CHAINED FLOWERS ( z. dragneel )

05 | "the girl, heartless"

05
{ the girl, heartless. }

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' s h e
w h o
r e m e m b e r s '

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"This town is busier than the last one, isn't it?" Esen asks Zeref (that is her lover's name, Ze-ref, glides across the tongue smoothly like a music tone, spoken in murmurs and prayers against dark mages that will lead the world to ruin, Zeref).

"This one is closer to the capital, that's why," he replies. They're standing side by side and as usual, Zeref is careful to avoid crowded places. His head is bent down in fear of meeting other people and potentially making them the next victims of his curse.

"It stinks of fish," Esen comments again and she's responded with a nod.  "I miss the forests."

Another nod. They pass by walls  vandalized with confessions and names and wishes. And so many hearts and cracks in the wooden establishments. There are even those that degrade others, calling them foolish and pitiful and heartless.

"Esen..." Zeref calls and his voice is as soft as always. "So many people call others, heartless, but how do you think one loses ones heart?"

Esen blinks at the question, clearly surprised. "I... have no idea."

How do you make someone heartless?

Esen knows because she has experienced it firsthand, after strolls in woodlands adorned with wildflowers, after the blood spilled in her hands and life escaped different eyes all in front of her, the fleeting feeling of having everything in your grasp only for it to be taken the next, to cherish and love and give everything, but fear every night, before you close your eyes to sleep and fear and think and be anxious— will tomorrow still be the same?

It n e v e r is.

How do you lose a heart?

Hearts are embedded into your core, connected to the vessels and protected by your ribcage, it's guarded heavily by your skin and your strength, fierce eyes and sharp glares and it's almost impossible to reach. You protect it with cold stares and cruel words and murmurs of I hate you, I don't need you, stay away! You never let anyone close. Pity those  fools that leave the heart unguarded.

Esen is a fool.

She offered up her heart to past lovers with their smiles reflecting sunshine and their whispers of an eternity spent with undying affection. She let them get close, offer up the organ still bloody and beating and they snatched it with force and they are gone gone gone gone gone the next moment.

How do you make someone heartless?

You love and cherish and adore and shower them with everything they could wish for, you stay, you promise to forever and you blind them with promises and hopes and dreams and wishes and aspirations for the uncertain future and you speak those vows with flowery words and determined eyes and once you break their ribcage open, you let them offer up their glass hearts and you marvel at the organ, touch it tenderly with warm hands and the frost that surrounds it melts and when they turn their backs or even blink for a single second, you take the organ with you and you disappear. You break your promises of forever and fin.

But according to the elders of a village with stars, the one where the cycle started its overture, a heart is not something so whole, it is in splinters and you can never truly get everything in one go, but Esen has a myriad of past lovers and bit by bit, they have carried the shards and they themselves carried away by the invisible strings of the cruel (cruel Ankhseram, I curse you) god.