Archive of Our Own ^beta

Amber liked being up high.

That wasn’t hard to achieve in a town like Selphia; the town was already built on top of cliffs. But the first few weeks after coming back, Amber had flown around so much that she strained her wings, visiting all the familiar places made new. The tall, aging trees surrounding the lake, the outer town border, with its new stone wall… the roof of the castle. She had flitted around from place to place like a bee that couldn’t decide which flower was the prettiest, tiring herself out to the point of falling asleep in the strangest of places and, as Lumie had later confided, “scaring the snot” out of the townspeople.

“Imagine, for a second, you’re Granny Blossom,” she had said one evening, bending her body over in a facsimile of Blossom’s posture.

Amber nodded eagerly and, with a grin, hunched over herself. 

“Now, you’re stepping outside of the shop for a second to get a breath of fresh air, because it’s a beautiful day. You stretch and say, ‘aaah, what a lovely day!’”

“Aaah,” Amber had giggled. “What a lovely day!”

“And then bam! ” Lumie clapped her hands in front of Amber’s face. The poor girl flinched so hard that she stumbled backwards into the flower displays. “That sweet butterfly kid you met just last week is jumping off your roof! And while you’re brain’s still processing the fact that this goober’s gonna get herself hurt so bad not even Jones will be able to put her pieces back together, she starts flying last minute and almost kicks you in the head!”

Still a little sensitive over the clapping thing, Amber pouted. “I was not going to kick her in the head! I’ve never hit anyone ever.”

“Not true!” Lumie had pointed dramatically, turning away from Amber just so she could spin around and give her pointed finger the weight it deserved. Amber usually liked when Lumie did that, but this was the first time it had been pointed at her. It made her feel like some kind of culprit. “Did you or did you not land on Bado not even a month ago?”

“He caught me,” Amber protested. “And that’s not fair, he was walking where I was landing! I was still learning how to slow down after going fast then. I’m a way better flyer now!” 

It wasn’t like she had wings for her whole life, she wanted to say to Lumie, to the doctors, to anyone in town. Did they think it was a little strange? Well, she could hear herself saying, imagine how weird it must be for her. At least she was practicing.

But then Illuminata held her hands up like one of them hadn’t just been pointed accusatorially towards Amber’s nose. “Hey, I’m not arguing that. You asked why I said people were scared of you when you first came to town, I answered. You’re a safety hazard in hair ribbons.” Then she lovingly bopped Amber on the top of the head– right between the antennae– and went upstairs.

Amber frowned at the memory. When she had asked Lumie exactly what she meant when she said that the townspeople– the new townspeople– were scared of her, what she really meant to be asking was they aren’t scared because I’m part monster, right? And the answer was kind of not that, but also… still kind of that? It was a thought that even Amber had a hard time shaking, for weeks and weeks.

But here, in the present, the sun peeked out from behind a passing cloud and Amber felt its warmth kissing her cheek and all the gloomy stuff in her brain seemed to shrink a little. Though winter was coming for their little town faster than Amber would have liked to admit, and making its presence known in the crystals of frost on her windows in the morning and the bite of the nighttime breezes, autumn was here to stay for one week more– one week she had to take advantage of. It was urgent.

So here Amber was, at the top of the observatory, fluttering her wings and smiling at the bright blue sky for as long as it was warm enough for her to do so, just until the snow came. 

Things were different now. Others like her came– pulled from the dark, woken from nightmare-ridden sleep by royalty, just like in some fairy tale. Weird like her– monstrous like her. More dangerous than her. And one by one, each of them slotted back into place in this wonderful town like knotting cherry grass into a chain of toyherbs, like they belonged there. 

Amber’s wings fluttered in the afternoon sun, and her heels began to lift off of the ground. 

Just until the snow came. Just until the snow came, this sky was hers. This sky was ancient. It knew her well. It knew everyone who lived in this town, everyone who had ever lived in this town– it never forgot a single one.

It knew her. Amber hiked up her skirts and lifted her knee, readying to push off of the observatory’s railing.

But just as her wings were just about warmed up– “Amber?” came a familiar voice. “Is that you?”

“Dolce!” Amber grinned, twisting in midair as she stopped flapping her wings. “And Pico!”

Dolce winced as Amber dropped like dead weight out of the air, but a strong, carefully-timed flap of her wings slowed her momentum and allowed her to gently perch on the railing with ease, her feet dangling over the edge. 

Pico swirled around her. “Amber! Amber! Dolly’s so happy to see you!” She pulled at the purple ribbon in Amber’s hair. “She’s been so busy at the clinic this past week, she feels like it’s been forever since she’s visited a friend.” The ribbon slipped out of Amber’s hair, and Pico pinched it between her upper lip and her nose like a mustache. “I’m glad to see you too, of course,” she said, her voice a little strange from the way her mouth contorted to hold the ribbon in place. “Dolly doesn’t appreciate my company, even when she’s lonely! Oops–” The ribbon slipped from Pico’s face and through her body.

Amber reached through Pico’s body and grabbed it before it fell. Pico blinked for a moment, then doubled over like Amber had punched her with an overdramatic groan. They both burst into laughter.

“Pico,” Dolce huffed, closing the door to the stairway behind her, “would it kill you a second time to be just a hair less than intolerable for two moments? Leave Amber alone.”

“No, Dolce, it’s fine, I promise!” Amber assured her between giggles. “I’ve missed you both, too! What are you doing up here?”

Cheeks slightly tinged from either the climb, Pico’s antics, or from Amber’s admission, she said, “...The weather has been cooling down, so I decided to take a walk. That’s all.”

“To see how many of her friends she would cross paths with on the way!” Pico stage-whispered. “Why do you think she climbed all the way up– eep!” Dolce reached into the pockets of her skirts; without even waiting for her to pull out a ghost-repelling charm, Pico zipped away and hid behind the observatory’s spire. 

With a quiet smile, Dolce walked over to where Amber sat and folded her hands over the railway. “So what have you been up to?” she asked, her eyes scanning across the town below and the expanse outside its boundaries.

“Mmm, nothing much!” Amber fidgeted with the ribbon in her hand. Talking with Dolce always made her a little… apprehensive, at first, before they fell into the rhythm of conversation. But that always meant that they would have to find a conversation. Even after how long they’d known each other, Amber had trouble reading Dolce. Singing made-up songs and laughing about misunderstandings at the flower shop– things that would have brought a smile to some of the other older girls’ faces with no effort– left Dolce staring blankly at her, without Amber knowing if Dolce was annoyed by her or just bored. So Amber had to try really hard to make their conversations fun! But then she would think too hard about it and end up saying something silly or awkward anyway. “Just stretching my wings, mostly? Um, while it’s still a little warm!”

Dolce didn’t say anything other than a quiet hm, so Amber kept going. “Because, you know, with the sun out like this, it’s still nice and warm, and my wings are happy! And I come up here because it gets really sunny in the afternoon. If I’m, um–” Pico caught Amber’s eye, gaining the courage to float out from behind the observatory’s spire. Slowly, the little ghost began pushing the windmill’s blade. “–somewhere too shady, like deep, deep in the forest, it’s, um–” The windmill gained speed, spinning faster and faster with Pico’s ghostly interference. “–not as nice,” Amber finished lamely, her train of thought gone.

Almost absentmindedly, Dolce nodded. “Is that why I don’t ever see you in Yokmir Forest when I’m gathering herbs for the clinic? Not enough sun, no room for flying?”

Amber giggled. Sometimes she forgot how much later Dolce was freed than she was. “Well, that’s part of it.” She began to swing her feet. “Sure, the prettiest flowers grow there, and the monsters aren’t too bad, but… well, after spending years and years and years stuck there, I’m ready to see what the flowers look like anywhere else.”

Dolce’s head whipped towards Amber just as the windmill launched a distracted Pico off of the blade she was riding. She stammered, “That’s where you– you never told–” 

Amber giggled again at the shock on Dolce’s face and regretted it the instant Dolce turned her head away. 

“I’m sorry,” she said coldly. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“No, no, don’t be!” Amber’s wings fluttered nervously. “If I didn’t want to tell you the truth, I just wouldn’t have. And anyway, that was then!” She tilted her head back. “I’m here now. I’m me now! So it’s okay.”

Without turning her head, Dolce let out a sad breath of laughter. Amber felt like their conversation wasn’t going well. This would be about the time when she would fly away before she made Dolce– or herself– feel any worse… but then Dolce placed a gloved hand on her knee, steadying her, keeping her from drifting away into the open sky. When she spoke, her voice was soft. “Would you tell me about your Selphia?” she asked. “What you remember of it?”

Amber was still for a moment, eyes wide. Then she clasped her hands together. “Of course!”

Like a stream undammed, Amber babbled on and on about the shape of the land that raised her. The way her house and many others were slightly outside of the current town boundaries, how each member of the town took turns holding the honor of tending to the land overseen by Lady Ventuswill, the land that fed the entire village. 

Pico inched closer during her explanation. She went on about how the member of Norad nobility who lived with Lady Ventuswill, an older gentleman with failing eyesight, told the best stories about the world outside of Selphia and would eat a meal with you on your birthday, no matter what, every year. How the town banded together to throw grand feasts celebrating the summer and winter solstices, decorating Venti’s hall with flowers and wreaths and vibrant banners in all the colors of the rainbow. How, when someone in the village passed suddenly, like her parents had, the town planted a tree, blessed by Venti herself, over their remains and tended to it daily for as many years as were taken from them–

At that point in her explanation, the blood drained from Dolce’s face. Even Pico stilled.

Amber, thrown off her rhythm, wracked her brain for something else to bring up– she didn’t like to talk about her old life with her new friends, liked to keep her two feet planted in the present sun where they belonged, but Dolce had asked , and she hadn’t realized how long she had been waiting to talk to someone about it all but all she could think of was the spot in Yokmir Forest, that time she was nine, the grave tree of someone she never knew, where she fell off of a branch and broke her arm. That didn’t seem like the right thing to talk about next. She locked her ankles around the vertical supports of the railing.

“You– you were…” Amber imagined she could see the words forming in the vapor of Dolce’s breath. An orphan? “Without parents?”

“Yep. So I was eeeeverybody’s baby.” Amber smiled, tracing her hands over the polished wood of the railing. “The whole village raised me!”

Dolce seemed to melt into the railing a little, her face inscrutable. “I see,” she said. “That… that sounds like a lovely memorial ritual, Amber. Truly. How… how young were you?”

Pico floated into her lap. “Was it difficult?”

“I was okay. I was… almost eleven.” Amber played with the star on one tip of Pico’s hat. “And I was really the only one my age in the village at the time– everyone else was already an adult or a really tiny kid. It was… it didn’t feel like I had no family. It felt like I had a big family.” Her chin puckered. “Sometimes it bugged me, honestly, how everyone treated me like a little kid, even as I grew up. Everybody’s baby... I miss it now, though.” She took a big breath, as though expanding her chest could stretch the knot inside of it. “Of course I miss it now. As the years went by, though, and people started getting sick, and the crops started failing, and the flowers weren’t growing, and we realized that the land was dying , I…”

The forest had been dense with foliage that time of year, she remembered. Thick. Heavy. Dark. Even on a sunny afternoon. “...well, I had to grow up a bit, didn’t I?”

The autumn wind blew cold.

Pico brushed a ghostly finger against Amber’s cheek. She realized that Pico meant to brush a tear from her face. A beat later, she realized that she was, in fact, crying. 

“Oh, I– I’m sorry, I don’t–” Amber sniffled, eyes wide and blinking away tears. “Why am I crying? It’s– I’m okay now, I’m safe, I don’t–” She let out a shaky sob as Pico wrapped her tiny arms around her. Dolce took her hand– the one still holding the purple hair ribbon– and gripped it tight between her own two gloved hands, pressed it to her lips. Amber’s wings trembled. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry.”

“No need,” Dolce said, more gently than Amber had ever heard from her. “Amber, Amber, no need. There’s nothing to apologize for. Pain knows no calendar. Grief knows no calendar. It’s okay for it to hurt.”

“Dolly gets sad, too,” Pico rested her head on Amber’s shoulder. “And me. It’s not just you.”

“But I don’t– I don’t want to be sad about my memories,” Amber sobbed. “I want to feel happy when I think about my old friends.”

Dolce’s eyes misted over. “Me, too,” she whispered. She didn’t let go of Amber’s hand.

“Maybe we can be both,” Pico mumbled. “Happy and sad about it.” She felt so light, so paper-thin, against Amber’s neck. “I don’t think I know how else to be.”

Amber sniffled. “Like…” she said. “Like a partly cloudy day.”

Closing her eyes with a short huff of laughter, Dolce inclined her head in a slight nod. “Maybe,” she said, Amber’s hand close to her chest.

Amber processed that for a moment. Then she nodded once, twice. She swiped at her eyes, slipped her hand out of Dolce’s, spun around on the railing with Pico rising from lap, and slid onto her feet with a spring in her step. “I can do that!” she said. “I can be that. Pico!”

Turning her head towards Dolce like a jointed doll’s head, then turning back to Amber, Pico squeaked, “Y-yes?”

“Do you want to fly with me?” Amber jumped into the air and flapped her wings. “Fall’s almost over! I’ve only got about a week left! What do you say?”

Pico’s glassy eyes widened and sparkled in the afternoon sun. Then, nervous, she turned again to Dolce. “Um, well, we can’t go too far, or else…”

“Dolce,” Amber folded her legs at the ankles in midair, smiling with a hint of mischief and a sing-song tone, “do youuu wanna fly with me?”

“...No.”

“I could lift you, probably!” Amber flexed her muscles. “I’m strong.”

“Certainly not.”

“Oh, boo!” Amber scuffed her shoe on the wooden observatory deck, but her pout was undermined by the smile peeking through. “Fine, we’ll stay close! Ready, Pico?” 

Pico balled her tiny hands into excited fists. “Ab–so–lutely!”

Amber sprang into the air, spiraling upwards into the blue sky above. Pico shot after her, rising erratically like an autumn leaf in a whirlwind. Amber stretched her hands down below her, splaying her fingers to reach Pico’s. With a hopeful grin, Pico slipped her fingers inside of Amber’s and overlapped the tips. Together, pantomiming that their hands were clasped, they flew together through the autumn sky.

From behind the observatory’s railing, Dolce watched them, a fond smile blooming on her lips. Another cool breeze blew through town; Dolce let it sweep around her body, watched it stir up the fallen leaves on the stone below. She watched Amber and Pico’s conjoined shadow– half clear, half faint– dance across the ground. And deep in her chest, unfolding inside of that ache to which she had grown so accustomed, she felt warmth that rivaled that of the sun above.