hello from the other side; any

[Cordis]

There is a reason love stories end at the confessions, and do not follow them any further.
Because it’s ugly, what comes after fate throws them together again and again, as the stars align and shine down.
(It shouldn’t be ugly. It should be tender. Shouldn’t it?)
But love is a living thing, a beastly thing, and it consumes them both in different ways. It is the reason Cordis lives still, wraps herself in lightning like a queen.
It nourishes her.
It destroys her.
She is riddled with cancers – her own darkness and this love, this pervasive thing she cannot shake. She is riddled with desires – to destroy cities, to touch her.

(There are faces that launch a thousand ships and then there is Spyndle. Cordis would burn universes for her.)

There is a reason love stories end.
Because the tenderness is not sustainable, not with women who are lightning-struck and wolf-bit, not when her heart beats too fast at this, all of this.
They should be rejoicing at the news of their daughter’s survival, instead, venom is spat out and hisses like acid at her feet.
She can’t help but laugh.
It’s cruel and she knows it – they are both cruel, in a way – but it’s impossible to stop.
“I’ve changed,” she says softly, dangerously. It’s almost the voice that told the boy, ‘come closer.’
She is not afraid anymore. Not when every wretched thing imaginable has come to pass.
(Including seeing her again, for now the things she worked to lie to rest rise and dance again, these things like desire, the urge to give her everything she wouldn’t take.)
“I’m magic,” she says. It’s the first time she’s said it out loud. She still isn’t sure she believes it, but –
But she has struck them dead with lightning.
But she has breathed underwater.
But she breathed her back to life once, said will you, will you come back for me.
But she has a crow who sometimes circles overhead, a gift from a raven queen, a crow made of lightning and feathers.
She is something, and it is powerful.

“You can’t see it,” she muses, almost to herself, and the lighting returns as she steps away, encasing her until she crackles and the static is near deafening.
“You can’t see it, but I’m glad I survived.”
(Is she?)
“I wish I could say the same for you.”
A lie (she thinks), one that aches to say, but she burns too bright to consider it long.

“I love you,” she says, and she means it.
She also means goodbye.

(There is a reason love stories end.)

she said it was a mistake to let them burn her at the stake

Cordis

(and she learned a lesson back there in the flames)