i can't stand to see you walking away.
talent.
worry not visitors to cuyahoga valley national park, mallow is here to hold your hand and show you all the wonders nature has to offer! working as a nature guide, mallow is an expert on all the flora, fauna, and history within the park; it is able to provide an educational and fun commentary to all that wish to tour the woods.
mallow takes the extra mile, with some saying it's like the woods are xir second home. mallow knows the ins and outs of the park; it knows how to accomidate its tours to each visitor, leaving everyone satisfied whether they adore nature or were inevitably dragged along by someone more enthusiastic about the outdoors.
personality.
mallow is a quiet individual with an odd air to it. it's face is lacks emotion, and xir tone is laced with melancholy. mallow asks questions more than anything -- questioning what it can do, questioning if it has done the right thing, questioning if it can even speak. it is an observer that does not know how to fit into the rhythm of the world, preferring to watch the system function from the outside.
there is a passion for the woods it works in, but beneath warmth is something ever-so-slightly colder. almost as if something is missing from it; as if there is a hole inside and a piece needed to fill it.. somewhere.
on the inside, things differ.
on the inside, mallow kwon is hollow. it has been empty for a long time, clinging to the memories of someone far gone to make itself feel whole. it lives in sage's shadow, it acts in the way it thinks he would. to be sage is to be nice, and to be nice is to have the things sage once had.
it helps like sage would. it asks questions like sage would. it does all the things sage would do without the care xir brother once had. for all the emptiness within it, mallow cannot find the room to care about the people around it. why should it, when people did not care about it? sage was the only person that loved it -- not its parents, not its classmates. it does not care and it will not care for anyone that isn't xir brother.
it only does what he would do, after all.
memoria lumen.
the story was never going to end happily for mallow kwon. not when it enters lake metis with hands that have already been soaked in blood and a hole inside of it growing bigger and bigger with each passing day.
when it awakens, mallow is not in the park it has come to know as home. it is in nature, but not the nature sage introduced it to. it is far, far, far away from sage and it just has to get back to him. and so, when mallow is alone and far from all xir has ever known, it thinks of its brother, it's guide, the only one that ever loved it.
and mallow knows what sage would do. so it tries to fit into his shadow. mallow has never been good at smiling, never known how to laugh or express how it feels. mallow knows what it saw sage do, and xe saw sage talk with people. it watched him ask them questions, it watched him offer a hand when someone needed it.
so, mallow introduces itself. it finds a way into the crowd, asking people about their titles and the lives they leave that mallow doesn't know of, or truly care about. when the group is told to kill, xe does not understand, nor can it find it in itself to really care. all that matters is sage -- whether it be getting home to him, or not being killed before it can.
but sage would think differently. when suzu falls, mallow does what it thinks sage would do. it extends a hand and when suzu takes it, the feeling is almost like home. xe would hold sage's hand in this way, but now xir hand is the one being held, being clung to, and if mallow thinks hard enough it could maybe overwrite the memory.
it can't.
the hole is bigger, now. and no one kills. and the group falls sick. and when mallow is fading in and out of sleep, covered in rashes, and xir heart is beating faster than it should, it sees someone in the corner of xir eye:
sage.
sage is there and then he is not and he has left tried to leave all over again. but just like before, mallow can't let him. it can't stand to be alone. it can't stand to be left behind. the least sage could have done was taken it with him.
the least mallow can do is find its way back home.
home is a rock in its hand. home is a rock swung into fennel aiken's skull. home is the blood spilling onto the gazebo floor and a rock discarded in the lake and a setup that's close but not quite the memory of sage by the berry bushes with blood in his hair. mallow does not take anything from fennel, but in the last moments xe has it clings to the only memory of sage it has left.
mallow takes xir hand away from suzu and grips the yellow ribbon. consumed by its jealousy and anger and selfish desires, mallow kwon is buried in the dirt by its brother -- by the memory it failed to keep, by its own reflection looking back.
and that is how the story should have ended. right?
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