Work Text:
The air was warmer today.
Tomorrow.
Five hundred years from now.
A thousand in the past.
The grass was dead and dying. It was thriving. It was buried beneath rubble and ash, and was renewed.
A thousand-thousand voices murmur, their whispers too quiet to be heard, except by their most beloved.
The last. Their daughter. Mother, cried the lilies, crowding together as she drew close with soft hums to mask the discord in her heart. Tiny fingers that dug in the barren soil to the sound of her own giggles as she plucked a grub from its burrowing to show her mother. Calloused hands deftly pruning flower and fruit and vegetable with practiced ease borne of time and instinct.
She is smiling bright as the sun that struggles through the metal ceiling high above. She weeps silent tears that she cannot show anyone else. Happy singsong blends with furtive mumbles and hushed whispers. They listen attentively as they always have, gathering up her hopes and dreams and fears. Hold them tightly in their leaves and roots. They will remember.
Before, after, now.
Is it before when she first came to them that they knew? Or is it after the final pillars fell and they reclaimed this city for themselves? Is it when she is brought back to them, ghostly touches and laughter that is felt but not heard?
All are true, all time is now.
She broke the soil and raised them up once, and she will do it again after she has returned from her time beneath the cold waters. They knew she would. It has always been so. Again and again she tries to mend soil and flesh. Barren and desolate earth turned verdant and lively beneath questing fingers and murmured prayers, all of them listen, share with her their little whispers. From tiny leaf to ancient, gnarled trees, they share their wisdoms with her, holding her close when no one else was there. She is their last guardian, most precious and beloved, to protect and cherish, the final sacrifice.
Even the mightiest among them know of her. The sleepers, their thoughts strange to the little plants who live and die in the time it takes for their hearts to beat. Entire forests seeded and felled as they slept and waited. Born of fury and terror, they lie in the deepest places and dream of blue skies and green land, too large to hear the tiny guardian’s entreaties. Her voice is so small compared to them, lost in the sound of their breathing, the great thunderous bellows of their voices, the earth-rattling rumble of their footfalls. They are too massive to listen, save one.
But that one has been trapped in an even stranger shell.
Sleeping. Waiting. Warping flesh and reshaping bone to better contain it.
That one does not mourn the loss of their guardian like the earth does, but it too knows she will never be truly gone.
She lives, has lived, and will live once again.
The waters claim her, the Lifestream knows her, and soon she will return, all tiny questing fingers and sharp laughter and they will remember when she does not. When they have to take back the memories of her worries and woes, old and new pains. Each time slightly different from the last but the end will not differ much from one path to the next, for they will always wait to reclaim what was rightfully theirs.
The last. Their daughter. Mother, whispered the lilies, their blossoms heavy on their stalks as their petals fall, laid out on wet stones near where she rests.
They do not weep as they have no eyes to make tears, but they know she is here, she is gone, she will return.
Because the air was warmer today.