Roses and Thorns

Rain

The weather is growing moody as of late.

It started on a morning with a patchwork sky, just before the harvest season kicked into full gear, but as the day wore on the weather turned from cool to frigid and the winds picked up, wailing through the trees and ripping off piebald leaves to spit out against the muddied earth.

Most everyone was already inside, including the three of us, but we have no ditch outside to protect us, nor is the dirt sloped at the entrance to ward the water away. Instead, our hastily made hole becomes a torrent of muddy water and the rain pours into everything, attacking our feather-and-pelt bedding and scripts Rose was taking out from the library. A flower crown, still withering from the summer, is thrown against the wall and licked into oblivion by the water now up to our paws.

Rose is outside digging trenches, though the water continues to pour in. I rush out covered in leaves and bearing small articles of personal value, though there's nowhere safe to put anything. By the time Ace comes bearing help, it's too late to protect our denning material, though most of the rest makes it out fine. The sensitive ink Rose had on the wood slab on the corner is gone, a present from Alabaster just earlier that year.

Behind Ace come Anassa and Eris, Anue and Tammory, and soon the whole town is working at our ditch in the freezing rain.

We Eudican sisters huddle like puppies, all sick and spit as the cold wracks our bodies, and it is far too long before we're able to turn away. 

I try to recall the last time I had watch a home flood. I can't think of anything- somehow, in the mists of time, our childhood day has been tinged by a certain invulnerability. It's hard to even convince myself anything bad ever happened when all I can remember are carefree days of racing my sisters through forests and sleeping by soft rivers.

Still, this will pass as well. These days may not be perfect but they're vivid, like a field of wildflowers. Each day is new, different... I had no idea one place could change so much yet manage to stay the same all at once.

The rain runs its glittering paws against my pelt, tugging at me from every angle, and I turn, moving from my sisters' sides. They collapse without me comfortably wedged in the middle, and I walk away towards a solitary figure on the edges of the workforce, tracing new venues for water to travel into the earth with strong paws. I shiver as he looks up into my eyes, his amber glare piercing my heart.

Alabaster.

"I don't believe we've talked before." he tells me, his paws turning the ground. "You must be Daisy."

"I am." I confirm. "Rose certainly talks about you. She's quite enamored with your intellect."

"Is she, now?" he mumbles. His steady gaze is beginning to unnerve me. "Anassa speaks of you as well."

"You talk to Anassa?" I ask. I've never seen the two of them converse.

"Late at night. I often come in to pursue my studies."

"What studies?"
"I'm searching for something."

"That's the vaguest possible answer." I snort, another involuntary shiver rising up my spine. "Do you talk to Rose this way, too?"

"I wasn't prepared for an in depth discussion in this weather. I'm afraid I'm quite preoccupied at the moment. To be more clear, I've been researching the three parts of the spirit, as well as the psychology of Empaths. The latter is purely due to recent events, but the former has been on my mind for a long time. As for your later question, your sister is quite private herself." he tells me.

"Which one?" I joke. I crane my neck around, trying to see where Rose and Ivy have gone off to. Rose is back at the ditches, unsurprisingly, and Ivy is talking to Anassa. Neither of them look thrilled but it's so hard to take them seriously when their pelts are all sopping.