04-13-2026, 04:16 PM
who could ever leave me, darling,
but who could stay?
but who could stay?
She isn’t sure what she is supposed to feel when he calls her a beautiful thing.
She knows that she is, or at least, she knows that she should be perceived that way. But she thinks that she is beautiful in the way a flower is beautiful, or a sunset. Nature behaving in the way you would expect—a cosmic and ethereal thing birthed from a god and an angel, as if there could be any other outcome.
There is a small, logical part of her that knows he is only stating a fact.
So she may not flush with warmth, and yet still there is a brief, sudden flutter of her pulse as something else flairs to life inside of her. A shadowy thing that curls around that miniscule validation, clings to it, holds it tight. For a brief moment that hollow ache in her chest doesn’t feel so empty, and while she doesn’t yet recognize this for what it is—her fatal flaw, an inheritance of mother’s brokenness—she tries desperately to hang onto it.
“Well, I haven’t met very many others,” she says, thinking. Her circle was terribly small, and once again she was wondering how badly she had doomed herself sequestering away in dreams and clouds. But even from her vantage point above, she knew that he wasn’t the only strange creature to walk these lands. She has seen them—dragons, shadow creatures, things made of more bone than flesh. She wouldn’t lie and say she found them beautiful, but she did not think them ugly, either. They existed as part of the world the same way everything else did, woven into the same tapestry that painted a larger picture. “So I guess for now, you are the strangest, but that could change.” She says this with a smile, her dark eyes alight with her teasing. And now, with his attention directly on her, she presses again, “And, you still haven’t told me your name.”
She knows that she is, or at least, she knows that she should be perceived that way. But she thinks that she is beautiful in the way a flower is beautiful, or a sunset. Nature behaving in the way you would expect—a cosmic and ethereal thing birthed from a god and an angel, as if there could be any other outcome.
There is a small, logical part of her that knows he is only stating a fact.
So she may not flush with warmth, and yet still there is a brief, sudden flutter of her pulse as something else flairs to life inside of her. A shadowy thing that curls around that miniscule validation, clings to it, holds it tight. For a brief moment that hollow ache in her chest doesn’t feel so empty, and while she doesn’t yet recognize this for what it is—her fatal flaw, an inheritance of mother’s brokenness—she tries desperately to hang onto it.
“Well, I haven’t met very many others,” she says, thinking. Her circle was terribly small, and once again she was wondering how badly she had doomed herself sequestering away in dreams and clouds. But even from her vantage point above, she knew that he wasn’t the only strange creature to walk these lands. She has seen them—dragons, shadow creatures, things made of more bone than flesh. She wouldn’t lie and say she found them beautiful, but she did not think them ugly, either. They existed as part of the world the same way everything else did, woven into the same tapestry that painted a larger picture. “So I guess for now, you are the strangest, but that could change.” She says this with a smile, her dark eyes alight with her teasing. And now, with his attention directly on her, she presses again, “And, you still haven’t told me your name.”
Empyreal
@bael