you pour the water —
If you were to ask Baptiste, if were one among the sisters that was worthy of being called angelic, it would not be her. She is too acutely aware of the dark corners of her own heart—that hunger that swells in her and gnaws. She knows too well how she yearns for things she doesn’t understand and shies away from things that she should know she wants. She knows that there is something twisted in her.
But Iliana?
Oh, she is everything that Baptiste wishes that she could be.
And while there is something soothing about being near here—something right—there is also something equally painful in facing a mirror with truths you do not yet acknowledge. The pain though is easy to ignore, for the moment, and she instead basks in that deep love that swells in her when her sister smiles at her. She breathes her in and feels her stomach settle, her pulse turn into a steady thrum.
At her sister’s exclamation, she merely tilts her head and then nods, encouraging her, watching with slightly widened eyes as Iliana moves a step back from her. When the light expands, she feels her own heart clench in response, a fierce joy and pride sweeping through her. “I-It’s beautiful,” she says and can’t explain the catch in her throat, everything unspoken clogged there. She wants to tell her that of course she can glow. Of course the entities saw what she was and what she deserved, but the words don’t come.
So she just steps forward to fill the space that her sister had left between them.
She drops her head to press her cheek to her sister’s spotted shoulder and she smiles.
“You are so beautiful, sister.”
— I would haul the stones
@Iliana