River’s words return in an echo, rippling the serene stillness of the moment. She thinks she sees the sky shiver and Natalie wonders how she’d never let herself be happy with solitary moments like these before. She had spent so long chasing, scratching and piling on new tacks for some semblance of an identity. Spent so long trying to calm the rapid buzz in her chest—smiled so hard and never let it light her eyes. They’re all built on broken pasts which they shovel into shaky foundations of lives they’re building today, and most succeed, she thinks. And if they don’t, they could’ve fooled her. Natalie’s been quivering and shaking on her own flimsy glass beams for a while now, and maybe it was time to let them shatter and break. Maybe they would cut, maybe she would bleed—but she’d be left with the sharp white scent of bleach; a starched, clean slate.
The septic smell reminded her of times forgotten, it was a threatening waft. Empty, wiped clean—no blood in her ledger anymore. This was the chance, she knew that. Natalie had all the tools at her disposal, she could be a new woman if she wanted. No longer a cripple to her thoughts; the only person whose forgiveness she needed was hers. But it was never that easy, she’d never been that brave.
So Natalie would break herself down one by one, take apart the glued on shards of a Natalie far forgotten until she was stripped bare to her core. Until there wasn’t much to pretend, not much to hide—and she would go from there. She would be everything she had never let herself be, everything she had never dared to be.
Nat had never wanted to be the old woman stuck in her past, the one who would hush people from uttering her real age every time the candles on her birthday cake spelled out a larger, and larger number. The woman who would massage gels into her soft skin in hopes of erasing the etches and pulls of time’s embrace. Natalie had been set when she’d decided she would age gracefully, set before she even knew just what it would mean. But she’d forgotten that promise when the stars had fallen. She’d shriveled and curled back into a bud, retracting and holding onto any root of memory that reminded her of something solid—because hell, now the ground was shaking under her too and the sky was cracking and leaking broken stars. She’d retracted into a bud, folding her petals and curling in while keeping the deep blush—keeping the smiles, the jokes, the memories of a time forgotten, the weight of a pain long gone. She was meant to bloom and she had failed, but she wasn’t high and mighty enough to not let herself have the small pleasure of ‘better late than never’.
Starting over now? Better late than never. Better now when she owed nothing to anyone, than never. Better now before her life stretched behind her, than never. Better now with little people around to be collateral damage, than never.
River is not reprimanding or degrading, a touch of genuine concern coloring her words. Nat smiles in return as she tilts the stick in her hand and considers it, a slow nod following. “Yeah.” She agrees. There are worse things in the world, there are other times more suited to care. “Can’t find the energy to deny myself now. One smoke won’t kill me,” she says. And even if it does, if it does, it would not come at a more opportune time. A time when she was being most honest and leaving the least behind.
She turns back to face the blonde, her gaze landing still on a beautiful sight as an easy smile settles on her lips. It’s light and breezy, and it doesn’t feel heavy at all. She glances down her frame before taking another drag and letting out, light and breezy as the smile and the cold night’s wind—but her eyes stop at the gleaming red flowing from her hand. Nat perches forward, eyes squinting—unsure whether the blinking stars above were playing with her sight. But the red is stark against River’s paler complexion, and Natalie’s gaze reaches for River’s again. “River…I, I think you’re bleeding.” And her hand is reaching for her companion’s in attempt to assure she’s right, though hoping she’s not.
River laid rapture at her feet the moment she stepped, feet bare and toes moving between dewy grass. There were some rules, set in place in this place that thought itself entitled to governance. And the real girl had swarmed herself at its walls and knocked them down with a careless breath so simply that it had hardly remembered her ghost -- let along recognized that its authority was null. Unwilling. Unworthy.
Something weak that spread itself thin in high, shaky vibrato notes and asked 'Will you allow me charge?'
And she had said no. And she had meant nothing beyond the 'n' and the 'o' and the way they had formed together into some solid something at the leaving of her lips. The way they had tasted like finality, and how finality had been something of wrecked rubble in soot stuck to the bottom of someone's shoe. They were her sounds and hers alone and no world and no system and no man could repeat them back at her and feel their effects rumbling in his belly. She'd counted to thirty-eight and breathed in cracked night sky air, and stepped.
And with each footprint breaking pattern of perfectly-laid grass, she planted seeds stuck beneath the heels of her feet and buried into the ground. She'd remembered what it felt like to walk and to feel empty space leak out from the thick skin there like glass had been beneath them and glass had cut through her and she had embraced the feeling because it had been her own doing. She had leaked and leaked and leaked out that which diluted her, leaving it in pretty strands on the grass until she was pure. And filled. And easy to find in the space inside of her leg. In the language of scars inside her mouth. In the brief moments. The waiting. The now.
This now felt beautiful. Held her up so high and close to her sky that she had not remembered how lonely it was without her loving it so. That only thing that she knew those words into some concept of reality: this sky, all open and waiting and completely her own. And this girl was here speaking and she knew that it must matter or she would not have allowed it to interrupt, but she lifted her hand nevertheless. Dropped glass shard to the ground with what she had because this fountain in her hand had been enough. And she could tell.
Her finger rippled the sky broken through until stars of her own appeared, slow. Wandering. Finding their home in a meandering gaze as her fingers traced them along their constellation. Found them their path -- something new that she had not drawn before.
"Do you know what will kill you?" Because her mouth sounded so sure. Because River had never bothered to ask her sky or her death what thing would bring the end to these that suffered and survived. She dipped her clean fingers of her left hand into the blood of her right. And she turned clockwise. Studied her canvas.
"I know what will kill me." Some lanky reaper with too much feeling in his gut. Yet not enough to not leave. "It isn't this blood." Her smile felt weak in the dark, but she meant it as a thank you.
