Mother and Her Lilies

(trigger warning: hatred, war, death)

When she held her hand, she felt the ridges of her palm, the cracks of stories past, of struggles overcome, of pain and love. Her eyes were the ocean sucking her in and welcoming her home. And the creases traveling from her eyes to the corners of her mouth showed the unbridled laughter of years spent living life to an extent few knew how to experience. Until the blood spilled and her spirit went with the tide. 

She remembered that laugh, the one she heard coming down from the white house sitting on the hill against the grays of the sky. It was one of those laughs that you felt coursing through your body and vibrating into the souls of those around you. How that laugh would rock her backwards and lift her through a sensation of complete glee. How few people laughed like that. 

As she stared around the lake by the little house, she spotted her, a dream from long ago, lounging there by the side, speaking to the water spirits she always believed in.

She felt herself smile as she remembered how she would run out at dawn to swim amongst the lilies that somehow always survived the spring frost. That, too, was attributed to the spirits living in the glacial lake. Maybe there was reason to it. She knew she never felt the cold.

From the lake, she knew she would continue on, dripping, into the garden that was overcome with peonies, chrysanthemums, and nettles. Rubbing these between her fingers, she would carry them into the cottage to brew tea and murmur to herself, lilting chants to welcome the ancient spirits of those long gone.

She’d always begged her to remember the prayers and the water spirits once she was gone. How could she refuse when the wild golden hair spun about her as if beckoning her to agree and the wide eyes beseeching her to be done as asked?

She turned to walk through the garden but a glance at the fields had her walking towards them where she could visualize her several strides in front, long shining hair flying behind her as she ran towards the cows and the horses grazing before the blossoming trees.

As if they could hear the joy radiating off of her, the horses would whip their necks up high and the one with the mane of purest blue-black would come running until she was swinging herself up high onto his bare back. They would be gone until the sun was high. Careening back through the wheat as if the world began and ended where his hooves hit the ground, her shouts bouncing off the clouds, she remembered the expression on her face, of someone experiencing pure elation of the most true sense of freedom. 

She remembered, long ago, watching her dismount and knowing she would whisper to the horse as if he fully understood her. She would then run out, hands extended, as her mother would swing her into her arms and tell her of galloping amongst a place that was neither here nor there, a place only few could travel to. A haven for those who saw the world for what it truly was, underneath the seams of reality and the mundane. 

As she now kneeled amongst the barren fields, she remembered the heavy machinery rolling in on a day when the birds had stopped their song. Crude and cruel against the fading blossoms, the machine brought with them a smell of rotten carnage and men who saw no beauty in the natural world around them. She could remember the men slaughtering the beloved cows who had roamed over the land and eventually coming after the black beauty that always ran free. She could see it now, as if it had only happened moments ago. 

Her mother, beautiful and glowing against their darkness, streaming towards the men as they bound the wildness and the magic of the ferocious creature. She remembered how they took her, bent her body, and made her watch as they put the fighting spirit in a metal box that allowed for no movement, no flight, and above all, no love nor compassion.

The tears that streamed down her mother’s face were the first she had ever seen. They had stained her face for years to come. Permanent marks to mark the passing of the warrior soul that she could not save, that she had loved just as much, if not more, than herself.

As the skies turned black, the smoke invaded the garden. The lake, the trees, and fields turned red could not withstand the hatred sweeping through the lands, and they, too, met their end.

With this, her mother watched from her doorstep, helpless, grim, turned sorrowful by the savagery of humans greedy for war, seeking vengeance, even if it meant the destruction of the life force around them.

Her mother grew weary. As the days passed and the screams rung out from the fields, the lilies, the ones who had held out the longest, met their end as well. When there was no more life to be seen, her mother sheared her own hair and threw it into the waters. Cutting her palms, she smeared the house in her own blood, willing the hatred to stay out. 

The eyes of ocean blue turned deep gray. Mirthless, haunted, forlorn. Sometimes she would touch her mother’s arm and watch as her eyes, unseeing, strayed to the blackened trees, as if she could see the stouthearted stallion shaking his mane, waiting for her to come to him, to ride with him into the rising sun, to a place only they two would go. 

Now she stared at the bareness around her, at the house, as if she could see through the wood and into the room where her mother sat silently with blank eyes, destitute of feeling. No hint of a smile, of laughter in her eyes, of a will to live. As if she had died along with the spirits of those around her. 

She thought of the men and their machines, who had departed singing songs of glory and conquest. They left a stench of malice and a taste of bitterness behind them, yet they walked off without a backward glance while all the while her mother stood pale and lifeless watching until she could no longer see their backs at the horizon. 

The daughter slowly stood and found herself no longer kneeling by the fields but standing by the pond, dazed from the memories that would weave in and out of her consciousness. Watching her own reflection, she saw her hair flowing past, the color of starlight, and her eyes, so much like her mother’s all those years ago. She the moon to her mother’s sun. Her face solemn, when her mother’s had always been so alive.

She let go of the breath that she was holding and let herself imagine her mother one last time, bending over the lilies, inhaling their sweet scent, a smile tugging at her lips.

Turning away from the image, she slowly walked towards the house, bracing herself for the sight of the empty eyes and the silence that permeated the rooms. 

Before closing the door, she looked to the pond. But she did not find what she was looking for. She remembered the promise she had made her mother way back when the spirits and her mother vibrated with life, but she could not fulfill it. Because the lilies, there was no trace of them at all.