#(aka wild strawberry and spearmint because i don't tolerate botanical anachronisms in my fics :D)

[awordwasthebeginning]

Moonacre Week 2023

Day 2: Strawberries and Mint

1523

When the sun shone on the red, red skin of the wild berries, their scent sweetened the air at the seam of the forest. Half-hidden beneath fern and moss, they gleamed like rubies on green brocade. The forest was dressed expensively; hundreds and thousands of them lined the edge of the woods at the far end of the valley, undisturbed by the animals who feared the traps, and the humans who feared each other.

Only the young human came here, the one who knew little about fear and all about strawberries. She came with the sun at noon, hair and cheeks and lips in varying shades of the berries’ red, and her dress as green as the leaves between which she knelt for her secret harvest. Only her eyes would not match the warm midday, cool and silver as they were.

She never did pick much, only a handful, and some more directly with her lips. Then, usually, she would hear her name called in the far distance; she would get up from her knees and brush off her skirt, and turn to the forest, a finger on her lips as if to ask for her secret to be kept. And she would run away, her quiet peals of laughter scattered in the grass between the strawberries.

The forest kept her secret as the meadow kept that of the boy who came at night. He came from the other side, from deep in the woods, and no sunlight ever led his way. His feet found the ground in silver moonlight as well as pitch-black darkness. He made no sound and was not seen, in his clothes of soft dark leather and linen, silver-metallic buckles fastened tight.

His fingers wandered through taller grass and fern until they found curly leaves and rubbed them, releasing the sweet, sharp scent into the night. One hand full, and not a stem more, was all he took, and sometimes a leaf found its way between his teeth, where the same sharp sweetness exploded on his tongue. If the moon then found his eyes, they shone in a strange honey-brown colour, as if to defy the cool, silvery darkness all around him.

He never found the sweet strawberries in the dark, and she never found the sharp spearmint among the foliage, and eventually they grew up to fear the edge of the forest as all the other humans did. Wasn’t it odd, that the sun knew the moon, and the meadow knew the forest, and the strawberries knew the mint, but they should never know each other?

#moonacreweek2023 #fic: did you miss me? #awordwasthebeginning writes #ft. fragaria vesca and mentha spicata #(aka wild strawberry and spearmint because i don't tolerate botanical anachronisms in my fics :D) #loquor