Of Wisteria and a Moon

A wisteria.

A bleeding heart.

A snowdrop.

These are the flowers weaved through her hair, her clothes, her heart.

These are the flowers that represent everything she is, everything she was, everything she will be.

A wisteria – immortality. The curse and blessing she is burdened with.

A bleeding heart – for all her friends and lovers and children that have come and gone, who now only live in her head and in her heart.

A snowdrop – the end and the beginning.

When the snowdrops sprout, Winter ends and Spring begins, and she begins again.

Her year does not start in mid-Winter like most, her year begins when she was born, the date long lost but the snowdrops that surrounded her mother during her birth the sign that time has continued.

She has lost so much, and gained so much.

An immortal is never truly happy, because they know that that happiness will be stolen from them eventually.

Her heart bleeds for her 21 children, for her countless lovers that came and went for so many reason – betrayal, distance, death… Countless reasons, and countless heartbreaks.

Her heart bleeds for her lost friends, those who stood beside her, who laughed with her and cried with her, who she all lost in the end.

Over three centuries, she has lived. Perhaps not the longest an immortal has lived, but she has never met another to truly know anything about immortality.

Perhaps she should look more into it; should learn more about her curse and blessing.

But perhaps she is too scared. For while this immortality is a curse that forces her to lose, it is a blessing that allows her to love, to keep living and loving.

She has lost her children themselves, but every Spring she sets out, and she finds her children’s children, and their children, and so on, and she watches the families of her beloved children grow.  She watches them do her proud – and not just her, she knows, for her children and lovers would swell with pride as well if they could see.

Some of them fall, need to be picked up, and she lifts them up each Spring, and touches their wounds with her bleeding hearts and leaves behind a sprinkling of wisteria petals in her wake.

Her wisteria petals, from the flowers woven in her hair and her clothes and her heart, dwindle, and she knows when the flowers are all free of petals she will be lost to the universe, but that does not stop her from setting out when the snowdrops sprout and spreading her wisteria petals to the progeny of her lost ones, so they may hopefully live and breathe to see another sprouting of snowdrops.

Immortality – a curse and a burden that has left her with a collection of countless bleeding hearts, including her own heart – her true heart, which is not a flower at all.

It is almost as human as any others, but the moon had made itself at home deep inside it when she was born – burrowing it’s way in to live a life alongside a child born during the Spring Equinox.

A child who was raised by soft and gentle parents, who never questioned exactly why her heart beat just a little differently than everyone else’s.

The moon nestled itself inside her heart, and she lived each day knowing that the whisper in her chest would not let her leave this world.

So, she made a deal, weaving wisteria into her hair and her clothes, so that the moon would let her go when all the petals fell.

And the moon agreed, knowing they would not fall for a long time – more than long enough to experience everything it came down to do. To feel human, to learn what it is to be human.

The moon watches, and feels, and waits until the day the last petal falls.

It could let her go sooner; it has lived through enough lives with her, but the moon has never claimed to be selfless, and does not want this to end. So it will honour their deal, and force her to honour it in turn, and when the last wisteria petal falls it will let her go.

The time comes sooner than the moon had expected.

A child – her twenty-second – suffering through a disease no child should have to suffer through. And she drips bleeding hearts and sprinkles wisteria petals as her child cries and withers away, but it is not enough.

The snowdrops begin to sprout, and she looks up at the moon.

“Forgive me, Moon,” she speaks, voice as soft and gentle as her parents’ had once been – the only thing she truly remembers of them after all this time, “I will not be visiting my descendants this year. I will not be leaving behind any wisteria for them. I have lived so many years, and I have been lucky. All of my children have survived with little petals lost, and the same for most of their children. But this child now, my twenty-second, he will need all of my petals to survive.

“I know this is not what you wanted when we made out deal, Moon, but this is my child. I have been so lucky, but I still cannot let a child of mine die. The father will still be here to care for our child. All of my remaining petals will go to my child. I will not allow this suffering to continue.”

And the moon wanted to rage, wanted to lash out, but the moon had also lived through the love that the one it had made immortal had with the father of this child. Had lived through its birth and all the horrible pain that came after.

And the moon had wanted to experience the life of a human, and it had. Countless lives it had lived with its immortal, and through those lives it found its own heart deep inside itself.

And it could not forsake its immortal for her choice, for despite all its selfishness, it had learned to love, and watching its immortal through the years, it had learned to understand selflessness.

And so the moon only watches as the snowdrops sprout and the immortal leans over her child as it sleeps, as she kisses its head and drips bleeding hearts, and the wisteria petals fall slowly, covering her child like a blanket, and she collapses, and looks out the window of the room, into the darkness of the night.

And she speaks her final words,

“Thank you, Moon.”