Reverie Jamboree - I Remember Fields of Flowers

The breath between winter and spring stirred a sense of nostalgia that Jack did their best to ignore. They were partial to winter; the cold and the dark were familiar friends and made the brief flashes of warmth and light all the more meaningful. Then, a lifetime ago, they had been prodded and plied until they let summer in. They’d found themself in love with the transient seasons between the extremes, in the new growth of spring and the slow settle of autumn.

That lifetime was gone but not forgotten, an old scar that ached and itched, a perfect place to be wheedled, if one were the sort of meddling manipulator that wanted to make Jack dance to their tune.

Being aware of their weaknesses did not make them immune to it, and when Keshet had pointed out that the nearest field of flowers was a short flight away… Jack had let themself be led.

Now, with a steady beat of leather wings beneath them and the bright morning sun glaring through their shaded goggles, Jack wondered why they hadn’t waited until nightfall.

Keshet laughed, brightly braying as she swept low over the plains that were still white with last of winter’s snow, and in the near distance, Jack saw it.

A brilliant burst of spring green rose in streaks through the snow, places where the sunlight had fallen, hot and bright and melted the snow so that the grass and flowers could grow. Oh, there were flowers stretching as far as the eye could see. Daffodils and tulips, snowdrops and pansies painted beautiful havoc across the landscape, a riot of texture and color even through Jack’s shades.

Around their neck, Napier woke with a quiet, displeased hiss, but even the scarf-sized dragon paused at the sight below them. Quiet energy hummed through him as he contemplated the bright sunlight and the energy that came with it.

Keshet flared her wings and landed squarely amid the flowers. Jack patted her neck then slid off her back, landing on the ground with a heavy thump that definitely crushed more flowers than it spared.

Freed from her duty, Keshet immediately flopped down in the flowers and rolled onto her back, hooves flailing happily in the air as she wriggled deeper into the dew-damp grass, petals breaking from their stems and clinging to her scales, as bright and scattered as her real markings.

Napier was discontent. Jack felt it prickling at their nape as he slinked loose, arching catlike before clambering down Jack’s leg like a lizard to stare at the flowers.

There was some loose kernel of longing, half-shaped as he put one button eye to the gap in a tulip’s petals.

Jack crouched, running their hand over Napier’s cloth-and-iron body. Napier peered upwards at them as Jack bit back even older memories of the colorless world they’d been born into, an aberration, a mistake to be hidden away, as if a ghost of the child their parents had wanted.

Jack knew from experience that adding anything to Napier’s body would conflict with the magic that made up his being as much as pure energy did. If they wove flowers into his stitches, they would turn beige and red, perfectly lovely on their own but faded and dull compared to what spring had brought to this corner of the world. Napier wanted more.

“Move, Kesh,” Jack said, and after a playful nip to their hood, she obliged, rolling out of the way so Jack could sit cross-legged on the grass she’d already destroyed. They reached for several flowers, using their nails to neatly cut the stems as close to the ground as they could get.

Jack had never done this: sat in the garden and wove flowers. The sun had been too unbearably bright without their shades or hood, and they had been achingly alone for the longest time.

Yet, with a few flubs, they soon made a circle of grass with flowers woven in. Without being asked, Napier stuck his head into it, letting Jack drop it onto him. The colors — red, yellow, purple on the green strands — remained as bright as when they’d been picked.

“Here, here!” Keshet said, waddling closer while braced on her wings. Jack glanced up, watching the way the light played across her iridescent scales as her fins flared. “This will help.”

Without warning, she exhaled a long, deep, freezing breath that made the air rattle in Jack’s lungs. The few remaining dewdrops on the flowers spidered into frostwork webs where they hung around Napier’s neck. Napier got warmer in response, the iron of his wings sizzling as the frost was made and immediately evaporated.

Jack finally threw an arm over their mouth, coughing violently into the crook of it. Napier startled, jumping into the air, the tips of his wired halo touching Jack’s hand. A numbing shock raced up the length of their arm, once again making it hard to breathe as their body seized slightly. They coughed and gasped until Keshet took some measure of mercy and reached out with her wing, forcefully pushing Jack to the ground. The newly-frozen mud seeped cold and miserable through their clothes, but the impact pushed the air out, and suddenly Jack was breathing again, feeling bracingly alive in a way that made them laugh, half furious and half delighted.

Then they reached up with their non-numb hand, smearing mud across Keshet’s scales and laughing harder at the shrill sound of distress as she tried furiously to wipe it off with her wing.