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Near a steep-sloping mountainside lies a satchel, the same one that Alba always has with her. Lying with it are the scattered petals from old, dried up flowers. Lightly-pink ones. Roderick steps cautiously beyond them, following a muddy slide mark in the ground. His hands shake. His whole body trembles. He doesn’t want to look over the edge because he knows what he will see. Slowly, he leans forward, and there she is.
“Alba!” he cries out, but receives no response.
Scanning the steep hillside, he finds an area he can glide down to get to where she has fallen. Carefully, he works his way there and then slides downhill on the loose rocks and dirt that form the topsoil. Stepping sideways to control his slide, he slowly approaches her. Once he is almost there, he throws his weight against the mountainside to stop just a few feet from where she lies unconscious but breathing.
“Alba,” he says more calmly this time, “I’m here to help you.”
Her eyes shift beneath her eyelids as she faintly hears him. Roderick places his hand in hers, squeezing lightly. She tries her best to squeeze back.
“Rode… is … is that you?” she manages.
“Yes, I’m here,” he answers through heavy, exhausted breaths. “How long have you been here?”
She doesn’t reply, but he guesses that she would have no idea anyway. The way she lies suggests that she has hardly moved since her fall. Her head is badly banged up, and her body, too, has cuts all over it. The bleeding seems to have stopped, but she is covered with several large bruises.
Roderick glances up and judges the fall to have been several hundred feet, not that she dropped that entire distance. The top of the cliff is only thirty feet or so from where she likely hit. Her body then tumbled all this way before a break in the slope brought her to a stop. Considering the remaining thousands of feet she could have rolled, she is very lucky.
Alba’s mouth opens slightly.
“I was… dreaming about you,” a faint smile forms at the corner of her mouth.
Roderick smiles back, though it is hard for him to do so without also feeling the agony of his weeping heart.
“What was the dream about?” he asks as he deftly places his hands beneath her, hoping that she is too out of it and numb to feel the pain of her broken body as he lifts her.
“We were… in… your garden…” she winces as she speaks, each pause a deep breath sounded with pain.
Tears stream down Roderick’s face as he carries her up the hill. He can tell that each step he takes is her misery. Each time he slips and jostles her, his soul agonizes knowing that any misstep he takes must feel like torture for her.
“You… kissed… me,” she continues, as though despite her pain she knows that her words give him the strength to keep going. “I… let you… and I didn’t… stop you…”
She doesn’t say anything else before Roderick gets her to the top, where he lays her gently. She is still breathing, but more weakly than before. He cries, feeling helpless to save her. That is until he again notices her satchel and the lightly-pink petals scattered around it.
“I’ll be right back,” he whispers to her, getting up and rushing over to search the remains of the flowers.
All of them are withered and dried up. Roderick doesn’t know much about medicine, but he does know that when plants are dry and withered, they lose their potency. He will need fresher flowers to give her the best chance, if there remains any chance at all, and he knows where to find them.
He returns to Alba’s side with the satchel, which is soft and made of animal skin. Within it, he finds that one of the flowers is encased in glass. He removes it and places the satchel beneath her head as a rest, then resting the glassed flower in her hand.
“I love you,” he says, kissing her on the cheek.
The place he had broken down, the place where he had planted the seed, is not far from where they are now. Roderick saddles back up and prompts his horse on. After a swift ride, he dismounts and runs off of the trail to where the bush would be.
To his surprise, it is not the size it once was, and much of the plant has withered away. Only a small portion remains green and full of life, and from it grows just one last flower. Before he picks it, Roderick runs to the elevated pile of dirt next to the plant. He will need something that is buried there as well.
The ground is still moist, and he finds it easy to dig with his hands. Frantically, he begins to uncover the supplies, tossing everything aside that is not what he is looking for. Finally, he locates what he seeks, a metal pot and stand for boiling water over a fire. He rushes over to the plant and plucks the last flower from it, mounting his horse and returning to Alba, who lies just as he left her.
He quickly searches for and finds some dry wood and kindling and places them by Alba’s side. Removing flint and steel from his horse’s pack, he then starts a fire, emptying his canteen into the pot and waiting for the water to heat up. Once it is hot enough, he begins tearing up the flower petals and mixing them in.
“Please let this work,” he mumbles. “I don’t know if I can go on without her.”
“Yes… you can…” Alba quietly interrupts, reaching her hand out and weakly grasping Roderick’s.
The words seem to deplete the rest of her strength, and she falls back into her daze, releasing her grip on Roderick’s hand.
“No, you have to let me give you this,” he cries, pouring the water into his canteen and pressing it to her lips. “Just hold on a little longer.”
She resists at first, seeming confused as though she doesn’t know what is going on or who is trying to get her to drink.
