All Kisses (Love Song Part 7)

I basked in the sunlight that had come out and warmed everything.

"Med," Jared said quietly, after several moments.

"What?"

I opened my eyes and placed a hand over my mouth.

Mark wasn't better. He wasn't awake, either. Around us hovered people, at least twelve to the inner perimeter and beyond them others, their circles extending back into a blur of white energy, through which the trees appeared like dark pillars. Though their bodies were transparent, wearing clothes from many eras, their eyes pierced me, staring gravely in my direction.

One small body, furred and bright wove through the legs of a man and woman, and sat on Mark's chest.

"Scat," I said. In this bleached light, he appeared more real than Mark did.

His eyes blinked slowly as a soft tickle twined around my hands. It was difficult to pull my attention from the scene, but I obeyed the sensation and looked down. Around my fingers, small brambles appeared, green and pliable. They sprouted small round leaves with edges that gradually turned sharp. More sprouted around my knees, and as the stalks thickened and hardened into mature branches with thorns, buds formed and blossomed into fragrant petals.

"No," I whispered.

The petals fell.

"Medea," a whispering rustle said my name. The noise came from all around me, as soft as the blossoms, but I knew the voice was of all these people talking at once, as though it took great effort to speak through their veil.

"You must believe," they said.

They faded away. Except for Scat, whose tail flicked.

"Are you saying I did this?" I asked him.

Scat yawned, ears back and teeth exposed in the full grimace, and hopped to the earth. He circled Mark's head, stretched, then bunched up and skittered off into the forest.

The world around me spun. Not literally, like the trees, and not figuratively like the souls I'd somehow seen. But my mind, my memories, my intuition shifted as I gazed at the roses curling around my limbs.

They were my roses, not my mother's. And untouchable by Jared's winds no matter how persuasive he was. They were a symbol of my life, growing one way and another in crazy and sharp directions--the green shoots nourished by my parents but often lonely, their bark twisted by uncertainty and freckled by life's thorns... and never just happy.

Unless I was in Jared's sun.

But roses are tough, and when the shadows fell, I grew wood over my green branches and found Mark. Mark was my attempt to create sunlight after the sun had left... and I'd done it, after a fashion.

I reached deep into my earth and allowed the roses to unravel their hold on me, and crawled toward the boy on the ground. I ran my fingers over the wounds on his cheeks, down his neck, along his arms, grieved that he'd gone through this pain. Jared hadn't hurt him, I had. I'd trapped him here, even if I hadn't realized it, and trapped myself here until I pushed through the song's equation and knew.

Jared's challenge wasn't to Mark. It was to me. All winds, all desires, all forces, all knowledge, all souls--I'd seen.

I pulled the band from my hair and allowed it to fall in a river to hide my face, then leaned over and kissed the lips of the boy that I loved.

I'd taken his sun.

___

One more week, coming up next Friday! Stay tuned :D.