Page 314 of May: Bloom & Bane

They aren’t weeds, Tav. They’re flowers, and they smell like summer… like her. Jovi whispers back.

Can we just… grab her? I ponder. She is mielù, after all. (Mine/ours)

At once, we both bolt across the snow toward the porch like two creatures who have never once in their endless lives considered how a thing like that might look.

She flinches back, just one startled step, her arms tightening around the baby.

We stop so fast Jovi topples over.

We scared her. The thought lands in both of us at the same time, and it’s agony. We scared her, we scared her, oh no–

Fix it! Tavi, fix it now! he says as he rights himself, his hat slouched completely over one eye.

I shove my arm forward so hastily that the stems snap in my grip. I thrust them out at her anyway.

“Who are you—” I blurt out.

“—What’s your name?” Jovi asks.

“Do you like⁠—”

“Flowers?”

“Can we keep you?” We finish together.

She’s staring at us, her eyes moving from the broken flowers to our bells and the places where our clothes are ripped. Her lips are parted, and there’s a flush creeping over her cheeks.

She feels it too. She has to feel it. Please let her feel even a sliver of what just⁠—

I do not get to finish that thought. Because something closes around the back of my collar.

It is enormous, and it lifts me clean off my feet, my broken bouquet still thrust out in front of me, my legs pedaling uselessly in the air.

Beside me, the exact same thing happen to Jovi. He dangles a foot off the ground, hauled up by the scruff like a kitten.

I crane my head around. The thing holding me is a mountain. White-fur, antlered, easily nine feet of it, with ice-pale eyes that are looking at me the way a predator looks at a particularly loud, annoying insect it’s deciding whether or not to squash.

And holding Jovi is a green-skinned creature with a deathly stillness about him, his eyes pitch-black.

It smells like cucumbers and murder. Why are they holding us like this? Do humans have giant pets?

I don’t think it’s a pet, Jov. I send back, my voice tight as the leather collar of my doublet digs into my throat, my bells giving one final, pathetic clink in the air.

“You have ten seconds,” the white mountain says. “To explain what you are, who sent you, and why I cannot see a single thread of either of your souls.”

I do the only thing a creature of my particular talents can do, under the circumstances.

I smile—not that it’s ever been optional—and I aim it, bright and crooked right at him.

“Okay, so,” I say. “Funny story.”

Our vaelùmè shifts the baby into the arms of the red-headed woman beside her and stops right where I’m dangling. She reaches out, her small fingers brushing my leather glove as she takes the flowers, and the moment they touch, a wave of heat rushes up my arms. My bells give a frantic shiver, my magic practically weeping with relief.

“They’re beautiful,” she says, holding the mangled stems against her chest. “I love them.”

Love, Jovi gasps. She said love.

The white mountain holding me turns his head slowly to stare at her like she’s lost her mind. Beside him, the green cucumber creature does the same.