[Birthright Universe] Lilies
[Title] Lilies
[Author] honooko
[Rating] PG-13
[Warnings] Brief descriptions of death and violence
[Notes] After the Western Quiet War, Book 1
[Summary] Arlo tells a story.
When I met her, I barely noticed her, honestly. She didn’t stick out, partly because she didn’t make a lot of noise or an effort to be sociable. She sat alone at mess, cleaned her guns quietly in the corner of the camp, and if there was half a second for us to just breathe, she’d pull out an embroidery hoop of all things.
I remember walking up to her one day to ask her about it. It was so odd to see a woman like her doing such a womanly craft; I wanted to know why it meant enough to her for her to carry it around in this muddy wasteland of death and heartbreak.
“What’s it for?” I asked her, sitting cross-legged on the ground next to her. She was almost as tall as me, a full head above every other woman in camp, and most of the men. Despite this, she had an elegant quality to her. She moved smoothly, quietly, almost delicate.
“Nothing,” she answered simply. “Just killing time.”
“There are other ways to do that,” I pointed out to her. She frowned, but it was such a small movement, I almost didn’t catch it.
“I’m sure there are,” she replied. That seemed to be the end of her desire for conversation. I wasn’t that easy to deter back then-I had to know her reason. Knowing everything was really important to me before the accident. It didn’t matter so much after that.
“What’s it supposed to be, though?” I asked, reaching up to touch it. She whipped it out of reach, glaring at me with such heat I thought she was trying to set my head on fire.
“Keep your dirty little paws off,” she snapped at me. “You’ll get it muddy.”
“So what is it?” I persisted. She sighed; I don’t know where she got the patience to deal with me back then, because she certainly never showed it with anyone else. If a talk went on too long, she tended to abruptly walk away. Being polite was never one of her skills.
“It’s-they’re flowers,” she said. She pulled the needle through, her concentration on her work never faltering.
“What kind of flowers?” I asked. I genuinely did care at that point, but I probably sounded less than interested to her, because she didn’t immediately answer me. Maybe she was hoping if she stopped talking, I’d get bored and go away. The thing with her though-I never got bored. Even when we’d just sit there, quiet as church mice, I wasn’t bored. I could do so much in that silence, like watch her mouth purse when the threads caught, or her eyelashes dusting her cheeks when she blinked. Sometimes I could look at her hands, surprisingly white and soft, considering where we were. There was always something interesting about her, once I stopped and looked.
She gave me a lot of time to look.
“They’re lillies,” she finally told me when it became obvious I had no plans to leave. “Yellow ones.”
“Do you like flowers?” I asked, wondering why I even cared. But I did care; I cared a lot, for some reason.
“I used to,” she said. Her voice wasn’t sad, but it wasn’t happy either. There was something about it that seemed resigned. “Not anymore.”
“Why not?” I wished I never asked that question. I should have figured it out already. I should have been paying attention to when she did the needlework, and where. I should have seen the pattern. Instead, I made her sit there and tell me, the fool who didn’t know when his presence wasn’t wanted.
“Flowers are for graves,” she said.
Clover Ellis was a lot of things. She was tough, refined, a damn fine shot-but she had a softness to her too, something people didn’t pay enough attention to. For all the horse shit we waded through, all the gore and death and destruction we observed and caused, all the pain and suffering we had to keep marching past... Clover still felt it. Clover wasn’t hard on the inside like everyone else.
We never had time for graves, back then. We just dug a hole and tossed them in, all together in a pile, like sacks of meat. Sometimes it was easier to think of them that way, especially when we threw the torch in and walked away.
But Clover put lilies on the graves in her heart. Clover grew them, tended them, stitched them out on white linen so they would never wilt and never die. Clover still saw death as human. I’d almost forgotten how. She reminded me, over and over through that nightmare of a war, that we were still humans, people who deserved to be remembered and mourned and missed.
Clover stitches flowers on my sleeve cuffs now. Hydrangeas, daisies, a morning glory here and there; that way I can’t forget them. I can look at my hands and remember that people I knew-people I fought beside-had died. Clover sewed their memories around my wrists so no matter how hard it gets to remember details, I’ll never truly be able to forget.
She’s a wonder, that woman.
[Author] honooko
[Rating] PG-13
[Warnings] Brief descriptions of death and violence
[Notes] After the Western Quiet War, Book 1
[Summary] Arlo tells a story.
When I met her, I barely noticed her, honestly. She didn’t stick out, partly because she didn’t make a lot of noise or an effort to be sociable. She sat alone at mess, cleaned her guns quietly in the corner of the camp, and if there was half a second for us to just breathe, she’d pull out an embroidery hoop of all things.
I remember walking up to her one day to ask her about it. It was so odd to see a woman like her doing such a womanly craft; I wanted to know why it meant enough to her for her to carry it around in this muddy wasteland of death and heartbreak.
“What’s it for?” I asked her, sitting cross-legged on the ground next to her. She was almost as tall as me, a full head above every other woman in camp, and most of the men. Despite this, she had an elegant quality to her. She moved smoothly, quietly, almost delicate.
“Nothing,” she answered simply. “Just killing time.”
“There are other ways to do that,” I pointed out to her. She frowned, but it was such a small movement, I almost didn’t catch it.
“I’m sure there are,” she replied. That seemed to be the end of her desire for conversation. I wasn’t that easy to deter back then-I had to know her reason. Knowing everything was really important to me before the accident. It didn’t matter so much after that.
“What’s it supposed to be, though?” I asked, reaching up to touch it. She whipped it out of reach, glaring at me with such heat I thought she was trying to set my head on fire.
“Keep your dirty little paws off,” she snapped at me. “You’ll get it muddy.”
“So what is it?” I persisted. She sighed; I don’t know where she got the patience to deal with me back then, because she certainly never showed it with anyone else. If a talk went on too long, she tended to abruptly walk away. Being polite was never one of her skills.
“It’s-they’re flowers,” she said. She pulled the needle through, her concentration on her work never faltering.
“What kind of flowers?” I asked. I genuinely did care at that point, but I probably sounded less than interested to her, because she didn’t immediately answer me. Maybe she was hoping if she stopped talking, I’d get bored and go away. The thing with her though-I never got bored. Even when we’d just sit there, quiet as church mice, I wasn’t bored. I could do so much in that silence, like watch her mouth purse when the threads caught, or her eyelashes dusting her cheeks when she blinked. Sometimes I could look at her hands, surprisingly white and soft, considering where we were. There was always something interesting about her, once I stopped and looked.
She gave me a lot of time to look.
“They’re lillies,” she finally told me when it became obvious I had no plans to leave. “Yellow ones.”
“Do you like flowers?” I asked, wondering why I even cared. But I did care; I cared a lot, for some reason.
“I used to,” she said. Her voice wasn’t sad, but it wasn’t happy either. There was something about it that seemed resigned. “Not anymore.”
“Why not?” I wished I never asked that question. I should have figured it out already. I should have been paying attention to when she did the needlework, and where. I should have seen the pattern. Instead, I made her sit there and tell me, the fool who didn’t know when his presence wasn’t wanted.
“Flowers are for graves,” she said.
Clover Ellis was a lot of things. She was tough, refined, a damn fine shot-but she had a softness to her too, something people didn’t pay enough attention to. For all the horse shit we waded through, all the gore and death and destruction we observed and caused, all the pain and suffering we had to keep marching past... Clover still felt it. Clover wasn’t hard on the inside like everyone else.
We never had time for graves, back then. We just dug a hole and tossed them in, all together in a pile, like sacks of meat. Sometimes it was easier to think of them that way, especially when we threw the torch in and walked away.
But Clover put lilies on the graves in her heart. Clover grew them, tended them, stitched them out on white linen so they would never wilt and never die. Clover still saw death as human. I’d almost forgotten how. She reminded me, over and over through that nightmare of a war, that we were still humans, people who deserved to be remembered and mourned and missed.
Clover stitches flowers on my sleeve cuffs now. Hydrangeas, daisies, a morning glory here and there; that way I can’t forget them. I can look at my hands and remember that people I knew-people I fought beside-had died. Clover sewed their memories around my wrists so no matter how hard it gets to remember details, I’ll never truly be able to forget.
She’s a wonder, that woman.