Written for PJFC's Capture the Flag competition.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
xXx
Before there were Grover and Juniper, there were Green and Jasmine.
There was Green and Jasmine, and there were furiously pounding footsteps and laughing desperation and sky so blue it burns and heals all at once.
"Come on, Jasmine! You know you love me!" The satyr stopped in his tracks and threw the most petulant look at the flower that waved teasingly before me. "You're pretty, Jasmine. Really pretty. And really nice, too. Is that enough?"
The flower continued to wave lazily in the breeze, inanimately though every bit as unreachably tantalizing as the laughing spirit within with her braided waterfall hair and bejeweled eyes. Jasmine wished Green would go away. With that adorably petulant voice and the horns that peeked above his mass of curly hair and the way he moved - two parts scrambling and two parts running and ten parts bounding like an over-enthusiastic dog, he was going to be her downfall.
"Fine! Be that way! The blackberry bush is prettier, anyway." Green cast her a last longing look before ambling off.
He was back in a day, as Jasmine knew he would.
"Hey, Jasmine!"
"Go away, Green. I'm busy." Jasmine twisted her lips and looked determinedly away from the bouncing satyr beside her.
"Did it hurt when you fell from Olympus?"
Jasmine turned around, exasperated. Oh, that stupid satyr. What wouldn't she give to just be able to strangle him there and then on the spot.
"Green! Surely even a half-wit like you should know that you can't just say things like that!"
"Why ever not, Jasmine? Why, your eyes - they shine like the stars. Your hair - it flows like the almighty rivers of the underworld themselves. Your smile, they make the sun go dark..."
"Gods of Olympus, Green. Just go away."
"Alright then! My blackberry bush is waiting for me too."
She found Green, a couple of days later, lounging on his favorite pasture and stuffing grass into his mouth.
"How was the blackberry bush?"
Green's face lighted up at the sight of her. "What blackberry bush?"
"The pretty blackberry bush you talked about."
"What? I talked about -? Oh! Yeah! She was so nice. Nicer than you, of course. Prettier too!" The corners of his mouth seemed to curve right into his cheeks.
Jasmine laughed. Green continued dramatically.
"She had the most beautiful dark hair, and shining eyes, and her voice was just... Beautiful. And her skin - it glows in the moonlight, Jasmine. She's perfect! I think she liked me, too. She called my horns cool, and arranged to meet me tomorrow."
"She did?" Jasmine was giggling now.
Green seemed to deflate. He glared at her and stamped his hooves. "You don't believe me, do you?"
"No, I don't think I do."
"It's true! She's amazing, Jasmine. She's nicer than you, anyway. And she likes me. She likes me. She likes me. It's true! And did I mention her hair? Her dark, silkily hair? Stop laughing!"
"I've met a few blackberry bushes. And I can tell you, they don't have dark hair. Do your research, Green!"
Green gaped for a few seconds. Then, he banged his fist into the grass and glared at her.
"Why, Jasmine? Why? Stop doing this! Just believe me! Why can't you? Why do you have to keep doing this?"
"Doing what?"
"Being an insufferable know-it-all!"
Desperation and frustration and embarrassment seemed to flash through Green's eyes. His cheeks flooded with color in the heat of the sun, his horns bared. Jasmine could almost feel his skin quivering with the effort of holding in the scream of frustration he was itching to throw at her. Affection rose in her stomach, coiling warmly through her chest.
"Oh, Green... There's no need for that."
Green pierced her with another glare and pulled a stalk of chrysanthemum from his pocket. It was fresh and seemed to glow in the sun, sunlit petals and emerald leaves bursting with life.
"I was going to give you this. It grew it myself. Took care of it and everything. I had it all planned out, and you just had to ruin everything with that stupid attitude of yours!"
"But -"
"I hate you, Jasmine! I hate you and your stupid attitude and your stupid face, and I think I'm in love with you!"
The chrysanthemum is thrust at Jasmine and she is not sure if she is moving or if Green is moving, but she can feel her heart thumping, and the blur of Green's sleeve, and Green's arms that wrap around her so tight they squeeze the breath out of her.
"Green..." she manages, hugging him back. "Oh, Green."
He loves me.
xXx
Aurora stumbled away, blindly, ripping her dress on tree roots scraping skin on branches. Dimly she can hear Oliver's yells, his pleas piercing into the evening sky. Somewhere in the periphery of her vision, she sees him, running after her, hears his footsteps pounding, chasing, pleading -
None of it reached her through the pounding in her ears and heart, and the utter hatred that coursed through her veins, that burned fires through her very being.
The sun was yellow, so horribly yellow across the sky, but it meant nothing, because there might as well be a tsunami because the air was so liquid that Aurora could not breathe.
I love you, Aurora.
Oliver at that raucous satyrs' party. That wood nymph with her intoxicating hair and venomous smile and poisonous poisonous long fingers -
Once out of the woods Aurora was flying, flying like the spirit of the air she was, away from the noise and the drunken yells, shooting into the air like a bullet. Her body ached with the pent up rage. Her mind ached with the force of the whip-like chaos. Her soul ached with the deception, the presumption, the foolishness.
I will never leave you, Aurora.
The air turned electric and Aurora knew what it felt like to be lightning; arcing through the air, slashing, whipping, tearing, ripping apart Oliver and his sunshine, plunged it all into the treacherous seismic darkness he really was.
Aurora breathes it in, gulps in the lightning like drowning men gasp for air, tears apart the sky and her tears because Oliver was not just her sunshine, he was her whole sky -
I will never hurt you, Aurora. I promise.
Aurora thinks of the nymph, with the curvaceous body that Oliver slipped his arm though, the thin long fingers Oliver laced his through, the mouth, the blood-red mouth that could ensnare the whole world. The lightning erupts around her, and through her storm-tossed eyes it looks almost like a flower, a twisted, electric Judas tree.
He loves me not.
xXx
"It's fine if you don't want to. I get it. I'll go by myself. It's okay."
"We've been through this. I'm coming."
This time, Hedge and Clover stood at the brink of a wood, as a new dawn broke over the horizon, spilling the first rays of golden and purple to pour across the awakening sky in a new wash of life. The ground awoke, spirits of trees and lakes and rustling to life, reaching out to the heavens.
"You sure?"
"Of course."
The search for Pan had taken weeks of planning and preparation, and now that they were finally setting off, how could Clover be complaining?
"Okay then."
Hedge's hand found hers and gave it a squeeze. She squeezed back and held onto it, determined never to let go.
The woods towered ahead, all shadow and weak sunlight filtering through interstices between branches that curved and arced in an almost elegant dream-like ballet. I'm the morning, the woods were beautiful. At night, though - Clover did not want to think about it just yet.
"Let's go."
"If we step over this place, it'll be the furthest I've ever gone from home."
"It'll be okay. I promise."
Clover surveyed the ground before her. It was pathetic, really, nothing but a feet of earth before the first trees came into step. For a second, she swayed on the balls of her feet, then Hedge squeezed her fingers again and a surge of something swelled up inside her. Almost blindly, she raised her foot and stepped forward.
Perhaps somewhere at the back of her mind, she had expected something to happen, something dramatic that would make her foolish hesitancy worthwhile. As it was, though, nothing happened. The trees before her swayed as usual with the first breezes of the morning. The awakening birds chirped on. Clover began to laugh. First a small giggle, then her insides seemed to explode with the hilarity, and Hedge was laughing too, face buried in Clover's hair, arms tangling together and foreheads pressed close, and they were laughing and laughing and laughing even though nothing was even remotely funny, none of it.
"Clover," Hedge wheezed. "Clover...! Oh, Clover."
And the sun broke over the clouds like an egg, blossoming and blooming like the radiant red petals of a great, beautiful amaryllis emblazoned in the sky, and the path and woods stretched out to who knew what else that lay ahead, they set out forward into the world, Hedge's hand slipping into hers, as the rising sun burnished their skin golden.
He loves me.
xXx
This time, Rose remembered. Perhaps something had upset the balance in the magic of nature, causing this malfunction. Or perhaps it had meant to be so. Whatever the reason was, Rose remembered. Remembered the past dream-like life of woods and search. Remembered Clover. Remembered the goat-boy that had stayed at her side.
She looked for him. What could he be now? A laurel? A pine? A satyr, still? Perhaps, so.
She looked for him as she woke up and roamed the small wood with the other dryads, her eyes peeled, wide, searching, for a sign of those eyes, that bumbling, loyal spirit. She peered beneath the trees, scanning the undergrowth for any sign of what he might have become. She looked too long, thought too long of the green-satyrs that her friends spoke of. She hoped. She prayed.
And she would turn away, the nagging disappointment curling through her insides like incense, dulled and muted perhaps, but still almost imperceptibly there.
She would find him in the most unexpected of places.
In that split second of limbo between dreams and wakefulness, she would hear him, hear that voice that floated through time and space and who knew what else. Come on, Clover. Stay close now.
You'll be alright, Rose.
When she awoke, eyes wide open and gasping for breath, he would be gone, leaving nothing but a dull ache in her limbs and a blank whirring in the empty spaces of her mind.
Or else, when that satyr friend Brown laughed and wrestled her to the ground, she would see him in the corners of Brown's grinning mouth, that almost imperceptibly similar tilt of the lips, the same laughing eyes. Her heart would leap, sure and shocked, then the moment would pass and Brown was only just Brown. He was not her satyr. He was never.
So she looked for him. In her wood, beneath the trees, in the stories of her fellow dryads, in the fields of pink camellias in her dreams.
Never once in reality, though, did she see him look back.
He loves me not.
xXx
The woods were peaceful as Grover and Juniper walked, hand fitted with almost surgical perfection against hand. Shafts of light shone through the green canopy above, bathing the path in a brilliant, almost ethereal glow.
"How are Percy and Annabeth?" Juniper asked. "Haven't seen them for a while."
"Oh, they're fine. They, uh, moved in together, actually, in a flat in New York. They seem really happy. Been getting loved up after the war ended."
Juniper laughed. She loved walking with Grover, with Grover's warm hand in hers and the sunlight above them. She treasured times like these, wished she could trap them, encase all the sights and smells and touches, so as to relive them forevermore.
"Juniper..."
"Hmm?"
"I... I love you. You know that, don't you?"
"Of course."
And before her eyes Grover was sinking down to a knee and taking out a rose from thin air and pressing it into her hand, and then his hands are moving as though in slow motion, pulling out a box that sparkled from within.
"Juniper, would you marry me?"
He loves me.
xXx
"Yes."
xXx
Crappy ending, I know. Wrote the previous scenes yesterday and the last scene today, where I kind of lost inspiration.
The plants are all symbolic, too. The chrysanthemum represents friendship and cheerfulness, the Judas tree represents betrayal, the amaryllis represents determination and radiance, the pink camellias represent longing, and the red rose represents love.
Please review!