alive in the world in which i do not recall you

“I miss the rain,” Citronella says. They sit on the balcony of Kuro’s burrow. Behind them, Oleander has his fingers looped into her hair, and is plating the blonde strands together. Blanche stands in the doorway to the room, keeping his silent and watchful eye over the two. 

“Is that so?” Oleander returns, curious and gentle. Citronella has noted that Kuro speaks even less highly of him than he does Mercy, but they've found nothing but comfort in the guiding words of the head priest. The citizens of the Burrowgatory look up to him for a reason, after all. When they nod, Oleander continues. “It's my experience that much of the burrow's buns can't wait for summer. It gives us plenty of reason to strip down to near-nothing and splash along the sea. The spring rain gives us… plenty of mud, at least.”

Citronella crinkles their nose in a display of disgust, and they would shake their head if Oleander wasn't occupied with braiding their hair. “It's hot. I don't like my skin being sticky, I don't like the sand in my joints, and I don't like wearing less. At least the rain was cold and refreshing, and when I put my dry clothes back on it was over. But this… persists.” 

Oleander smiles behind her. From his position across the room, Blanche’s heart flutters with a beat of his own affection. Even on her most distant days, the echoes of a princesses’ personality shines through in Citronella’s disposition. She's very picky and precise. Both men in the room find it adorable. 

“And besides…” Citronella shifts, crossing her legs under her summer skirts. She worries the inside of her lip before she speaks again, while Oleander waits with a curious eyebrow raised. “It's… suffocating. It feels like something is always trying to chase me down. If I step out to the park, something is lingering over my shoulder and pouring that hot breath down my neck. If I pause in the doorway to the burrow, something reaches out to grab my ankles and pull me into the sun. It's cold here. And safer… Nothing, and no one, is a moment from grabbing me…”

The room is quiet in the moments following. Outside, the bulbugs screech to one another in the trees, and Kuro scolds his egghel as it fails, once again, to roll over on command. Inside the stuffy attic room, Citronella’s hair whispers as it passes through the deft and slender fingers of the priest, and all three buns breathe in unison. 

Blanche hadn't wanted to address the issue directly, but there was a reason he asked Oleander to make a visit to Kuro’s burrow today. Citronella is always, as a rule, reserved and melancholic. The recent seasons, however, have seen her tense, anxious, and reclusive. When Blanche comes to visit her bedside in the morning, he doesn’t find them tucked into their covers and whining about not wanting to meet the morning chill, but pacing around their room, chewing their fingernails into stubs, sweating from the heat and their anxiety alike. Something is plaguing them, and Blanche lacks the words to address it. If there is one bun in the entirety of the burrowgatory that never runs out of the right words, however, he’s standing in the house today.

Oleander looks over his shoulder at Blanche. He gestures with his head for Blanche to step from the room in a subtle, but concise manner. Blanche hesitates but ultimately decides to follow the silent instruction and steps from Citronella’s attic bedroom. He closes the door behind him, leaving the two inside in silence on the balcony, still overlooking the hot summer and Kuro’s struggles below. Oleander waits until he’s finished braiding their hair to speak again, all the way to the long platinum ends, each twist in the hair carefully tucked and tightened by hands of a man who has braided his own hair since he was but a bun in Murmur’s care. He brings it forward to fall over Citronella’s shoulder and watches as their jointed hands lift to grab at the hair in comfort, hesitate and stiffen in the air, and fall back to their lap without touching. Lest they frazzle the plaits, he assumes. 

“It sounds to me…” Oleander speaks, finally. “That there is much more on your mind than the mundanity of the weather, Citronella.” 

She may not want to muss her hair, but her dress is another issue. Her hands grip the golden fabric in her lap, twisting it into a stack of wrinkles. Her mouth twists much the same. 

“Blanche is gone from the room. Kuro is far too occupied to hear you. Why don’t we take a moment to discuss?” Oleander continues prompting, when he realizes the stubborn girl is not going to simply begin talking like many others in his confessional will. “You can say as much or as little as you want. Your worries will be kept between me and the eyes of the demons.”

Citronella huffs, her eyes closing and head tilting away. Delicate hands continue to play with delicate fabric. “I can’t imagine even the demons would want to help someone who no longer belongs in the burrowgatory, Father Oleander.” 

Oleander blinks. That was quite the jump from weather to introspection, indeed. He looks around the room to find the stool in front of Citronella’s vanity, scoops it into the palm of his hand, and brings it beside her rocking chair to sit at her feet. His position makes it much harder for her to avoid looking at him, and when she opens her eyes again to inspect the shuffling noise of the priest sitting down, the princess pout on her face says plenty about her feelings regarding that. 

“I regret to inform you…” Oleander begins. “The demons don’t help any one of us. From the time we leave their care after our first year, we are on our own. It’s through the study of their tenants and devotion to their sinful ideas that we learn how to lead our lives and help each other. That’s why I am in the position I am… Through dedicating myself to their scripture, I’ve learned how to help the lost buns that come to me for salvation. I may not be sure what compels you to think that they would oust you from the burrowgatory… but I can assure you I for one do not intend to leave you feeling lost and abandoned.”

Citronella’s hands stop worrying the bunch of clenched fabric within them. They flick their gaze over Oleander’s face, lingering for just a moment to take in the genuine kindness in his expression before they wander back to the summer heat beyond the balcony. There’s something about the summer that seems too bright and too oppressive - something beyond thick glass, unreachable and yet always pressing down against them.

“I find it hard to feel like I have a place to belong when I barely feel like I have a place within myself. I feel… all outline, and nothing between. These days more than ever.” Citronella whispers. Oleander is silent at her side, fingers interlaced in his lap. The patience he offers is… different, somehow, in a way that feels uniquely comforting. Kuro is perhaps the pure antithesis of patient, and Blanch is attentive and obedient, but patient more as an afterthought and less as a virtue. “Should I not be able to enjoy the heat and the ripe fruit of the summer myself? Should I not be able to stroll at the beaches and wet my feet in the waves without the guilt of an invisible memory I’ve left behind?”

Oleander leans forward toward her, removing one of his hands from his own grasp to rest it on her knee instead. “Memories are sly little imps, often returning when least expected. Perhaps… it is not a matter of searching for what is lost, but learning to move forward with what is new.” Oleander waits for Citronella to respond. They don’t. He urges once more. “I think you should speak with the envy buns the church has recently taken into our care… You might find something of value to take away with other individuals who feel separated from their home and things they can no longer return to. Or, perhaps, with the cherubuns who are remaking a new home in the burrowgatory. There is as much to learn about rebuilding and the future as there is to reflect on in the past…”

Citronella’s eyes focus on his hand at their knee. They raise theirs, delicate and hesitant as always, and slowly lower it atop Oleander’s. Oleander is as warm and soft as one would expect him to be. She leaves her hand there. “At what time shall I attend to see them?”

A smile spreads across Oleander’s face. “The Church of Sulfur operates well into the evening for any night-owl wandering sinners that come our way. Find a time that works for you. I’ll be waiting.”

Citronella nods.