His fingers ran over the harsh bark of the tree. It was dark in some places, sporadically light in others. Speckled, the tree’s trunk stood strong and tall in the sand near the lake, its roots digging deeper than the deceptive sand until it hit the bottom of the bank where it wound its tendrils into the ground and took hold.
His fingers scraped off bark, chunk by chunk until he reached the brand new, tender skin of the tree. Running a finger over it, he was surprised when even the slightest touch inflamed the tree, turning it an angry green colour – the color of bruised tree flesh.
Instantly realising what he'd done, James stepped back quickly, recoiling in shame.
Sighing, he looked back at the tree. The tentativeness at which he’d stroked it, the gentle touches. The horror at damaging it. The tree’s inflamed skin and the lurid green colour appearing made him drop his head in dismay.
‘Stop looking so mopey, James. It’s a tree. It’ll grow.’
He spun around to see a girl with the eyes of the trees starting at him. She wasn’t angry, or hurt, or sad. She was green. It emanated from every inch of her face and stole over her lips, down her shoulders to her fingers that stroked the tree softly as if to repair the damage James had inflicted on it.
‘I didn’t mean it,’ he muttered foolishly. He knew he should have walked away, but he didn’t. The green captured him and made his heart soar, strangely. As Lily brushed her fingertips over the missing bark and the raw tree, James felt as though he should run his eyes observed the tenderness she displayed.
‘What.’
‘What?’
‘Yes James, what. What are you doing here?’
He stared at her, confused. The green was fading from her eyes, but he focused in on the tree and it came launching back, slamming into his chest and making his words stagger as they traipsed up his throat and out his mouth before he could stop them.
‘Will the tree be alright?’
She stared at him with incredulity. ‘You must be joking. James, you’re considering someone else, other than yourself for once? The damn tree will grow.’
James shuffled his feet and moved closer. ‘It’ll grow, right? It’ll fix itself?’ He stared at Lily, touching the tree tentatively, wincing when another piece of speckled bark fell from the tree with a touch of his fingers.
‘It was mean to come off,’ confirmed Lily, following his gaze. ‘You scratched it. You scarred it.’
‘But I didn’t mean to.’
‘You don’t mean to do most things, James. A lot of things happen as a result of not thinking.’
She lifted her eyes from the sandy ground to the raw weeping bark on the tree. ‘It’ll be scarred. But it will heal, and with time,’ she caressed the broken, bleeding bark tenderly, ‘it’ll be fine. It’ll grow. It’ll change and it’ll recuperate.’ She paused. ‘I’m not saying you did it a favour.’
He searched her face for something to give her intentions away. He met with her green eyes and all colours seemed to fade away. The harsh blackness of the lake took on a softer tone, the sky was as tainted as the grass, and the tree assaulted him with the shade and illuminated her eyes. Her hair was the only thing that stood out against the shade of jade, and green, and the hint of lemon…
‘It’ll grow stronger because of you.’
James frowned. It was always the same, with Lily. ‘Why don’t you say what you really mean, Lily. Just because I scratched some bark off a tree, doesn’t mean I’ve aided its ability to grow taller than it is right now,’ he said sarcastically.
Lily’s face changed. James wasn’t exactly sure how to describe it. He’s wasn’t sure if it was good, or a bad. It was just a little different, and the colour in her eyes, the colour all around them changed. Again, he wasn’t sure whether or not it was a better green, let alone a less favourable green, it was just different.
She opened her mouth and closed it again. Her voice was odd when she said, ‘I guess all the intelligent stuff doesn’t work for you, does it James? I guess I can’t skid over things in hoping that you’ll hopefully pick it up.’ She breathed. ‘You never picked things up.’
‘I never picked things up? Things that weren’t perfect for you weren’t good. So you can’t be standing her feeding me all this stuff about growing and changing when you’ve just told me that you haven’t changed. You haven’t grown stronger because of us. Because of what happened.’
Two clouds met in a fury above the grounds of Hogwarts, battling for dominance until they split the sky with lightning. As though a bucket had been thrown over the two of them, the wind brought a sheet of icy cold rain to replace the stifling humidity. It hit them all in one blast, splattering the tree trunk with big, fat blobs that struck his head and her face simultaneously in an assault raining down on them from above.
They both momentarily forgot their dispute and huddled together under the tree while each leaf dripped slowly, soaking them slower than what they would have if they were out in the open beneath the crying sky.
‘I have changed,’ she shot at him. James hadn’t been listening to Lily. Evidently this was the first thing that she’d said, because she wasn’t at his throat by now.
‘No you haven’t,’ he said in a low voice, observing the way the world seemed to go grey at the touch of the water in the puddles. It rippled outwards, spreading a depressive drear across everything, dulling the colours and just smearing everything into a monotonous mess. What was colour before, bright, vibrant, hopeful, wonderful colour before – something that was so mind-numbing and completely confusing was now something James wanted to cling to as the shade of grey consumed the world around him.
‘What do you mean, I haven’t changed, James. Of course I’ve changed. I’ve moved on.’ She turned to him, eyes storming. ‘Obviously, I’ve changed. You haven’t. You’re still bickering with me, isn’t that enough proof?’ she spat fallaciously.
James was stunned. Letting an incredulous note sneak into his voice, he whispered through the raindrops on his lips, ‘Lily. Don’t you get it? Part of the reason I’m fighting with you is because I’m different. There’s been a transition somewhere along the way, Lily. Your stupid inability to realise that you haven’t changed is the worst. You look in the mirror each day, and what do you see? You see some flimsy façade you’ve created because you’ve wanted to change.
‘You’ve wanted to change, but you haven’t been able to,’ he blustered through the rain. ‘Look at you, standing there absolutely soaking! You wake up every morning and you see a different person in the mirror, but you’re still the same old Lily underneath. You still crave the same stuff, and you still do the same things. Everything you think that you’ve changed about yourself, you haven’t. You haven’t, you’ve just tried to.’
Lily’s lip wobbled, and a quivering rain drop fell from her chin. ‘You don’t know me,’ she said, looking up at the brilliant green leaves above them. ‘You don’t know the way I think, or the way I am. You don’t know me anymore.’
James looked out over the Hogwarts ground’s grassy lawn; underneath the pitter-patter of the raindrops of the blades of greenery, it was a thirsty green. The same green colour resided in Lily’s eyes, and James stepped forward so all that there was beneath the umbrella leaves of the tree was green, red, black, and pale creamy skin sprinkled with freckles.
‘I don’t know you right now, Lily. I’m working on it. I’m working damn hard so that maybe we can change. Maybe we can get over it.’
‘I just want it to stop,’ she pleaded with her eyes. ‘I’m sick of all the angry thoughts. I’m sick off all the shouting –’
‘What shouting?’
She laughed a weak little laugh, suppressed by the emotion in her chest. ‘There’s the fighting and the yelling no one else but me hears, sometimes you know. There’s a lot to me you still need to learn.’
‘My point exactly,’ James jumped in quickly, murmuring as Lily smiled and graced her face softly with her hand, laughing softly as an emerald tear drop fell through the umbrella of falling leaves.
Feeling the warmth on the back of his shoulders, James motioned to out from under the tree. The steamy feeling had returned. ‘It’s stopped raining,’ he pointed out.
Lily chuckled. ‘Well, yes. Nice observation.’
James grinned and touched the tree on the brilliantly green patch of raw bark before kicking some pungent dirt into the base of the tree and setting out into the renewed warmth.
Emerald Tear Drops by Lurid
Chapter Notes: I'd like VV to be the mod, becsue last time I submitted an "unfinished" typo-ridden copy that I'm pretty sure she just sniggered at and rejected :D. So I'd like another chance!Also, I'm not getting emails. So drop me a PM in Lurid @ MNFF BB if it's rejected. Or if there's a comment or whatever :).