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He did not remember much of his mother. He had heard of her in whispers—the remnants of a head laid in meadow grass, the prayers pressed into his palms from the lips of villagers that passed by, the wind that rustled the curled fingers of the leafy treetops—but never did he dare to say her name aloud. He had been acutely aware from his inception that he was never meant to hold her tightly, that motherhood was nothing more than matching eyes and the thrashing tadpoles that used to swarm around his ankles in the pond. Other children of the wind knew this to be true too: she was their mother, and he may be her prized boy, but she would not ask him to come to her when he had already left.
He used to think it unfair—the children of the stars at least got to visit Death in the end, got to at least press their ears to her hollow chest and hear the rustle of wings underneath her ribcage. None of that was for the wind children: you could be bound to Death for an eternity, but Life was a fleeting thing.
So when Tommy had rose from a field of daffodils that first Spring, his patch of hair gleaming the same proud yellow of the flowers making his bed, he did not question his loneliness. He had wandered for a bit, teetering on thick toddler legs with baby fat on his cheeks and new-grown teeth, until he had been found bathing in the cool river by an old woman from the nearest village. She had not asked where he came from, had not asked why the dragonflies seemed to dance on the softness of his forearms, why the frogs croaked their song even louder when he giggled; she had not asked why he muttered to the ants in her cupboard and chattered with the crickets at night. Women are good at knowing when to let truths lay dead, especially those who had been mothers.
“That boy just has a way with the wild, that’s all,” she would say to each neighbor’s inquisitive stare, her face heavy with wrinkles and a coy smile, “forest babies always do. You pluck ‘em out and they just keep crawling back. Sure does make a racket at night telling stories to the fireflies though.”
The old woman had not been his mother, no one could be, but she had been close enough. She taught him to cook and air out the kitchen when frying pig fat; how to suck on the blood beading when he stuck his finger with a sewing needle, how to never get stuck; she showed him that butter was good for keeping your skin smooth when the work got hard, and that working egg yolk into your scalp kept your hair healthy. She was not his mother, but she had been the one to kiss the tear tracks from his cheeks when he had scraped his knee and laughed when he sung to the garden a lullaby each night. And for a while, Tommy thought that he might find Life a bit merciful.
But she was old, and everything wilts.
She tried to keep his spirits up those last few months, even as her frail body shook with coughs and blood stained the sleeve of her blouse as she held her mouth. And Tommy had humored her, had fetched water from the river when her legs were too weak to join him and had brought her back jasmine to crush in her palms at night.
But then the season turned, the air thin with promised snow and cold biting the apple of his cheeks as he struggled to find a river that was not already frozen over. Her breath had rattled then, and the coughs swallowed the rest of her throat until she could no longer speak. Tommy hummed to her when her eyes grew weepy and her fingers twitched—this one is from the church, he would say, the nice ladies taught it to me when I was getting the soup. They said if Prime heard it, you would get better. And she’d smile and her eyes would get wetter and Tommy just murmured the words louder, careful not to disturb the moths fluttering near the candle-light.One night, she had found it in her chest enough strength to warble a tune back.
That night was when the flowers first came. Orchids tore themselves a bouquet out of his stomach as he clutched her hand and sobbed
Wilbur was the first star child he had properly met. Sure, there were the fireflies and the dashes of bioluminescence clinging to the sea foam, but he had never really talked to one. The children of the stars are hard to nail down, the old woman had liked to tell him with a chuckle, that’s the only thing that unites them, that and their fear of hard work. Unlike the children of the wind—birds who rustled their feathers and throated love songs in the early morning, ladybugs that allowed the village kids to cup them in their hands and blow wishes onto their red-shelled backs—the star children were not ones for easy companionship. Tommy had heard stories of those who tempted fate, who offered their hands to the small shards of Death and soon found their bodies submerged, whether in the heavy muck of a bog or in the sharp salt of the ocean.
But Tommy did not fear burial: it had been the soil that had first held him, and he would not be afraid to return to it.
So when Wilbur Soot had approached him, all gangly teen limbs and sharp smiles, Tommy did not turn away. He had simply stuck out his hand, arm straight and unrelenting as he peered into the man’s twilight-dark eyes, and said, “if you’re a wrongun, I’ll punt you all the way back to your mother.”
Wilbur’s returning laughter had sent the earth shaking and crows leaping from their perches.
And that’s how it began: Tommy and Wilbur, Wilbur and Tommy. A son of the wind chasing the dredges of night glittering above him; a mockingbird trying to keep pace with the anxious fluttering of a butterfly’s wing. They were inseparable just as they were incomparable. It was the natural balance of things, after all, one could not exist without the other—Life and Death were both mothers, and Tommy and Wilbur were both sons. It would be naive not to admit destiny.
So Tommy followed Wilbur; he followed him across countless plains and the yawning mouth of canyons; he followed him to torch-lit caves and abandoned mine shafts; war; I will go where you go, he would say, thin fingers pressing away the freesias blossoming on the small of his back, somebody’s got to watch over you.
Wilbur would smile at that, something soft and moonlit. I don’t need any watching, just something to care. And Tommy wished then that he had known what that meant, understood that hands could be cruel and nail-beds soaked with gunpowder—that love could tear and rip and hurt. But the freesias bloomed so lovely and the white lilacs gleamed tender from where they gilded his knuckles, and so he chose not to worry about it.
I am a boy of the wild, after all, he thought, watching as the teen in front of him became a man and his eyes gleamed earth-bound comets, I’m not one to be afraid of a little adventure.
War did not suit Tommy. Of course, it didn’t really seem to suit many, but Wilbur liked to say he had a particularly fragile constitution. It must have been true: he was not cut out for the hard work of digging trenches, of building battlements and marring the countryside with the declarations of war. He returned to his tent every night with calloused hands and an aching back, feet sore from hours of guarding the L’Manburg territory, and he fought the urge to immediately collapse upon his thin cot. He tried not to complain—Wilbur had enough on his plate already, didn’t need to add his right-hand-man’s whining—but every day and every night saw him struggling to keep up with the grueling pace of preparing for battle. Magnolias bloomed and wilted upon his collar bone, and the dandelions under his uniform left him exhausted as they ruptured the soil of his skin and left scars in their wake. Late at night, he laid in his cot and pressed the heel of his palms into his eyes to stop the tears from escaping.
Now, standing on a battlefield set ablaze from canon fire, he understood that it could get worse. So much worse.
The air was thick with gunpowder and unbecoming, each inhale causing him to gag even through the bandanna he had tied over his nose and mouth. He blinked away the ash in his eyes, looking to and fro for his squadron—where had they gone? He had led them here, sword raised high above his head as he rushed the opposing army, how could he have lost them?
“Fuck! Fuck!” He screamed, coughing into a bloodied fist, winching as fabric rubbed against a deep gash—that must have been from the tooth of the man he had punched. “Fuck! Where—Tubbo? Fundy? Where are you? Fuck!”
A scream; behind him, he could hear a body thud to the ground.
“Fuck,” he whispered again, voice carried away with a boom of canon fire. This wasn’t—this wasn’t what he had wanted. This wasn’t how Wilbur had described…he said that it would be fine. That no one would die.
Next to him a woman and a man were engaged in combat, blood leaking from their foreheads and into their eyes. The woman’s axe cleaved through the man’s shoulder and he let out a gurgling wail. Dimly, he noted that she was wearing L’Manburg colors, and he wondered if he should feel a surge of triumph. In front of him, two men had forgone weapons for their fists, wrestling on the ground as a horse nearby whinnied and nearly trampled them both to death.
Oh Prime, he couldn’t help but mourn, what did we do?
There was the twang of an arrow being released from its bow and he ducked on instinct, gasping as the flinty-head of the arrow imbedded itself in the back of a man in front of him. Tommy watched him fall with sick interest, stomach heaving as the arrow burst into flames on impact, setting the man alight. The man he was wrestling screamed as he scrambled away, hands raw with burning.
Tommy stumbled forward, fingers twitching as if to help, as if to call out, when a blood-thirsty shout erupted behind him. He rose is sword, spinning just to catch the iron of a man’s axe upon his blade; the man’s eyes were rimmed with red and desperation, teeth barred like a rabid dog backed into a corner. The enemy soldier let out a howl of rage and Tommy returned in kind, spit flying as he parried the man’s attack and followed suit with his own.
Tommy was thankful for his helmet as the man used the flat-side of his axe to slap Tommy across the face, sending him cross-eyed and dizzy. His tongue flashed across his teeth, searching for a missing tooth—none, good. My brilliant smile will at least still be intact. He swung is sword haphazardly, striking the bridge of the man’s nose and slicing through it with a crunch. The man screamed, pulling away to bring a gloved hand to his face, cupping his eyes—an opening.
Tommy lunged forward.
If asked, he would not be able to explain the rage that beheld him in that moment, how his ears echoed with the rushing of blood and clamor of armor, how his sword plunged itself into the mans’ abdomen and came away slick with red. He could not explain the relieved laugh that left him in the moment his enemy fell, how he staggered away, blinking away the shock and adrenaline starting to pound through his veins. A laugh bubbled through him.
Tommy had never killed a man. Now…
He understood why they called war hell: it was a demon maker.
That night, he found the remains of his squadron huddled around a campfire. Fundy, face still plump with baby-fat, had his right ear nicked by a stray arrow, the orange fur clotted with blood. Tubbo’s shoulder had been dislocated trying to pull himself from underneath a felled horse—it was by Prime’s grace that his entire arm hadn’t been crushed. Niki was nowhere to be found, but he heard that she had gotten a bad concussion and was on bedrest.
Tommy allowed himself a weary smile as he settled next to them, watching moths flock to the brilliance of the fire-glow. Tubbo’s bruised hand wrapped around his.
“Did we win?” Fundy whispered across from them, a soft yellow shade cast upon his blank expression from the campfire. “Is it over?”
Tommy worried his bottom lip; he had not heard from Wilbur after the battle. The man was apparently negotiating with Dream’s general Sapnap on the Holy Grounds, Prime knew when he would return with news of the battle’s outcome. Tommy tried to remain optimistic, but the tumbling dread in his gut told him that the war would not be ending by tomorrow’s sunrise.
“We survived,” he said in lieu of an answer, “that’s enough for now.”
Tubbo gripped his hand harder. The dandelions under his stiff uniform fell away.
He was dying and what would be left were roses. The water was soft as he fell, filling his a cushion for his head as his eyes fluttered shut. He was dying, not for the first time; the coolness filled his lungs with each breath, his chest rising with the swell of river coursing underneath his ribcage. He wondered, the sun’s rippling imprint above him, if he should be afraid.
Weeping petals floated past, red and dark as they left his throat.
What happened to a child of the wind after they died? Would he crumble away into nothing but soil, continue the home the flowers had made of his body? Or would he become starlight, a universe expanding?
Rough hands gripped his ankles, tugging him up. Up. Up. His feet broke the water’s surface first.
He didn’t know then. He had a feeling he would soon.
It was Wilbur who put him to bed that night, laying him gently on a bed of straw and thin cotton blankets. The general held his hand as he shivered, face drawn taut with worry as Tommy desperately clawed at consciousness. He did not sleep much, fits of wakefulness and sickness, coughing up river water and stray roses; Wilbur did not flinch as the flowers erupted from the wound on Tommy’s neck, fingers tender as they plucked each thorn stuck in the boy’s throat. It will heal, he reassured, eyes dark flint under the tent’s lonely torch, my mother is more merciful than yours. She will heal you.
I saw her, Tommy wanted to say in return, the bubbles clinging to my skin. I saw her there, in the sun. She was kind. She misses you.
But he could not, not while the river still filled him. So he emptied his stomach and sweat-out the bedsheets, hand clutched in his brother’s. Wilbur stayed by his side the whole night, humming old lullabies and murmuring prayers to Prime when Tommy’s lips could not work themselves around the words.
Lady of Fortune, find me safe passage, Wilbur muttered, an unbeliever at the mercy of angels, may your bounty be one overflowing. May its traces trickle into my own plate. Lady Prime, stave off famine, be it of the earth or my own.
His palm grew sweaty in Tommy’s. A sharp inhale, as if he was trying to take away the scent of Death on Tommy’s skin into his own lungs.
“Mother,” he said, “do not bring my brother home early.”
Independence came in Summer. Exile in Fall. He thought it was apt—seasons were his mother’s favorite, after all, change was her playful companion—but it did not mean he had to appreciate the cold. And don’t even get him started about the ravine.
Pogtopia was always filled with cigarette smoke. In his anxiety Wilbur had picked up smoking again, and the man burned through half a pack a day, teeth stained yellow and lips chapped from where they puckered around the rolled tobacco. At night, he leaned against the stone walls and told Tommy about the constellations he couldn’t see, the stories Wilbur had strung on imaginary stars. Tommy was afraid of those nights the most, above the yelling and bruises that found themselves on his forearms and shoulders: he was afraid of how Wilbur’s voice tumbled into something hushed, sticky with cruel-wonder and impossibility. Those were the nights where Wilbur talked about buttons and gunpowder.
“I would blow her sky high, if I could,” he’d say, sing-song and the glare of his glasses under torch-light obscuring his gaze, “I’d let it all burn down to the ground. L’Manburg is a dying dream, Tommy. I should put her out of her misery.”
“Stop, Will.” He had long lost his spitfire, voice heavy with exhaustion. “There’s—we can still save it, we’ve got a plan. I sent the letter: Technoblade’s on his way, remember?”
Wilbur let out an empty laugh. “Technoblade? The War God’s disciple has no warmth on his heart for us. We’d be lucky if he even returned your request with a ‘no’.”
Tommy scratched at his forearm, ignoring the pink begonias beginning to rise from the soft-skin of wrist. “It’s a stretch but,” Tommy licked his lips, sighing heavily through his nose, “listen, I’ve prayed to Prime and put my trust in Her. We’ll be alright—”
“Oh, you’re a fucking joke.” Tommy flinched back, words a slap across the face. The flowers on his arm began to ache as his nails dug at the stems “You think Prime’s going to help you? When your own mother won't even give you the time of day? Honestly, Tommy, your faith is going to get you nowhere but dead.”
“Will, please—”
He reached forward, hand extended. He didn’t know exactly what he would do, maybe pull his brother back to earth, maybe to swat away the hidden stars he was seeing, but he never got the chance. Wilbur spun, nostrils flaring and teeth bared; for a moment their roles were reversed, a man of wolves howling at the boy of the moon. Wilbur snatched his wrist, dragging him forward until they were nose to nose, Wilbur in his height towering over his little brother.
Tommy had never been scared of his older brother, not really. In their many years wandering the world in hopes of finding whatever the son of stars was looking for, Tommy had never been afraid of what he could do. Sure, his brother may be the son of Death, might have some latent power beneath his skin, a monster clawing to get out, but he was never scary. Not to Tommy. Never Tommy.
Now, as the begonias were crushed under his grip, he was terrified.
“You’re pathetic, Tommy,” Wilbur spat, “a sad, little boy who never had a real family. How does it feel, to know the only person who tolerated you can’t stand you anymore? I’m stuck in this hole with you, with all your bullshit. Technoblade won’t save us, he won’t save L’Manburg! That country is dead, Tommy!”
“Will,” he gasped, “Will, please. Please. You’re hurting me!”
A blink. Above them, the torches flickered as the wind wound her way through the ravine’s depths. The hair falling in front of Wilbur’s eyes were ruffled by her careful fingers.
Wilbur pushed himself away from Tommy, dropping him as if the touch burned. Tommy fell to his knees, shaking hand reaching to smooth the wrinkled blossoms that had begun to tear at his skin, blood trickling to the stone floor. He gasped, wide eyes gawking at his brother.
Wilbur was trembling, hands clutched to his chest as he rocked back and forth on his heels. “Oh, fuck,” he panted, “holy fuck. Tommy I’m—I’m so sorry, I didn’t—why? Why do I keep doing this? Why can’t I stop?”
Why can’t I stop hurting you? His brother’s sniffles practically screamed, and Tommy’s throat closed as he watched Wilbur brush away tears.
He wanted to scream. He wanted to rip the flowers from his wrists and throw them at Wilbur’s feet. Look at what you’ve done! he would shriek, embracing every feral thing that was his birth right, look at what you’ve made me into! Are you proud?
But Tommy was a boy of early-morning bird-calls and newly built nests, he was nurture and April showers, a newborn deer’s unsteady legs and the mother who lifted him to stand—he was a boy of Spring’s wilderness. Not winter. Not bite and cold.
So he pushed himself to his feet and wrapped his brother in his arms.
“It’s going to be okay, I promise.” And he hoped the whisper counted as a prayer, that he could pin his faith on such simple words. If it was not a request of Prime, then let it be one to his mother. “We’re going to get through this. I-I won’t let anything hurt you anymore, Will. Not even L’Manburg. I care.”
Where Wilbur’s tears fell, a purple hyacinth grew.
He threw them in the fire after they’d been plucked.
Smoke. Gunpowder. Fire. It always came back to that.
Smoke. Gunpowder. Fire. He was crying this time, vocal cords raw from the splintering wails that left him. Smoke. His face was streaming with tears, dripping on his split lips, stinging. Gunpowder. His voice gave out after the sixth scream, and he coughed up blood into his scraped hands. He retched, gagged, trying to get sound to escape. Fire. Around him his city crumbled, his home decimated in front of his eyes. There was no Life here, not as withers split their jaws to spit white fire, not as his fellow soldiers laid on the ground, necks twisted and eyes glazed with Death.
His stomach heaved, and he spat clear bile onto the bedrock beneath him.
Smoke, fire, gunpowder—it was all the same, now. It made his eyes water, left lungs tight from years of inhaling the destruction that seemed to follow him. Smoke. Fire. Gunpowder—it was everywhere, dusting his clothes, threatening to light him up at the touch of a spark. He hated it, hated how it coated his hands, hated how he couldn’t get the smell out of his hair. He hated it all. Another vengeful scream tore its way out of him, deafened by the explosions rocking the world beneath him. A murder of crows circled above him, a cyclone of black feathers, cawing at his crumpled form.
Smoke. Gunpowder. Fire. Smoke…
“I promised,” he sobbed, “I promised. Please, please. Prime, don’t make me break my promise.”
The petals falling from his cheeks evaporated in the blaze.
He was wandering again.
He tried not to, tried to keep himself busy by following Tubbo around or laying the planks of the Prime Path, but he found himself returning again and again to the meadow. After everything, it was the only thing that remained untouched: there was no battle, no blood to be shed and fires to be lit. It was just Tommy and the quiet Life that surrounded him. He spent hours there, fingers threading through the dew-touched blades of grass and admiring the insects buzzing near his ears. He said hello to each monarch butterfly that settled on his knee, each gopher that peeked from under the dirt; he sung alongside the crickets that chimed as the setting sun painted the sky orange and pink, laughing with the hares leaping to and fro. When his flowers blossomed he did not think to pluck them, allowing each snapdragon and petunia to take its natural course; he was not happy, but his head was quiet.
“You’re changing, big man,” Tubbo said one day, shuffling through the paper-work that scattered his desk. Tommy liked to visit after cabinet meetings to bring Tubbo some muffins from Niki’s—you’re overworking yourself, he’d scold, and if you won’t take care of yourself, let me at least make sure you’re fed well—and it was hard to say it wasn’t awkward. Tommy had been spending less and less time in New L’Manburg, and Tubbo had been spending more and more in the White House. What had once been easy jokes had become awkward pleasantries. Tubbo peeked up from his papers, voice dry, “it’s like you’re avoiding me. Is there something I should be worried about?”
Tommy snorted from where he was perched on the oak desk ; he did not have the energy to create belly-aching laughter or curse louder than canon-fire. Not here. Not anymore.
“Not avoiding you, just appreciating the country side. It’s really lovely out there, really peaceful.” He picked awkwardly at an unfamiliar scab on his elbow. Across from him, Tubbo gave a vague hum, reaching for a paperclip held in an old ashtray—Wilbur’s. His tongue ran dry, and he wiped it across his teeth. “I’m, uh, thinking of taking a trip out there. For a little while—I, I miss it, y’know? I was raised out there, I think it’d be good to go back.”
Tubbo’s scarred hands stilled on the papers in front of him. He breathed heavily through his nose, brows furrowed as if concentrating, or praying; he did not meet Tommy’s gaze. “You’re leaving?”
A pause. Tommy shifted nervously. “Not forever. Just…until I get my head back on right. Y’know it’s been a bit—well, it’s not been exactly fun after…”
After Wilbur, went unspoken, but Tommy knew Tubbo heard it from the way his eyes darted to the ashtray, a wistful look at its chipped ceramic and poor paint job.
“I understand,” Tubbo’s voice did not waver, did not shake. He gave a determinedly nonchalant shrug, sighing, “I just wish it didn’t have to be now. There’s a lot of work to be done, rebuilding to do, and I’m not sure if I could get through it without you.”
“Aww, is Tubster being clingy?” Tommy tried to plaster his face with a teasing smile, knowing that the relief shone clear in his grin. He wanted to feel guilty, really he did, but he found regret to be something far off now. A thrall was underneath his skin, the anticipation of something leaving his hands jittery and leg bouncing up and down. For the first time in a while, Tommy felt excitement.
I’m coming home, he wanted to shout to the sky, in hopes that the stars could hear him, I’m finally coming home!
A few hours later, when Tubbo had finally finished his paperwork and the corn-muffins he had brought had long since been eaten, Tommy said goodbye to his best friend. Tubbo’s arms were warm as they wrapped around his torso, hands planted firmly on his shoulder blades as he gave Tommy a firm pat.
“I’ll miss you,” Tubbo said, finality heavy in his words, “I hope you get some rest, alright? Don’t let that stupid head of yours keep you up at night. Stay safe for me.”
“Okay, okay, you worry wart.” There were tears rising. He could feel the yellow chrysanthemums underneath Tubbo’s fingertips. “I’ll be seeing you soon. Don’t blow L’Manburg up while I’m gone. Again.”
A weepy laugh. Last-time shoves against friendly shoulders and jeers. Another hug. They both did not let go until the sun set and fireflies began to rise from the tall grass.
The stars above him were singing. He watched, bewitched by their winks as he laid in the soft grass—the smile on his face was immovable. He was at home here, yellow hair melting into the meadow beneath him, breathing in the pollen that jumped like fireworks from the daffodils tickling the back of his neck. He giggled as the ants crawled up his arm from the tips of his fingers, squealed as the midnight spiders perched on his nose and spun their webs in the trees nearby. He felt like a child again, letting the wild sprawl across his body.
And the fireflies. Oh, the fireflies.
They danced above him, mingling with the stars and the children already lost. Their brightness was stunning, was comets falling from the sky and late-night whispers in a war tent. The fireflies strummed music and wrote national anthems about boys who loved flowers. They were the spark of a cigarette bud and evenings by bonfires.
They were home. Prime, he was home.
“Thank you,” he breathed, feeling the soil reclaim what was once hers, gentle hands cupping his cheeks, his hands, “thank you, mom. I’ll miss you. I love you.”
His eyes fell shut, fireflies twirling from behind his lids. Air left his lungs in a shudder.
Hello, did you miss me?
He opened his eyes to Night.