(Untitled)

[vestalstone]

That the sky was clouded was the first thing Pierrette noticed that morning, the day cool and listless compared to some of the scorching days past. She spent her morning and afternoon daydreaming of a summer rain, delighting in the fantasy of dewy grasses and wet earth. She would find herself wandering out towards the beaches and hills to look out

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[only_son]

There are still moments, fewer now than before yet no less jarring, when Clark is suddenly and tangibly reminded of all the things he can no longer do now that he's on the island. Today it happens in the form of a wispy girl perched in the high branches of a tree. He likes to believe that he's aware of his surroundings, but it's only the faintest whisper of a voice that draws his attention upwards. Back home, the discordant rattle of the branches would have been like thunder.

He sets aside his dismay and shades his eyes with a hand as he peers up at her. Or, at what of her he can see, which is mostly spindly legs and the flap of linen and lace.

"Be careful up there," he calls. For all he knows she's more at home in the trees than on the ground, but the sentiment remains.

[vestalstone]

The sudden voice startles her, just enough for her head to whip aside to peer down past the branches at the stranger standing at the tree base. For s split second her pride is wounded, a girlish fear running through her as she tries to imagine the state she is in. High in a tree with blotchy face and tears stinging at her eyes and cheeks, arms scratched and streaked with dirt and lichen. But as soon as it happens she shakes her head of such silly thoughts and wipes at her nose with her hand, the arms holding balance aching from strain.

"If I were not already being careful, I would not be up here." She called, and began pulling herself up again. The wedding gown had not moved, and still hung on the branch above her like a crestfallen bird, crumpled and lost.

She hated it.

Thinking for a moment, she picked her handhold and called down a second time. "And what have I to fear? With you standing there you may break my fall."

[only_son]

"Wouldn't be the first time someone used me for that," Clark has to allow, his eyes sharp as they track the girl's movements through the branches. She looks nimble enough, but all it would take is one false step or a rotten branch, and it could go bad.

"I'm just going to stay here until you're safely back on the ground, if that's okay," he calls again, worry creasing his forehead. "It's nothing personal."

[vestalstone]

It was considerate, so much so that even in her frenzied state Pierrette could acknowledge so. Another day in another place she may have questioned him, perhaps even found sturdy purchase on some high branch to wait out his leave. But as disrupted as her tempered days had become, there was a distant comfort to know there was someone to stand watch, to be there should her desperate climb leave her a broken puppet, strings cut and left to tumble to sure destruction.

"If you must," she allowed, but her words were mumbled as she straddled a large branch. The gown fluttered in a small gust of wind, hem and sash flapping in the breeze like a mocking flag, pretty and whimsical against the green of the flora.

Fresh tears stung at her eyes, and her mouth grew to a pinched and straight line. "If I were to fall," she wondered. "Would you do something for me?" It was an odd notion to humor, much less with a stranger, but the heaviness which hung on her heart told her to was crucial.

[only_son]

The girl is high in the tree, there's little doubt of that, but Clark doubts the situation is so dire as to require the exchanging of last wishes. He frowns, concerned that she might have planned something he has little recourse but to scramble to correct once it happens.

"If it involves anything other than getting you to the clinic as quickly as possible, I'm afraid it will have to wait," he calls up into the branches.

[vestalstone]

"I find nothing more important than this," she disagrees, pulling herself up another branch. "I would not ask you to understand it, I doubt that you could. But the destruction of this token is something I would gladly place above my own life." She doubts that such a thing would come, and her footing is as sure as it was when she first pulled herself up into the tree. But her love for Marie was stronger than her will to save herself in any situation, be it dangerous or simple. As long as Marie's interests were met, whether she was present or not, she would protect her sister.

"This is not to mean I have a death wish. Only that I must see this goal met." She shudders out a breath, steeling herself, and finds herself a steady handhold.

[only_son]

Things often hold power in the metaphorical sense even if not the literal, that Clark understands. The destroying of a thing can be cathartic, freeing, but he understands too that whatever meaning things hold is assigned them by us and only us. What power they wield is the power we give them.

Whatever it is up there-A dress, a shirt-it isn't worth dying for, not for any reason.

Unfortunately that point hardly seems as though it would make a difference now.

"I'll make sure it's destroyed, but just be careful and take your time and I won't need to."