Status Updates From Winter Rose (Winter Rose, #1)

You killed his father. You turn his words to leaves. You take away his eyes, his voice. You don't love him. Why do you care where he goes?"
"Because he is mine, of my blood and of the wood. Love and hate are nothing more than leaves here; he knows that. He was not born to learn them."

i love how she writes fae, fucking terrifying

"Do you care for me at all? Or do you only need me?"
His hand opened to my face; I felt only the cool invisible leaves. I lifted my own hand; in the light our shadows touched.
"You come to me," he whispered. "Into every dark place. Into every memory. Into the empty eyes of winter. I go alone and find you with me. Why do you care for me?"
I did not know until I spoke. "Because you are making me human."

*screams*

"Who are you?" I whispered. She was something wild in my wood, the glint of an eye on a lightless night, the formless shadow the moon reveals tangled in the shadow of a tree. "Who are you?"
"I am night," she said, and it was. "I am winter's song," and I heard it. "I am the shadow of the bloody moon and all the winds that harvest in it." I felt them. "I am the dead of winter."
She wore my mother's face.

disl jezomor

"I thought I knew what you were, who I was, but you changed under my eyes, and so has Laurel and so has the wood, and I don't know anymore what I am except a woman who sees too much.'
"I know. I always knew."
"What did you always know?"
"That you see with the wood's eyes."

You lied to both of us... I believed you...
YOU SAW ME. I COULD NEVER PRETEND TO YOU... YOU SAW ME TOO WELL 💔

But they didn't know where to look, or how to see. I thought I did. Doors, he had said. Thresholds. Places of passage, where gold fell from one story into another, where time shifted across the boundary between worlds.

✨️

I thought I knew what cold was, before cold stripped me bare of thought, then blinded me and froze my heart. I could not feel such cold and live; cold forced me into something other, something not quite human, who held a dream with bones of ice, and did not remember names, only what we once had been: a flower on a vine, a fall of light.

The hard winds sang their way into my dreams again that night. Long, white, insistent fingers of snow brushed against the window glass until I saw the storm out of memory, snow falling endlessly, hiding the moon, the earth, and any footprints in the frozen ground. Come to us, the winds called. Come. And I rose and saw the light from Lynn Hall flickering like a star among the wind harrowed trees.

"I must go," I said to Anis, but where, I did not know. I kissed her cheek; she drew a deep breath as I straightened.
"I can smell the wind and wood on you," she said, "as if you lived in them."
I opened the door and glimpsed, in the wild wind and sky, perhaps in her words, the next turn of the tangled path we walked.

It was a song out of a forgotten kingdom, out of the deep, secret heart of the wood. It burned wild and sweet in my throat, in the back of my eyes. It lured and beckoned; it gave us glimpses of the land beyond the falling leaves, within the well. He blurred into tears and fire, a face of fire and shadow, a gleaming stroke of silver. I wanted to find that place where such music grew as free as roses, where winds began

Come in."
"No. "
"You will," he told me. "You will follow me. You keep trying to find your way past the world. You still see your reflection in water, you still feel the wind rushing past you, leaving you behind. You want to dissolve into light, ride the wild winds. I saw you, that night. You wanted to flow like moonlight out of your own body. You will follow me."

scary aa only fairy tales can be 🤫

Water has its moods, flowing or still; it can lure you like a lover, or look as bleak as a broken heart. I pushed the faded vines aside and dipped my hand into the water. Wind rippled it, and my splashing; it would not give me my reflection. But it tasted of those great dreaming clouds, and of the bright winds and broken pieces of blue sky its trembling waters caught. It tasted of the last sun before winter.
*sigh*

"Are there different truths, the way there are different curses?" I could feel the dark sweet wine pulsing through me.His eyes changed as he looked from Laurel to me; they withheld answers, emotions, held only secrets. "Or," I continued, "is each curse a different truth?"
Laurel laughed. "Rois, you're making no sense! Ask something he can answer, so we can understand."
"Yes," he said to her, and my breath stopped

I simply wanted to untangle myself from the web I had touched. A single, sticky, quivering strand of it was all I needed to warn me away. I did not want to think about people. I wanted the trees, the scents and colors, the shifting shadows of the wood, which spoke a language I understood. I wished I could simply disappear in it, live like a bird or a fox through the winter, and leave things I had glimpsed to resolve

"People see what they expect to see.Except for you. ou simply see"
I was mute a moment, gazing at him"But I am not sure what it is I'm looking at.
He did not answer,but his smile remained. I realized then that he saw me all too well.The fine lady with roses in her hair and buckles on her dancing shoes was not the truth; truth stood in a ring of mushrooms in the wood; truth drank from secret well.
"Youll miss the wood

His eyes came back to me, as if he felt something pass between our hands.
I did not know, until then, that you could disappear into someone's gaze, that bone and heart and breath could melt like shadow into light, until only light was left. "Corbet-" I did not know whose voice spoke, whose heart beat so violently, whose fingers shifted from his shoulder to the bare skin beneath his hair.

🫠

I slid apart the dying roses, and watched my reflection for a long time, until the faint rings and ripples he had left broke against the stones and faded, and the water grew calm, only trembling slightly with the hidden spring that fed it. I went home then, still feeling strange, as if I had stepped between two worlds, and had forgotten which I had come to and which I had left.

#whenirealisemycomfortcharaterisntreal

He moved, and then I did, taking half an aimless step; I could not remember why I had come there.
"Can you use it?" I asked awkwardly,and he looked a question. "The well?"
He shook his head "Pity.It's very sweet. It tastes of roses."
"I know."
He smiled again, his eyes still secret, like the well,which suddenly, was no longer there. "Yes," he said softly. "You would know. You are drawn to secrets."

*giggles insanly*

But the distorted shapes and unexpected colors of mushrooms fascinated me; I prowled through shadows and under bracken looking for them. They were ancient, wild things. No two were ever alike, and they had no roots to tie them to one place; like curiosity, they wandered everywhere. So did I, that brief, rich season between summer heat and autumn rain, when the light took its shades of gold from the dying leaves.

"I've seen you," he said, "in the village." His voice was light, calm; his eyes said nothing more. He looked down at what he held. "Mandrake."
"It's for the apothecary," I said. I still crouched in the elm roots, staring at him. He seemed human enough; he met my stare and matched it, expressing nothing but mild curiosity "They say you're cursed."
"Oh." He looked away then, smiling a little "So I've heard."
🤭

I looked out over the darkening wood, and wished I were something wild that prowled at night. I would run through moonlight until I reached the hall, where the wild roses grew among the tame in the old rose garden. And then, from some secret place, I would see what he became when moonlight touched him.

i missed mckillip's writing... makes me sigh dreamily almost constantly 🥰

We lived comfortably in the rambling, thatched farmhouse that had grown askew with age. Centuries of footsteps had worn shallow valleys into the flagstones; the floors had settled haphazardly into the earth; door frames tilted; ceilings sagged. Other things happen to old houses, that only I seemed to notice. Smells had woven into the wood, so that lavender or baking bread scented the air at unexpected moments.
opisi!

"Barefoot.And with rose petals in your hair.You look like something conceived under a mushroom."
I stuck a stem of honeysuckle in his hair, and bleeding heart into my father's.It slid forward to in front of his nose,a chain of little hearts.We laughed
"It's time you stopped dancing among the ferns put your shoes on, and learned a thing or two from your sister"
"I know."
"You say that" he grumbled "But you dont listen

Of course I thought about him, at first the way you think about weather or time, something always at the edge of your mind. He didn't seem real to me, just something I dreamed on a hot summer day, as I swallowed water scented with roses and stone. I remembered his eyes, odd, heavy-lidded, the color, I thought then, of his hair. When I saw them a day or two later, I was surprised.

💘