting of someone I once knew.
I’d met them in the heart of a mountain kingdom that I’d already forgotten the name of. A brilliant woman from one of the Night Clans up north, she’d been there as a guest to the king to do research. I’d taken up a side job collecting plant samples for her from a nearby valley, since I was going there anyways to collect herbs for my own medicinal practices. I didn’t actually meet her until after I’d returned to finish the delivery and get paid. I’d planned on continuing wandering west, before that day.
Her private rooms, converted mostly into lab space, with one corner still reserved for her bed, were on the lower levels of the castle. Normally, that area was reserved for guests the king wasn’t very interested in, or didn’t very much like. After visiting several times to ask her about her research, to watch her work, and take the opportunity to get to know someone from the Night Clans, I discovered she’d specifically asked to stay there; there was a huge balcony - more like a patio - that had enough space for her to cultivate several different kinds of plants to study their growth. Being lower in the castle and largely recessed into the stone, it also had less windows to let light in.
It took several days in a row of trying to visit in the afternoons and being turned away by a lack of response at the door for me to learn that she was actually awake during the night, and slept during the majority of the day. When I finally found the guts to ask why - a whole week into our quickly formed friendship - she straight up laughed at me. Apparently those of the Night Clan were incredibly sensitive to sunlight, due to the fact that they rarely got any sun, and they’d adapted to that thousands of years before global travel was common.
In that first week, and the many that followed, we became good friends. I called her Cat, in part because it was close to a shortened version of her full name, and because of her nocturnal and curious nature. We were constantly telling each other stories about our travels, things we’d learned in our research, and taking midnight walks outside the castle walls when the moon was full. Whether the grace and beauty was something I saw from the start, or attributed to her over time, I don’t know.
Before I knew it, I’d been in a kingdom I didn’t care about, in the home of a king I barely knew the name of, for months. It was almost the time of year that I was planning on returning home, to see my family and friends that I frequently left behind. It was a shock for me to realize I didn’t want to leave, because I didn’t want to leave Cat. If I left, there was a possibility she wouldn’t be there when I went back. She’d mentioned going back north.
I squinted up at the sky, curving above me like the petal of a giant blue iris. I couldn’t remember why the arguments had started, or when we’d begun holding grudges and attacking one another for the smallest things. I did remember that they made it easy to leave.
When I did, I never said goodbye, and I left most of my accumulated things behind in the interest of traveling light. The only new thing I took besides clothes was a catalog Cat had compiled of all of the plants she’d studied in her homeland, one of the first gifts she had given me. I didn’t open it again, however, until I’d been back in my family’s home village for a week. Almost a year since I had met Cat.
That was when I found the tiny scrap of paper, marking the page with an entry and sketch of dozens of tiny flowers, labeled “saxifage.” That was the nickname Cat had given me. At the time, I’d thought it was just some term of endearment in her mother tongue; it turned out, based on the notes in that entry, it was her favorite flower. And that slip of paper, the same as the one I now kept in my vest pocket, in handwriting that matched the rest of the entries, had said: “I’ve been in love with you since the beginning.”
North was an abstract location to me, somewhere on the other side of a desert, but I was headed there. Maybe I’d collect more knowledge on the other side of it, or discover civilizations and cultures I’d never experienced before. I hoped I’d find Cat.
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