❀ (( our little cherry blossoms )) completed

[Asherwy]

goodness please everyone stop dying
fievel get out of there i love you
rae you too *yanks out of amazonian dirt*

[Asherwy]

twenty two. goodbye
ＪＵＮＥ (( ＣＡＳＥ ))

I'm holding the blossoms tightly in my pocket, heart shivering in fear. No contact, not a word in six years;
what am I supposed to say? How am I supposed to act? Fresh pink pilgrims are twirling around me, and
I don't even know if...

"I love you!"

The words tumbled from my lips before I could think. I could feel my face flushing red, but I don't regret
what I said. Lark stood before me in the midst of students bumbling about, with feathers in her hair and
the universe in her gaze. It looked like she could spread her beautiful wings and take to the sky.
Without me. Please...

"Stay with me."

Her eyes shimmered with salt, blinking green in the light of the afternoon sun. Her chin crinkled like the
surface of my heart, and her placid expression melted into a sob. Chest wrenching like a serrated knife
to my gut, I took a tentative step towards her before I, too, began to weep. I was too afraid to make
another move, for surely she'd reject me. So I remained still and rested my gaze on her faded black flats,
tears painting the pavement and latching to my lashes.

"...Case."

Her voice diffused into the summer air and softened at my ears like cotton candy, the single syllable
wafting off her tongue as if her mouth was made to speak my name. I jerked my head up and stared at
her. I saw a viridescent ocean of sea foam floating quietly, its waves as light as feathers soothing my soul
as she reached out and grasped my hand. My voice didn't know what to do.

"You..you said my-"

A breath of cool air buffeted my face and suddenly a pair of fawn-coloured wings flooded my vision, its
plumage touching my lips like a flower petal drifting to the earth. It didn't take me long to recover from
the shock. Shutting my eyes in agonised joy, I pressed back into Lark's kiss and ran my hands through
her silky waves and cupped her cheeks as gently as I could manage, every part of me aching not to let
go. Delicate fingers caressed the nape of my neck, and I could feel her other hand stroking my jawline.
I thought my chest would explode.

"We'll meet in this next month, when we're twenty four and ready to love." This is what she had said
before walking away, through the cherry blossoms and out the black gate, leaving me empty.

And then there was nothing. She'd stepped away and averted her eyes from mine, mine which were lost,
hurt and in despair. I knew it was time, and I knew I agreed to it, but why did it have to rip me apart
like this? Why did she have to leave? Trapped and lovesick, I took her hand in mine for the last time and
kissed her forehead, biting back tears that had already fallen.

"Goodbye, Lark."

"...Goodbye."

I don't even know if she'll be there.

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[raey]

goodness please everyone stop dying
fievel get out of there i love you
rae you too *yanks out of amazonian dirt*

*looks at new post*
*looks at Ash*
*clamps shards of broken heart to chest*
*returns under amazonian dirt*

[calliopë]

there are actually tears rolling down my face

[Asherwy]

great one's buried themselves alive again and the other is crying
I should write a new story:
"The Tragedy of a Widow and her Masochistic Family"

[calliopë]

better yet why not
"I Sustain Myself On the Tears of My Readers"

[Asherwy]

lol that title should be part of one of those one shot challenges

[Asherwy]

interval
ＩＮ ＤＡＲＫＮＥＳＳ

Often I go days without thinking of him, telling myself that my affection has withered from a plump carnation to a single, dried up seed driven out of its flower. Without a doubt he cares nothing for me. If I were to pass on from this life, his tears would laugh at me for hoping. I wanted to tell him, with all my heart I wanted to tell him how I’ve stared after his footprints these five years, too afraid to even catch a glimpse of his distant silhouette lest he find me a fool for thinking I ever had a chance. This story was written out of a hope I soon saw as disgusting. Thinking of these events I’ve fabricated to satisfy my repugnant fantasies pitches a pellet of bile down my throat which bursts and ejects all its abhorrence into my bloodstream. Fantasies of being with someone who thought me as a weed amongst the sunflowers. In spite of the revulsion I felt toward myself, my chest blooms in bittersweet exhilaration amidst the tar.

What I’ve written is a love in which I’ve phased out all the rejection and cowardice, replaced by inexplicable reciprocation of affection from one to another. My flaws replaced with the silent beauty I desperately coveted. I began this story at the peak of my fondness for him, when my hope and naiveté took to the sky and refused to come down. Seeing this story stirred revulsion, regret, and a bitterness toward myself for being love’s fool. Now, returning to its side after my passion burned up the remaining firewood he tossed me, I understand the err of my negativity. As I was rejected from his life, two characters came to find the painful happiness I pined after. They are the bittersweet joy blooming in the murk. The disgust I felt died with my hope to be with him, but the embers from that fire will not be stamped out so easily. I no longer have the authority to turn away and halt their journey on account of my self-pity.

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[Asherwy]

twenty three. dread
ＪＵＬＹ (( ＬＡＲＫ ))

Metal gears grinding against each other in my head. Did I think this was romantic? Was I that self-righteous and arrogant to believe I had made the right decision to promise us happiness? In the years I’ve lived since then, grasping opportunity at its first appearance is the lifestyle that’s been repeatedly hammered into my head. Instead of clawing after this perfect, unconditional love he gave me, a love I haven’t seen since that icy afternoon we walked away from each other, I inhaled the pompous notion that we were too young to take anything seriously. Hands slipping into my pockets, my fingers tickle the shrivelled, hideous cherry blossoms we both promised to hold close until this day. I was a fool then for throwing away pristine happiness served to me on a silver platter, and I’m a fool now for keeping a broken promise.

Tinkling simpers flutter past me, and I stop walking to turn and see young school girls strutting away, the sunlight frolicking through their romping tresses. I stare after them for a while, them and the phones glued to their palms, inflections of the younger generation bubbling endlessly from their glistening lips. I glance down at my own phone in my hand, pressing it into my bag before continuing on toward the cherry tree. The black gate shimmers with a fresh coat of paint, but I do not approach the cherry tree on the other side. I stand, studying it through the fence like a petrified scarecrow. The figure sitting beneath its branches, lush with plump blossoms, quivers slightly in my peripheral vision, and I’m unable to meet his undoubtedly fathomless eyes. My sudden fear confuses me, but with it comes a familiar torrent of the delirium I used to feel when my heart was awake.

It’s as if the core of my being is contracting and retracting over and over again, sending excruciating jolts of electricity throughout my body which manifests as countless beads of sweat kissing the skin of my back. Each time I force my gaze lower and lower from the blossoms to his motionless figure, the sweat pulses out of my body in cold waves. I’m straining to make out the endless wells where his soul would stare back at me until I realise that his eyes are closed, his chest rising and falling peacefully under the fractured shadow of our cherry tree. His hair is shorter than when I left him, his tan is more pronounced, his jaw sharpened, his face narrowed, his arms thinned. He both grew and shrank in the time I spent away from him. My heart is beating four beats quicker than the rise and fall of his chest, and the dead blossoms in my pocket are shrieking to be freed. I can’t get in because I need a keycard to open the gate.

The shyness I thought was already buried returns and clamps down on my throat to choke my voice and strangle my movements, the corpses in my pocket still screeching as I slowly drown in remorse. Knees buckling, I fall to the brittle pavement and press my face against the wires when voices sound behind me. I can hear someone speaking on a phone, but nothing properly registers as dry sobs seize my body with spasms of an emotion so severe - an amalgamate of guilt and shame and incredulity smashed together - that each inhale grates the walls of my lungs as punishment for snatching his love and slamming it onto a contract written in my brain. I don’t want to speak to him, so when I hear the screaming sirens followed by pairs of hands gripping my arms and shoulders, I don’t resist.

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[Asherwy]

i don't understand