Archive of Our Own ^beta

They have taken to walking daily through the garden surrounding their hive. It is a concession for each: he does not complain over the way the sunlight settles upon him like a second mantle, and she allows him to return to the shady respiteblock within after, instead of making him sit with her as she tends to each plant in turn. With time, she thinks, perhaps he will come to realize how delectably the warmth heats his skin, and he will long no more for distant memories of a dim, dank world of echoes and shadow.

She knows he misses that world below the surface, even if he remembers little but being led out of it two sweeps ago. If he did not, she could drape swathes of fabric around the windows of the respiteblock, instead of over them, without his cringing at the merciless light.

The tug to return sneaks up on her occasionally, too, when she wonders who has replaced her in running to and fro for the mother grub.

The Dolorosa moves so much more slowly than she once did, taking deliberate, careful steps to account for the young troll's shorter legs. She is only a rustle of skirts and sleeves now, no longer the constant swish and swing of fabric that sent her hurrying to ease the mother grub's pains, large and small. There is time to think now, time to kneel in the soil and pat down the dirt around her flowers and saplings before venturing back inside to tell her boy a story or two.

His hand is small in hers as they tread the little path between the trees and bushes, taking care not to step on any vines that have begun a slithery growth across the stones she laid a sweep ago. Though the Dolorosa rules her garden with an iron fist--and, more importantly, an iron saw, mechanized for easy pruning--she sometimes allows the plants a head start. He must learn to keep an eye on the places he steps anyway; she thinks it a good trial to watch for stumbling-lines as they cross the path.

"WHAT IS THAT?" he asks her, pointing to a flower with blooms of indigo that spread forward like the base of a stalagmite only after the sun absconds. He has a tendency to shout, particularly when an emotion has come over him, and it is rare that she minds.

"That Is A Nightlily." It is not a nightlily. Or, rather, it could be, but it is probably not outside their little oasis at the edge of an endless sheet of blinding sand, a bolt of fabric unfurled to the thin line of the horizon and beyond. The Dolorosa does not know the names of her many plants, for the most part; she invents names as she is asked and continues to be delighted to find that he recalls them after being told just once what they are.

In fact, he tends to remember the names better than she and delights in pointing them out to her on subsequent walks. "THAT IS A BAZALEA TREE. THOSE ARE ALTERNITUFTS."

"You Are Quite Correct." She squeezes his hand, giving him a smile of sharp teeth and soft eyes, and he returns it with a brash glow of pride. So intelligent, is her boy. Bright and bold and unfortunately fond of stomping around as he plays his games, but that surely cannot last forever. He will drive her mad if it does last forever, and she likes to think he likes her well enough not to drive her incontrovertibly around the bend.

That day, after she has plucked down a small golden fruit they have taken to calling an eorppla for each of them, they continue their walk until he stops short, frowning into the leaves of a bush. She has named it for him before, though she cannot for the life of her recall what she chose to call it. Something to do with horns, she believes, for the dark orange leaves come to sharply pointed tips, but she does not recall with any certainty.

"WHAT IS THAT?"

Time to pretend she is well aware of its name. "Do You Not Remember?"

"NO, NOT THE HORNBUSH," he answers with a roll of his eyes. A hornbush, she repeats to herself, how simple, and tucks away the information for another day. "THE ONE UNDERNEATH IT."

"I Did Not Plant Anything Benea--Oh." The Dolorosa squints beyond the sun-drenched grass to the shadows beneath the spreading, leafy branches of the hornbush. There is something there, something which promises to uncoil long tendrils past the shade if she does not prune it judiciously. "Let Us Have A Closer Look, Shall We."

Side by side, they crouch to hands and knees in the dirt and set their heads together to examine it. Tucked away beneath the bush--which is hardy but not unmanageable and does not seem to require much pruning--the plant might have gone unnoticed for any length of time. Within its shaded den, it has come to thrive, already a twisted mass of spiky, fibrous stems and jagged-edge leaves that seem nearly as sharp as the thorns that encircle them. She reassesses, deciding it will not stretch out into the sun, not when it has already grown into so tangled a wreath in a location where the light only rarely filters down to greet it.

It would not be a notable thing, only a lazy attempt to choke the life from the hornbush's roots, however, were it not for the single blossom resting back against the stem from which it emerged. It is the size of the Dolorosa's hand, palm to spread fingertips, bursting with velvety petals with tips the colour of the boy's tears. They fade darker and darker into the heart of the flower, until she cannot tell whether they are crimson dimmed by the shadows or truly black.

She reaches forward to disentangle enough of the flower to draw it into the light, but her hand freezes at the sound of a shout.

"DON'T PICK IT!"

Fixing him with a dubious stare, eyebrow raised, she asks, "Will There Be Complaints If I Don't Break The Stem?"

He shakes his head, his shoulders hunching around his ears, and she turns back to the plant, slipping a hand behind into its prickly depths with care. Every attempt to draw the flower out into the sunlight ends with a choice between leaving it where it is and picking it from its bed, and she is loath to snap it off when there is only one flower. After a few minutes, she gives up.

"WHAT IS IT CALLED?"

She looks at it and furrows her brow, but the names that come to mind don't quite seem to fit it; she cannot find within her the mix of reticence and beauty, ferocity and reclusiveness to call it by. It is with another fanged little smile that she looks over to him, still frowning at the garden's mysterious new resident. "You Decide."

"WHAT?"

The Dolorosa laughs, dusting off the embroidery that scallops down the front of her skirt as she stands. "You Can Name This One."

She's met with a blank stare as he looks up at her. "WHAT IF I DON'T WANT TO?"

"Then We Will Have A Nameless Plant In Our Midst."

"OH." He raises himself to his feet and leads the way through the rest of the garden, she keeping pace with him easily. Within a few steps of the end of their walk, he turns his face up to hers once more. "WILL YOU TELL ME A STORY?"

"I Think You Should Tell Me One," she informs him, ruffling his hair between the two nubs of horns that poke through it.

The suggestion draws a pout as he looks up at her, his lower lip already threatening to stick out. "BUT I'M NO DAMN GOOD AT TELLING STORIES."

"I Am Given To Understand There Is Only One Way To Improve." They are at the entrance of their hive. "Consider It A Trial."

Only one flower blooms at a time, she finds over days and weeks of watching over the plant, and it never seems to require any meddling from her water can or shears. She cannot manage to coax another to grow anywhere within the garden. After a time, she stops trying and chooses to take heart in its one continued residence beneath the hornbush. On their walks, in one sweep and then another and another, she asks him the name of the plant and its single burst of colour within the darkness, and he finds a way to change the subject.

After they have left the hive, after he is no longer her stomping, shouting boy but the Signless, she will see the flower occasionally, but only once will she have the opportunity to inquire about its name to another. To her lover--her master--she will beg the question one afternoon, so far from the hive she once named as home that she could not make her way back if she tried.

It is called, she will be told, a dolorose.

She will not speak for the rest of the day.