Song- Berth: Gregory Alan Isakov
"I suppose the world is our oyster now."
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The birds whistled the breeze that brushed the bluebells that curled around my legs with vines and leaves of a summery green. Professor Fig's floral enchantment had created a raft for Madeleine to rest upon so that she could not drown in the tears of her sobs, but it had still been a reminder of another soul that she couldn't find. It was still an injection of pain.
Sometimes Madeleine needed to be picked up from the ground, but sometimes she needed to be joined there. It had been little use to hold myself away from her, to hide behind the emptiness of the tree upon the hill, and it had been mere minutes before the want to hold her pain had turned into the need to heal the permanent tear tracks that streaked down her freckles cheeks.
Though the February air was bitter, we were held in a bubble of warmth that came from our togetherness, an unbroken air pocket of atmospheric softness. Our coats' fabric distanced us from the grass that was almost more littered in blue than green, and my arms and legs caged her against my chest where she had stayed for hours. Her head nestled into my shoulder, her back slumped against my chest, her fingers laced within mine with a force as though a glue had bonded our skin.
And there we sat, her mother's grave a figure before us, the bluebells flickering beside our legs, our hearts on display for the people who never got to see them. I could feel Madeleine's fingers lazily resting within my grasp against my knee, the comfort of peace evidently present as she relied on me to hold her fingers to mine. Her eyes battered to a languid close as my chin rested on the warmth of her hair, and I smiled softly as I felt her begin to notice that death did not have to be the discomfort she had been taught it was.
"Seb?" I had never been sure what a whole heart felt like, I had never known such a thing, never held such a privilege, but I knew what a broken one felt like, what it sounded like, and I had thought it to be the worst possible feeling in the world. That was until I realised that the true worst feeling was listening to the sound of her heart breaking into more pieces, irretrievable pieces.
"Hm?" The flower buds seemed to listen to the apprehension through my small hum, they seemed to still as my eyes closed to match hers, to wait for the question that would surely match the shake in her tone and the tears underneath her eyelids that I couldn't see.
"Did you see her, my mother, in my mind?" We had never truly spoken of what I had seen when I had delved into her memories, and I had selfishly hoped that she would never ask me to share all of the things that only she should've known. I could remember her memories like letters written to herself, letters that were never addressed to me, letters that she couldn't always remember writing.
"Yeah, I did." It was a strange emotion, perhaps one that wasn't quite its own but rather a mixed combination of several, to sit before a woman that I had never quite met, but one that I had watched so intently with a vividness that matched reality. There had been so many pieces of her that I found within Madeleine that I was sure that if I had met Celeste, she would have been rather easy to get along with.
Madeleine shifted in the place that she had kept for the previous hours, her head leaving the spot of warmth that she had created to lay within my arms instead. Her legs swung over mine, her neck now resting gently in the crook of my arm. It was better this way, to be able to look down upon her, to be able to sketch lines across her nose, to be able to see the tears to take them away.
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The Keepers' Evil
Fanfiction"That's where Sebastian's guilt met my guilt and, oh, what a dangerous form of amortentia it was." Ranrok was killed, Rookwood was dead, and the repository was opened. Madeleine had done her part, she had done everything asked of her. But whilst Mad...