Chapter Text
Clutching a hand of sand in her hand, she spat out salt water — coughing worse than ever before in her life (and she had been dying of the Flower Curse, last she remembered ). To cough now meant that she had lungs. That she had lungs meant a great many things, each too big to fully grasp. Shoving briny strands out of her face, she coughed again and then, she took inventory of all that was around her. There was the sun, burning in her eyes and blinding her as on her skin, salt water dried. These impressions were benign and small , but they filled her with . . . happiness. So , she was at a beach. She had never before been at a beach, and the absurdity of this thought made her giddy.
She had not felt anything akin to giddiness in a very long time. Not since . . . not since before Ultear had fallen ill. A thought she set aside with great difficulty, but a thought she could not linger on now. It tended to devour her, to consume all there was to her and to spit her out tired and drained of all optimism. She would mourn, she would always mourn her daughter — but Ur knew that everything, even grief, had its time and place and it did not belong on a sunlit beach with the sun slowly crawling up in the sky. It was early, and she might have made a joke about always having been an early riser, would it not sound so weak in her own ears.
Ultear , she thought, would have liked this place. It was peaceful, the beach stretching on further than her eyes could reach. And there were seashells, quite a lot of them, some stuck between her toes. Lyon and Gray, too, would have liked this place, she added as she ran a hand through salt-crusted hair, rubbing some of the salt off her brow. It would have been . . . she wished she could have taken the three of them to this place, wished she could have waded in the ocean before it had ever been the only home she had known for what had felt like eternities.
Another thought she had to set aside for later — she did not know how long it had been since she had last been whole. She neither knew how long it had been since she had collapsed in the institute's lobby, nor did she know how long it had been since she . . . had bid her students goodbye. The ocean did not care how many moons, how many years passed ashore; it was eternal, had been there before everything had begun and would be still there after everything had come to an end.
She knew the ocean well, now. Had learnt its language, spoken in mumbles. It had been a subtle presence, ghosting at the edges of her conscience. Sometimes, she had dreamt. Or had she recalled memories that were not her own? She had felt peace, most of the time. She had felt as if she was cradled in a mother's arms, shielded against all evil. She remembered thinking that if this was death, she finally understood why the church preached it to be the final step of a dance that encompassed all of life. She remembered thinking that if death was this peaceful, Ultear had finally free of the suffering her illness brought. She had been able to let go, slowly. She had been able to let her daughter rest instead of carrying her body and her empty grave on her shoulders.
But it had not been death. It had been its . . . opposite. It had been resurrection.
Then, she crashed headfirst into another thought, one that was ridiculously base in comparison. Clothes. She halted, her gaze aimlessly wandering over her surroundings, searching for something she could wear. It truly had been too long since she had had a clear thought if this puzzled her, but almost, she would have forgotten the necessity — where she had been, there had been no need for these things. There had only been her, the occasional thought and, of course, the Emerals that had brushed past her in the darkest depths of the ocean.
( She had not believed they even existed , before. Now, she did, had heard their haunting songs and had clung to their melodies to stay sane. )
Always the pragmatic, she forced herself to stand, forced herself to ignore her legs mumbled protest. To her surprise, there were two of them despite her remembering clearly that one had been torn away. They were not used to anything like this, not anymore. Neither was she. Her first steps made her feel like a toddler — clumsy and insecure, but she made it to the neat rows of tiny sheds, painted in all sorts of colours. Though she had never known their proper name (if they had one, that was), their mere presence told her that this was a beach where rich people came to swim.
It made her feel marginally better as she reached to pull magic from her hands, magic she needed to forge a key. That her magic responded too quickly, too easily was an annoyance in the making, but so was the fact that it took her eleven attempts before she got the key right.
Still, she did smile as the door opened and she saw the bounty she was about to reap. She would not take more than she needed, she assuaged the part of her conscience that was wary, but she did need clothes, money and shoes. She would leave them their badly hidden designer sunglasses, though it struck her as very irresponsible to leave them there in the first place.
She was making excuses for herself, excuses that were utterly trivial right now, she reminded herself as she rubbed off as much salt as she could from her skin. There were things in life that were . . . bigger than the question who the clothes she sifted through belonged to, she thought as she picked a flowery top and a equally floral skirt with a matching hat — whoever owned this clothes had a truly frightening love for hibiscus flowers.
She did not need a mirror to know that her outfit made her look ridiculous, but though she had found more money than first anticipated, she would have to wait for a bit before she would trade these clothes for something that was more her style, something like a leather jacket and proper boots. But it would do, for now. There was no one around who could laugh at her, there were even fewer people whose opinions she valued so much that she would care what they thought about her summery look. Though was it even summer, she wondered. The absence of people, the emptiness of the vast beach made her doubt it, but it was of little consequence for her anyway.
The weather and its temperature did not matter to her, had not since she had been younger. It was a comforting thought as she shoved whatever necessities she could find into a bright pink shopper and slipped into a pair of flip flops that would have to do for the time being. All of this was far from ideal, but — it would have to do. All she expected of this was that it would function long enough for her to get home, to return to her cottage where (if fate had shown her any kindness) she would be able to find her own things, likely covered in dust but still there.
A thought that struck her as she stumbled away from the sheds and towards the treeline that was calling her with promises of shade and that almost made her trip down the little hill was did the world miss me as much as I missed it? But the truth was the question that slumbered beneath, the question she should know better than to prod at.
Time had, as surprising as this sounded, healed some of her wounds. Or rather: it had shown her how unimportant they were in the greater scheme of things. Her broken heart, the hurt she had never allowed to matter, to truly matter — it had not left her. But it was a manageable pain, was not a storm that overwhelmed her.
And this was the truth she had not realised before and that resting between her ribs now: she had loved and she still loved — and this was all right. To have loved, even if it had not been the happy ending most would wish for, was precious in its own right. Her love had been true, always, and it had been answered in kind. It would not absolve her of the violets that grew and festered in her lungs.
(Even now, they were still there, having fallen from the cracks within her heart.)
But there was peace in this acceptance, and there was healing in it, too. She had loved, and she had been loved. And it was all right for her to miss him still, now. To miss her partner, to miss someone who half of the pain she carried belonged to, because Ultear had been his daughter, too.
She was allowed to love him still, ever faithful . His goodbye still hurt her soul, but it had been a long, long time since. She had been angry, she had been sad, and now it was her choice to miss him, to wish to see him again. Amidst cornflowers of ice, she had once promised him her heart. Amidst violets, she would keep her promise.
Looking once more at the sea that softly rippled behind her, the sunlight glinting on the gentle waves, Ur straightened her shoulders and set her eyes on the endless, endless land stretching out in front of her. She had been born anew amidst salt and sunlight, but she was not made of this. She was a woman of spruce trees and stone, overgrown with moss and violets.