Fern Flower
Deep enough to remember, shallow enough to live.
She walked toward the forest with trepidation and a hunger she couldn’t name. The air here didn’t just wait. It breathed. A draft coiled into her ear—shallow, intimate, and smelling of ancient rain.
“Have you come here to lay your body to rest?” The hollow of the forest asked. The voice didn’t come from a throat, but from the gaps between the rotting cedar and the black earth.
She shook her head, an abrupt movement that startled the trees.
“I haven’t come here to die. Not yet,” she said. “I’m seeking the flower.”
“Rest and death are similar,” the hollow gasped. “Why do you seek the flower?”
She shrugged, a subtle nudge of skin against wind.
“I need it. I’m not sure why.”
The forest hummed unsteadily. The vibration moved through roots, stones, and her own marrow. She glanced down at her tattered dress, the lace stiff with the iron-scent of old, dark handprints. Something essential had slipped past her, a memory that tasted like copper and felt like a door slamming shut.
“Who are you?” the pulse of the forest asked.
She shrugged. “Nobody.”
“You may pass.”
She bundled the white lace between her fingers, the fabric catching against her callused palms. She wandered through a cathedral of pine and birch, needles crackling like static underfoot. The scent of mulch was thick—not an assault, but a heavy reminder that she was crossing a threshold from which there was no map back.
An orange glow bloomed between the trunks—warm, flickering, almost like a hearth.
“Sit with us, Nobody,” the gnomes beckoned. They were gathered around a black dog who looked as discarded as she felt. They tended to him with a frantic, earthy grace, brushing mud from his coat and massaging his scarred ears as if he were a holy relic.
“You don’t belong here in this form, friend,” one whispered, his voice like dry leaves. “No one will pat you here. No one will feed you or love you. You must become a wolf. It is unnatural to walk this world in this form.”
The dog growled, troubled by a truth he could not deny.
“I will love you as you are,” she offered, her voice small against the towering trees.
But the choice was already made. The dog opened his maw and inhaled a dire ghost. She watched, heart hammering, as his bones snapped and sang, his muzzle sharpening into a weapon of bone and muscle. When his eyes settled into pale green orbs, he didn’t growl. He sauntered over and licked her palm—a wet, hot seal of a new covenant.
“He is your companion now,” one of the gnomes said.
“Yes,” another added.
She rubbed the top of his head and felt a peculiar kinship when he looked at her. She knew they would walk into the dark side by side.
“Before you leave, Nobody,” one of the gnomes said. “You should take some mugwort with you. It will aid you on your journey.”
As she reached over to accept his gift, he gripped her arm tightly and pulled her face in close enough for her to see the glittering black in his eyes. His beard tickled her face. Before she could register what was happening, he deposited a gemstone into her pocket.
“When you need it most,” he whispered.
She looked back as the wolf guided her away. The spiky red hats vanished into the dark between the trees.
She and the wolf became bound to one another.
The feral spirit within him did not stop him from loving her. They played, they slept, they ate. They killed giants born of her old resentments and shape-shifted into the birds she had watched from her childhood window. They communed with the dead, whose restless dreams tasted like oceans of grief.
All of it in a single second—
and in an eternity of possibilities.
All mortals know—
there’s an end to every journey.
“It’s time, friend.”
“But I didn’t find the flower yet.”
“It’s in your pocket. It always was. You just need to open your eyes.”
“I just don’t want to go back,” she cried. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“I know.”
“Do you think I should let go?”
“I’m not the one to decide. But I know it is right to miss her. Even after years. Even after the memory starts deceiving you into believing you have forgotten her face. She is the ground you walk on.”
She wished he had been kinder, but refused herself the urge to change his nature. He was a wolf. She knew their hunt was over.
The first rays of sun slipped through the smudged window, threading light between the drapes. Her fingers trembled against the fabric of his essence, as if touch alone could anchor a ghost to reality.
“Please don’t go. I can’t go back yet. I need you…” She clung to his rainsoaked fur, seawater streaming, but felt him slip away anyway.
She woke to the salt of her own tears. The house was quiet, smelling of dust and the faint lingering scent of the sea.
She made a cup of black, bitter coffee and stepped out into the garden.
The weight was still there. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a dark green tektite—glassy, cratered, and humming. When she looked into its depths, she didn’t see a stone. She saw a window. Entire worlds cradled within. Not stationary images, but living, breathing memories.
She saw the wolf and the mermaids and the stars. They seemed so real.
She saw her mother too.
Not the pale, still version from the funeral, but the mom who lived in the margins of a Tuesday. Putting groceries away. Eating a banana. Slicing bitter melon into green hearts and raising one up with a wink.
The stone vibrated in her palm. It offered her a trade: she could slip into that world. She could go back to the morning she left in a hurry and replace her “goodbye” with a long, desperate embrace. She could stay in the loop of that kitchen forever.
“You should bury that in the garden, mom,” a voice said.
She turned. Her son was standing there, his hair messy from sleep, looking at her with eyes that were far too knowing.
“Why?” she asked, her voice thick.
“Maybe it’s better that way. To let it grow.”
She embraced him, anchoring herself to the present. She looked at the garden—the peonies and the roses—and then at a half-dried, uninvited fern struggling in the shade of the fence.
“Should we make some space for her?” her son asked.
“Yes,” she answered. “We’ll hide the stone in the roots. Deep enough to remember. Alone enough to grow the flower.”
They knelt together, digging at the cool soil with their palms and nails, burying the memory so that something living could finally take its place.
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Achingly beautiful!
This is so beautifully written 🖤