She could tell she was bleeding profusely from where the cop had thrown her on the undulating ground, deep in the chasm of earth that her bleeding need had opened and too far from the oak tree to even make her broken body any use. Her head was pounding, her vision compromised, a thousand problems rolling into one. She had no proficiency for healing. No proficiency at all. She’d only had one thing her entire life and she’d resented it, she’d cared nothing for it. She had not cared for it at all.
Fuck this. Fuck all of it. She still felt a buzz of nothingness in her limbs, her empty hands, but chose to ignore it. Have it, whatever you need, she thought to the adolescent oak tree, the one that had tried to save her for no goddamn reason at all. Take it, you need it more than I do—if I have anything left in me then take it, have it all!
The silence that followed dropped like a guillotine. Game over.
Just another wasted life.
Then, belatedly, it burst from her like spring.
Like music. A crescendo into dazedness, into song. Like the darkness had been, the sudden efflorescent bloom was equally blinding. Something landed with a thud near Reina’s feet, and though her vision had not yet cleared, she could sense the presence of petrichor—the air was suddenly rich with it; from old deadness, new life. She closed her fingers around the object that had been thrown to her: the policeman’s handgun. Realizing what it was, Reina kicked it away, as far as she could, tilting her chin upward. Looking up through slitted eyes toward a blur of sanguinary sky.
Blink. Another blink.
It swam in front of her, gradually clearing. Mother, open your eyes.
A canopy hung above her head, not sky. Shading her from the battering sun. A circular grove of trees stood in newly fertilized ground, petals the color of freshly spilled blood.
The cops were gone. The park was empty. The heat was gone, a cool breeze ghosting gently by. Fruit hung heavy from the branches of the newborn trees and Reina struggled to her feet, sore and bruised, to gently pull one down. The tips of her fingers brushed the skin, glossy and smooth.
Pomegranates.
Staggering with exhaustion, Reina sank to her knees and she cried.