(no subject)

[river_meimei]

It's River's Garden, around them. Wildflowers bloom in springy grass; paths twine and cross and dead-end, never quite forming a logical pattern. (Or perhaps it's one large pattern, complex and mathematical and too intricate to be clearly seen from the inside.) The paths are gravel so fine it's nearly sand; a surface to dig bare toes into, to make castles of.

There are rosebushes of every color, and palm trees tall and luxurient, and morning glories and purple clematis twining around treetrunks and delicate trellises. Ferns stud the flowerbeds, and grow unexpectedly in the middle of paths. The spicy-sweet scent of jasmine fills the air, drifting from the heavy white blossoms of the gardenia bushes that cluster and nod over meandering paths and tiny streamlets. In the distance, there's a slope covered with hodgeberry bushes.

There's a fountain, filled with lilypads, and near it hummocks of grass as large and shapelessly soft as beanbag chairs. River is curled up on one.

She's not asleep. But she's silent, and still, and her breathing is slow and steady.

Relaxed.

Floating.

Comments

[lastgunslinger]

Roland is there, long stem of grass in his mouth. He's reading The One About The Kid Who Grows Up To Be The Rat-Tamer And Prostitute Both In 1950s Small Town Maine, by John Irving.

He looks up at River. She's...better.

It might be time to start talking about what's to come.