Their conversation was often deeper than the world. It passed between them in silence and the unheard rustle. Sometimes it lived in their fragrance, which the wind shared.
‘Oh, that chequered road,’ said the Rose indirectly to the Vine. ‘It is not just black and white, you know. It goes through blue fire and yellow sands.’
The Vine was silent, but quivered lightly with the flame of those silent words.
‘The road passes over a bridge made of the tongues of martyrs and across those hedges of insanity and through that delicate blue of awakening minds in the remote temples,’ said the Rose, concentrating its speech into the air.
The Vine listened to the broken tale.
‘You may not know it, but this road I speak of passes through the dreams of gods and the screams of children. It beholds the slow rot of daily life.’
A faint troubled blush rose deep within the Vine, and made it tremble, as when a fable of the wind turns suddenly dark.
‘Sometimes the road leaves the earth and ascends to the fiery moon, where it is repudiated by the stars,’ said the Rose with the joy of its radiant mood.
The Vine sensed now the enigma of that mood and allowed itself to be shaken by its magic.
‘You too have heard the obscure sounds the Sybils make that trouble our sleep with prophecies. The sounds come from the earth, and the earth is pregnant with dreams and nightmares. Sometimes flowers sprout from the blood and bones, and carpet the road with colours. Those who walk the road breathe the colours as hope.’
The Vine, full to its edge with the fable, replied:
‘That is the road that flows in my veins. But with my grapes it is crushed into that liquid, touched with the gold of the stars, that makes men free.’
All around them was the many-coloured wind in the arbour, and the fable shared was their conversation with the sky.