Between the Perennial Blooms || Paul Lahote

Forty Seven | Bluemink

"And in memory, perhaps because I am closer now to the border between worlds, I think I can sense the multitudes, the ghost throngs that had gone before us, how they shuffled the paths between us, how they lay down beside us on the ferry, a humanity that fed us, urged us forward, day by day. This is the end ordained in our beginning, the bestial clarity and solace we ignore as we seek: we would be nothing without them, we will be nothing with them and we must learn to look upon this without turning away."
—Mark Cox | 'Knossos'

• • •

By the time the next morning rolled around, Paul and Bailey's goodbye had faired tearfully to say the least. They'd woken up solemnly, both having barely rested as their slumber that night had been fitful with worry and plagued with nightmares. They'd held to each other tightly, desperately, and parted at the treaty line with stinging chests and tears welling up in their eyes that neither dared let fall. I love you, they whispered to one another over and over and over again — so much so in fact, that the words eventually took on a new meaning entirely. Don't leave me, don't leave me, don't leave me, they said instead. And though neither of them wanted to, come time to say finally their goodbyes, they had to leave each other anyway in the end.

Nearly two hours had passed since then though, and with each minute that ticked by, Bailey found it became easier and easier to deflect the torrent of emotions that had plagued her heart from the moment she'd watched Paul's grey pelt disappear between the trees. She'd managed to hold in her tears as he did, and with Bella's reassuring words of comfort in her ear, she'd managed to all but abolish them completely while the two sisters hugged one another tightly in the backseat of Edward's car. The bronze-haired Cullen had helped as well by insisting that everything would turn out fine come Sunday, and knowing that it would do neither her nor anyone else any good to keep hold of it, Bailey had swallowed her sorrow and smiled small as she simply replied with: "Alright."

"I swear it Bailey-Wren," Edward had vowed. "I promise my family and I won't let anything happen to you." And though it wasn't a promise she would dare let herself uphold him to, she found comfort in it either way.

Currently, Bailey and Bella were traipsing through the undergrowth of the forest as they prepared for the evening ahead. The plan was to have the two Swan sisters walk through the trees surrounding the clearing wherein Alice had foreseen the battle taking place and leave their scent upon the path so as to create a false trail. Jasper had told them that it would mislead the newborns and send them right to where they wanted them, and though the two Swan sisters had both agreed to do anything within their power to help their Vampire and Werewolf consorts as much as they could, Bella seemed to have taken it to a whole new level entirely.

"You're going overboard," Edward berated his girlfriend as he watched her smear her blood along the rough bark of a tree trunk. She had cut her hand on a protruding stick after tripping over a log and, much to her boyfriend and little sister's dismay, had then proceeded to put her blood to what she deemed as 'good use'.

"If this is all I can contribute, I want to be thorough," Bella defended herself.

Edward sighed while he watched over the two Swan girls he had grown to care so much for — the eldest of which continued to leave a blood trail in her wake. Scanning them each respectively, Edward's eyes landed on Bailey's booted feet and he pressed his lips into a thin line upon sight of the stray drop of blood that had fallen onto the tip of her shoe. "You're not being a very good influence on your little sister," he tried to argue with his girlfriend, gesturing down to the droplet of crimson said little sister was currently trying to wipe off with a leaf. Bella huffed but didn't say anything. Meanwhile, Bailey strategically placed the bloodied leaf on top of a pile of twigs when she saw that neither of them were looking.