Faded Roses, The Garden's Over

 What of the roses, you may ask as you watch them burn. 

The question thought, the question, is so much complicated. These roses, they were a symbol. A symbol of an empire crumbling down in silky, pearly ashes. They were meant to mean something, but like the empire itself, they failed to resonate. All the thorns and blood-red resistance aside, the war finally ran them down. Bleeding, they got crushed between ivory teeth. As the roses burned, the druid died for her sins, sacrificing her lover to save something that couldn’t be saved. 

That night the monster was born. 

It’s long, hooked claws touched the smoldering petals on it’s way down the garden path, rotting the crimson away. For a moment, watching them die, it almost fell in love. For the first time in it’s short, loveless life, a passing moment in a senseless whisper, it ignored the dangerous thorns and let itself be embraced. But that didn’t save its soul and both, the monster and the druid knew as much.

The druid watched it approach with dark, unreadable eyes, squaring her jaw to keep from shivering. On the inside the heart hammering in her chest heaved with heartbreak. ‘They will be back. They will stop you,’ she promised the earth and skies.  

But the monster merely smiled, tearing off a puffed bloom, mindless of the thorns biting into its skin. The blood it bled was dark and thick. Its voice grated as it answered, ‘No, they won’t.’

The complete and utter arrogance in its voice sparked a tiny flash of gold in her eye. A hope that maybe, just maybe, despite the destruction it was raining down on the place it used to call it’s home, some of the roses could still be saved. If nothing else, may the heart-break of her soul be lessened by the knowledge of that one scar in the monster's perfectly made-up facade. In a voice that denied hope, a voice that cried with sadness and surrender, she whispered, ‘I can’t watch you burn.’ 

She never got to hear the monster answer. She hit the ground hard, quick enough to cut her pained gasp in half. Her fingers, paling in the moonlight already, touched the scarlet of her chest on impulse. Her cold lips did not feel any pain. There was the shock and then it was gone. The tears that sparkled on her cheeks reflected the smothering tongues of fire.

In the end her passing was swift and painless. It came on a white wave that smelt of fire and smoke. Whether it was the last shred of its mercy seeping from that hollow black heart of it's, conveyed by a simple, fleeting touch, or the blessing of her goddess, the druid would never know.

The monster, kneeling over her still form, touched the bloodied rose to her cheek. Her skin looked eerily white against the crimson streak it left behind. ‘Perhaps,’ it mused in it's grinding philosopher’s voice and watched the petals rain down on her, ‘it’s a good thing you won’t have to.’ 

Behind his crooked figure the wind bellowed, roaring high into the skies and bringing the heavy, coating taste of ash across the cold, thundering sea.

Fragment, January 2021