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Have you ever met someone you knew you could never touch? A human being so full of emotions, of a tenderness you fear, deep down, tearing in two. Where even the gentlest touch of your fingertips against their skin would leave them scarred and singed, burned eternally with the burden of your existence. The kind of person who you should be destined to never meet, to avoid for as long as you can, in case you ruin the chapters of their life story.
For him, that person was a blossom, the most stunning flower he had ever laid eyes upon. A Lily of the Valley, dressed in white and green, her face round and soft, and hiding a bitter poison in her petals should someone sink their teeth into her.
But she was so illuminated in the manor moonlight, so small and full of a hope he couldn’t quite place. Behind her garden eyes and the soil that speckled her pale skin was a sadness, images torn and taken from her that she had still yet to find. Misery lurked inside her, seeping through her veins and finding a place to lie just behind the upward tilt in her lips.
Yes. This was the person he was destined to avoid, unless the end of times came and swallowed him whole into the pit of the Earth.
A gardener, who was seemingly born among the moss and morning dew. Nature was in her every step and stumble; the grass at her feet and leaves rustling above her head. Her hands would tend to every leaf, stalk, and bud with the delicacy of holding a child, teaching them to read and talk. Loneliness was replaced with the company of flora, the verbena and meadowsweet growing around the forest deep between her ribs. And yet, she could not keep from watering them, from tending to the soil and praying they grow healthy.
Though she was not cast aside by the others. In fact, she was far from it, living with so many people from such differing sides of life. Cooking, cleaning, caring, she was good for all of it, watching the foliage of everyone develop under her watchful eyes and treating everyone with the same kind of compassion she seemed to give the world. She had always taken it upon herself to look after those who needed her aid, no matter the sprouts of her own garden that were trampled.
With this, he had expected it to be easy to avoid her green thumb coming in contact with what dirt remained locked away in his chest.
The gardens of most others in the manor were full and flourishing, if not for the weeds and harmful insects that came to gnaw away at the vegetation. That’s what she was good at, helping others learn to care for the columbines, lichen and dogwood—anything which had become overgrown with flooded earth or dying leaves. And she was always so forbearing when doing so, never overstepping, and always taking her time.
But where there was verdure for the crowd, there was wasteland for him.
Fire had ravaged through his woodland, slashing at the trees and fruit, redbuds, heath, peonies; everything destroyed in the blaze. Salt streaked through the embers that met the ground, tilling the land until it was sure to never bring forward life again. Rain never fell upon what was once his wilderness, sun always shining far too hot between his collarbone.
He hadn’t started the inferno, but neither could he control it. Once it started as a spark, the flames charged as hungry, rabid dogs, running with the heat of the wind and tearing at any color of life they could spot. All that remained were the scars, burns cast in the soil that had been charred in the beasts’ wake.
This would be enough to deter the lady of nature, who’s voice alone brought the bees back to pollinate her crops, he was sure.
And yet, why was he so sure that he was to run and hide from her, when she was a monsoon that could wash away the dead branches and kindling that remained from the pyre? There she was, a proof of the universe having given the chance for even the harshest desert to have an oasis, yet with each call of his name, he turned his heel from her.
In all honesty, he feared the flames that tore from his torso, thrashing at the herbage that had barely grown inside him to begin with. They had taught him to run, to hide, to be unable to trust his lungs while breathing in the space of someone who had yet to experience the wildfire, given they meet the same fate as he.
What once were warm hands had grown rough from years of facing the licks of orange and red that ensnared him. Why would they stop with him alone?
The greenery in her was all so flammable, so fragile and precious to her, as important as the feathers of a crane flying free from a trap. If he reached for her, accepted her as someone who wished to restore the life he lost to the fire, would their hold torch her, and turn the garden she’d worked so hard on to ash and soot?
And if it did, if her work was ruined after all that, would she forgive him? With the same hands he burned her with, would she let him attempt to mend what he had broken? Would she still kneel with him, taking his fingers with her own to shovel at the ground and plant the seeds of purple hyacinths?
Panic made him flee from her, refusing to let a bloom from the heavens above wither and fade away due to his Midas touch of fire. In his eyes, he was shielding her from the edge of her paradise, no matter how hot the world got from his side of the fence. The flower would continue to grow, it had to.
Slowly, nothing began to matter more than her safety to him. Even if there was a lethality in learning to care for her poisonous leaves, he pushed it aside to watch her grow. With every moment, he would search for the pale, bell-like petals of her form, savoring the seconds he got to spend with her before the fire became too close. It was his own little joy, no matter the burning monster that seared his ribs between its teeth as it begged to be free.
Time and time again, they would meet in passing, speaking not long, as he often seemed so distracted and would quickly flee from her side. And even though she knew not of why he ran from her so, even though she did not understand what she could do to him—or what he could do to her—she followed after the singed marks he left when he would go.
No matter how far he ran, or how hard he tried to keep himself from her, the two would be connected by vines and ivy. And he would look at her from over his shoulder, counting the cloves and yarrow in her which at the time he knew not by name.
Why could he just not stay away from her?
Determination to keep her away from him became the slow ache of yearning to be at her side, to hear her voice again and become lost in the petunias that he saw within her. Even as he fought so hard to keep her from burning, he was pulling at roots just to see her once more, long enough to watch the sun kiss her face.
Her kindness never wavered, always extending her palm towards his own no matter how rough he was in denying her. He had only wanted to protect her, was that truly so bad? How could it be so rotten of him to wish to preserve the sweetness of the fruit she grew herself?
But even still, she smiled and walked alongside him, speaking in a way that made him unsure if she was fanning or attempting to blow out what burned so deep inside him. There, in the forest of her being, she kept a spot for him to visit, always ready for him to step towards and sit, safe from the emptiness his pain had left behind.
She was laced with a darkness that wasn’t her fault, leaves tainted by a world that took her delicateness from her, and he wanted to hold her, to tell her just how beautiful her petals were, and how if the ground inside him hadn’t been so tainted, he would look for the perfect place to plant a flower just like her there.
He couldn’t tell if she knew that or not, or if it was important that she did or didn’t. For when she took his hand in her own for the first time, and when he had pulled away from her and tried to hide the burns that remained there, she caught a glimpse into him.
All of the efforts he had made to avoid her getting to see the horrors that lie inside his chest, gone. Everything found its way into smoke.
And he knew, as she looked at him with such worry in her gaze, that she had seen what he wanted her to be able to look away from. Everything that had been taken from him, all the emptiness and anger, and the dogs that still howled for more foliage to rip apart, it was there on display, for the woman who had spent years cultivating a sanctuary where he remained in a barren land.
So he waited. Wincing and looking away, he stood and expected her to flee from him, afraid of the animals that wished to take from her what they had from him. He had failed, and thus, he assumed that he would have to pay the price, losing what good he had from her in exchange for more sorrow.
However, she never did.
When he looked back at her, she was still staring up at him, that smile like warm honeysuckle spread across her lips as he her hand continued to reach for his own. She was there, unmoving and happy, with him.
For while he ran from her, attempted to hide the shame of having a garden tattered by time and trauma, sprouts had already found their way through the tough soil. All she had to do was be there beside him to water them, while he provided them with the necessary warmth and sunlight, and slowly, they began to grow.
She hadn’t stayed him out of pity or sympathy, but because with each passing day under the blaze of his fire, she was warm and safe. He provided a special kind of photosynthesis in her garden, creating lilacs and tulips of such incredible health that even she was surprised.
Her hand remained extended to him, the wish to create a new garden together locked in what-ifs and maybes that could only be set aside if he were willing to try.
If he hadn’t taken her hand then, she would have waited, and so would he. For their gardens had already begun to grow around one another, with each tending to a Lily of the Valley, in hopes of preserving the joy they’d made, together.