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By Blossom and Bud

This journal contains content only suitable for those over the age of 18.

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Created on 2011-04-22 22:45:59 (#879204), last updated 2019-07-20 (379 weeks ago)

1,136 comments received, 2,166 comments posted

161 Journal Entries, 26 Tags, 6 Memories, 121 Icons Uploaded

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About

Name:	Amarante LeGarde
Birthdate:	Sep 19, 1990
Location:	California, United States

Mini Bio

The writer is over 18 (by a couple decades). The muse is over 18 as well.

AMARANTE

Apart from the wandering pack
In this brief flight of time we reach
For the ones, whoever dare

You believe but what you see
You receive but what you give

Caress the one the Never-Fading
rain in your heart - the tears of snow-white sorrow
Caress the one, the hiding amaranth
In a land of the daybreak

-Amaranth, by Nightwish-

HISTORY
(September 1942)

In the spring of 1926 Mama met Papa as he worked in the fields of our home, tending the grapes in the old ways, with his hands and his own heart's blood. He was a seasonal worker newly brought over in the retinue with the Countess de Rochefort from her far off Island home; but we, the LaGardes, had been tied to that part of France for as long as Grampere could remember.

After they were married and I was born, we moved away to Paris quite against Grandpere's wishes, and my Papa's heart broke more than a little I think, to leave the fields and vineyards for the concrete and closed in spaces that we found ourselves surrounded by. But Mama had great skill with needle and thread and wanted so badly to be a famous dress maker for the movie stars that passed through the great city; and Papa as always wished only to indulge her dream. When the war came, Papa had to join the l'Armee, and Mama sent me home to Grandpere's to be safe. I've only gotten a few letters from her in all the years since, but I pray for her every day, and for Papa as well.

I live now with my Grandpere who is the head gardener and caretaker of the lands and vineyards around the centuries old French Chateaux. He says I have a gift for growing things, a gift for bringing life to seed and bud and blossom like all women of our family. More so than even my papa, who's own mother and father he had known as friends to his own grandparents long ago when he was young child. I do not quite understand this, as my papa was so young, and for my Grandpere to have known papa's parents when he was a little boy makes not a lot of sense to me at all.

On my mothers' side I obtained gifts as well it seems, gifts of a darker sort from a heritage that goes all the way back to my ancestress, Marie Legarde. She was rumored to be a witch and consort with devils. She of whom it is said could speak with the dead. She is another story, a sad one. But her story is not mine.

But if what Grandpere says is true, that they are gifts and not some curse upon me? Why do I still see my Grandmama's ghost, wandering our small home, sitting in her rocker and looking out at the stars at night? Why do I see the shadows of our soldiers, marching back from a war they'd lost when their lives were taken? And why in that house do I hear heavy footsteps where no one treads? Why do I feel the cold chills down my back in the sunny library; and why oh why do I feel a presence, dark and forbidding in the halls and ancient rooms of Chateaux De Rochefort?

(March 1945)

I leave soon, traveling away from my home with it's past, with it's triumphs and it's secret and not so secret sorrows. I must go to the Fortunate Isles to continue my training, that which my heritage and my own blood demands of me. I thirst for the future, and yet I hesitate. Fear perhaps? Reluctance to leave what is comforting to me? All of it, I think and perhaps more besides.

But then I am excited as well. And Madame says that if I am good enough, if I work hard enough and I am diligent enough, there are other places that I may go to learn as well, places of knowledge and near-lost lore.

(April 2007)

I have returned.

*****

(2007 and beyond)

Amarante, once returned from the Fortunate Isles, has completed her priestess training, attaining that rank and responsibility; and then had delved heart and soul into the solitary pursuit of the nature, and the growth and healing of the land, the forests, the groves, the plants. Years spent alone in realms where, by hard work, sacrifice and growing trust; the personalities, the language and the secret souls of plants were revealed to her over time. And because of all her time spent in other realms, now that she has returned to modern day France she barely looks older than when she left the mortal lands those decades before. "... I've worries and pains enough with the women of my own family, Jareth. I need not go searching for one who is trying so desperately hard not to be found."Comte de Rochefort.

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