Chapter Text
PRELUDE
frost
( garfield's perspective )
✩
The pain was too deeply stitched into my bones, but I felt it anyway.
This was the consequence of me being strong. Too strong.
The box from five years ago held what my soul loved most.
Broken amethyst and heavy ivory.
The people that promised to sew me together after I was pulled apart at the seams had dissipated.
All that was left was a chipped, lavender teacup, and almond-smelling pages encased in leather jackets.
For as long as I could remember, I was drowning inside, and my heart was longing for something it couldn’t reach.
some years ago. the trauma has blurred the essence of time.
Frost.
Snow dusting the world with fragile, pure flakes. The sky was saturated in a slate of grey. A crystalline blanket skirting the Earth as she breathed the space between dusk and dawn.
The world was silent.
People were barely on the road, too lazy to shovel away growing ice and pristine white; or, too scared to be bitten by the teeth of the winter.
Snow had the power of putting the world on hold whenever it pleased.
All it took was the caution of Mother Nature’s glacial pearls, and everyone scrambled to the stores for bread, milk, eggs, and the eager premeditation of calling out of work tomorrow. The kids were armed with carrots and buttons to make snowmen and snowwomen.
It was in that same snow that crimson blood dripped from my chest. A fresh trail of scarlet spotted the clean, perfect ground. My fragmented gait ruined the world around me as well.
I wasn’t sure if I was more concerned about a wild hound tracking my blood and finishing me off, or more disappointed that not that long ago I was snow-watching, and now devastating said snow with my despair.
Every breath came out sharp through my clenched teeth as an ache twisted deeper into my flesh. The pain pulsed through my body like a relentless drumbeat, which permeated agony into every nerve ending possible. My head was crushed with heaviness, and my vision was blurring with time. My fingers stung with a chill as if frozen shards had infiltrated my skin inside-out.
The pain was ripping me open.
I wheezed heavily as I got my hand on the knob of the teashop on the corner of a street. My blood smeared the handle and glass. My lips were numb and chapped from the harsh cold. A pained wince left my lips as the pain turned acidic.
I couldn’t coordinate my hand or body to get the door open, or for my mouth to cry for help. My neurons staggered to get a coherent thought or action executed.
It was just as my body collapsed that a figure of purple appeared at the door. And with her, the smell of lavender and ginger root.
I never imagined that I would be so close to death.
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