The grass is so tall it surpasses my knees.

It is soft to the touch, velvet soft and smooth as ribbon as it wraps my fingers. Though my fist is small, the blade I clutch crumples as easily as paper. It seems odd to term something so flimsy a blade. A blade should have a sharp edge and a point, and should be hard as steel, unbreakable. This grass tears with only the slightest pull.

I pull again, and the grass blade rips jaggedly in half, leaving me with the severed upper section. Some stirring awakes in my core at the sight of the torn edge. Frost pricks my heart despite the honey-like sunlight caressing my face. It appears harsher this way. A broken blade.

"Noli?"

My name. I jerk, thoughts melding into a single blob of curiosity. In the shimmering haze of light, colour blurs in a similar way. Circles of translucent white and gold blot the view of emerald fields and the clear blue sky beyond, bold and brighter than anything I feel I should recall seeing. Everything is so beautifully, endlessly alive. The bare skin on my arms seems to pulse with fluid heat, like the sun itself has grown strong enough to stretch out its yellow fingers and cradle me, gentle but intensely firm.

The call of my name comes from a splash that cracks the view: a swaying lilac dress, fluttering with movement rather than a gusty breeze, and a mess of tumbling black curls. Blinking, I raise a hand to shield my eyes, and my mother's image sharpens.

She strides briskly towards me and drops to her knees. Her eyes are glinting forest jewels, and they catch the light in an odd pattern, their dim shine lighting only as her gaze locks to mine. "There you are," she says, her voice soft and cool, an intrusion of winter amongst the warmth we bathe in. She cups my cheek. Her touch thrums through me strangely, kindling an alarm that chimes with a spark of confusion until it settles and fades to my heart's drumbeat.

The corners of my mouth rise. She grins back, fingers threading my hair as she tilts my head forward and plants a kiss on my brow. "Don't play with grass, Noli." Her tone skips like a snowflake, bouncing through the swirling wind currents of her smile. "It's far too dull for you. Why don't we find some flowers to pick?"

My chin dips in a nod. Laughing as if in tune to a joke I don't understand, my mother takes hold of my hand and leaps to her feet, guiding me through the field. I have to jog to keep up with her swift, lithe movements. She moves like a graceful storm.

"Here!" she cries. There are trails of gold sewn into her dress's pale purple, and they glitter in the sun's full glow, outshining the darker violet shade of the flower she bends down to pluck. There are many of them clustered together at her feet, a splash of stark difference amongst the green. The flower itself forms a short funnel guarded by miniature petals. It sways atop a long stem, seeming to stare up at me without eyes as she brings it closer to my face.

"I always loved this one." Glee carries almost too thickly through her whisper. A throbbing urge in my chest pushes me to look beyond it, to the mild sadness in her expression. It's contradictory, and it fizzles the buoyancy of her smile.

There's something dull about it. Distant. Alarm whines again in my ears, and I frown, wishing I could swat it away. The sun's rays are starting to burn.

My skin is hot, yet my hands prickle with cold.

"Lavender," my mother says, and the thought snaps like a blade of grass. "Go on, give it a sniff."

Obedience is easy when it's her voice I follow. I oblige, and a sweeping wave of calm accosts my senses. Woody smoke scatters across the scent. It's softly sweet, and it scoops up doubt and soothes it until it fades to nothing but dust. With my nose full of it, I can only grin.

"You like it?"

I adore it. It smells of home.

I would tell her so, but my tongue is a lump in my mouth, a heavy weight that refuses to weave the words I wish for. Instead, I carefully take the lavender flower from her. Its stem is delicate, its scent seeping in with every additional inhale. I fear I'll break it. I don't want to ruin this somehow.

My mother ruffles my hair. A laugh lurches from my chest, tickling my throat. More smoky sweetness climbs my nostrils until I feel lightheaded.

"Keep that one," she tells me, sweeping my curls back from my face. "And help me pick some more. We can decorate your bedsheets with them, if--"

She freezes, and her silence is awfully deafening.

Concern wells up around my heart, and I dive forward to grab her wrist, but she doesn't look my way. Her previously animated form has gone still as a statue carved of ice.

"If you'd like," she murmurs listlessly to finish the sentence, though her voice is too low to lift upward in question, frigid and murky.

A dark lump of fear sets hard in my stomach. Agitated, I curl my fingers around her layered sleeve, the outer netting catching on my nails as I tug, and she finally remembers me. Her arm wraps protectively around my shoulders, but still the air's tense atmosphere seems to wield icy spears pointed my way. I whimper and shrink into her side.

There's a shadow watching us from the trees.

Cast in the sharp shadows that balance out the sun's sweltering light, it takes several shaking moments before I identify his form as a man rather than some beast bearing broken, elongated limbs. His clothing -- deepest nightshade navy layered over black -- does little to aid him, though his skin carries a hint of pale ash. A hood shades his face.

"Harlow," my mother bites out in that same stiff, frostbitten tone. Within the same instant, the man steps close enough for the light's clumsy fingers to peel away a little darkness, enough to make out his dull green eyes. Just like my mother's, a slice of light hits them in emerald brilliance as his gaze sweeps over me and her, though it's gone far quicker.

I lick my lips nervously. The scent of lavender has faded now, replaced by a bitter chill. I know it.

I know it.

I want to gasp, but my breath remains caught in my throat, my mind buzzing with fear I can't pick apart. My fingers are cold again. Though they're buried in the folds of my mother's dress, I try to flex them, searching for something that isn't there.

"Mayci," the man says. His voice is soft as the brush of flower petals. It makes my skin crawl.

My teeth clench. I don't want him here. He needs to leave.

My mother seems to share the thought. "You have no place here," she snaps. Her hold on me tightens. "I told you to stay away from us."

Though her tone is the same razored shrill as a sword being drawn -- a whistle of threat, sharp and unyielding -- it drips past my ears like water. The sky seems to ripple, my body ghostly and very far away. Harlow's green eyes pierce through the mist.

A sting drags across my shoulder blade. I cringe at the pain, but his gaze pins me in place.

"Noli." He speaks, but his mouth doesn't move. His voice rattles in my skull instead, reverberating through my bones and across the stilled field. Like a shockwave, it heaves away the sunlight layered over my skin. I shiver.

The sky fades to black. The field shrivels and greys and drops away from my feet, then flickers back, wavering in and out and leaving me dizzy as I scramble in pursuit of it. An icy chill claws outward from my core.

Terror grips my lungs. I clutch for my mother, but she's gone.

"Nathaniel. Wake up."

I pitch forward, a suffocating scream locked tight in my jaw, and then suddenly there's solid ground pressed into the soles of my feet once more. The tiny grass blades itch at slits of bare skin, tingling uncomfortably. A freezing wind slaps into my cheek, and I suck in a frantic, broken inhale.

Cold bitterness fills my mouth again, and I remember to term it death.

There's a body at my feet and a knife in my hand. The details register dully, dragging through my mind like rocks across a muddy riverbed. The stars glower above. The trees are thick. Harlow's dark figure watches me from amongst them.

The colour of his eyes is less nuanced than a few moments ago, yet no less piercing. This time, his lips do shape his words. His jaw is visibly clenched. "Nathaniel, listen to me."

Nathaniel. I'm certain that name is foreign, that it belongs to someone else, yet the longer its echo sits in my mind the more it ekes out familiarity. Sticky chills cling all the more tightly to my skin.

The memory flits through my mind as if it runs a race. The water. The thrashing, the drowning. The fire. Her voice, so inviting, and then the enveloping shroud of darkness, the soft touch of blankets, the falling into the ether--

The screaming in my core, too smothered to reach my ears. The barren wasteland, spread at my feet, all belonging to me.

The freedom.

"Listen," Harlow says, more insistent, snapping my thoughts like a knife through a spider's web. "She has control of your flame, Nathaniel. You know what she wants to do. You have to stop her."

His words pull at me like ropes, lashed to my limbs and wrenching me from a pit. There's a numbness in my fingers, but it's subsiding. The leather hilt of the knife rolls over in my palm. A thin film of blood coats its edge, and a wound cuts lightly into my wrist beyond it, red against paper white. There's a tightness in my chest, a cramping in my stomach. Black flickers waver uncertainly at my fingertips.

The wind touches my cheek again, and I breathe it in. Stop her, the order echoes, pulsing at the forefront of my mind. She wants to destroy.

Harlow's ropes pull tighter. The knife tumbles from my hand as I whip to face him, anger brewing in thick tendrils to break apart the intrusion of his voice, his careful tone, his commanding edge. Why do I hesitate? Why do I listen? I hate Harlow. I hate all that he has done, and I will not be controlled by his wills.

A warring desperation wrestles within the tangle. I can't let her destroy.

It is feeble, weakened. I shove it back to its cage.

My heart beats, just once, before I stop feeling it. My mind cracks, and awareness tumbles into the abyss the gap creates, taking with it the furious stars and the press of death and the man I do not want to see.

My mother told me that Harlow is a bad man. I must not trust him. I should stay away from him.

Light bursts back into clarity, and her hand is in mine, safe and secure. Harlow's gaze bores into my back, but I'm not looking his way anymore. Together, we run from him, and there is no pain but the pleasant burn of the sun.

───── ⋆⋅♛⋅⋆ ─────

I had so much fun with this chapter tbh. We've finally reached the true reason I'm writing ADB and it goes brr :iminnocent:

- Pup