05-06-2023, 04:38 PM
It is not a mere sting.
No, it is an arrow that buries itself in the meat of his heart to hear her say that she wouldn’t wish what she is on anyone. His pulse quickens and he swallows thickly, consumed suddenly by a heady kind of guilt.
(He should not have drawn attention to her brilliance. He should not have mentioned it at all, should not have let his wonder pass so plainly across his face.)
He, too, looks away.
And he considers it a long while, ruminates, lets the notion of it expand until it has filled him all the way up. She wouldn’t wish what she is on anyone and he wonders what about something so beautiful could be so impossible to live with. Is there some hidden darkness in her? Some evil thing lurking just beneath the surface? But how could there be with the way she cannot seem to meet his eye? How could there be when she acknowledges it so plainly. Surely, if she were as bad as she seems to think, she would not say so.
The silence stretches thin between them, each of them staring intently at those flowers. He does not know what to say. He was not born a fixer. Not even born a helper, but he feels some overwhelming urge to reach out and touch her, to find some way to convince her that whatever it is she feels is so awful cannot possibly be that bad.
Her confession draws his attention back to her face and he studies her a beat before smiling, awash with something that might be relief. “That’s okay,” he says, though it hadn’t necessarily been an apology. “It’s been a long time for me, too.” He had spent so much time searching for his sister in the darkness. (Still, he has not found her, but he has more or less abandoned the effort.)
“I can go,” he tells her, “if that would be easier.” He pauses then. “But I’d like to stay.”
No, it is an arrow that buries itself in the meat of his heart to hear her say that she wouldn’t wish what she is on anyone. His pulse quickens and he swallows thickly, consumed suddenly by a heady kind of guilt.
(He should not have drawn attention to her brilliance. He should not have mentioned it at all, should not have let his wonder pass so plainly across his face.)
He, too, looks away.
And he considers it a long while, ruminates, lets the notion of it expand until it has filled him all the way up. She wouldn’t wish what she is on anyone and he wonders what about something so beautiful could be so impossible to live with. Is there some hidden darkness in her? Some evil thing lurking just beneath the surface? But how could there be with the way she cannot seem to meet his eye? How could there be when she acknowledges it so plainly. Surely, if she were as bad as she seems to think, she would not say so.
The silence stretches thin between them, each of them staring intently at those flowers. He does not know what to say. He was not born a fixer. Not even born a helper, but he feels some overwhelming urge to reach out and touch her, to find some way to convince her that whatever it is she feels is so awful cannot possibly be that bad.
Her confession draws his attention back to her face and he studies her a beat before smiling, awash with something that might be relief. “That’s okay,” he says, though it hadn’t necessarily been an apology. “It’s been a long time for me, too.” He had spent so much time searching for his sister in the darkness. (Still, he has not found her, but he has more or less abandoned the effort.)
“I can go,” he tells her, “if that would be easier.” He pauses then. “But I’d like to stay.”
— hadrien
@Israfel