08-30-2021, 01:47 PM
She could have touched her, she thinks.
Could have reached right out and grazed her nose and she wonders if Sickle would have recoiled, if she would have skittered away into the darkness of the forest and left her alone again.
Perhaps it is this she craves the most: touch.
Even more than company.
But the thought passes just as quickly as she shifts her focus to the flowers floating on the surface of the pond and she is consumed instead by the warmth of the idea of friendship.
She had existed, for a moment, outside of this darkness. Sickle had thought of her in her jungle, so far away, plucked these flowers from their homes and brought them here to her. And Asterope is undeserving of such kindness but she loves them deeply and she does not know how to preserve flowers and she will mourn them when the petals come free from the stem and sink to the bottom of the pond. But for now they are beautiful and they are hers and her friend thought of her, thought she would like them, and she carried them all this way for her.
For the moment, she is not lonely.
And Asterope listens to what it means to be a jungle, how it’s like the forest except more vivid, and she turns her own gaze to the canopy overhead. Dark, drab. Sometimes bright birds come to rest in the boughs over the pond but they never stay long and they are the only color she ever sees and she shows them her wings but they never seem interested.
She smiles.
“How did you come to live there?” she asks, eyes shining, as if there is any chance at all that she might someday have any hope of living there, too.
Could have reached right out and grazed her nose and she wonders if Sickle would have recoiled, if she would have skittered away into the darkness of the forest and left her alone again.
Perhaps it is this she craves the most: touch.
Even more than company.
But the thought passes just as quickly as she shifts her focus to the flowers floating on the surface of the pond and she is consumed instead by the warmth of the idea of friendship.
She had existed, for a moment, outside of this darkness. Sickle had thought of her in her jungle, so far away, plucked these flowers from their homes and brought them here to her. And Asterope is undeserving of such kindness but she loves them deeply and she does not know how to preserve flowers and she will mourn them when the petals come free from the stem and sink to the bottom of the pond. But for now they are beautiful and they are hers and her friend thought of her, thought she would like them, and she carried them all this way for her.
For the moment, she is not lonely.
And Asterope listens to what it means to be a jungle, how it’s like the forest except more vivid, and she turns her own gaze to the canopy overhead. Dark, drab. Sometimes bright birds come to rest in the boughs over the pond but they never stay long and they are the only color she ever sees and she shows them her wings but they never seem interested.
She smiles.
“How did you come to live there?” she asks, eyes shining, as if there is any chance at all that she might someday have any hope of living there, too.
Drops of dew from their hair
@Sickle