Betulla

I am the breeze ruffling locks of pink petal-pocked ivy.

Perhaps I’ll never know whether the Gladekeeper picked me, or I him. In all honesty, it doesn’t matter all that much, anyway. Just as a bee never roams far from its hive, I could never be too far from the tangle of mossy undergrowth; the voracity of ever green, ever lush vegetation; the towering build of tree after tree. Spring is my breath and summer my heartbeat, the crushed, fallen leaves of fall my tears and deep slumber my winter. Where nature ends and begins with me is a mystery, for as long as I have breathed, I have been one with the breezes tickling the fronds of my children.

Mother says I was born at dawn, when the sun crinkles at the horizon and the buds open their eyes to the Solar Serpent’s glory. The last to hatch from my clutch, she’d been surprised when I’d unrolled myself from the shell of my egg carefully and calmly; as if I couldn’t have been bothered to awaken my sleepy eyes and cramped limbs. I’d been as long and wiry as a beanstalk, she used to tease, and as bright as the fields of sunflowers just beyond our small Clan’s lair. Growing, ever growing. “Ervinha,” she would call me, nodding at the plump and persistent weeds always spotting the outside of our den. You see, she’d always been impressed by me, Mother had. She’d always been fascinated by own deep-rooted adoration of the living. Such a love had pushed me forward and onward as I’d chased butterflies and ivy, traveled ravines and climbed great boughs of oak and maple. Yes, she’d always seen something in me others had not quite grasped; appreciated yet, but understood…not entirely. Till the day of her passing she never ceased to make me glow with that nickname of hers she had for me, always whispering between mouthfuls of cinnamon spice tea that I would forever be a weed; ever learning, ever cultivating, ever growing. To stop was to die, and to be content was to embrace the staleness of life and crumple beneath its weight.

Lately, I’ve begun to hear her whispering to me again. Even from her orchid spotted grave, she seems to call me. I hear her in the wind ruffling the tree canopies, the mushrooms growing upon the corpses, the moss creeping along the ground and the flowers budding their beautiful heads above the tangle of grass and weed. She is there, and she is here, with me. She is in the recycling of nature, in the birth of the new and the death of the old.


I am the cold corpses of crops buried desolate beneath the snow

It is rather ironic, I suppose, that someone so enamored by Mother Earth would be unable to be a mother herself. Barren, I am, as the driest, darkest reaches of a desert; as if the sand and wind has eroded away any ability of mine to grow personal seed of my own. My only hopes for a family now reside within my greenhouse and garden, where hundreds upon hundreds of babies glisten and gleam beneath the sprinkle of water and the warm blanket of fertilizer. They provide for me a genuine sort of happiness, in which I am unable to glean from anywhere else. Anywhere, that is, then the ill dragons and hatchlings I find myself tending to now and again.

The dragons come plodding past my shop, eyes darting like glistening minnows and claws itching together like frantic fire ants. Some of them are too embarrassed to ask me if I’d be willing to part from my babies – after all, the flowers in my shop find themselves traveling from greenhouse and garden to my shelves and display cupboards –, but I’m quick to surprise them with a smile and a clawful of my newest blooms. Flowers, like the prettiest things of life, were meant to be admired and loved, but not just from afar. The truest of love is felt through the smallest of sacrifices, whether that be the simple watering of roots or the tender pruning of heavy-laden stems. And how could I be so selfish as to keep these life lessons to myself? I offer these flowers to any and all who pass by, hoping they will bring such happiness and enlightenment of mind to them as they have for me. After all, whether blood or not, this is what family is – a heaping of lessons and love, with whom and where one cries and smiles the most.
Family. Peculiar, it is.

My family has long since gone the way of the world; the first was my mother, of course. Her last breath had smelled faintly of nightwood, and to this day, while I enjoy offering my services to ill dragons, the smell of the medicinal herb twitches at my stomach and tickles the back of my throat. Tears are the sweetest water a flower could ever ask for, and they feed my garden just as they fed the flowers at my mother’s grave. A garden of family members greet me when I find my way back home, starting first with Mother’s grave; she’d always loved daisies, and my, have her plot of daisies spread since her untimely death years ago. The next plot in my garden belongs to my poor father; he hadn’t expected his mate to pass on so quickly, and stranger yet to all of us watching was his own untimely undoing. Fit and healthy, my father had died with the smell of holly rotting between his teeth. Hundreds of them, ingested forcefully and hungrily. Romantic as ever, he had seen it fit to throw himself off the same proverbial cliff as my mother, and painful as ever, my family and I had found our claws heaping dirt upon his stinking corpse soon after.

Family. Yes, a peculiar word that. Despite the fact that I am now lonely in this world, the Gladekeeper has given me not one, but two families. Or, perhaps given is the wrong word for it. Maybe it is I who truly discovered the second in my travels through daisy fields and grottos of holly bushes; in the days that the daisies brushed away my tears and the holly smiled contentedly at me. Perhaps I had always been born of the fields and flowers, and my Mother and Father had simply given me, Nature, the corporeal form she’d finally deserved.

I am the sun-warmed grasses soaked sweet with the smell of sweat

I am not well off like most dragons in my clan, yet I am followed at all opportunities by a clawful of little nymphs. Mischievous and misbehaving, they like to bother me just as much as the members of my Clan, but strangely enough, it is very inviting. Their flitting bodies are welcome burdens, traveling with me between the small plots of my garden and the expansive aisles of my greenhouse; all sizes and colors, ranging from promiscuous palm-lilies to shy honeysuckles, to crimson carnations and plum pansies. They chitter and chatter, like the squirrels hidden deep within the arms of trees, filling my days with golden delight as they grow gossip like weeds and pick blooms like hungry fawns. “This one,” they offer to me, smiling widely as I search for flowers and gifts for the ill, the injured, the sickened hearts and the frail frames. “Take this one.” They are the kindest friends a dragoness like me could ask for; the brightest stars to my night sky.

Flitting and dancing, they play; catching my eyes as they streak between the aisles of the greenhouse, sprinkling magic and sweet nothings to the young bulbs. Careful and quiet, they tend; following me to ill dragons, smiling kindly and blessing those I give flowers to. Helpful and happy, they are; teetering around my flower shop to find bouquets and corsages, headpieces and wristlets. They braid flower crowns for hatchlings – and me when I’m not paying attention – and beautiful flower-wear for the solstice and equinox festivals, twiddling their small fingers across thorns and briars. Such fingers find purchase in my wings, massaging out the pains of an old back – they scoff when they hear me call myself old, but it is true; I have passed the age for any dragon to take me as his mate – as they sing songs of the forest and recite poems of the streams. Such hands pat away my tears when the solitude and longing for family become too much for my swollen heart to bear.

Friends. Such precious, precious friends. I just hope they stay, rooting themselves in this miniscule life of mine, never to bluster away in the gales of autumn and never to dissipate like the fallen corpses of leaves.

I am the bliss of freshly crushed leaves; bleeding crimson, screaming ochre, glowing gold

Notes, notes, notes. My garden and shop are covered in bleeding parchment, the smell of fresh ink always present as I scratch something down for an ill hatchling or dragon. This is the balm of Mother Earth, the presence of her hug and the source of her affection: the preening petals of flowers are her heart opening wide and enveloping one’s own, if they have the eyes to see. The flowers speak of healing and kindness, if one has the ears to hear it. As I gift such precious stories and poems, heartfelt messages and silly, silly anecdotes to the lame, the sick, the deaf, and the blind, I cannot help but see Mother Earth’s heart beating for the dragons under my care. She loves you, I write, jotting, jotting, jotting, and She hopes for your swift recovery. I hope this flower finds you well and happy, and may the Gladekeeper bless you with long health and joy in all your endeavors.

Mother Earth is all-loving, all-knowing, ever-present. She guides me in what to say. She speaks to me through the whistling of the leaves and the kowtowing of the fronds, the singing of the brooks and the hissing of the breeze. She gives word to my compassion, life to my kindness. She is the medium through which I conduct art, the quill I use to scratch out stories. She is just as much my inhale as my exhale, the beating of my heart and the ache of my limbs.

She calls to me, and I heed her voice. Plain and simple, exuberant and urgent, delicate and fragile, forceful and awesome. Soon comes the day in which I will go the way of the earth just as my mother and father. Soon my nymphs will be tending to my decomposing frame and the flowers that grow from between my scales. Soon the parchment I have collected over the year will be thrown out and the hundreds of notes I have written will spin spirals around my deceased head, returning to bring comfort to a nonexistent life. Soon my plot will be added to my family’s and soon I will rest, sleeping amongst the roots of my children as they cradle my swollen, seeded soul. They will hush me just as I have hushed the crying of colicky hatchlings and mothers in labor. They will usher me into their embrace just as I have the elderly and the fallen, the broken and the breaking. Next to the smoldering corpses of my parents, I will rest, and I will breathe; resting from the thorns of living and breathing in the new life that death offers.

Finally, the Gladekeeper will call me home.
I AM BETULLA.
-an ode to spring, summer, autumn, and winter; written by Betulla in the Year of Gladekeeping, the Fourth Month of Gathering.