Memory - something remembered from the past.
Lilac - a Eurasian shrub or small tree of the olive family, which has fragrant violet, pink, or white blossom and is a popular garden ornamental.
They say that, in the last moments of living, your life flashes before your eyes.
I am not sure whether this is true, as I am still alive, but I do know that, in the last moments of being with someone, their love flashes before your eyes.
She smelled of lilacs. Freshly cut from fields of viridescent, dew drop adorned fields of grass, their colour and scent attracting even the most timid of honeybees.
He had caught whiffs of her scent, pleasant pockets of air that were decorated by the smell lilacs, but he had never really smelled it until she hugged him.
That hug was all too quick; by the time he realised what was happening, that she had forgiven him and was throwing her arms around his neck with a smile on her face, he had very little time to appreciate the fragrance that hung to the air around her, to inhale it as she exhaled into his shoulder.
The next time he smelled it was when she sat next to him at the Ember Island play. God, he couldn't get enough of that scent, and he wondered what amazing thing he could've done in his life to have deserved this flowery, aromatic smell surrounding him as he watched a horribly inaccurate play of his life.
The small moments that he inhaled that scent blended together in his memory, until one stood out in his mind.
Lightning did not smell of lilacs. It didn't really smell of anything, until it came in contact with him. Then it smelled of burning flesh and the desperation to save that lilac-scented girl's life. Even if she didn't feel the same way, even if she didn't care what she smelled like, the act of jumping in front of a lightning bolt wasn't an opinion of needing to; rather, it was fact, and any other option seemed stupid an impossible at that time. Why let a lilac wilt when you can simply water it?
So he continued to water his lilac; the act of protecting her seemed instinctive, even though she insisted that she did not need protecting. It wasn't that he didn't realise that; like things already mentioned, it was a fact, not an opinion, that she was capable of handling herself. However, he wanted to help, wanted to protect her.
Not only that, but he favoured his lilac over sunflowers or bluebells. He even cared for that little lilac more than the stunning black rose, although he eventually stopped caring at all for that rose. He slowly, almost unnoticeably, fell deeper and more helplessly in love with that pretty lilac.
Their first kiss made any other times he smelled her scent seem unimportant, because that kiss was the first time he really smelled it, inhaled that gorgeous scent, inhaled the cobalt cloth of her dress, inhaled her soft, wavy hair, inhaled her warm, cinnamon-coloured skin tone; inhaled not only her scent, but her, in her full, perfect imperfection.
For three, love-filled, lilac-filled, perfectly imperfect years, he was blessed with her flowery scent and cerulean eyes. But all good must come to an end.
The memories flashed through his brain in a millisecond, but each one seemed to whist him away to a world of lilac scented joy.
He could inhale that lilac scent forever. But, of course, just because he could, doesn't mean he was going to.
AN: do lilacs even smell good lmao