Strange little oneshot written to the tune of Jon Mark's The Greenwood, the Briar, and the Rose. I recommend putting it on while reading.

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It was a green mass, a winding maze. Dark, glossy leaves edged in dew, woody stems, and the sharpest barbs interspersed, twining in a spiny pattern. There were high hedges and overshadowed edges, tall trees looming over all, bending as if to listen to your passing conversation. At the centre, a stunted rosebush, struggling without fail, putting forth its single bloom throughout the seasons.

There were hidden spaces, clandestine places, masked by riotous growth and squirreled out by small children and lithe animals. We knew them all, my friend and I. We found them out, forced them to give up their secrets. We ran the maze, giggling like bubbling streams, mired in childish celebrations of life. We ran, because we could.

Why not?

Eyes, with which to see the world around us, though we were too young to understand it yet. Ears to hear the most delightful and liquid of sounds, birds trilling above us, leaves rustling, and the wind’s sigh. Skin that felt the warmth of the slowly passing sun. And legs that took us through it all, tumbling, skipping, tripping, falling, rolling in the sweet grass, staining ourselves green. So much to see, that we had to run, otherwise how would we take it all in?

We two, always two, never separate, further apart than strangers, but closer than twins in the womb. Hands clasped, eyes turned to meet, blue staring into green, green gazing adoringly back. Blonde and brown and sky and earth, a dizzying mix, tearing towards maze’s middle.

Pausing for a moment to observe, respectfully, velvet petals open to the heavens, and some airy thought spun through our heads.

A closer look was needed. The hedges watched us silently, and we stepped steadily closer, pilgrims on hallowed ground. We admired tiny leaves and short branches, but most of all, the blossoming majesty strutting its resplendence above the foliage.

There came a loud, startling sound, one that made my companion jump, and slip, putting out his hand to stop descent, tangling it in the frothy shrub. Other hands stretched forth, my own, intending to catch and becoming equally trapped. The thorns resented our intrusion, biting, scratching, protecting their lonely, blood-red queen.

Real blood welled and dripped, and mixed in the moist dirt. A bond was made, and a connection to this place, this moment. We escaped the sharp soldiers and went for aid, but did not feel the hooks sunk into our hearts. It was another secret for the maze to keep.

One that would not be given up for many years to come.

~~~

In my adolescence I walked as a stranger. I, not we, for I was alone now, choices and circumstances and a butterfly’s wing casting us to far corners of a still-flat world. I walked among tall trees, straight pillars to hold up the emerald ceiling, even as it flamed into seasonal glory.

There was no need to hurry, for now I was old enough to know that there was time, time enough to see wonders, and taste them, and remember them.

But there was knowledge, now, a slight jadedness, though it was perhaps too early yet for that word, those thoughts. It was knowledge that the world held sights both marvellous and dreadful; that its stories were both romantic and tragic. I had but seen an insignificant portion, enough to inform my naivety, to erode at innocence so boundless before.

I yearned silently for a place and for a person. Silvery bark armoured the ramrod trunks that obscured my vision, fading to hazy grey in the close distance. The azure expanse above the splaying branches was not mine, did not belong to my memories. Autumn leaves crunched against hard-packed earth, an unfamiliar crunch beneath my wandering soles, unforgiving as spring grass had never been.

But he found me even in that far place, coalescing out of the silver-brown palisade that the trees had built around me. He had searched and found and lost again, but as we came together in dizzying, windblown swirls of red-tinged orange, that past paled and ghosted away, and we were again the children we had been.

But in a similar fashion, we were not.

We were grown now, learned, though not wise. The years had not only opened our eyes to wonders, but to the desires of our hearts and our flesh, hidden deep within until the moment became ripe in its fullness.  In that moment, we acknowledged it, full of hope and trust. Standing on the raw bones of the forest, we connected in unfamiliar ways, discovering new textures, new sounds.

Our bodies swayed to and fro, leaning into each other, each trying to find a state of balance, that perfect pressure. And then we came to it, coverings lost, hard lines pushing into harder ones, sweat and tears and saliva comingling into a heady mess of need. We drove ourselves and the other higher, and higher still, and in a frozen moment we tipped, and fell, feeding our essence to the mix.

But time was a cruel mistress.

She sped up the fall of the leaves and the spread of the snow, forced the sun and moon to cycle ever faster. My only one, my lonely one, called away to unknown horizons while I was left to shiver in winter’s thoughtless cold, all the more harsh for the lack of ever-present heat beside me.

Left behind were whispered words and promises, and the slow, waking tug of a bond made long before.

~~~

The older nestling came home to roost, in the end. I stood at a window and gazed through its invisible solidity, looking out over the maze. I had wandered through, earlier, and discovered that while I could now see over the hedges, I could no longer crawl into the secret places. It was a saddening thought, something else lost.

I frowned at the clouds. I liked rain, liked to feel cocooned by the fire’s warmth as it pattered harmlessly against the sill. I enjoyed the sun, freeing us from dusty confines to walk where we would in its too-bright magnificence.

I did not like this greyness, this half-weather, neither one nor the other. It cast yet more doubt over a future already laden with it, and weary. I stared worriedly at the drooping rose-bush at center, once so spry despite stunted branches. It hunched like an old man exhausted by patience and waning hope.

My eyes caught on a blonde head, darkened by water from nearby showers, rushing through the hedges. It bobbed along, reaching the centre within seconds. It turned, searching. What for? I threw open the windows, leaning unheedingly into water that had begun to fall.

I am here, my body called. I am here, my heart pleaded. I am here, my lips shouted, announcing my presence to all and to none.

His handsome face turned up to me, smiling wide. He did a strange thing then. He turned to the rosebush, throwing forth its single valiant spring bud, and bowed, a subject honouring his royal mistress.

He came back to me then. His scraping formality was for the rose, but his loyalty belonged solely to me, as did his love, and he had mine. We entwined again, and this time it was slow, reverent. We somehow knew that this was the end of it, of distance, of silence, of nights alone and cold beds. We had gifted the solitary rose, and this was the reward, well-earned by trial.

A sustained dream bought to its due close.