thick black lines; Eilonwy
When something is done growing, are they now dying? A little leaf settles, shaking, into palm of Eilonwy’s hand; it’s color sun-kissed face down against the young woman’s skin. It was the pale underside, carved with lines that she fixated on. This is the line where I first sprouted, I bloomed here a few months ago, tasting the air of Spring, and then I danced in the Summer as a leaf. Each vein whispers to her, whilst the leaves still clinging to life on the tree above jingle with laughter. Eilonwy likes Spring, it is when the world wakes back up and colors overtake. It was when this little leaf lived, but now it has gotten colder. “Would you like to live with me? I’ll put you somewhere warm, and keep you even after you a dry and wrinkled.” Even after you are dead, is what she means. Each exchange sees the leaf a little weaker, it’s soft high-pitch trembling in Eilonwy’s ear. I would like to go with you, yes...the voice trembles. But I don’t know if I will be living. That line, that short one, that’s the last I grew. When something is done growing, are they now dying? Eilonwy pulls her legs up into her chest, and holds the leaf close to her chest. “Don’t be scared if you won’t be, some of you is alive. In the veins and notches of that tree where you came from,” she bit down. Why be sad for a leaf? Was she speaking the the fey that lived in the leaves-- like those old stories her mother had told her? Maybe she would end up like her mother, taking to thin air and looking sad all the time. “I think so, little buddy,” she finally answers the leaf. “When you stop growing..stop changing and drifting. I think that’s when you die. Doesn’t matter if your body’s still breathing.” Are you still growing? It asks her. She has so many black lines tattooed into her branches and fingers, each a mark of someone that has stopped growing-- that cannot grow anymore. Eilonwy passes a finger over the bands on her forearm and swallows down the lump in her throat, “I have these because I am growing..... these lines are for people that helped me grow.” I grew another line when I met my neighbor. I grew another when I sang in the rain. There was so much rain. Um... Could you make a line for me? I don't have the strength to anymore. But I want to grow one more time, because you've offered to help me. “Yeah, I'll get a line for you. One more line so that you can grow with me after you go, and I'll keep you with the other flowers." She would keep this leaf somewhere in a book beside an alabaster lily from a garden memorial, a wilted rose from a crown worn at a lantern festival-- beside the first sprig of a blue wisteria from the first blooms of Spring. “And I'll visit this tree so that if leaves get reborn too, maybe we'll meet again in the spring.” Thank you, friend. The leaf whispers softly, fading out into winter. But I hope, maybe, next time I am a tree. Then I can stay longer, and give you all the leaves you want. It isn’t shaking anymore, the last beats of life leaving it. When Spring comes again...
“Hey, kid. Been a while,” No’vindere says from behind the counter she had leaned herself upon. The elven woman is covered in her own black lines, much more than Eilowny. “I need a line,” Eilonwy says, her cheery tone all twisted up with grief. Grief over a dead leaf. No’Vindere knows no one ever comes to see her with good news. She is responsible for all those little lines all over her family’s bodies. “Who was it? I..didn’t hear.” Silently, she prays that this isn’t to do with Eilithe’s extended absence. “Not.. that kind of line,” Eilonwy said, sliding into the chair and awaiting No’Vindere to ready her tools. The younger elf doesn’t allow the confusion to linger on No’Vi’s face long. “From up here,” she gestures to the pit of her left arm, “to here,” and slides her fingers all the way down to her wrist. “Both sides.” “Kid..” The woman protests, it’s irregular, it isn’t traditional. But something in Eilonwy’s face stops her from pressing further. “Sit still. Tell me when you need a break.” For hours they’d be there, the artist working in silence save for the soft clicks of a wooden mallet tapping a long needle into flesh. Eilonwy’s head remained turned away from No’Vindere-- brows knit tightly with discomfort. Growing was painful, but this would be her Grow Line. It’d run through every new band she added to her branches and remind her to keep moving, keep changing, keep drifting. Her flesh would not be as her mother’s, nor her grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Not a monument to the dead winter, but to the hope for spring to return again. [leaf written by @bad-rper ]
