I was waiting in the garden

it's thursday

there's a sticky-sweet scent woven through the breeze, trees so laden with sap that it bores out from the centre of the wood before it can even be tapped. twelve isn't seven though, it's ignored, or perhaps just not noticed by the men and women that shuffle through the woods on their way to the coal mines each morning.

the maples tower above him, old gods with their arms spread out wide, leaves taking up any small breath of space that sunlight might come through to filter golden green shadows onto the forest floor. when he was younger, he used to think that the soft whisperings he heard while in the woods was the musings of those twisted branches themselves. it was only after watching for awhile that he understood that it wasn't whispering at all, just the wind running through the canopy above, agitating the swaying branches, like trying to get through a crowded room.

he's got a bucket, not for the sap. the cattails at the lake are ready for harvest, he checked last week, then checked the almanac that had been left for him. he remembered harvesting them last year too, when she was still alive, how she'd shown him how to wrest them out of the mud, stem and all. turns out that's where all the vitamins are, in the root of the stem, but the head can still be split open, the cotton-like clouds of seeds used for stuffing pillows, packing wounds and as fire starter- many uses, everything in the woods, he's come to learn, has many uses.

at the edge of the lake, right where the water runs its fingers over the lip of the shore, there's an old rowboat with no bottom to it, the wood having long rotted out. solas stands there in the middle of it for awhile, a strange ritual that he has to perform every time he goes up there.

because the bloodstain on the inside curve on the starboard side is his mother's and so it's also his.

she's not the one who left him the home with the almanac and the knowledge of the cat tails, that was someone else. when his mother left him, all she did was leave him. it was a long time ago but he still has to stand in the rowboat, his back to the hull, eyes studying the calm surface of the lake as if it's the last thing he's ever going to see.

then he wades in up to the middle of his shins and he pulls cattails out of the mud, snapping them carefully at the stem so that they can grow back again next year. it's early spring yet, the water is so cold that his breaths come out on clipped wings, his toes curl inwards beneath him, his fingers go numb, blue at the tips, but it doesn't matter. he's still going to fill the bucket.

it's thursday, there's going to be a party in the clearing after the dark settles. there'll be a fire, aines will have bottles of beer from the old rusted laundry tub him and orta found in the basement of the factory. it tastes like iron to drink but it still makes you drunk, so no one really minds. solas always sips on it, if he dares finish a cup then aines makes a beeline for him with a bottle, ready to pour him another.

aines wants you drunk, orta told him once.
that's odd.
doesn't mean nothing by it, just worries about you.
still odd.

part of him's curious though, what's aines going to do if solas winds up drunk, what's he going to win? will it feel good, to watch sparkling, careful solas stumble around in the roots of the trees like the rest of them?

he just thinks you should loosen up, ever since that ma of yours-
that was a decade ago though.
-you've never been the same.
ten years.
wouldn't matter if it were twenty.
it would to me.

and that's usually the point that he stops being fun at parties- no one remembers the irish goodbyes, sol's good at them, stepping back slow until the light of the fire stops burning his eyes.

he had his first, second, third kiss at a party like that. first time, he was nervous, then the lips against his were soft but tough, kind of like rubber, then all he could think about was the eraser in his pencil case that he has a habit of chewing on when he's deep in thought. he's never tried a fourth kiss, it would probably be like the first kiss and the ones that came after it.

he chews on the stem of a cattail on his walk back to the house. she taught him all the routes to get back to it from anywhere in the woods and he walks game trails, hardly visible to the naked eye, easy as if he was only taking the road from the mines to the square.

aines talks to him less these days, most people do since the hedge witch left him her house. folks just know what that means, what it makes solas. she'd written about that in the letter she left him.

i could go because i knew when we met, we were the same. that was the only explanation but solas didn't need more than that, he understood. you can handle it, that's all she meant, the loneliness.

he'd never known his father, his mother never spoke about him and solas was too young back then to wonder and by the time he was old enough to it was too late to ask.

the first time he'd met the witch who lived so deep in the woods, he'd been limping. sometimes when it's cold, even after all this time, he still does. the bullet that went through his mother's chest embedded itself in his leg. there'd been a chopping sound, like someone was slicing the air, slicing the moment into befores and afters.

he'd watched the blood blooming on the back of her coat as she rowed them back to shore, half-listened as she helped him climb out, you know the way to the witch's house, i'm right behind you, always.

sometimes he still looks over his shoulder out of habit, even after they strung her body up in the hanging tree as a reminder of what happens to runaways. they questioned solas for a few days but let him go eventually, he didn't know much, he was so young then. he hadn't even known they were running away.

all his mother had packed that day was lunch and the fishing rod, like usual.

his hand falls on the latch to the garden gate and solas pauses. there's a prickling on the back of his neck, he turns his head slightly, he can hear that whispering, if he listens close enough he can almost make out words.

He glances back over his shoulder at the path but it's silent, still.

always is.