clocktowers | [old] flowers for cynthia.

[ The Moon Presence is handing her heart to you.

The onyx weighs heavy in your hands, and you can begin to see— to feel— the gentle slivers of memory as they seep up, crowding in at the corners of your mind. But this heart is not like the others. With each life you plant, the memories come in a gentle wash of little moments, soft eddies of thought and sensation. This heart weighs heavy. This life pours in and keeps coming, in a wave dense enough to drown you. ]

[ You lie in the grass with your beloved and the evening smells of summertime. Sunset has bathed the mountains in a gentle orange glow. Tiny insects float above the meadow and catch the light like motes of gold, and Salem watches them in reverent fascination, her eyes very wide and very green. You are so full of love it's as though the sun shines out from you. You can't stop smiling. On the horizon, the moon is rising full and luminous and beautiful. ]

[ Your love is pale as the moon, now, and her eyes glow like embers. You hold her in the breathless twilight, and she catches your hand and presses it to the swell of her belly, tucks her face against your shoulder. You are choked with the surging joy of it. You're going to be a father.

"I love you," you murmur into her hair, and she hums contentedly and laces her slender fingers with yours. You smother away the constant, splintered feeling of wrongness in the back of your mind. You bask in the warmth. ]

[ Your hands are wrinkled. Your bones ache. You are almost too miserably drunk to care. ]

[ Your hands are steady and callused and brown. You hold a storybook, and your son and daughter are all tucked in. She is lying politely, pointedly still while he twists in the blankets to lean forward, silver eyes wide, breathless for the good part. Your wife is trying not to laugh.

You love them fiercely. Your grief could fill the ocean. You don't want to be here. You could want nothing else more. None of this is right.

You do all the voices anyway. ]

[ "My lord," says the girl who curtsies in your throne room, and you hate it. You hate to be addressed this way. Every time, you expect to find her slender fingers laced with yours, and you feel ill with wanting it. ]

[ Your little hut in the snow is hardly more than four walls and a pane of glass for a window. Good. All you want is to go away, to retreat so deep into yourself that no spark of thought can harm you. You are so cold. You are so tired. ]

[ "They've come to join your Circle," she says, and her eyes are brown, not silver, but she looks so like your daughter that your heart softens every time you look at her. She is wearing that proud little smile of hers, and so you sigh and set your cane aside.

"I have never wanted acolytes," you tell her, gently as you're able. Her face falls. ]

[ The desert sun hits like a blow. You are heaving for every breath, sweat dripping into your eyes, ears ringing. Someone is calling my lord; there is a ragged cheer of Vale! Vale! rising over the sandy dunes; your sword and sword-arm are slick with red. You need to tend to the wounded. ]

[ You try to avoid paying too much mind to your reflection, at this stage; the sense of dissociation can get away from you. But it is your first day of school, and so it is best to do these things properly. The Beacon uniform looks very handsome, really, as you straighten your tie and adjust your coat. You don't favor red for yourself (do you? did you?) but there is something satisfying about seeing yourself in the colors you planned. Really.

You are seventeen. Your name is Ozpin.

Your name is Ozpin. ]