Meadowsong

I had a new dream this night.

But this time, I didn't see the sky bleeding like before. It felt normal, almost familiar to me.

Instead, I walked barefoot. The grass wrapping between my soles like velvet wrapping about rusted needles. The field, it must've had hundreds... maybe thousands of flowers stretching out like a quilt stitched over the Earth's lungs.

The red was more... gentle. I remember thinking that. Not like reds I've seen previously - when the clouds churned and convulsed above me like ripped out organs. That red had claws, a heart beating with anger. This red was warm, humming, almost forgiving in a way.

The blue, though... it held it's own broken heart. It just watched. I felt small in it's shade. Like it was mourning something I hadn't realized I lost. Or perhaps it was waiting for me to admit what I already knew. There was some kind of grief in it, but also distance - like someone staring at you drowning from the edge of the pool, unsure whether or not to intervene.

The flowers moved.

I mean—they moved like they had thoughts. One red one leaned close and whispered a joke, I think. A blue one sighed dramatically. Some intertwined, trying to merge together. That’s when it turned ugly.  Sometimes it burned. Other times it froze over, crusting and cracking like a diseased glacier. None of it made sense.

I saw a red flower nestled into a blue one, and for a brief second Where their colors met, violet formed. Not the delicate kind. The dark, oily hue that shimmered like bruised wine. Then the violet darkened. A shadow blooming across their petals, their fused form began to degrade.  And just before they could hold their new shape, that violet melted into green. Not forest green. Not natural, but a sickly green. Spoiled milk and bile and copper pipes that haven’t breathed water in years.

I watched as that blended flower melted, hissed as it rotted. Maybe even of envy. Sometimes it burned. Other times it froze over, crusting and cracking like a diseased glacier. None of it made sense. And I swear I heard it scream. A scream which bloomed inside my own skull. That stayed.

Just when I thought these screams would lose me again, that’s when I heard it. A voice—soft as winter static, calling me from the hill.

I know I heard a voice - genderless, honeyed, familiar - and I followed it past the flowers writhing at my feet. Over the hill the color drained from the world, the meadow stripped down to dying grass, I sensed decaying bones beneath the soil that I could not see.

There, standing alone: a flower. Violet petals, trembling. Stem: green, luminous, almost wet looking. I felt the urge to run, but I was rooted.  The flower greeted me like an old friend. Sweet, cloying, wafting my name into the air like perfume.

I tried to ignore it.

It spoke with kindness. Like a therapist who knows exactly where to press.

I tried not to respond.

I tried.

It asked about the bags under my eyes. I told it I’ve just been reading more. It didn’t believe me. 

It said my hands are shaking even when I dream now. It said I smell like copper and citrus and god-dust. I don't know my own scent, nor how I could smell like a god, but I had no reason to believe the flower would make up such a specific lie.

The flower, still smiling, changed the scenery around me.

First, I was nine again, standing under the burning lights of a gymnasium, holding up a second-place trophy like it was gold. My dad was still clapping. My shoes were still new. People were still proud of me. He called me his "clever little bird". I remember laughing.

Then, all of a sudden, I was now in the ring, A real one. A crowd chanting my name. I don’t remember who I fought, only that I won. The adrenaline. The love. The triumph. I looked divine in that ring. I was drunk on my own freedom, something I wish I could sip down on now.

Then, all of a sudden, I see myself from just a few months ago. Before that moment. I was on stage. The world is watching. I screamed in a voice which didn't feel like mind, but felt more like me than I ever had. All that pain, all the anger he caused us... It was released on that day. I felt on top of the world, like I had finally protected her with all I could.

It knew I wanted those moments back. 

Something inside of me aches after each passing scene. Every time, the flower asked, again and again, almost taunting me with each question. “Wouldn’t you like to hold me?”

I wanted to keep refusing. “Do not give into temptation”, I kept telling myself. But I couldn’t resist.

I reached out, pulling the flower from the Earth - begging for the torment to stop.

The stem whipped forward with speed, impaling itself into my palm and spreading sickness through me. I dropped to the ground, trying to shake it away, but it’s veins bulged through my palm - warping beneath my skin. The flower began to laugh at me through it’s emerald blaze.

It told me, “You asked for all of it. The triumph. The regret. The divinity.”

I tried to scream, but my mouth was full of rot.

Then I wept. But my tears didn’t begin blue. They flowed out a stream of violet, dripping on the floor - staining the ground next to me a blood red.

I think that scared it away. The flower’s colour faded away, and all the pain I felt reversed. My skin cleared. The green receded like an oil tide. The flower shrank away into itself, dying without thought or grace.

I woke not in my bed, but in a place I do not recognize

The ground was soft beneath me, and I think I heard humming in the distance. 

In the distance, shapes—some humanoid, others more like machines carved in bone—wandered aimlessly, weeping black sand. One of them stared at me, almost like looking at my own reflection. I don’t know yet.

I don’t know much of anything anymore.

But I think I’m starting to understand why gods go mad.