Julrien Valebright

Evergreen

He’d written him again that day. Letters, stretching out into the Void, in dark ink and untidy scrawl. Crumpled up and cast into the sea; it was as close as they would ever get.

Like fireflies, on the coast of Eversong, caught between his hands. Dim light flickering between his fingers...there was nothing there when he looked inside. A spectre of himself, of what they were. And he was a long way away from nights like that.

The weeks had passed in highs and lows, tidal pulls all his own. Finally he found himself splayed out on unwashed sheets, staring into shadows whose language he didn’t know.

Lore, of course, was born knowing. It was as his mother tongue.

All that time… and maybe it was only a blip in his entire life, a single point in an entire constellation, tacked onto the ink-black sky. In a life made up of decades, not years, a fraction of that shouldn’t mean all that much. 

Tell it to his addict’s heart, the tatters of his aching veins.

All their work, and their laughter. Tears, and blood. Everything that happened was supposed to get them here. But ‘here’ was a funny, fickle thing. ‘Here’ meant a home for himself, with good people and a forever horizon.

It was honest work, and dirt under his nails. The sun on his back, and Light in his footfalls.

It was each new stalk of brilliant green, rising stubbornly from the ashy grey… and endless, thick fog leaving salty dampness on his skin.

It was the everlasting pulse of life, a primeval language he did understand, from his lips to the ageless ears of the earth.

And in the end, it was something else entirely for Lore.

There was peace in that, at least; the certainty of one being where he was meant to be.

His room was dark, with candles long since burned down low and curtains drawn against the early dusk. The loamy smell of plant life surrounding him had been creeping up on the last of their scent, and it would have it soon enough.

Two months, with the holidays now draped across the village in bright lights and warm fires, cinnamon in the air and enduring evergreen. And yet this was where he chose to celebrate, to mourn, to tend to his wounds alone.

Firefly nights, on the tips of his fingers. Reaching deep into verdant space within and setting soft, blue bio-luminescence to dance.  

Happy Winter’s Veil.

He didn’t need to write it.