What if I've built up my walls too tall too strong

COLT

The sun has long since burned away the morning mist, but its warmth doesn't descend readily. A truth all around Caido this season, but it seems particularly distant today, at least here, upon her. The knitted poncho around her shoulders is one she draws tighter across her chest, fingers curling into the fabric with a grip that turns her knuckles pale.

She has avoided this place ever since she walked away from it. It's been traveled plenty of times in her sleep, and while returning home should seem like a dream, it's always been the nightmare of it burning. Standing before it now, there's no flames licking up all she'd ever known, nor the blackened bones of what had already been picked clean by the voracious fire, but it still rolls through her with all the smoke of something extinguishing slowly.

"It almost doesn't look like it," she murmurs beside Thorn, the words requiring enough effort from her that her head doesn't have the strength left to hold itself. Slowly she leans into his shoulder, cheek resting there. The tilt of her gaze continues to trail every edge of strangeness that has come to rest over something once as familiar as her own hand. Her inhale catches on the way in, suspended in the back of her throat before her ribs make room for it.

"It's pretty, though." The meadow is a fury of color, unlike any of the rest would naturally be. Here, all the seeds Sunjata spread had flourished, fed by ash that has soaked into the soil. 

---

Complete a thread unearthing flowers from Meadowreach (roots and all!)

Baby, don't fall for me, I'll tell you right now
You're gonna hate me when we hit the ground
Think you're gonna fix me, think we're making progress
You'll be broken with me somewhere in the process

// oh we could never be together //

At this point, the planted flowers had certainly grown up enough to have steady roots among the ashen remains of the ranch. And with it, the slow bloom of all the flowers and their rainbows of colors were pretty – like a reminder that from the ashes, something beautiful could be made. It almost reminds him of Colt, in a way. That despite the terrible thing(s) that had happened, she’d always found a way to turn it into something better. This part, in particular, was a catalyst of her going to Hak Etme, and for that Thorn is quietly proud of his friend.

“Yeah.” He agrees softly, his arm wrapping around her as she tucks in against his side, hugging her gently as her cheek warms up his shoulder, injecting through his coat. “Do you want specific flowers or are we jus’ goin’ for what looks nicest?” He asks, angling his head toward her and shoots her a small but gentle smile. He squeezes her shoulders gently, looking back toward the flowers thoughtfully. “M’a sucker for the pink ‘n purple ones.” But she’d know that.

Hawthorn

// but it's nice to play pretend //

COLT

It should sit as a symbol of how even damaged things can adapt and thrive, and that thought passes, but so too does the one that every mark she'd made here has been so thoroughly erased even she can barely find the sketch of them. The world does not wait to move on, and it'll bury whatever it can in the process. She swallows.

The wind of his arm against her tugs her back to him, and she stirs a little, sighing against the reminder of the present. "A little of everything," she says in gentle answer, lifting her head and turning an eye towards the shift of his gaze from meadow to her. "Kind of like the time we collected flowers to keep out the void." Her smile is weak, but present, and the more it tries the shape of itself on her lips, the more insistent it becomes.

Easing fully off the crutch of him, she reaches for the bag slung around her other shoulder, pulling it around front. She withdraws a trowel in each hand as if intending to duel-wield in the battle against grief, but the formidable gardening appearance doesn't last before she hands one over to him. "You get the pinka nd purple," she hums, "I'll nab the blue and yellow." With nothing more than a nod and another gathered breath, she starts down the slope to where her house had once stood, bag thumping at her side, and eventually crouches down to drive her trowel in under the dirt and roots. They'll be excavating the flowers for replanting in Hak Etme for Rae, and it seems fitting she'd select part of one home to bring to another. There's enough to spare, and they'd repopulate the gaps themselves before long.

"So tell me," she says with enough pause to cut a glance over to Thorn over her shoulder. "What's got you smiling this much. I saw it on your face the whole time we were riding, and I expected a much different expression then." With all the heaviness that's been dragging her down for so long, it feels she barely has the means to stay above water and catch her breath, but she grabs hold of the opportunity for something lighter in the hopes it might shed some of what pulls her under.

Baby, don't fall for me, I'll tell you right now
You're gonna hate me when we hit the ground
Think you're gonna fix me, think we're making progress
You'll be broken with me somewhere in the process