blood orange.
the woods are familiar to juno. a second home. a redemption. she remembers the paths that trace the leylines like lattice work. she knows the plants that bloom and rot underfoot. she knows the creeping vines that strangle the trees and the thick, twisting roots that sink deep into the soil, feed on the energies of something deep and dark. it calls out to her even now, that energy deep beneath her feet. she wants to shuck off her shoes and dig her toes into rich earth.
but this is a party and not a midnight pilgrimage beneath the moonlight, and such activities would be ill-advised done around the uninitiated. those who see her as the reclusive scientist up in the forest, or who remember her as the pale and sickly thing she had once been. gaunt and weary. those who remember the posters of her face up around the town - have you seen this girl?
sometimes, juno feels that there was a changing, that day. that she had gone down beneath the surface of the water and another girl had resurfaced. someone else, who was not quite her. someone stronger, certainly. she wonders if she lives on the borrowed time of the soul of another. every year she’d lived, as a child, had been a blessing. another year of conquest over some terrible and unnamed affliction. she’d been baffling to doctors even prior to the miracle of her cure.
as the sun plunges towards the horizon the sky behind and between the trees is painted in reds and oranges and pinks. it’s a cacophony of color that beams across them, these gathered revelers, and she’s not sure how she feels with this upset, this interloping on her sacred spaces. she pushes her hands into her pockets, the check shirt thrown over her shoulders falling past the frayed edges of dark denim shorts. it’s a thin barrier against the sudden chill, and she turns to the offered drinks to assuage it. as she approaches, there is a familiar figure there, one that brings a wry smile to her lips. a little bit of friendly animosity never hurt anyone, she thinks, and she makes sure to brush against his side as she approaches the table, wraps her fingers around a glass. “hello, are you here chasing the next pulitzer prize winning story? towns people have a party?” she sweeps a hand through the air before them, as if to illustrate the headline.
@inhopa festival event