11-01-2025, 10:27 AM
these days i don’t pray when i close my eyes—
It is impossible not to.
Even though the clouds above hang low, she still shines.
He’s never seen anything like her and perhaps he thinks to approach but thinks better of it. Because his is a life of solitude now. Because he had tried so desperately to be someone who meant something to others and it had become unbearable. He is better off alone, he thinks. Has thought for a long time now.
And, though he is intrigued, he turns away. And it is quiet for several moments while he goes on pretending that the stench of Death no longer turns his stomach. It is so potent that he does not smell it on her when she approaches. (And it’s there, of course, though he could not know that it exists only in tendrils, in wisps of her mother’s countless deaths.)
It is her footfalls that give her away first and then her voice, quiet. He turns, blinking his surprise. She is even brighter up close. Instinctively, he takes a step backward, away from her. Not because she is standing too close, but because old habits, he’s found, are nearly impossible to break.
“Oh,” he exhales, just as quiet. He casts a glance around at the wreckage cast across the landscape around them and shakes his head. “No. I’ve often wondered, but I’ve never come close to an answer.”
A young Selaphiel might have cringed with this failure. How viciously guilt would have festered in his gut! But he has resigned himself to this, too.
He could offer his name, he thinks. In fact, he knows he should offer his name. But he doesn’t, just goes on surveying the landscape. Like perhaps she will spare them both his inevitable failure at this, too.
—I just bite my tongue a bit harder
