daylily: loss of what could have been

The first memory Maylis Laclair has is of standing in the garden, toddler pudgy hands fisted into her mother's dress, a slight breeze pulling at dark burgundy locks. Ninon Laclair hums a song with no words, simply enjoying the warm morning sunlight. A dilapidated house creaks behind them. It's a gentle scene at odds with the painfully poor lifestyle they live.

A gentle moment in time Maylis wishes she cherished more.

Standing a little above her mother's knees, Maylis can't help seeing the soft orange horizon as some sort of omen. The curled and knotted space within Maylis's heart that was once named Jacqueline Renaud hisses at the painfully domestic and movie-like scene, a lost and confused teenager being assaulted by the vague memory sensations of the young girl known as Maylis Laclair.

Jacqueline refuses to give into the child, nearly four years of life is nothing against Jack's nineteen years of age after all. Maylis is confused, a moment of broken peace, before moving to follow her mother to clumsily help tend to the vegetables. It's a fairly normal routine of waking, eating a sparse breakfast, gardening, and then playing with worn hand sewn dolls until dinner except for the days Maylis's mother drops her off at their distant neighbors house. Ninon sells cheap ink dyed fabrics in the larger villages, green and black stained fingertips carefully hidden by pristine gloves.

On really successful days Ninon will come home tired and triumphed, a basket of food and maybe, just maybe, a thin book to help teach Maylis to read. Jacqueline can read and write and dance and do all kinds of things that Maylis doesn't know about but they seem important.

Except none of what Jacqueline can do, or rather, could do (once upon a time), matters because right now Jacqueline Renaud is Maylis Laclair. Except the part curled and knotted in Maylis's heart that burns and aches with a longing for what can never be brought back - that other life, that other world, the one Jacqueline was ripped from by a reckless driver and the blood painted asphalt road covered in glass. Jack the snarky American girl feels small inside Maylis the innocent French child.

Maylis scrunches up her nose at a wiggling worm that she disturbed trying to poke at the carrots and onions. A tinkling bell draws her attention, Ninon is softly laughing at her disgruntled expression, hazel eyes with glimpses of amber when the light hits them just right hold all the love of a mother. Jack reluctantly recalls Ninon telling Maylis that she inherited her grandmother Melina's teal colored eyes. Jack ignores the slight disappointment that this body does not resemble the kind woman who tries so hard for her little girl who isn't truly just a normal child.

Maylis sticks her tongue out, Jack sighs with a lingering fondness that can't be fully ignored, Ninon lightly taps on her daughter's nose to get her to go back to helping with the vegetables.

Everyday that Maylis learns, even if it's just that worms are icky and weird, a phantom piece of Jacqueline disappears. Reincarnated souls aren't meant to remember. Jack supposes it has to do with the faint not-abyss moments of awareness between hitting pavement with a snapcrunchnothing and the white of hospital walls. Jack isn't sure how many times she was revived, either through sheer bullheaded incomprehension of death or the stubbornness of EMTs. It just felt unnatural since Jack was aware on some level she died and was being brought back to a body that did not want to house a soul any longer.

It was a cold thought, one that made Jack curl around the last of the pieces of tattered memory that remained tighter. Jacqueline Renaud is Maylis Laclair but Maylis Laclair is not Jacqueline Renaud.

Hours pass, Maylis fumbles with the wooden blocks that have paint peeling off in an attempt build a castle. Jack settles in and unfurls for a moment, images of better looking block houses floating behind Maylis's eyes. The child frowns before nodding to herself, chin length hair bouncing. The little block houses aren't as grand as the castle Maylis wanted but still fun.


Maylis is five years old when her mother does not return from selling the pretty fabrics at the nearest village. Jack absently shushes the girl as an aunt they never knew they had drags her to a carriage. Crying will not help.

Ninon Laclair with her gentle hazel eyes with flecks of amber in sunlight and wavy burgundy red hair that always curled upwards at the ends was not going to come home. The woman Jack had come to accept as a second mother was never going to be able to make things better.

Instead of outright bawling as instincts mandated, Maylis only began to sniffle and held her watery gaze to the rough carpet of the carriage. Her mother was never coming home and they could never garden the pretty flowers behind the creaky house again.

Instead of burn with longing for that other life that she could never get back, the half-forgotten picturesque memory of a mother she could never go home to, Jack slackened her grip around tattered memories. A precious few of them lost their edge and faded from mind and heart. Perhaps it would be better to just leave. To not influence and make the child suffer from the things Jack has gone through since waking to a new life. That grief was not meant for a child who has just lost their mother.

Maylis Laclair was once a different girl named Jacqueline Renaud. Jacqueline Renaud could never be Maylis Laclair. More bluntly, Maylis Laclair did not need Jacqueline Renaud, and so with grace that Jack never had in her own life, she let go.

It was a slow but inevitable process.

Solange Larue would never claim to being good with children, that was more of her runaway half sister's expertise, but even Solange was certain that little girls that just lost their mother's should not be so withdrawn and cold. Solange expected many things from Ninon's child, loud crying, shouting even, fits of temper she'd have a right to for being uprooted from all she's ever known, not this uneasy state of calm gently enveloping little Lily.

Ninon's little Lily was strange and quiet and only let her eyes water but never cried. Jack has already been uprooted from all that she's ever known, the least she could do is shush that incessant need to plead for Ninon to come back and ease the tiny spikes of panic of being in an unfamiliar place inside Maylis.

Jack does not know Solange Larue but she can see the badly hidden grief of having lost a loved one where Maylis only sees a stiff and mean looking lady. With luck, Jack can impart a little emotional awareness to Maylis before... Well, Jack didn't know.

Jack didn't know what would happen when every little memory and piece that made up Jacqueline Renaud disappeared. It might mean just that, that Jack would just disappear into the ether, and yet considering the situation, Jack was sure she'd just be properly reabsorbed by Maylis - perhaps the right way she was supposed to in the first place during reincarnation. It didn't sound as bad now compared to a few years ago.

Maylis was a child innocent of Jack's nineteen years of life and troubles. It should remain that way. One complete soul instead of one new soul and the tattered remains of the old one in one body. Jack didn't want to die - except she already did. Jack has been fighting a futile battle but in the end could not bring herself to kick out Maylis Laclair to have another chance at life. This world has nothing to offer Jack.

It would not bring back her old world, her old life, her old friends that she can no longer recall the names of, her old family that she can only sometimes recall the faces of. This was not Jacqueline Renaud's life anymore.

Wild daylilies pushed at the fence around Solange's tiny well kept house, intent on blooming free and unfettered wherever they wanted.

Three weeks into hesitantly finding a schedule or routine in Solange's house, Maylis can only put a hand to her chest, unmindful of the grass strains sure to earn a harsh word or two from her estranged aunt later on. Daylilies sway with the wind, Maylis is five years and suddenly alone except Jack shaped threads woven into her heart.


Disclaimer: I own nothing within D Gray Man.

Writing on a phone is hard and not recommended.