Chapter Text
Between a collapsing pharmacy and the river is an overgrown parking lot, situated next to a small shopping center: a relic of when the Moralintern had attempted to “reinvigorate” the Burnt Out Quarter, back when its newly christened nickname hadn’t seemed everlasting. Black asphalt crumbles under soft brown roots, and it powders in the whistle of the wind, hints of it darkening the edge of your trousers.
Tall, blonde grass sways, tickling the underside of your chin. When you fall, unable to resist any longer, the strands under you graciously cease their dance to cushion your body from the concrete, bending and snapping and becoming broken just for you: it will grow anew, you assure yourself. They cradle you, shielding the worst of the sun from your tired eyes.
Decades ago, a Seolite mother, still raw from being granted that title, approached the empty parking lot, at this point only black in color. She carried a rusted spade, some dirt, and a worn leather purse stuffed full of weeds.
She kneeled on the broken asphalt, where you now lie, and carefully unpacked the contents of her purse. Some dandelion. Some grass. Some small pink blossom she uprooted on the way here. They piled up beside her, and that task completed, she renewed her grip on her spade and began chipping away at the crack beneath her.
Black asphalt crumbled under soft brown hands, and it powdered in the whistle of the wind, hints of it darkening the pads of her fingers.
In some parts of Seol, the women plant trees to commemorate the birth of their child. Sweet fruit for daughters, to hope for beauty and fertility, sturdy pine for sons, to hope for strength. But she is in Revachol, and her child will need something more than beauty or strength to thrive in the disgraced capital of the world. There are no trees in the Burnt Out Quarter, but weeds? Weeds will provide the tenacity her child requires.
And as she filled the holes she’d made with the future of her firstborn, she prayed to gods she’d forgotten long ago, stolen by cruel Occidental school children and time.
And as you lay there on plants grown thick, each subsequent generation of dandelion and grass and small pink blossoms nestled under your palms, dark blood lost in fiber and leaf, you pray to gods that’d abandoned you long ago. Pray that Harry will come. That you’ll continue to feel the sunlight on your cheek for just a little while longer, and the city whispers her determination into your ear.
Weeds are unwanted, she thought. Undesired. But every time one rips its leaves away, mangles it beyond recognition, they sprout once again. And is that not enough? To endure, despite it all. To grow against the odds and live. And for this, you shall survive.
And for this, I shall love you.