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If you come at four in the afternoon, then when three o'clock strikes my heart will know to be happy.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
When Escargot visits Mademoiselle Foie, she spins him a story - words woven to seize his interest, her voice smooth like silk. She would compose him a song of little princes and melancholic sunsets, of taming and being tamed.
She would construct scaffolds, building brick by brick the very backbone of a world. In elegiac tones she laments a world of clipped wings and caged birds, their trill a prayer for freedom that goes unheard.
It is a story all too familiar, Escargot realizes, and they both know it.
Her voice has never failed in lulling him to sleep, her steady, unfaltering cadence akin to the susurrus of the tides. More often than not, hearing the drag of chains as Mademoiselle paced sent guilt crawling down his spine.
It coiled heavy in his gut, the brilliance of her smile even behind bars. He was one of the few who offered her company, but could do little else. But what else was there for him to do? He was not a strong soul; he feared he would doze off mid-strike, if he had to come to blows.
Between them yawns a chasm that Foie will leap across every time, even if she knows little of his world: of boundless skies and fathomless seas. Sometimes, she could almost forget.
Were it not for the shackles searing frost against her skin, she might have played pretend - that her captivity would only last a little longer; that this, too, would come to pass.
(She never could have fallen for such a beautiful lie.)
Escargot tells her of the weather outside, a forecast she eagerly awaits - if only to imagine how it must feel. The streets are slick with ceaseless rain, as of late, the cause of the cool morning fog that enshrouds all in sight. It is how she knows spring has come again, in the weeks that follow.
“The sunflowers are blooming, Miss Foie. How pretty....those fields of gold, they look like...they stretch on forever....”
Most mornings, he is caught mid-hello by a yawn. The hour is early, after all, if the barest glimmers of gold streaked across the horizon are any indication; Foie liked to think her routine allowed her some semblance of control. When the sun stirs from sleep, her heart knows a certain happiness: unfurling like a miraculous flower. It makes this hour unlike any other.
Like fields of gold, she thinks, what a sight it must be. If there was one defiance destiny would allow, it was in the form of dreams put to paper. O Fate, she begs, allow me at least this fragile hope.
She longs to stretch, to be allowed the fluidity of motion that her confines forbid. How she wishes to savor the heat on her skin, wind at her back; how wonderful it must be, to sprawl among a world suffused in saffron and laugh without reserve. To breathe without feeling eyes on her back, to see flowers ablaze as far as the eye could see.
What a foolish little dream. But oh, how beautiful.
"You must take me there, one day, " Foie sighs more than speaks, filled with yearning for what she has never known. She wants to greet sunlight scattering the shadows of dusk, warmth on skin that knows its touch only as a kind stranger - a guest that greets her morning by morning, a joy that murmurs a tentative, sleepy hello.
"Oui, Mademoiselle." murmurs the boy. It is in a voice that sounds incapable of shouting, so used to dulcet, whispery tones. "C'est un beau jour, n'est-ce pas?" It’s a beautiful day, isn't it?
"Je ne sais pas, petit garçon," Foie will respond, voice light with mirth, "Pourriez-vous m'en dire?" I don't know, little boy. Could you tell me?
The sun has already set. Foie ruffles his hair, offering a gentle, "Fais de beaux rêves, Monsieur Tournesol" in farewell. Her eyes are fond, filled with a tenderness that warms him to the tips of his toes; it makes him beam from ear to ear. Though he flushes a bit at the nickname, he can't say he minds it.
"Au revoir, Mademoiselle Cygne," he offers in return, unable to resist rubbing his eyes. Foie is one of the few who doesn’t chide him for it, instead offering him a little laugh.
“Take care not to fall asleep on the way home,” she warns, only half in jest. Just this once, he makes haste for the door - if only out of mock indignation. He leaves to the sound of her laughter, the sound mellifluous as the chime of bells. Smiles suited her, he learns.
Escargot learns many things about Miss Foie, but one is that she used to fight. Having never seen her in battle, he can only go off rumor. They say her strikes were executed with the bright, brisk movements of allégro, the whirlwind spin of a deadly pirouette. Every movement spoke of calculated strength: not a second whispered of hesitation.
Though she was no royalty, Fallen knelt at her feet all the same. She lifted her chin and stared them in the eye: a challenge without words, an invitation into pas de deux. It was the enactment of a story that has but one end. She soared with feather-light footsteps, curtsied with all the grace of a crane. They say it was a coronation of crimson, for the rivers ran red the day she claimed her crown.
There was not a Fallen left to offer her applause.
The boy has little to fear; rather, the more he knows, the more his respect grows. It makes sense: how her feather-light steps would not make a sound, were it not for her chains. How she can wake at a moment’s notice, salute ready before he can even speak. Back rigid and shoulders tensed, she snaps to attention, muscle memory acting before her mind catches up with the motion.
On mornings like these, her voice only knows to obey. Orders are never questioned; insubordination is unfathomable. For once, it had startled Escargot fully awake. Steadying himself, he spoke with a gentle voice, but a firm reminder. Miss Foie… you don’t need to fight anymore.
He does not know the Foie of her dancing days, where she fought and fought because there was no other option but death. But he does know the Miss Foie who ruffles his sleep-mussed locks, her eyes only knowing gentleness. He knows the Miss Foie who reaches through the bars and takes his hand whenever nightmares swallow him whole, guiding him back to the waking world - guiding him home. Tout va bien, mon cœur, c’est d’accord. C’est d’accord …
He knows her patience and pain in equal measure, for he never spoke of her hands when they trembled; she always waited until he was ready to wake.
He wakes within a dream as a sunflower, rising to the scent of loam and the sway of petals - his petals. He’s perched on a windowsill, shrouded in a sea of white - wings, he soon finds. They stir up a cool draft, rustling his leaves. They unfurl in all their majesty, sheltering him: an umbrella against the onslaught of rain.
He did not think it strange, as one immersed in a dream generally does. No, he thought, soaking up the sunlight that spilled across the sill, I am content.
His first memory of the swan is the saddest song he’d ever heard: more mourning than melody.
She told him she knew nothing but battle, having fought across the frontlines until her feet bled. Just another drop, she mused, added to the growing sea. A living, breathing sea of Fallen.
But he tells her that isn’t right, because she never forgets to give him water, day by day. She knows the kind of stories he likes by heart, and will always give in if he’s the one asking for another. It does little to convince her, but it’s a start.
Forests always spring from a seed, after all, and gardens from a single sprout. This is no different.
The swan’s only company is the little sunflower that rises with the sun and turns toward its radiance, unfailing in his daily ritual.
“Why do you always look to the sun?” She asks him. He always replies with a little laugh, the rasp of dry leaves in the wind. His response is never the same as the last; this time, it is a question. He never seems to answer.
“Why did they cage you, little bird?” The sunflower asks in lieu of response, more courtesy than curiosity; he already knows the answer.
She looks to the sky and remembers the medallions the military officers presented her. Pretty pacifications in the face of her incarceration, cold against her skin. She refused them all.
Give them to those you find deserving, she had smiled, all teeth bared and sardonic mirth. Your little farce could not withstand even a child’s scrutiny.
“Humans fear what they cannot control. All they cannot identify with their taxonomy, the obscurity of the arcane. Even their young fear the dark; they would be unwise not to. Who knows what beasts skulk in its shadows?”
Between them is their own little language, spoken so that only the other would understand. What Foie means to say is: They are afraid of me. But are you?
“I will never fear you.” The sunflower says without pause, yet his words are measured, weighted in worth for very ounce. He knows how much this means to her. Knows how easy it is for this moment, taut with tension, to shatter.
“I could Fall. What then?” She clutches at straws, desperate for any traces of doubt that have taken root.
“Never.”
“You’d be a fool not to,” she whispers in a voice she fears would crack, were it any louder.
“I’d be a fool to,” he says, for his faith in her is as immovable as the mountains, fathomless as the seas. If this were poetry, she would be the bird and he the sky, having found a home in each other.
If this were poetry, maybe then she would have died a martyr: a sacrificial lamb in the name of their cause.
(If only that luxury were made available to her kind.)
One day, the sunflower learns he is being uprooted, replanted in a field where he would bloom anew.
The swan is happy. He knows because she tells him this, not because she is smiling without her eyes to match. She tells him a lot of things. She tells him to go on already. (She doesn’t tell him, so you do not see me cry.)
“I would bloom anew,” the sunflower whispers, “but I would bloom alone.”
He does not tell her this; he did not like seeing her cry. Soon enough, if he wasn’t careful, he would do the same.
“I’ll come back,” promised the sunflower.
And he did.
Spring has come bearing its manifold blessings; one of them is that Foie is free.
The wind sighs through a field worth far more than any gold could offer. Sunlight spills across Foie and her shining feathers, Escargot and his sleepy smile. Here they stand, side by side.
“Why do you always look to the sun?” Foie asks again.
“Even after… the darkest nights… it rises… just as bright as before…”
“Never knew my little flower was such a poet,” Foie teases, and laughs all the more as his face flushes red.
Escargot teaches her warmth like this: a bouquet shyly offered, a sunflower threaded through hair he offers to braid.
“It won’t....be taken away from you,” he says, “I’ll...make sure of it.”
The sunflowers are swaying in the wind. He stands unmoving, unwavering in his promise.
The sunset’s rays limn his face, softening the hard lines of the furrow in his brow. So young, Foie muses, yet so very wise.
They watch the sunrise together in comfortable silence, bearing witness to the dawn slowly overcoming the shadows. Its glory is a riot of blushing rose and radiant marigold, a bouquet of beautiful chaos blooming in the sky.
Foie takes Escargot flying on mornings like these, when the air is brisk and the wind steals their breath from their lungs.
For once, he is unable to fall asleep. How can he? He will never be deceived again by Foie. Blessed as she may be with the looks of an angel, she has the speed of ten devils.
The elation crackles through his veins. Fear and exhilaration meld together in a sense of breathless, euphoric bliss; his heart pounds like thunder, races like lightning.
Streaking through the skies, wind whistles in their ears; the ground looms so very far below, so very small. A thousand cities, a thousand burdens they had to bear. They could soar above it all, if only for a little while.
(He has nothing to fear. He knows Foie will never let go.)
He can’t help but laugh upon seeing the aftermath: their hair, all in disarray.
At times like these, Foie can let go; there is little dignity to be had in such a state. She allows her picture-perfect posture to soften in its rigidity, beaming like never before.
The sun is shining today, brighter than anything she’s ever seen.
She follows her flower’s example: she turns towards its light and doesn’t look back.
"I’ve always wanted to see this, little sunflower," says the swan, and the sunflower can only smile.
And in his heart he thinks: this is how flying must feel.