to the cherry blossoms that thaw, to the warmth that blossoms in the cold:
i hope my love still remains, even as winter departs for spring.
~
Elizabeth feels strangely nervous.
Her body that had been carved and chipped away by the long years on the frontlines, admittedly, wasn’t used to the stagnancy and tranquility of civilian life. In recent years, it hasn’t even occurred to her that she is pushing forty years old soon. She wonders if it had been the sharp and acrid smell of gunpowder, imprints her weapons have left on her body like they were meant to be there, or the deafening sounds of artillery vehicles and gunfire that clouded her sense of time.
Despite the warmth emanating from the fireplace, Elizabeth still feels the cold biting her cheeks from her seat near the window. She looks out of the glass window, frosted at the edges, at the barren tree branches sprinkled with pinkish-white flower buds. The cherry blossoms are set to bloom soon with the coming of spring, Elizabeth hums pleasantly. Her scarred and calloused fingers idly skim the opened journal in her lap, her fountain pen near-forgotten in between the arm rest and her cushioned seat.
The first bouts of March in the Far East meant the frequent chimes of shrine bells, the crescendo of street activity in the district, and the surge of tourists arriving for the blooming of cherry blossom trees all across the country. And, for the first time in perhaps many months, Elizabeth’s legs ache to go for a walk.
“I was wondering where you were,” a soft, raspy voice sounds from her right.
Smaller apartments in the country also meant that the bedroom has little to no distance from the living room. Elizabeth is greeted with the sight of Nerissa Ravencroft, her high school sweetheart, in one of her own rumpled button-downs and with their large fluffed comforter draped (rather adorably) over her barely protected lithe body.
“I…” Elizabeth rummages through her morning-fogged mind for an excuse, not wanting to worry her partner, to which she then almost comes to a realisation that Nerissa will most likely still be able to see through any of them. So she obliges herself by saying what she had been planning to do.
“I just wanted to enjoy the view while penning things down in my journal.”
Her raven-haired lover rubs some more sleep out of her eyes. “Whatever you say, Fireheart,” she murmurs sleepily. The brief mention of the pet name reverberates through her heart like a bell struck in an empty chapel. She wants to take that sound, fold it snug and tuck it in between the gaps of her ribcage.
Elizabeth smiles tenderly, not quite reaching her eyes. She looks down at her still empty pages, and frowns a little.
“Have you had breakfast yet?”
“I just made a pot of hot chocolate, it’s still warm on the kitchen counter.”
Nerissa quirks a brow. “Haven’t had anything to eat yet?”
“I was waiting for you to wake up so we could maybe have breakfast out today,” Elizabeth’s hand delves in between her side and the armrest for her fountain pen, then rests it atop the open book on her lap. “Snowfall has been lighter in recent weeks.”
She’s quick to notice Nerissa hesitating; her long nimble fingers usually start to fidget, which mostly end up fiddling with each other. She tends to also roll on the balls of her feet, and worry the inside of her lower lip in between her teeth.
As much as Elizabeth hates admitting and being reminded of it, both of them haven’t been able to venture out into Ueno after they moved into a luxury apartment in the district. It had been early in winter, and heavy snowfall meant that their movement around their neighbourhood was limited. It hadn’t been a full half-year since Elizabeth was cleared for discharge, and her awareness of her only one properly functioning leg seemed to wake from dormancy once they were on their way back home. It took every remaining sanity that remains in this eroded soul to close her eyes and breathe.
“My love…”
It’s a sweet term of endearment, but as Elizabeth breathes the name, she feels frozen fractals forming in her lungs, the ice burning her blood vessels. Instead of the flames that roar intensely at any call to Nerissa, in place are bittercold and despotic raging winds surrounding the brazier that is her heart. She doesn’t feel any warmth–instead nothing–responding to her star; like a brilliant moth to a flame, like a sunflower to a sun, like priests and nuns to the light of God.
For a decorated veteran who is famed for her unwavering intrepidity that can contest the stalwart longevity of ginkgo trees, Elizabeth silently wishes for such descriptions to be buried with the old legends of her homeland; to disintegrate into the earth, so she wouldn’t have to remember what else she had to lose the day she lost use of one of her legs; requisite in giving anchor to anything, to anyone .
Nerissa pulls the comforter tighter around her body. A smile breaks out across her incandescent face, and a dimple finds itself below her left eye. “I'll go get ready then, we’ll head out after we finish the hot chocolate.”
As Nerissa disappears behind the partially opened shoji, Elizabeth sighs and leans back against her chair. Her mangled, right leg starts throbbing in pain as if to mock her attempt to put up a valiant front for her beloved songbird. She gives it no thought, reaches into her chest and takes out her heart to splash its colour on the empty page.
(It’s almost been a year since it happened. The doctor says that I won’t be able to walk without a cane anymore, so I’ve been honourably discharged by the Royal Air Force and the Royal Army. Though, Father and my superiors ensured that I’m more than welcome to take on training duties once I’ve recovered. Other than my physiologist, I was also referred to a therapist. I’ve come to appreciate what she does, because I feel like I hardly can remember what happened in the past few months up till now. And it scares me.)
(Demoralising matters aside, Nerissa Ravencroft has somehow made her way back into my life, and she came to me before spring even began.)
Elizabeth and Nerissa first met in Freesia when the former was a foreign exchange student at Nerissa’s high school. By some means, they always meet and depart around spring; be it before, amidst, or the end; be it reunions, partings, or fitful chances of seeing each other soon. Elizabeth is reminded of how the warmth Nerissa brings always bursts forth through the cold, slowly thawing the sensation that nips at the tips of her ears, the high swell of her cheeks, down to her fingertips.
She doesn’t think of the spring sun. For her it’s in the form of Nerissa Ravencroft.
Elizabeth’s eyes trace over the graceful loops of the cursive ‘s’s of Nerissa’s first name, pausing briefly over the downward arch of the ‘f’ and upwards into the ‘t’. Warmth has never completely left her body since the setback, even the frigid zephyr cannot threaten to steal away what Nerissa provides. Her fountain pen continues to etch away at the off-white paper.
(I wonder what happens when spring doesn’t arrive on time. What happens if spring wasn’t there to guide winter to wherever it goes to rest until it wakes again.)
Elizabeth muses at how Nerissa is still here with her, when spring imminently approaches. She should be searching for flights back to Freesia, start sorting her luggages, yet here she still remains. She wonders if the winter snow is ever reluctant to part with spring, because they cannot coexist for a long time; forever.
“Seems like something’s got you writing a storm,” her pen stops at the period, and her eyes leave the way the ink blooms from the tip of her pen.
Elizabeth looks up from her journal to find Nerissa fixing her muted indigo, plaid-patterned scarf around her neck, on her way to reach for both of their coats hanging on the coat rack.
She chuckles. “If you must know, I was writing about you.”
“Your therapist did say that it would help,” Nerissa turns to face her, one coat in each arm, that irresistibly contagious beam illuminating her gorgeous face. “Nice knowing I’m still your muse after all this time.”
A light, airy laugh makes it way past Elizabeth’s lips. The sound makes her chest rumble deep within and her shoulders shake a bit.
The hot chocolate on the counter gets downed before they leave.
~
Their breakfast spot is a short walk away from Ueno Park. Enough for Elizabeth to avoid collapsing before they make it to their destination.
Nerissa’s warmth is a comforting presence nestled against her side, arms looped together, as they walked together underneath the cherry blossom trees. Elizabeth starts to feel petals fall upon them like arpeggio, a few strays brushing against her flushed pink ears. Her longtime lover giggles next to her, light and airy like the bubbles children love to play. Nerissa still has a childlike innocence under all that maturity, making her think of her favourite white wines; a zesty and citrus note laced through each brew.
She finds the steps they take together therapeutic. With each time she moves her cane forward a step with her good leg, Elizabeth puts her weight on it and shifts her right leg the slightest. Nerissa’s hand on her bicep anchors her. And they repeat.
Elizabeth counts those steps; one step forward with her cane, and she moves the other–left, right, left, right, left, right–she manages to keep any worrying thoughts by grounding herself in each step she takes with Nerissa on her arm.
Ueno Park is one of many popular viewing spots for the famous cherry blossoms, or sakura, as they call them in the Far East. Elizabeth is able to see why. Under the morning lustre, kissed by the sun, the flowers looked heavenly. Snow isn’t just falling from the sky this time, but also from the many trees that lined their path, in the form of the petals that continue to shower the land in whites and pinks, in the form of the petals that blanket the drab concrete beneath their shoes.
As they walk closer to a tree nearby, Nerissa suddenly unlinks her arm from Elizabeth’s and rushes over breathlessly with an enraptured gasp. She mourns the loss of the warmth, and starts feeling the tension set in her bones, more prominently in her knackered leg. The grip on her mahogany cane turns knuckle-white.
She watches Nerissa reach up to cradle a tree branch closest to her in her palm, mouth slightly agape at the arrangement of flowers and its buds up close. Elizabeth is able to discern the change in Nerissa’s wine red eyes like second nature; her pupils dilate and they twinkle as though the stars the universe has to offer were all in them.
A beautiful epiphany unfurls like the flowers stirring above Elizabeth's head.
Nerissa is her spring. She is her sun, she is the warmth that perforates winter, she is her world's replay button at the end of each cycle. Yet, she still has a question:
“Will you be leaving when spring begins?”
The light of her life, the epicenter of her devotion, turns to face her. The ever-radiant smile nearly sends Elizabeth off her already struggling, but stable feet.
“Why would I, Fireheart?” Nerissa asks. There’s so much love in her eyes, it’s almost too much for Elizabeth to comprehend. “I want to be with you beyond this spring, and the next, and forevermore, if you’ll have me that is.”
Elizabeth’s soul sparks and ignites, and the brazier that is her heart blooms with the flowers that rain around them.