A Tumbling Doll Of Roses And Blood

“This is where my sister is. And she was beautiful, and I loved her.” Melina pressed her hands together, her fair white skin glowing under the dappled spring sun. Her auburn hair fell over her shoulders like her sister’s had, and she was pale in all the same ways, from her frosted skin to the washed out blue of her sad eyes. Melina sat amongst the branches, hidden within the leaves and the vines running through the new tree. It had been pushed back from an hour a million years from now to some place in the present, made to grow from its home in the sky all the way into the ground. And deep within its heart, where Melina’s sister had been put to rest, the trees rings silently disappeared. They were the ripples from a pond receding into themselves, tumbling back into the clouds beneath the stars. As the hardwood fell into the ground, its branches slowly closing in, it hugged Melina’s sister so, so tight.

The tree had settled, fallen into the fields of roses surrounding the oceans of petals where the other sisters had been laid to rest. This was where all sisters went when all sisters died. And when the other sisters, still alive, came to visit sister’s past, the tree’s future came tumbling down and fell away into the ash of the Earth. Deep within the sands beneath the roses were the roots who could see blackness and interpret it as light. Melina stood on a branch as it rocked back and forth in the soft spring winds, looking out over the falling leaves and to the ocean of petals. The fallen blades twisted and turned through the islands of still breathing flowers, purple and pink and the deepest reds and blues. Melina wiped a tear from her sad blue eye and climbed down from the tree where her sister had been laid to rest. She stepped through the grasses, like green crystals, down into the valley where the sun passed by the tree. It laid shadows like lost siblings, passing over the daylight to slowly stroke the landscape. She had worn her forest coloured dress, two small straps over each shoulder. It fell and hugged against her small body. She was only twelve.

A boy watched from a patterned grove of flowers on the hill top, hidden by the branching stems of roses large and grey. His own sister had passed; the illness had taken her as it had taken Melina’s sister. His sister had no name and neither did he. He watched her from behind the curved petals of the smoke coloured flowers as she passed from the brook into the ocean. Up to her knees, the colour bled into her skin beneath the cutoff of her dress. He wanted to talk to her, but he didn’t have anything to say.

“And she was lovely, and she was wonderful,” Melina whispered, stepping backwards. She glanced up at the tree as it reached to hold the sun, no choice but to fall away. Like all the sisters who were gone; they were pieces of the past. She was beautiful, and she was wonderful, but she was gone, preserved by the receding echoes in the rings of the blood of the tree. The boy continued to watch her until she was a speck on the landscape, twirling and tumbling through roses with no thorns, reaching down with their veins towards the sister’s from before. There was no way home, not for him or for her. There was no future in this place, not for them or for anyone.