A song that no one knows forgot how it goes
Just john and me forever eternally, Jane Doe

The pale woman led @Sorrel slowly through the jungle, through the tall grasses. The field of flowers quickened her awkward pace, a strange sense of comfort washing over her. Flowers had been the first thing she could recall. Pinks and blues and yellows and reds. Deep purples. It was an image she clutched to.

She found was she was looking for with surprising ease. The shallow hole in the ground, whoes crisp edges had crumbled inward slightly from weather and creatures feet, seemed to call to her. The flowers that had surrounded her had wilted into a collection of muted browns. Some were still stained dark with her blood. The sight of the aged flowers saddened her, the image of bright colours that she remembered not matching what she now saw.

"I woke up here." She turned to her fluffy companion then, unblinking eyes fixing on theirs once again

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Sorrel is soundly of the opinion that they would not survive a campfire tale, one of those horror stories you tell to scare your friends in the dead of night, right before sleep. Only an idiot would follow a strange, waifish girl into the dark to an unknown place to find her _soul_. Honestly, Sorrel is partly surprised they haven't been attacked by her - turns out, she's a ghost, and she collects the lives of fools who fall for her innocent but mildly creepy ruse. But no, she doesn't attack or turn into smoke and vanish. She leads the rogue to... A hole in the ground, nestled among the flowerbeds.

"I woke up here."

Sorrel can feel her gaze on their face as they step forward, peering into the shallow hole. There's dying, wilted flowers around it, decorated with the care and respect shown only to loved ones. Sorrel's paws slip, sending a torrent of loose dirt into the grave as they skitter backward.

Grave.

Holy shit.

"Fuck." They breathe, casting a wary eye to the side, where she stands. The stranger seems unaware of the situation. "...You know this is a grave, right?" For some reason they doubt it, very much. They'd been joking about where she'd last had her soul, but gods. "What happened before you woke up?"

@Sylva

art © rabbit | code © hinter

A song that no one knows forgot how it goes
Just john and me forever eternally, Jane Doe

There was an odd little catch in her breath when @Sorrel's footsteps disturbed the already crumbling edges of her hole. It hurt, somehow, in the pit of her stomach. Carefully she stepped forward, using a paw to gently pat the drying earth back into a lumpy edge. The fluffy lions words brought her head twitching back up again, her midnight deep eyes flashing something akin to sorrow, though she wasn't sure why she felt so.

She stepped closer to them, stretching her neck and pushed her tilted skull close to them. "What's a grave?" Her question was soft and floaty, like a mist in the wind. The awnser felt just out of reason, an unknown known. She straightened again, her face though unchanged darkening into a shadow of sadness. She looked away, staring hard at the wilted flowers and their living counterparts that surrounded them in bright bunches. "I don't remember." There was a long pause, heavy with pain. "I don't remember anything." It was black, endless, nothing before flowers and dirt. Except; "I remember singing," her words hurried on, as if the single memory was her only comfort, "Like birds, but they weren't birds voices. They were sad."

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"What's a grave?"

Oh, fuck, Sorrel is not the right lion for this. For a moment, all they can do is stare, useless as ever. Thankfully, she seems distracted by their question, and looks away while pondering it. Sorrel's bone pierced ear twitches, gaze shifting, following her slight movements. The way her expression shifts, crumbles, her eyes glistening.

She remembers nothing. Which, by now, even an idiot like Sorrel had seen coming. Much as they didn't want to be right (for the first time ever), it simply makes sense. The context clues line up, fit together.

She isn't a ghost, but she might as well be.

"A grave is where you bury a dead lion." Sorrel ditches the trademark snarky tone for one a bit flatter. See, they're capable of not always being a shithead. "You dig a hole, put the body in, cover it up. If you cared about them, you put flowers on top." If nothing else, the sign that whoever was buried here was loved is there.

Maybe it isn't a bad way to go.

"Do you remember your name?" Even that small thing might mean something, somewhere. Fuck, if she was buried here - there's prides not far from here, maybe she belonged there?

@Sylva

art © rabbit | code © hinter

A song that no one knows forgot how it goes
Just john and me forever eternally, Jane Doe

The woman's tilted skull remained stretched out to the lion, eyes staring unwavering while they spoke. Once they finished, she lingered for a moment longer before straightening and staring vacantly off into some far distance mist. Grave. The word whipped around like a leaf caught by a storm in her mind. She struggled to catch it, to force a true understanding of it. But when she did, when the full weight of what @Sorrel had said hit her, her balance faltered a little.

She was dead. Was she still dead? Was this some kind of heaven? Or hell? Was the black void she had floated weightlessly in, filled with starlight and singing and the sound of tears falling, the space between death and alive? "I was bleeding." The words were almost in a trance. She had awoken seeping blood from the deep wound that stretched across her face and down to her throat. There was still evidence of it upon her flowers. Her flowers. The second half of Sorrel's words came into focus then. There were so many flowers within the hole. She had woken to do many plucked buds, to many to count in so many colours. "Someone cared for me?" Her voice was not for Sorrel now, but instead for flowers around them. So many flowers. Both in her grave and growing around them.

Do you remember your name? The question made her want to vomit. It sent her into an awkward sway before she took a step forward. Her jittery walk was even more unstable now as she circled around the lion. "Do you like flowers?" She asked. It had been the first words she recalled ever saying. Shaky hints of panic pulled at her ghostly tones. The empty space in her mind where her name should be ached and yearned, sending painful shocks to the back of her eyes. She focused on a soft pink peony. Despite the slight shake of her, she plucked it, holding it towards her companion. "This is called peony." Awkwardly she attempted to shift the focus from her name to those of the flower she had plucked. "And that is a daisy..." She pointed to the white petals, her voice quivering a little.

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It’s not really a surprise to get a whole lot of nothing for an answer, but that she was bleeding - injured - makes sense. Sorrel stays silent, not sure what else to say. If she doesn’t know, has no memory of what happened, they can’t really help her. Her gaze travels across the hole and the flowers, and the rogue is little more than an awkward, unwanted spectator at someone else’s grave. They can’t mourn her or what she’s lost - they don’t know her. She asks a question they can’t answer, and honestly it doesn’t seem directed their way, so Sorrel just stands there.

Dark brows lift over the two narrowed, silver eyes on the pale girl as she flits and flies around the flowers, naming them without waiting for Sorrel’s response. Which is a terrible attempt at avoiding the question, which is an answer in of itself. She doesn’t even have a name of her own.

Sorrel might not have anything else, but they have that.

"That’s a sylva," they interject, nodding at the small flower she’s near standing on. "Another name for it is forget-me-not." There's a quick, almost hesitant pause, before they add, "Sylva suits you. For a name."

Shouldn't everyone at least have that?

art © rabbit | code © hinter

A song that no one knows forgot how it goes
Just john and me forever eternally, Jane Doe

She stared hard, almost desperately at the flowers around her, willing them to comfort her. She clung to the first image she could recall, of the petals, like it was a floating log among heaving waves. She longed for them to whisper secrets about herself, to tell her who she was. Yet they never spoke, never gave up what they knew. Had the flowers seen who she had been before? Had they seen the faces of those who put her here? Did they watch them mourn? Had those unknown lions mourned? Did the flowers mourn her, as she mourned herself?

"Forget-me-nots." She echoed softly, leaning down and looking at the tiny flower. They grew just at the edge of her grave, blooming in little bursts of blue. They reflected in the night of her gaze like flecks of starlight. Was she forgotten? She commited the flowers to her memory, etching every petal into the blank canvas of her mind. She didn't want to forget them. She didn't quite comprehend what @Sorrel had offered, the words hadnt hey sunk in.

"Do all flowers have names?" She looked out to the field of flowers, tilting her head before looking back to Sorrel. "Sylva?" She echoed again, staring at them with a softer gaze.

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"Yeah," Sorrel murmurs, intelligently, as she repeats the flower’s common name. It felt fitting at the time, but maybe it’s just offensive. They don’t know. To say Sorrel is over their head is a vast understatement. The lioness seems more intent on staring down the little blue flower than really paying them much attention, though.

Sorrel plonks down hard on their ass, shoulders slouched. Leaving would be… wrong. Even the rogue has standards, sometimes. This is certainly the most interesting thing to happen to them in a long while - but they can’t say it's entertaining. If anything it’s just… sad.

"Well, yes and no? My language - one of them - has different names for flowers. Peony is paionia. Daisy is bellis. But sylva is… special. It’s the name for that flower, and it’s also a word for a stories. Stories you’ve lost." Fucking hell, someone might mistake Sorrel for a sap if they hear what’s coming out of their mouth right now. So they shrug one bony shoulder. "Or you can call yourself Elizabeth or something boring like that. It doesn't matter."

art © rabbit | code © hinter

A song that no one knows forgot how it goes
Just john and me forever eternally, Jane Doe

It seemed somehow unfair that flowers seemed to have multiple names. Gently, the names were stored alongside the ones the already knew. She casted a twitchy look around again, sweeping her eyes over the sea of colours.

A name.

Elizabeth. Nope. She almost winced at the name, at how it felt so foreign.

"Sylva." She echoed again, the word lilting softly like a song. It didn't feel like her, yet it also didn't feel so distant from what she could be. Could she be Sylva? There were long moments where she stared at the sky, breathing and thinking and unmoving. Sylva.

She looked back to @Sorrel, stepping closer and leaning in. "Can Sylva's favourite colour be blue?" Could it? Could she construct something from the nothingness?

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