Chapter Text
“I wish you wouldn’t keep meeting that spirit,” she says, unusually petulant.
He looks up at that; his brow furrows as he catches her pout, the way she stares fixedly at the lake instead of glancing around at every little blade of grass. Her hands are stiff as starched brocade by her sides. The air in the clearing is so still that even the crisp autumn air suddenly feels stuffy.
He sighs. “I know,” he says, and it hurts that she frowns at his words, that it’s the only apology he can give. But, well, some things he can’t give up. The fate of the world happens to be among them.
She blows out the wind in her cheeks, the breeze rippling through the treetops and sending golden-red leaves cascading down to the forest floor. They turn and watch the leaves together, hands almost-but-not-quite touching, the maple branches bending slightly as they shed their leaves. One spirals down, and Sunwoo beckons slightly to bring it careening over to them; another gesture, and the leaf falls onto the clear cold waters of the lake, sending ripples in all directions.
They sigh in unison. It’s calming. The season is still warm enough that the early morning sun softens the bite of the breeze; the ground is steadily warming as the sun rises overhead, the shadows growing shorter, the constantly shifting chiselled surface of the lake glinting brighter as they stare off into the distance.
There are no ducks today. It’s not yet time for them to migrate south, but the time is coming. There is a distinct chill to the nights now, and the air is dry. It’s the season where a roaring fireplace is most comforting; the dry branches catch easily at the slightest spark from a flint, and it only takes a few moments for the fire to spread from the brittle branches to the logs.
He falls asleep. An errant breeze catches him quickly enough to lay him gently down on the leaves; it lingers to muss up his hair before dispersing.
When he wakes, the clearing is brighter, and she is watching him. A stubborn cloud stands between him and the sun, unnaturally still; it takes him a moment to wake up enough to realise it’s her doing.
“The sun was in your eyes,” she explains, and now he’s awake she frees the cloud and sends it on its way across the bright expanse of sun-bright sky.
He rubs at his eyes, yawning. Merde, how many hours did he sleep? He can barely get away nowadays, and instead of cherishing each moment with her he dozed off. The apology rises naturally to his lips this time. “I’m sorry.”
She blinks at him. “It’s interesting,” she says, and he catches the way her gaze lingers on his lips as he yawns again.
He stretches lightly, his arms locked behind his head. “What is?”
“Sleep,” she says simply, still gazing at him as if enraptured.
He smiles slightly. “You don’t sleep?”
“Not really. Just…” She gestures vaguely, the leaves stirring at the movement of her translucent hands. “I’m not always solid, you know—”
He nods; he’s seen her dissolve before, leaving nothing behind but the echo of a breeze. “When you become the wind, is that like sleep for you?”
“I don’t know,” is her candid reply. “Being the wind, it’s like being everywhere and nowhere at once. I’m not really thinking, just moving and aware of everything in the forest. It’s like being every single dew drop on every blade of grass, but just on that level. I’m just… the dew.”
He tilts his head, smiling at the thought. The scale of such an existence, the sheer magnitude of her presence reaching into every hidden corner of the world—it’s humbling to someone who can only walk one step at a time, to say the least. “The entire forest. Incroyable.”
She grins, satisfied. “What about you? What’s sleeping like?”
“Nothing,” he says, trying to think back to his own nap just now to explain better. “Unless we dream.”
Her eyes are alight with curiosity as she nods for him to continue. He pauses, trying to find the right words. “Dreaming… it’s different every time. They don’t really make sense, our dreams. Things happen, people act, sometimes the setting is as mundane as a market, and sometimes there’s magic, intrigue.”
“Sounds a lot like life,” Sunwoo remarks, and his eyebrows arch before he nods.
“I suppose it is.”
Silence, again—and yet even without the rise and fall of their conversation, the forest is never truly silent. The rustle of leaves and the soil as tiny lizards scrabble up sun-soaked slabs of slate, the constant murmur of water as the surface of the lake is disturbed by some falling leaf, some small waterbound creature, a frog smaller than his fingernail—and by the ever-present wind, the presence that sweeps through the entirety of the forest, from the highest oaks to the minuscule spaces in between their roots. At that gentle touch, every woodland creature from the birds nesting at the top of the trees to the blind moles in their burrows underground looks up, looks westward.
When he breaks the not-quite-silence, he keeps his voice low so as not to disturb the singing of the wind. “I have to go,” he says, and his heart aches as she whips around to face him, eyes wide.
“Already? It’s not even afternoon—”
He shakes his head, his smile turning sad. “Not today. Soon. A month, or maybe more. There are rumours of a witch that can control the dimensions. I need that knowledge, but it’s a long journey—”
Her pout is back. She opens her mouth, then closes it again. When she finally does speak, her tone is resolute. “Okay. But send me letters.”
Letters? He laughs, thinking she’s making a joke of some kind. “How should I address it? I pity the poor messenger who has to come all the way out here.”
She frowns. “Haven’t you ever seen people send messages in bottles?”
“Yes, but they don’t actually—” The thought brings him up short. “I thought—”
“That’s how people used to send letters to their naiad friends,” she says briskly, like he should’ve known. “It’s easier to send a letter to an aura. You don’t need to go all the way to the sea.”
“The wind,” he guesses, and she nods solemnly.
“The sea is fine too,” she adds as an afterthought. She looks away, shoulders hunching slightly.
He’s never seen her like this—of course her cheeks are as translucent and colourless as always, but he swears he can almost see her blush. It’s so rare to see her uncertain that he can’t help but tease. “Oh?”
Her voice is almost indistinguishable from the sighing of the lake; she still refuses to look at him as she whispers, “I’ve always wanted a message in a bottle. It’s so…”
“Romantic?” he suggests, and she looks at him, abashed but pleased.
“Yes! I’ll get it either way, wind or water. Naiad blood, remember?”
“Of course,” he replies, his heart lightening. The thought of having some mode of communication makes the thought of separation easier to bear. It’s short-lived, though; his heart sinks again as he realises how one-sided this communication will be. “If I were a naiad, you could send me messages too.”
She scrunches her nose up at that. “Just listen to the wind!”
“Fine, fine,” he laughs, although privately he wonders how he’ll discern her voice calling to him among the thousand breezes. Doesn't one wind sound much like another?
It’s a long journey, a week’s hard riding to get to the first stop. It’s afternoon when he arrives in the sleepy backwater. His horse snorts in surprise when they cross over from cobblestones to dirt paths.
The air is clear here, and warmer. It's an old village, and they pass ruined mills and abandoned hills before he spots the first sign of civilization: a cottage in the distance, whitewashed walls propping up a sloped brick roof.
The line between woodland and well-tended fields is distinct. One moment they are cantering past wild dandelions and overrun weeds, and the next they are among small budding tulips in all the colours of the sunset. His horse slows, stopping to nose inquisitively at the strangely shaped flowers, but it’s well-trained enough to pull back when he pulls gently at the reins.
As beautiful as it is, this is someone’s crop. He wouldn't want to start his visit on the wrong foot.
The landscape changes with every hill they pass. Tulips soon give way to daffodils, dazzling in their golden-white beauty, and then to wide-petalled roses. Their scent hangs heavy and sweet in the steadily thickening air.
He’s glad he opted to dress lightly; the climate here is warmer than back home, the village being almost directly south of the woods. It’s a pleasant half-hour or so of riding before they reach the city centre.
Which is perhaps too generous of a description; there is a single high street, bustling with people looking among peddlers’ stands selling everything from fish to finely tuned wristwatches. He casts his gaze around, his horse tapping an uncertain hoof on the cracked stone pavement.
The sound is dull; there are pebbles in the horseshoe. He will have to find an inn with a good stable—but there is one more thing before they get their well-earned rest.
He has to call twice before the street urchin looks up, their confusion evident at being called to by such an obvious outsider. Still round-cheeked, hair so short and so messy that their gender is indeterminate. The silver piece he hands to them is the same size their eyes widen to.
Immediately, the coin disappears into the mass of scarves; in an instant, it’s hidden so deeply that he’s not sure even the child could find it afterwards. “Where to, sir?”
“The flower shop,” he says, but the child just looks back at him, flummoxed.
“The one on High Street, or next to the church? There’s one near the bakery too, sir.”
Vincent laughs, delighted at his mistake. What a tourist he’s being today! It is such a joy ride into a village bursting with so many flowers that it has more florists than churches. “Anywhere that has blue flowers,” he says, and the child trots off without another word, leaving him and the horse to weave through the throng and not lose him.
A half-hour later he is another silver piece lighter and holding a beautiful bouquet of autumn flowers to his chest. Coaxing his horse—just one more mile, Jean, then we will both feast like kings—he rides away from the crowded street, heading to the far side of the town where a brook runs through one of the blooming valleys.
This one is far enough from the town to be as it has always been, bursting with tall grasses and patches of dandelion, both white and bright yellow. The clover grows all the way down to the riverbank; he dismounts, leaves Jean to nose at a clump of spiky wildflowers he’s never seen before, and carries the bouquet to the water’s edge.
He pauses. It feels very silly. Here he is, with the most marvellous bouquet in his arms, bedecked with sky blue and white ribbons and arranged to show all the shades of the flowers to their best effect. He recognises some he put in her hair—lilies, cornflower—but there are many more he has no names for. A gift fit for a queen—but he’s missing his. Behind him, Jean snorts and ambles away from the wildflowers. The water rushes past, her favourite shade of blue—a shade darker and greener than the sky, but so brilliantly white where the surface catches the sunlight.
He breathes out slowly and plucks a single flower from the bouquet. A little white rose, the thorns sheared off in a flash of silver by the florist’s clever knife. The bloom tilts when he pulls at one of the outermost petals, and the slight noise it makes as he tugs it free is the loneliest sound he has ever heard.
“She loves me,” he murmurs to himself, and blows the petal into the wind. Another one follows. “She loves me not.”
The sudden gust of wind nearly knocks his glasses from his face; instinctively, he clutches the bouquet protectively. When he opens his eyes, the two rose petals he blew into the wind are caught up in the breeze, eddying around and around each other. The warm afternoon air has been replaced with the cold morning air he remembers so well from so many golden days together; this is what the air tastes like when she is there, the crisp morning dew blanketing the forest as the night turns to day.
“She loves me,” he repeats, wondering, and the wind whisks the third petal from his fingers. He can’t help but smile, touching the fingers to his lips—Sunwoo, he whispers, and the wind almost sounds like it’s saying his name back.
Petal by petal, he gives her the rose. When he runs out of them, he sets the centre of the blossom on his palm, no longer bothering to blow it into the air; she is here, she will take it from him.
And so she does. For a moment, the wind slows, the petals quivering as they dance in slow concentric circles, eventually settling into their original shape. The rose is there again, perfect and whole, and then the wind picks up and he has to squeeze his eyes shut again, and when he opens them there is only the scent and the stem in his palm, and the sweet morning air. Behind him, Jean is licking fresh dew off the clover.