Chatwin was the first to the scrolls that morning. She arrived when the sun was still low, and the heat of summer had not yet spiked, rendering the day suffocating and unbearable. This early, however, with the world still muted and half hidden in night, the gentle wafting of her tails did the trick to keep her cool as she poured over the damaged text at her workstation. She was about halfway through cleaning the fragments of parchment when Suichii arrived, a curious bundle of florals tucked into his saddlebags.
"Good morning, Winnie," he called to her as he strode over to his own station, laden down with references and cross-references as he worked with his own forgotten text. “We should probably put the shades up now, the villagers are saying it’s going to be hot again today.”
It was hot already, but Chatwin kept her silence, nodding at his suggestion and hauling herself up to help raise the canvas on the shade poles to offer whatever meager reprieve from the sun they could manage. The issue wasn’t of course, the heat itself, nor was it the sun. It was the moisture in the air that pressed down on all life as it quietly drowned in the humidity. Chatwin’s own skin was glistening with her exertion, lines of sweat pouring out from under her pelt and pasting her mane to her neck. Even the breeze from her wings as they worked to fan them both as they panted in the shade did little to ease the discomfort.
“Thank you, Chatwin,” Suichii sighed, finally rising to return to his work. “Awful thing, this heat. What I wouldn’t give for a dip in a nice cool river but…” he tapped his hoof on the cluttered surface on his table. “There is important work to be done, isn’t there? Perhaps afterward?”
He looked at Chatwin with hopeful amusement, but she only leveled him with a look of her own before turning back to her own work. With the parchment cleaned, she could now assess the damage and begin planning the restoration. Behind her, Suichii chuckled good-naturedly and muttered, “I had suspected. But you cannot fault me for hoping. Perhaps tea by the river? The flowing water will cool us off, even on the banks.”
That sounded far more like something Chatwin could abide. She made a sound that conveyed as much through her nose, mouth occupied by the small, wax-tipped pointer she was using to arrange the parchment fragments. For a long while, as the unforgiving sun rose higher and higher into the sky, the pair worked in silence, side by side. Chatwin’s restoration was fairly straightforward. By no means the oldest nor the most damaged piece she’d ever worked on. But it was cherished, brought in by an older woman from the village. It had been her husband’s, dead now for a few years, she’d said. He had oved flowers, and often recorded variants he saw in his journals. This was, however, not a journal, nor was it about variants of any sort of flowers.
As Chatwin worked, the words on the page began to come together. She was able to piece together words like “language” and “color.” A list began to form as she worked, arranging delicate fragments, delineating the flowers that the husband had encountered along with their respective symbolism. The list also detailed the differences that the colors of some flowers could mean. Red roses, obviously, for deep, everlasting love, but there were others, of course, that surprised Chatwin. Sunflowers for friendship and for joy, which should have seemed fairly obvious, but still intrigued the quiet mare.
She peered up at Suichii’s workstation, the flowers that he’d brought in set up in an earthenware vase that he’d found gods only knew where. A sunflower stood, tall and proud, above the rest of the blooms. Chatwin could feel herself growing lighter just looking at the flower and it shone, a small sun situated on the desk of her very dearest friend. It was wreathed in delicate white forget-me-nots, and Chatwin found herself curious if the mysterious and insightful late husband had recorded the meaning of this flower.
He had, of course. White forget-me-nots, symbols of sincerity and memories, reminded her so of the stallion working diligently at his translations. She knew no more dedicated and genuine living thing in this world. Not one sentient being more reflective and gentle. More pure in his intentions and his actions, despite his sordid past, the details of which he had already shared with her with ease. Such honesty, such goodness in the shadow of such sorrow… it made her want to be better. To be
worthy of such a friend.
She glanced back down, searching for what they husband may have said about the yellow irises, nestled in among the broad, green leaves of the sunflower. The words leapt off the page, like a fortune waiting for her to read, bringing tears to her eyes. She wiped them away quickly, worried that the salinity of her tears might damage the work.
Hope. The yellow irises meant hope, and wisdom, and kindness, and every wonderful thing that Suichii always was. Even in the face of unkindness, when the world was dark and cruel. When people were horrid to him because someone had been horrid to them. He only ever smiled at them and wished them well, remarking that something terrible must have happened for someone to be so upset. Joy and light and love in his every breath, step, and word.
And Jasmine for his grace. The soft blush of the pink flower pillowed it all, scent swelling in the heat to fill the space not with sweat but with it’s sweet perfume. The way Suichii filled the space with his gentle spirit. The way he filled Chatwin with his devotion. Even in the face of her own sins, still so clear in her mind all these years later. Gentle grace that he’d extended to her when she confessed what she had done, weeping through the story of the lives she had taken and the ruin she had wrought while in the clutches of her horrible curse.
Suichii was a light in the dark. A sole candle in the cave Chatwin had thought was the whole world. The gentle gilding hand that led her out and showed her that it was all so much more. So much bigger. So much more beautiful than she could have ever imagined. Grace and kindness and love and hope that she did not deserve but clung to anyway, promising that she could someday be worthy of all of it, even if she wasn’t right then.
Even more miraculous than her friend, who hummed softly to himself as he scratched out notes and musings in his notebook, was that Chatwin was beginning to believe that… perhaps she was worthy of it after all.
