myth for wild geranium

They say we all live many lives, lives within lives, while in the snake, Sweetie was transported to the peatlands again. Music - that's what she heard. Sounds danced through the suffocating muck. She came in and out of consciousness. After some amount of time, her heart would jolt as if remembering something she should have died.

Her grandmother was no longer there, but sweetie could feel the essence of her, seep from the trees, rise from the mud, exhale from the mouths of birds. Her and others. The peatlands were alive forever, alive, ancient, and slowly, slowly breathing.

Her sword, she sensed it. How had she lost it in this so? How had she lost it in her garments? Her handless arms felt its blade. There in the wood of which her grandmother was now a part, the geranium stood before Sweetie. And she was softened by it. She knew that a true part of her was within that plant. Around it, sundew grew by the dozen.

“Give me your secret,” the wild geranium demanded as clearly as rain.

And sweetie remembered then, the meeting was bitter, her best friend, so many years ago. A secret they shared, that they both swallowed. She had forgotten, so used to keeping it away. And now Sweetie coughed up the secret, a seed. And held it on her arm. “My friend gave her soul to the soil.” She responded. “She promised her body to the earth and now she is gone” Sweetie didn't mean she died.

But bitter was gone, and Sweetie didn't know how else to say it. After she disappeared, all of this happened: The grass men, the Emmer, the daughter that covered the sky, the oppressive laws.

“That's not entirely it.” The geranium replied, “you have told someone else's story. What is yours?”

Just then Sweetie woke. In the darkness of the snake's belly, with the sword in her arms, she had to find Bitter, because in her, was Sweetie's story. The one Bitter swallowed so long ago.