#aro creatives

[Image description: The first moodboard at the top is for the aroace flag. It’s a three by three grid of images. In the center is the aromantic asexual flag, with five stripes: two orange stripes on the top and two blue stripes on the bottom going lighter as they go inward to the middle white stripes. The top three images are orange pictures of a sunset over ocean, autumn leaves, and a close up image of a flower. The bottom three images are pictures of blue sky with the sky over a city, deep blue sky behind trees, and then blue clouds. On either side of the flags are white pictures of clouds at sunset and ocean lit by sunlight.

The second moodboard is five stripes of photography, themed to the color of the aroace flag. The top image is orange leaves of a tree mostly in shadow with only a little bit of dappled light showing through. The next image is a close up on orange-yellow leaves lit by sunlight. The next is a a clear, shallow wave gently cresting up a beach of white sand. The next image is of a the blue ocea from afar. The last image is of a dark blue sky littered with some waves of clouds.

The third moodboard is a moodboard for the alloaro flag. It’s a three by three moodbaord featuring a five striped flag in the middle. The flag has two green stripes on top and two yellow stripes on the bottom, the stripes getting lighter toward the middle of the flag. The middle of the flag is a white stripe. Around the flag in the middle row are photos of white fluffy clouds and the ocean being turned white by sunlight. The top row features green leaves lit by sunlight. The bottom row has two pictures of yellow leaves lit by sunlight and a close up on a yellow dahlia.

Below that the forth moodboard is of five strips of photos themed to the colors of the aroallo flag. At the top is a photo of dark, vibrant green vegetation layered thick together. Below that is a sideways photo of light green grass glowing in the sunlight. Below that is a photo of clear, shallow water over white sand with a light grey and green rock in the corner. Below that is close a photo of yellow leaves light by sunlight. Below that the last photo is a of the front of a brink home, the bicks all warm colors from yellow to brown. 

The fifth moodboard is for alloace flag. It’s athree by three moodboard, In the center is a flag with four stripes: a dark red stripe at the top, a lighter red stripe below, a white stripe below that, and a dark purple stripe at the bottom. The top row features photogrpahs of red leaves, a close up of red leaves and red leaves lit by sunlight, and a close up of a dark red flower in the middle. The middle row features a close up of a red flower and the white background behind it and white clouds seen from above around the flag. The bottom row features pictures of purple flowers, with close ups of different purple flower petals. End description

“Hey, tell me again why we decided to travel in the summer?” Petra groaned for the thousandth time. “I swear, the summers have gotten hotter. Or am I just getting too old to handle it?”

“Petra, you’re only fourteen, quit being dramatic,” I retorted, rolling my eyes. “Besides, we could have stayed in Verdigris longer, but someone was getting impatient.”

“Oh, are you referring to yourself?” Petra shot back.

“Shut up.”

I raised my hand to shield my eyes from the blazing sun and squinted down the road. In the distance, I could just make out the figures of two royal guards, leaning against the façade of a local inn. Frankly, the odds of either of them being able to recognize me out of context were marginal at best, but it wasn’t a risk worth taking. (I also wasn’t quite sure how effective Bertrand’s love potions had been or how long they lasted, and I really wasn’t eager to find out.) I turned heel and retreated the way we had come, and Petra no longer needed to ask to understand why.

“You’re right, though, the sun is very bright these days,” I mused, wiping the sweat from my brow with my shirtsleeve. “Should I start wearing hats? Maybe it’d be a good disguise.”

“I think you might as well wear a big sign that says ‘Look, I’m suspicious!’” Petra snarked.

“Not any sort of fancy hat, obviously,” I huffed. “I meant, like, a straw sunhat. Like a farmer.”

Petra sputtered and laughed mercilessly, doubling over alongside me.

"What, do you think I would look funny in a farmer’s hat? I could look the part!”

“Yeah, with the bow and arrow and everything,” Petra wheezed. “Typical farmer. If I saw you walking down the street, I’d immediately think you had something to hide.”

We took a break from the sun in the shade of a tall oak tree, in a quiet corner of the town where only a few passersby came down the road. The temperature seemed to drop several degrees away from the sun’s rays, and we both sighed in relief, taking large swigs of water from our canteens.

“Have you ever thought about what comes next?” Petra asked, picking absentmindedly at a fresh bug bite on her arm.

“I mean, we should probably find something to eat, and a place to camp out for the night.”

“No, I mean in the future.”

“Not really,” I sighed. “We could go back to Verdigris eventually, hole up for the winter there. We could keep trying to blend in here, or who knows, there’s a whole world out there far beyond Amistadia.”

Petra chuckled, and I shot her a suspicious look. She raised her hands in defense.

“It’s nothing, I just never thought I’d see you without an over-thought plan,” she explained.

I shrugged. “What good did that do me before?”

So far, that summer had wrought us nothing in terms of success since we returned to Amistadia. With the royal guard now calling the shots, very little had changed, materially speaking, though their increased presence had certainly sparked a heightened sense of suspicion in the air, as though people were beginning to wonder whether they were being pinned down. Our efforts to spread the truth and connect with the rest of the Heartless had so far been significantly hampered by my ever-present need to play dead, but I was not feeling particularly deterred. There was still hope fluttering within me, alive and well, and while it was possible those wings would melt under the relentless summer sun, it didn’t matter. I would simply grow them anew again, a thousand times over if that was what it took.

“Should we keep walking? I think there’s a farmer’s market down the road,” Petra suggested.

I nodded and pushed to my feet. We continued down the street, Petra already grumbling about the sun again.

“You know, maybe I should get a hat,” she ribbed.

A light and airy chuckle escaped my lungs.

Over time, Petra grew antsy. A peaceful, quiet life of complacency—no matter how appealing from the start—was foreign to her, having been far out of reach her entire life. I felt no differently; the thought of all the people we had left behind weighed heavily on my mind, and I knew it was on hers too. We’d been part of a community that had been scattered to the wind; most of our friends and neighbors were still out there, somewhere, waiting for some kind of answer. There was a part of me that wanted desperately to stay still, to settle permanently in Verdigris and pretend as though the past had never happened. But there was another part of me that didn’t even know how.

It was thoughts like these that found me in the meadow next to Frida’s house at dawn one crystal-clear morning as the spring began to melt into summer, stringing together a crown of wildflowers to occupy my hands. I recognized Basil’s approach behind me by the sound of his slightly uneven footsteps rustling through the grass before he came to a stop beside me.

“You’re up early,” he commented.

“I was having trouble sleeping,” I replied, joining the two ends of the chain together. “Here, bend down.”

Basil obliged, bending at the hip, and I placed my finished crown on top of his head. “Crowning the king,” I thought to myself wistfully. He reached up and turned it over in his hands, examining my work.

“You have steadier hands than I remember,” he noted. Then he smirked. “But you still aren’t very good.”

I feigned offense. “That’s how you treat my gift?”

Basil replaced the crown on his head and dropped down to the grass beside me.

After a few moments, I inquired, “Basil, can I ask you something a little bit intense?”

“Of course.” Basil began plucking wildflowers from the space around him.

“Why did I ever want to feel human?”

“What do you mean?”

I hesitated, unsure how to fathom the whirlwind in my chest into something intelligible. Eventually, I settled on, “Well, if being human is so ideal then why are we so terrible? Why do humans spread hate and lies and kill or displace so many innocent people? People have died by my hands, both directly and indirectly, and if that’s what makes me not so different from every other human then maybe I don’t want to be human at all. Maybe I just want to float aimlessly through some void somewhere and never see or be seen by anyone ever again. I spent so many years wishing I could be human instead of a monster, only to realize they were the same thing.”

Ever wise beyond his years and mine, Basil set aside his half-finished creation and reasoned, “The question is not whether humans are good or bad, but rather how to reconcile so much kindness and goodwill with so much evil. The truth is each of us has the capacity for good and bad, and having done things you regret does not make you deplorable or beyond redemption. It just makes you human. And maybe it’s like you said and being human is the most monstrous thing you can be, but I like to think it’s also the most beautiful.”

“You say that so easily,” I mused. For someone who has experienced such violence, I did not add, but Basil seemed to understand, nonetheless.

He chuckled and returned to his steady and practiced weaving.

“Over time, life puts things into perspective.”

“What do you say of love, then?”

“Love has very little to do with it, at least not in the sense you’re talking about. Heart or no heart, there’s blood rushing through your veins, isn’t there? You’re a whole person, Ace. You’re alive. That’s really all there is to it.”

“It doesn’t feel that simple,” I muttered.

Basil shrugged. “I never said it was simple.”

A few minutes passed in companionable silence as the sun started to climb over the tree line and the commune began to buzz with activity, signaling the start of a brand new spring morning.

“I think Petra and I are going to go back soon,” I said eventually. “We finished the fence.”

Basil hummed. “I thought you might say that.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” I asked hopefully.

Basil smiled sadly, fixing his gaze somewhere—or some time—beyond the horizon.

“Ace, I’m tired. I fought with all I could at the age of ten. Please understand that I can never go back to that place again. I’m just… tired.”

“I understand,” I whispered, trying to hide my disappointment, though I’d anticipated his answer.

“Besides,” Basil sat up a little straighter, “the people here need me, that’s my role in this fight. But I’ll still be here whenever you come back, and that’s a promise.”

I smiled. “You’d better keep that promise,” I warned.

The flower crown that Basil had been weaving landed on the top of my head. I turned in surprise to see a sunny grin plastered across his face, an older, wiser reflection of himself from all those many years ago.