1.1 A Nice Thought

Gilbert restlessly tapped a finger on his parchment, half covered in notes from the council meeting that was, like always, droning on for far too long. The current subject was how best to dispose of the whale carcasses cluttering the shore near Haelstone. Even the sea had begun to reject its own in a silent but passionate revolt. Serena motionlessly glared at Gilbert, as if her anger and her need to blink worked in opposition to each other. He made a note to leave the meeting quickly, or she would pull him aside. The council meetings never had a predetermined ending, they would continue on until the chamberlain could take no more, at which time she would ring the small white bell at her side and they would all disperse. She looked nearly as bored as Gilbert, so he expected the bell at any moment. Martin was speaking with his deep voice, a tactic that he had adopted recently. His voice was normally rather high-pitched. Not distractingly so, it was a tone that fit him, but when he spoke in front of a crowd he would intentionally lower his voice as deep as he could manage. It was oddly endearing, watching him struggle to maintain it as his chin dipped lower and lower towards his chest unknowingly. He would then realize what he was doing and abruptly straighten up, clear his throat, and pick up exactly where he left off. His idea was to burn the whales, which wasn’t the best idea but it certainly wasn’t the worst. That would go to Oliver. He planned to butcher and cure the meat of four fully grown whales and then try to, in his words, ‘aggressively feast.’ 

Gilbert was listening just enough to give a quick reply should anyone question him, but mostly he was thinking about what Margot had told him before the meeting. The evening prior, she had been out late feeding the horses and decided to take a walk. She passed the old chapel and on the hill behind it, spotted a pale blue flower bud. At least she thought she did. She climbed the hill, but in the enveloping darkness of the night, she lost it and couldn’t find it again. Even the possibility was enough to set Gilbert’s mind racing. For two years he had searched, and in those two years, he had found not even a flower petal. Over and over he would descend into the town library basement and pour over the village logs that remain from before the Saltblade Legion crossed their borders and ignited a war that lasted a generation. The logs spoke of gardens, meadows, entire blossoming fields like a great floral ocean, lapping against the trees. They were commonplace then and frequently passed by. Funny, how time can change the value of things, he thought. I wonder what someone like me will pine for, long after I’m dead and they read the scrolls that we leave behind. Surely it will not be cured whale meat, but perhaps something as simple as a council meeting of peers. Something I would never think to treasure because I am inundated with it. He was shaken from his thoughts as the Chamberlain sat down her bell, having rung it three times loudly. He had missed it, and now Serena was between him and the door. 

She gave him an earful, one that he was unsure quite what it was about. It began with a lecture about commitment and the importance of taking the council seriously, and then quickly devolved from there. Something about her last husband, and how all the men in Hillroar were dullards, and that she didn’t sleep a wink the night before because of the dogs howling around town. Gilbert listened and nodded, hoping for a chance to slip out. His chance came in the form of poor Oliver, who wandered through Serena’s field of view and was immediately beset by the wrathful woman. The crackling flame that was in her eyes as she spoke to Gilbert grew into a veritable inferno in the presence of Oliver, who was clutching his pack to his chest like a shield, and begging her for mercy. Gilbert slipped out quickly and headed towards the hill behind the chapel. 

Before he reached it, he ran into Odette and her husband. As Gilbert understood it, Odette’s husband recently signed quite a lucrative blacksmithing contract with the Tower Prince. According to the two of them, it would provide work for even their children, should they be blessed with any. They were quite happy, and Gilbert felt a twinge of pain, but more so admiration. He no longer wished for her like he did so long ago, but he still ached with the pain of feelings lost. He often thought back on the maps he tried to make of her thoughts when they were together. They were arresting and labyrinthine, infinitely detailed, and yet they didn’t even begin to plumb the depths of her complexity. Perhaps they were the very reason he had lost her. He spent so much time desperately trying to illustrate her being, that the living truth of her became obscure to him. Seeing her with her husband, a man who was nothing but what he proposed to be, was like looking into a dream. She looked at him with such care and unguarded interest. They complimented each other honestly and fully like a story told to children in the dying light of the evening. Gilbert talked with them for a while, then said his goodbyes and continued towards the chapel.

 When he reached the hill, only despair was there to greet him. The hill radiated with dead energy, rippling in the air like waves of heat. For hours he searched, but even the wyrmlings that often slithered their way through the craggy surface were nowhere to be seen. He grew dizzy from holding his breath in the face of the rotting air that leaked upwards from the split face of the hill, and eventually, as the sun set, he gave in and returned home with nothing but his witless fantasy. Maybe it withered before I could reach it, he thought to himself. How a thing could ever live on the surface of these sick plains, I’ll never know. Perhaps it's time to forfeit this endeavor in favor of a pleasant life in the now, ignorant of what once was. Sleep took him slowly and fitfully. 

The next morning, outside the town market, Margot found him once again. She shouted and jumped up and down, pulling on his sleeve. She saw it again, on the hill behind the chapel, just moments before. Gilbert was harshly divided. For the first time in years, he had spent the morning thinking of anything but a flower, and now he was presented with a finer lead than he had ever had. He entertained the idea of pushing the girl aside and continuing on with his day, but the interest still burned brightly within him. He nodded and excitedly followed the girl towards the hill. He could hardly keep up with her as she bounced from building to building and weaved through alleyways, unfeeling to the weariness of time that pressed down so heavily on Gilbert. They reached the chapel and she clambered up on top of a wagon to be the same height as him, then pointed at the crest of the hill. There, wavering delicately in the warm decaying air, was a pale blue flower in bloom. 

Gilbert hugged Margot tight, then scrambled up the hill. As he neared the flower, he slowed his pace to a crawl, afraid to disturb the perfect creation before him. It was hardly the size of his thumb, but beautiful nonetheless. A bright silver hive of florets like a mass of stars was surrounded by tiny blue petals. The space around it glowed with a dense purity, pushing away the putrid air that swirled around the hill. Its vibrant green stem wiggled upward from the splintered ground, and Gilbert leaned down to follow it to the root. He found no root or living soil out of which the flora was birthed, but instead, the spine of a wyrmling. It wriggled back and forth in delight as it chewed on a small purple mineral deposit. It held the stone up to its mouth with its front paws, unphased by the man staring down at it. As the stone was completely devoured, Gilbert watched in awe as a second flower, this one a dark purple dotted with black, sprouted from the back of the creature. The wyrmling roared like a child and meandered forward through the roughly hewn crevasses of the hill. Gilbert watched the two flowers roll back and forth in rhythm with the wyrmling’s body as it coasted away from him and disappeared beyond the hill. 

He thought of returning to town, but instead, he lay down on the hard ground and stared up at the sky for a while. Even such a small moment was enough for him. Oliver from the council once asked what he would do with a flower if he found one. Nothing, he had said. It is enough to know it exists. It is not mine. I have no claim to it, or right to do with it as I will. I only wish to see it, to know that something in this world can grow. He might have stopped there, but Oliver looked intrigued and so he went on for long enough that Oliver never again asked about his quest. If I ever find one, he continued, and I truly believe I will, I will leave it be. I will watch it push against its extinction, striving to blossom for no reason other than because it feels the need to. I will admire its growth in the face of adversity and wish that we might emulate even the smallest piece of it. A thing so pure, so contrary to everything we’ve built, so singularly focused on bringing something good into the world. I hope that should I find one, it will infect me like a virus. The stagnant air will pick up its pollen, and plunge it deep into my lungs, and there it will take hold. I will feel it sinking into my blood, my heart, and the tips of my fingers, and even if just for a moment, I will know the kindness that it knows. If I am unimaginably lucky, I will carry it with me for a while. From one to another, I will pass the spores along, and rapidly the sickness will take us all. Everything that once tore this land apart will starve, and in its place will be nothing but tenderness. Perhaps the very ground we walk on will not recover, but we ourselves would be the flowers. Standing shoulder to shoulder, we would sway like an endless expanse, bursting with the qualities we have long ago passed by in favor of cruder methods. I know it will not happen, but it’s a nice thought to have.