Page 11 of May: Bloom & Bane

The grove feels emptier now that the songbirds have gone quiet.

I tell Eden about the great migration and how the birds follow the stars like a map etched in their blood while I carve a tiny bird into the stone next to her name. It looks more like a lopsided potato, but Droot seems to think it’s a masterpiece.

I wonder if I have a map in my blood.

I wonder if that’s what led me here.

Day 152: The peonies are officially skeletons now. The last of their petals have fallen, forming a bronze carpet around your box that crunches like broken glass under my feet.

I spent the afternoon gathering the uncrushed blooms, pressing them into the mud around the base of the crystal.

If they can’t be flowers anymore, they can be insulation.

Droot has started hibernating for twenty hours a day. He’s built a nest out of my wing-molt and dry moss in the crook of my elbow. Every now and then, he’ll twitch in his sleep and chirp a single word: Warm.

I am the only thing in this meadow that isn’t allowed to sleep.

Day 165:

The relentless tug in my chest is the only thing keeping my heart beating. It feels like a hot string of light stretched between my ribs and yours.

The wind is howling so loudly tonight, it sounds like the grave is screaming for me to come home. I ignore it and tell you about the first time I saw a sunrise through the willow trees.

Your hair is the only sunrise I care about now.

Day 188:

The first true cold has arrived. The water in the little stone basin Droot drinks from has turned into a solid block of ice.

When I lean against the glass, it’s the only place I can feel my blood moving. You are keeping me alive as much as I am guarding you.

Day 196:

The air has become a weapon, and I am tired of bleeding.

I can feel the life in the willow trees retreating deep into their hearts, fleeing from the frost turning the ground to rock.

If I don’t do something, the winter will become a grave for us all.

I stand at the foot of the plinth and close my eyes, reaching past the sluggish sleep in my veins to the warmth of her. I pull on it, commanding the earth to remember the heat of high summer.

Nothing happens.

I try again, and again, until I have no strength left.

But then⁠—

The roots of the willow trees slowly begin to move, weaving together, layer by layer, until they form a thick, rib-like dome over the entire clearing. I lace the gaps with thick, velvety vines.

It’s not a palace, but it is a sanctuary.

Sage made a nest! Droot chirps, his little body vibrating with joy as he does a lap around the new perimeter. Big nest for The Sun!

I collapse from exhaustion and reach out a trembling hand to clear a stray bit of moss from the glass near her hand.

And the world stops turning.

Beneath the crystal, her index finger gives a microscopic twitch—barely a flicker. The way a butterfly’s wing might brush against a window.