03
{ the foolish girl. }
-
' h e
w h o
f o r g e t s '
- -
THE WOODS ARE STRANGE, LABYRINTHINE PLACES. Word and time travels fast. Black and white trails before her, swishing onto the direction of the playful breeze. Dandelions bloom in the sides and she dares to regard them with her icy eyes, but Esen is aware that at the pace they're going, her lover will find a way to lose her.
Time is unfathomable. For an immortal whose purpose is to fall in love and embrace her lover's death, the seconds, minutes and hours are merely something that held no genuine significance.
They pass towns once in a while, cobblestone pathwalks with potted plants and colorful roofs partnered with bricks and sticks. The people are lively, enthralling and there are ones who gape at her. Esen doesn't blame them. She is beautiful and she is very much aware of the capabilities of her beauty.
And the curse that comes along with it.
Maybe if she was as an unattractive as a seacow, then maybe her lover would stop falling for her and then they'd be rid of this curse. For eons now, she's thought of wounding her face, slitting the cheekbones all the way to her jaw, letting the blood gush. And maybe things will be better that way. Maybe she will be so ugly and unremarkable that the despotic gods would transfer the curse to more foreseeable prospects.
She shakes her head. What a selfish, foolish thought.
Rumors circulate as she continues following her lover, the sad raven haired thing that is careful to avoid every little thing he encounters. Twisting and turning in order to fulfill his goal of avoiding every single sign of life. And maybe lose Esen in the process. He's made it clear that he doesn't want to be near her and the first days (or was it months?) she feels a minuscule pain blossoming on her chest at the thought of his dislike for her. Then she thinks that it is for the best.
Clothesline zip above them, complete with long skirts and shawls, and she climbs stacked crates in order to reach a shawl. Surprisingly, her lover regards her with a curious look and consciously or not, she smiles.
Wrapping the shawl around her, she catches sight of the unmistakeable tinge of carnation pink on his cheeks.
"You should be careful..." he says, almost a whisper.
She looks up, shock filling her face, because it has been a long long traipse now and it's one of the few instances where he spoke.
"Pardon?"
He regards her with another distant look, and Esen oh Esen hates how she adores him, how she's falling deeper and deeper for her lover again, even though she knows the denouement of this play is everything unhappy.
"Those crates were unsteady..." he repeated, his voice mellow. "You could have fallen."
The way he says it makes it sound like as if he's chastising a child and Esen has been jaded by the time to react with an immature, obnoxious outburst, so she merely nods. The problem with communication doesn't entirely allude to his faults.
She steps forward, three quick paces, watching the floor as her feet make contact with the pavement and thud. Her face comes in contact with his back and she only has ample time to release a welp before falling.
She ignores the pain almost easily and looks up to meet his disinterested ruby gaze.
Lips part and lo behold another unusual circumstance with her lover who speaks.
"I've been attempting to lose you for four months and two days now," he says, his voice devoid of emotion. "And you're too persistent. Why do you continue to follow me? My curse could kill you."
"Your curse doesn't affect me in the slightest and as for why I am trailing after you like a penguin with her mother, it is because I believe that you will fall in love with me and we will spend our last days together."
"Odd."
He touches the white cloth slung over his coat and he gestures the tip of it toward her.
"Hold on to this," he says. "Maybe you are interesting company."
Esen resists the urge to roll her eyes, and instead of accepting the white fabric, she reaches for her hand. The raven haired boy tries to scamper away, but her grip is steady.
"Why do I need to clutch onto some fabric like a child when your hand is warm like sunlight?"
His face reddens at her candor and he averts her gaze. Esen has seen too much of him to even have decency at this point, so she merely holds on tighter, feeling warm hands.
- - -
They called him the Black Wizard, the most powerful. Word travels fast and Esen continues to learn more about the elusive Black Wizard. Zeref was his name, she heard when they passed murmuring men. A wizard which held power that challenged the very fabric of being itself.
A being probably as ancient as this curse that bound her and her lover and there it is again, the glimmer, the spark, the tiny tinge of hope that sparked in her eyes. Maybe, again, again, maybe that wizard will find a way to break this.
But Esen cannot trust that fast. Rumors spread by people tend to be exaggerated after all. She has to know more before she acts.
Esen looks at her lover, he's passed the point of being flustered by their hands intertwining. He merely looks straight ahead, dead straight into the woods with animals clearing the paths they trek and she grips his hand tighter. They rattle whenever there's a bird chirping, a ferret scampering away or a flower swaying idly in the breeze.
He's afraid to hurt them.
To let the curse that bind him tear others into pieces, turn them into ashes.
Esen takes a deep breath.
"It's okay," she whispers, and he turns to her. "You won't hurt them."
He detaches his hand from her grip and she doesn't let the heartache seep from her face.
"You don't know that," there is acid in his voice. And it hurts more than it should.
She wants to help him.
And she will.
Esen surveys the path that lay in front of them and she catches sight of a desolate cave. She raises her hand and points at it.
"You can stay there for the meantime. It's almost nighttime and I think it will be better for you if you stay there and not loiter in the forest where you're bound to do something unbeneficial for the plants and animals."
He nods and she runs to town.
There she meets with a man with dark skin that tells her all she needs in exchange for some rare herbs in the forest filled with wild beasts. It's underneath the deep lake that's bound to drown everyone. At the very bottom. The man laughs at her at first, but his mouth gapes when she returns with the herbs, her body dry.
"What...?" the man asks and croaks, "how?"
Esen smiles a little, haughty at her feat. It's been so long since she managed to conjure it. The power to call on the bodies of water and will it to her bidding. The flowing, transcendant power.
"Don't underestimate a Water Mage."
The man chuckles. He's a suspicious character, and Esen feels uncomfortable trusting him, but all the past deaths of her lover flash before her eyes and fear, fear is a horrible wonderful trigger that leads her to do reckless endeavors.
The man hands her a leather bound book, filled with scratchy hen handwriting that makes her wrinkle her nose in disgust, but the next thing she knows, the man has disappeared.
ZEREF
THE CREATOR OF DEMONS
THE BLACK WIZARD WHO
POSSESSED POWERS THAT
SHOOK THE GODS THEMSELVES.
The scripture is followed with instructions, some that may prove to be painful, but Esen will do it. She grips her wrist tightly and traipses back into the forest where she's delighted to find out that he didn't leave her, but a pang of guilt still strikes her because if all of these fails, she's leading him to his death.
This peculiar boy with the most beautiful eyes.
"Where were you?" he asks, his voice producing echoes along the cave.
"I was in town," she replies curtly and goes deeper into the cave in search for something. Her hands grope on the land for something and when the tip of a sharp rock feels against her palms, she holds it closer to the moonlight filtering through the cracks of the cave. It will do.
Hurriedly, she takes a step out of the cave, her heart hammering loudly in her chest in preparation for what she was about to do.
"Wait," she hears a voice and Esen turns to her lover with her doe eyes.
"What?" Maybe it came out too coldly, but Esen cannot be bothered. The ends justifies the means.
"Where are you going?" he asks and maybe she catches the hint of concern in his voice. Warmth blossoms in her chest and it only encourages her more. She will do this. For him. For this man.
"The lake, west from here," she answers, heads to the lake with haste.
The ritual to call the Black Wizard is pretty simple. Well it was originally difficult, but Esen is a Water Mage and the processes are expedited by her power.
She wills the water to rise and ready a path for her. She makes it carry stepping stones and she steps on the stones, heads to the center of the lake. Moonlight strikes her entire visage and she raises her wrists, cuts her wrists using the stone and let the blood flow on the water.
It hurts, but she'll manage.
Time trickles and crimson continues to trickle from the cut, soiling the stepping stone where she stood with sanguine colors. Her vision blurs incredibly and Esen's knees continue to shake. The curse is probably the only thing preventing her from dying and it hurts, so damn much, but Esen will end the curse. She has to.
She needs to.
The pain mingles with her hazy mind and releases a plethora of previously undiscussed thoughts. The cycle has torn her apart and she's spiralling slowly into madness. Esen is a mess now. One time she's smiling and powerful, next she's marble and fearful.
Blood drips again and she can hear the throbbing of her heart from her chest. Please, she murmurs the mantra over and over again. Begs the entirety of the ordeal to end. She has to call upon the Black Wizard. She has to find a way, because maybe... really... truly... Esen is the one who doesn't want the cycle most. She is the one who wants the wasting and pain to cease.
Esen rasps for breath and the reality settles into her mind in bold letters, imprinting itself, almost the etching of names on marble tombstones meant to stay until time immemorial.
Then Esen sinks into her knees, the water she wills collapsing like a bunch of dominoes and she's going to drown until she feels hands grasping her and she looks up wishing, hoping that it is the Greatest Mage of All Time. It isn't. It's her lover, so fragile, so worried.
IT WAS A TRICK.
NO BLACK WIZARD CAME.
His touch is warm, like sunlight. Like silk sheets and if she reached out the sky and touch the clouds, maybe the cotton white things would feel the same.
"Esen!" he calls, her name soothing. She doesn't know his name. Shame. "Esen Rietvield!"
Esen faints.
-
e n d.
[ thank you for reading chained flowers. ]
c o m i n g:
04 | "the most powerful."
• this is trash sksksks, but i love it