Maquia When The Promised Flower Blooms -2018- B... -

Maquia stayed until his hand grew cold. Then she walked out into the meadow where the dandelions bloomed—the promised flowers that carried wishes to the sky. She blew on a seed head, watching the white fluff scatter.

“Stop treating me like a child,” he snapped, his voice cracking into a man’s baritone. He stood a head taller than her now. She still looked fifteen. “You’re not my real mother. You’re… you’re nothing .” Maquia When the Promised Flower Blooms -2018- B...

He smiled—a boy’s smile, buried under eighty years of war and love and loss. “Will you remember me?” Maquia stayed until his hand grew cold

She threw herself into the flames, her small body lifting the beam that ten men could not move. “Get up,” she whispered, dragging him to safety. Blood streaked her face. She looked exactly as she had the day she found him. “Stop treating me like a child,” he snapped,

“For saying you were nothing.” A tear slid down his temple. “You were… everything.”

“You’re crying,” Maquia whispered, touching the tear on his cheek. She realized, with a strange pang, that she was crying too.