Roses and Thorns

Plague

They decide to leave the next day.

We decide to stay.

I remember in harsh, vivid colors the faces of Calla, Watercress, and Poppy...

Oh, I thought, Not you. Please not you.

Poppy's disappointment stuck with me for a while, even though it shouldn't have hurt at all. I looked up to her so much more than I knew. I saw in those defiant eyes and strong words a kindred spirit, or at least something I could admire.

I still do.

Quietly.

***

"What now?" Rose says on the night after and the morning before. We find ourselves overlooking the way we came, out to the west, where the trees part and reveal sprawling acres of fields and wildflowers. We both know our paws will never tread them in the same way, that we have been torn forcefully from the earth like onions being ripped from the ground.

The difference is that we have pulled ourselves up.

"You'll find something worth staying for." I assure her.

"Have you?" she asks.

I nod.

"You better," Rose warns, "because I'm staying for you two. So you have to be happy."

"Fair enough." I reply, mocking her diplomatic tone. "If you want to barter with my happiness, we can propose an exchange."

"Those aren't big words, Daisy." Rose tells me.

"Incandescent," I reply.

Rose pouts. "That's not in context. Anyone can just recite large words. The goal is to use them as a means of expanding your range of thought."

"Fine, fancypaws, but if I did just want to recite large words, having you as a sister helps. A lot."

Rose smirks, but as she looks back up at the sky, her face grows solemn and her tone bitter. "They don't want a bard here."

"Then what are you going to do?"
"Everything. I'm going to do so much that they'll never notice I haven't picked a profession."

"Really?"

"Sure. I think working with Alabaster might be nice, and that Red Canis you and Ace hang out with all the time-"
"Anassa." I correct her.

"She has a library, doesn't she?"

"Yes, but it's not her profession. She's a farmer."

"Guess I'll be sticking around you and Ace, then. The rabble shall be blessed by my 'intellectual presence'." she jokes, starlight glittering in her eyes.

"Intellectual this!" I spring at her, and we wrestle down the hill, a mess of giggling fur and bits of leaves and grass, happy to be alive and young in the light of the moon.

***

I will never forget the look of my mother as she stared back. It was a glance as cold and hard as the moon's glare, the apex of the sun in the winter, a pitiless brightness that promises nothing.

We all grieved in different ways.

For my sisters, all their emotion threw itself into this moment, this kicking out, and everything after was a new life, a new world, a universe where they had no wrong to rectify.

I, on the other paw, felt my mother there in places where she shouldn't be, no matter what I did.

It was the least I could do for my Eudican blood.