[Fanfiction] "Un Pissenlit Dit"
"Un Pissenlit Dit" ("A Dandelion Speaks")
Characters: France/Spain (?)
Rating: PG
Summary: This is how his mind works.
His mind works (after centuries upon centuries of memories being forced into it and never discarded) in a methodical manner that involves the bared edges of memories being welded together with a light touch, reminders stacked atop each other in layers.
But not in layers like a cake or a shelf, but rather like an onion; he would be loathe to admit it if he knew, because there is hardly anything in this wretched world more humble and humbling than an onion.
It is a complex network, the chains linking these thoughts together. For every layer one pulls back, there are thousands more to take its place and the inception cannot end and will not end and never could end so simply.
The benefit to never forgetting anything is that you never forget anything.
The trouble with never forgetting anything is that you never remember anything quick enough to be of use, because instant recall is a thing of the far distant past (if you can remember that far back).
But the newer memories lurk at the front of his mind, free-floating until the altogether too-efficient hands of his mental librarians snatch them away to coldly compartmentalize them and the fact that they are so free, maybe, is the reason why he can remember the most important faces at a blink.
Or at least the most constant ones weave the same chain through so many layers of memory that they have embossed themselves on them over and over until they reached the surface.
So perhaps he will never truly remember Spanish and its ridiculous subjunctives and nonsensical idioms and the finer passages of Don Quixote.
But perhaps he will always remember the cadence of it, the flowing staccato of it like a heartbeat gone far too fast, puffs of warm breath whispering over the shell of his ear like a breeze over the arms of windmills-
He will remember green, he thinks. The green of eyes, the green of envy, the green of the prince’s small coat with its tails touching the sand, and he thinks he will remember the exact shade of tawny gold that comes from pale morning light dappling over bare skin tanned by the sun.
He will remember them, he thinks dimly, because of the colour of wheat.
And somewhere in the mazework, he might remember the day when a dandelion could speak.