Conversations With Blodeuwedd

"Choose," she says. "You get one or the other. Which would you rather?"

I look at her, study her, not quite understanding the task. She's always been both to me: the beauty of blooms and the sharpness of talons, a petal-soft being with a beak to tear flesh.

"I am not the one you must choose for," she reminds me, feathers ruffling where flowers used to be. "I show only what is. We are yet to tell the story of what can be. That day is coming, but not yet."

I look down again at the options.

One: the soft beauty of petals and a shapely figure clothed in fine dresses. A life of being admired by many, of being pleasing to men. 

Two: the warmth of feathers and freedom of wings. A life of hunting and relative solitude, of reputation as an ill omen.

"These are truly the only options to aspire to?" I ask incredulously."What of other shapes, other forms? What of other ways of being?"

Blodeuwedd shakes her head sadly. "I told you, that story isn't here yet." She pauses for a beat before adding, "And there is also a catch."

I feel my eyebrows go up. "Oh?"

She nods. "The first one is another Eden."

"Another Eden?" She's lost me now.

This time she levels me with a look. "Think. What was the true sin of Eve?"

I shrug. "She ate a knowledge-giving apple after being told not to?"

"That is part of it," she concedes. "Knowledge has always been dangerous. It's why Lleu sought a blank canvas by having me made, why so many men seek younger women, and why the controlling seek to remove education. But you must go deeper than that."

Now I'm truly confused. Blessedly, she takes pity on me.

"Choice was the true sin," she reveals. "Yes, Eve was tempted. But in the end, she chose, and she did it for herself. Her choice - no, her sin - was an expression of her agency, an affirmation of herself as a whole person. 

"It's one of the oldest stories in the ThisWorld. Nothing pushes the person born of flowers to the talons faster than that."

She laughs bitterly, her fingernails elongating and becoming talons.

"If Adam had done the same, they would have praised him for his courage and called it 'growth'," she spits.

I stare down into the pool at the two options again. This time when I look, both the blooms and strigiform features are gone, and instead, I see something else. 

"So, in essence, a person like myself must choose between a life of trading agency for admiration and/or acceptance, and one of trading admiration and/or acceptance for agency?"

Blodeuwedd blows out a long breath and nods, her beak rounding to a nose.

"Yes. That is the story at the moment. And Eden, despite its reputation as a paradise, is often a garden of false promises; a place where Efnisien's toxins spread like vines, infecting the plots."

I nod, thinking of the pressure to be a perfect bloom, the pressure to look and be a certain way - to be that perfect supporting character who only exists for the benefit of another's life. And I think of the many abuses that go on behind closed doors. The flowers broken and bruised by that life.

Of course, the men are making their own bad trades as well -their own paths to becoming rotting eagles fit to fall from the house trees they rule - but that's another story. One that's *not* mine to tell.

"What of the roses?" I ask suddenly, my mind returning to the blooms I can no longer see. "They prick regardless of who catches them yet still remain among the flowers despite their talons."

"Ah, here's the thing about that," Blodeuwedd says. Her eyes seem to grow bigger, the corners softening to round curves. "Those roses will never be expelled because they can never commit the biggest sin of agency."

"And what is that?"

The hue-ring in her eyes has shifted from violet to yellow. 

"Choosing to leave!" she shrieks, more avian than flower now. "Some men will bear countless wounds just so long as they get to keep the keys to the cage."

At that, she reaches up, her arms becoming wings. Her form shrinks as the blooms of her body become feathers to ruffle, and she takes flight. An ill-omen. Gwyn's "crazy owl" ready to taunt the next Dafydd ap Gwilym with the alleged misfortune on her tongue.

I watch her go until her ghost-hued form is swallowed by the cloak of Night and wonder how long it'll be before the ThisWorld has room for both blooms and talons together. I also wonder whether I'll ever see a day when the wants of the Lleus, Dafydds, Adams, and a million other names no longer justify using the Eves, Blodeuwedds, and a million other names as resources.

I go to bed on that thought and sink into a dream that feels like flowers and talons both.

The new story is coming, but not yet. Still, it comes.

Image is Blodeuwedd in Bloom by Selina Fenech, prints available here.