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Clarke Griffin holds summer in her step. Where she walks flowers grow and a soft breeze follows in the hopes of catching her. She lives in the moments of beaches and ice creams and dances in warm sunlight. Reflecting the blue sky, her eyes echo with warmth and serenity. She is summer.
And her favourite time of the year has come again.
The old legends call it the waltz of the seasons. The time when summer, autumn, winter and spring shake each other’s hands and embrace like old friends. Clarke loves it.
A smile drifts its way across her face as she enters the meadow that has become her sanctuary. Basked in an orange glow, the Blake siblings lie in the middle of it. They are the first ones to arrive, as usual.
Clarke feels the twinge of jealousy that always strikes her when she comes face to face with the autumn twins. They are so lucky, she thinks, to have each other, whilst she walks through the months of summer with only the echoes of children who can’t see her to keep her company.
She almost does not want to interrupt the peace that the Blake’s seem to bask in in this moment. Bellamy is sitting upright, his fingers absentmindedly playing with the golden grass around him, whilst a crown of brambles sits crookedly atop his wavy hair. Octavia is resting her head upon his lap, looking up at the sky as if it holds the secrets to all of time.
Clarke does not blame her; the sky becomes majestic during their dance.
It catches the rhythm well, erupting with different temperaments to follow the lead of each season. At the moment it is a mixture of orange and blue, creating contrasting swirls that open Clarke’s heart. It will become even more beautiful when winter and spring arrive.
Moving forwards, Clarke catches the attention of Octavia and Bellamy, who stand up and move to her, leaving a playful golden trail in their wake. Octavia hugs Clarke and it smells like bonfires.
“Right on time I see.” Bellamy’s eyes echo with centuries of friendship.
“Early, as usual.” Clarke shoots back. “I know I’m amazing but you don’t want to come off as too eager to see me.”
Octavia giggles. “Maybe you’re just late.”
Clarke feigns offense. “Summer is never late, spring just sometimes oversteps her boundaries.”
A voice rings out from behind them. “Already talking shit about me I see.”
The three turn around with smiles lighting up their faces. “Raven.”
Raven Reyes, the embodiment of spring, smiles back at them. She holds her own beauty, not in warmth like Bellamy and Octavia, or in serenity like Clarke, but in a feeling of endless opportunities and freshly baked bread. Her face shines with life and her eyes gleam with mischief. “Fancy seeing you lot here.”
Clarke rolls her eyes. “Raven that joke grew old after the hundredth meeting.”
Octavia chimes in. “Actually I think it was around the hundred and fiftieth, give Raven some credit.”
Raven smirks. “Yeah give me credit. I’m the one who actually builds things. You, Clarke Griffin, just float about for three months acting all graceful.”
Redness creeps its way into Clarke’s cheeks. “I do more than that.”
Raven reconsiders, her mouth pulled into a pout as she thinks. “Actually yeah, you do.” She turns to Octavia and Bellamy. “It’s you two who spend too much time chatting to each other to do anything productive.”
“We’re awesome.” Bellamy shoots back.
Quickly backing him up Octavia adds. “Yeah, we’ve been told we have quite the air of mischief.”
Raising an eyebrow, Raven crosses her arms. “And that’s a good thing?”
“Sure,” Octavia nudges Bellamy’s shoulder affectionately. “We bring atmosphere to autumn. Give it character.”
“That’s because you are autumn.” Clarke point out the obvious. “It’s not what we do, who we are already makes the season what it is. Summer runs through my veins, as spring runs through Ravens and autumn through yours.” She stops talking for a moment, gazing up. “Look at the sky.”
The sky above the meadow has turned a purplish colour, streaked with shades of blue. Emitting a golden glow, the sun sits halfway behind a cloud. Clarke sighs, trouble resting on her usually sunlit features. “She should be here by now.”
Bellamy rests a hand on her shoulder in comfort. “Winter is always late Clarke, do not fret.”
Clarke looks down. “I know but-”
Immediately sensing what plagues his friend, Bellamy speaks again. “Whatever it is that you two have has been going on for longer than a human lifetime, she will not forget you now.”
Suddenly, a bitter wind sweeps through the air, as if it senses Bellamy’s words. The sky turns thundery and beautifully broken. Clarke smiles.
“Lexa.”
Clarke turns around with a careless whisper and there is Lexa, in all her wintery might. Her facial features are soft, unlike her eyes, which stay as frozen as they were the first time the four seasons met. She steps closer to Clarke, wrapping her hands around her waist. “Surely you do not think I could ever forget about you Clarke.”
Clarke chuckles, the thought of how inconceivable it is that summer could possibly be here, looking into the cold eyes of winter and melting, crosses her mind. “Well we are both immortal, it would be pretty hard for you to ignore me forever.”
Lexa smiles, “Exactly.” Before leaning down and pressing a chaste kiss to Clarke’s lips. How Lexa’s lips are so cold and so warm will forever remain a mystery to Clarke.
“You guys are gross.” Octavia calls out, ruining the moment.
Lexa looks up, “Tell me again, Octavia of Autumn, how many meetings now it has been that you have gushed about that Satyr boy, what was his name again?”
Octavia blushes. “Lincoln.”
Lexa’s smile is so beautiful, but it is made of ice as she teases Octavia. “If I am correct you have been relentlessly telling us about him for ninety-six years now.”
Octavia grins back, mayhem pouring from her smile. “Yeah, almost as long as you two have been banging.”
Lexa’s brow furrows, and Clarke thinks it is the cutest thing she has ever seen. “What is banging?”
Stifling her laughter, Clarks places a soothing hand on Lexa’s arm. “She means having sex. It is a new development of words in the human world.”
“I don’t keep up with the evolution of human language.”
Raven butts in. “Trust me Lexa, we know. We picked up on your ‘heartless bitch of winter’ thing the first time. It’s a good think Clarke set you straight.” She raises an eyebrow, laughter in her brown eyes. “Well not straight.”
Bellamy clears his throat, clearly uncomfortable at the previous conversation of who his sister was ‘banging’. “Talking about human evolution.” He snaps his fingers and a bottle of whiskey and five glasses appear on the grass in the middle of them. Giving a crooked grin, he shrugs. “Their development of alcohol is getting really good these days.”
A few hours and more bottles into drinking, the sky settles. It looks like a bath bomb of colours and moods has been dropped into a crystalline bathtub, leaving a fizz of aroma. Bellamy’s bramble crown is even more crooked than it was before and his face is flushed from the alcohol.
Raven never wore a circlet on her head, stating that the ones the others wore were a bit too classically clichéd for her. Instead she wore a necklace that was said to be given to her by her first mortal lover, long dead and lost by now. The others never questioned her about it – there were some legends that didn’t need to be proven, myths that didn’t need to be uncovered.
This was the rule with all but Clarke and Lexa. Clarke sits with Lexa’s crown of icicles jauntily balanced upon her blonde hair, tucked into Lexa’s side. Lexa also currently appears to be wearing Clarkes flower crown and Raven isn’t sure if it looks stupid or enduring. Though it does make sense that if the cold heart of winter was going to be thawed by anyone, it would be summer.
Clarke looks up at her lover and feels warm and right. Lexa’s lips turn up at the corner slightly and she leans down to give Clarke a kiss, her lips lingering for perhaps a bit too long. They counterbalance each other perfectly: warm and cold, gentle and harsh, light and dark. They are so opposite and yet so similar and when Clarke looks at Lexa she feels human.
When Lexa looks at Clarke she feels free.
Clarke sighs into the kiss and when Lexa pulls back she grabs onto her shirt not wanting to lose contact. The kiss comes crashing back in like a cold wave upon a golden beach. Lexa’s fingers tangle into Clarkes hair and Clarke moans a little bit, pressing their bodies together and –
“Goddamn it!” Octavia’s voice cut them apart. “Can you guys not bottle it for one second? At least have the decency to sneak off into the woods like you did last year.”
Both out of breath, Clarke and Lexa simply shrug, neither of them regretting the kiss as much as they should.
“This is your fault!” Octavia points the finger to Bellamy. “You know what alcohol does to them.”
Bellamy holds his hands up in surrender. Raven cuts in in a sarcastic tone. “As interesting as this is, can we discuss the legends now? I love talking about how mortals speculate about us.”
Bellamy coughs, “Narcissist.”
Raven sticks out her tongue, before adding as an afterthought. “But seriously, I want to know.”
Octavia sighs. “It hasn’t changed that much Raven. The stories are fading now anyway. Soon we’ll be forgotten.”
“There has to be something.” Raven practically whines.
Bellamy laughs at his friend’s insistence, sunlight pouring from his eyes as he tilts his head back and chuckles. “Actually.” He grabs the attention of his friends. “There is this poet.”
Clarke sighs, a roll of her eyes quickly following. “Please don’t subject me to more deep poetry about me. I’ve already heard enough about the ‘melancholy of summer’ and all that crap.”
“Yeah.” Octavia laughs. “If anyone around here’s melancholic it’s Lexa.”
Gently smiling, Lexa gazes at Clarke as if she is seeing the sun for the first time. “I’m perfectly happy.”
Clarke smiles back and pecks her lover on the lips. “Perfectly soppy more like.”
Lexa sighs, “Not you too.”
Laughing at the couple, Raven joins in. “Actually Lexa, Clarke has a point. You are so whipped.”
There is a grumbled, “I’m too old to be ‘whipped’.” Which is followed by a round of laughter before Octavia sobers up.
“Okay Bell, tell us about this poet.”
Quietly Bellamy begins to talk. “Actually this poet is more accurate about us than anyone has been in years. Here’s one of his pieces:
Autumn skips through the orange leaves, confessing her attraction to the compounded colours. Oranges and reds and yellow so bright that they could make your head hurt. But they fill Autumn’s heart to the brim.
Staying full of love and light, Autumn’s heart only begins to fade when Winter storms in, leaving a fine layer of frost under her touch. Perhaps Winter has grown used to the cold, but she leaves people shivering in her wake as if her soul itself is ice. This is not true. Whereas Autumn pumps love around her body, Winter injects passion straight into her veins. She is ice on the surface but thawed underneath, like a frozen lake.
Spring shatters the ice of Winter with ideology. Where she walks on the frozen ground breaks and melts under her heel, allowing ways for new ideas, new beginnings – a new life. Building and mending is what Spring loves to do, and rather than cramming her heart with love or poisoning her bloodstream with passion, she leaves her soul empty. A space for what is yet to come. A blueprint of new design.
Summer brings with her the melancholy-”
“Fucking melancholy. Again.” Clarke interrupts.
Bellamy looks up from the scrap of paper he is reading, unimpressed. “Do you mind?”
Glaring at Bellamy, Clarke stays silent, allowing him to carry on.
“Summer brings with her the melancholy of forgotten friendships. Feeling her warmth, her devotion, people smile around her, though they do not know she is there. Loneliness plagues Summer like a lost spirit, but still she carries on. She does what she must, without a chirp of indignation about the weight of almost somethings on her shoulder. Brilliantly she lightens the world, adding vibrancy where there would be none. She does it well.
The seasons watch over us, each with their love, their passion, their beginnings and their burdens. Standing in beauty, they catch the world as time passes on, continuing their dance with exquisiteness and fluidity. We watch, but we do not see.”
Silence falls upon the small group, before Bellamy crinkles his forehead slightly. “Why do they always portray autumn as a girl?”
Scoffing, Octavia lightly punches her brother on the shoulder. “Uhh, cause girls are the best. Duh.”
“They never seem to pick up on the fact that you’re twins either.” Raven adds in, smiling.
Gently, Clarke mocks. “Yeah. You’re right, it’s almost as if they can’t see us.”
“They can’t” Lexa says, seriously, before realization hits her. “Oh right, sarcasm.”
Chuckling, Clarke pokes her nose. “You’re so cute.”
Lexa growls. “I am not cute.”
“You are pretty adorable actually.” Raven smiles.
“Agreed.” Octavia adds in, Bellamy nodding his head as well.
“Oi.” Clarke jokes. “Hands off. She’s mine.”
“Eww. As if.” Octavia wrinkles her nose. “Sorry but the ice queen just doesn’t do it for me.”
“Yeah.” Raven pushes Octavia shoulder jokingly. “Octavia only dates people with fur.”
“Hold on!” Octavia goes to argue before tilting her head slightly. “Actually that’s true. Never mind.”
Bellamy shakes his head in false disgust. “I could’ve had anyone as a twin, and I ended up with you.”
“You love me!” Octavia laughs.
It takes a second, but Bellamy’s face breaks into a smile. “Yeah I do.”
“Aww.” Raven coos, “Sibling love.”
Continuing throughout the day and evening, the five friends fall back into warm conversation, as if they hadn’t been separated for a year. The sky stays frozen in a state of all four seasons, but the temperature drops as night rolls in like a blackened cloud. Eventually, Raven stands up.
“I guess I’ll see you next year then.” She says, wiping her dirtied hands on the front of her trousers.
Bellamy stands up and hugs her. “May we meet again.”
“Bye Raven!” Clarke calls, unwilling to stand from where she has curled herself into Lexa.
Raven just nods, before walking off into the forest surrounding the meadow and disappearing.
The sky forgets spring.
Bellamy sighs. “She’s always the first one to go.” He looks down at his sister, who is poking at the embers of the small fire they assembled earlier. The flames dance up her arm, igniting her eyes with bonfires and ambers and she looks natural. “Come on O,” Gently taking his sisters hand, Bellamy helps her up. “It’s time to go.”
“I don’t want to leave yet.” Octavia states. It isn’t a whine or a complaint, just a sentence.
“I know.” Bellamy says softly. “But our night is over. The rest of the world needs us back again.”
Lexa shifts from behind Clarke, standing up. “Goodbye.”
“Bye. We’ll see you next year.” Octavia waves. “You too Clarke.” She waves to the blonde who is now standing as well.
“Yeah we’ll see you.” Bellamy states, before adding. “Oh and Lexa, don’t fall back into that whole ‘love is weakness’ thing again. It was a bit of a mess last time.”
“You’ve been mentioning that for the past one hundred and twenty seven years.” Lexa sighs. “Can we not just get over it?”
Wickedly Bellamy grins and it reflects autumn in his eyes. “Never.” He takes Octavia’s hand and the twins leave together, causing the orange glow to fall out of the sky.
“And then there were two.” Clarke says. Lexa turns around and faces her.
This is always one of Clarke’s favourite moments in the year. The seasons always leave in the same order and so there is always this time, when the sky is a swirl of dark and light blue, crisp and cold, but with warmth tinged sadly around its edges.
This is Clarke’s heaven.
“I guess I’ll see you in a year.” Lexa visibly gulps as she looks down and takes one of Clarke’s hands in her own.
“Hey.” Clarke uses her other hand to tilt Lexa’s chin back up. “We’ve been through thousands of years, what’s one more.”
Lexa chuckles. “It doesn’t make it any easier.”
“I know.” Now it’s Clarke’s turn to smile. “We have this conversation every time.”
“It doesn’t make it not relevant. I still love you just as much as I did a year ago.”
“I love you too.” Clarke replies, because she does.
Lexa kisses Clarke softly, before pulling away. Slowly she walks to the edge of the field, before turning around one final time and saying. “I’ll think about you every day. I always do.”
“I do too.” Clarke shouts, but Lexa has already vanished into darkness.
And then summer is left alone, always the last to leave. She is neither melancholic nor vibrant. Her body holds so much love and grace but also so much tiredness as she moves to the edge of the field. She is beauty in her own way.
As she reaches the end of the field, the last of the colours drop out of the sky, leaving it a blank canvas. Clarke takes a deep breath, closing her eyes. “Until next year.”
And then she is gone.