10-16-2021, 11:15 AM
How strange it is to have her loneliness punctuated by something so lovely as her friend.
Because there are weeks that pass with nothing at all, the woodland creatures venturing to the edge of the pond to drink but never staying. And then there is Sickle, who comes and stays and brings her the most beautiful gifts.
It is like a feast after so long spent starving. She cannot get enough and she knows that Sickle’s departure will be hard to swallow, even if there is a promise that she will return. Because knowing how sweet it is to have company here in the dark makes the solitude even more bitter.
But she wills herself not to focus on the inevitable. She wills herself to enjoy things as they are now, with her friend sprouting fins from her shoulders, grinning when she says that she’d thought about Asterope. And Asterope has no choice but to smile, too.
“I’ve thought about you, too,” she admits, though there is something bittersweet in it. There has been nothing else to fill her time except missing the sweetness of her company. Perhaps it is this that has driven her to the brink of madness.
But again, as if privy to her thoughts, Sickle swiftly changes the subject back to flowers and Asterope softens, glancing at the tropical flowers still floating on the surface of the water. “I don’t know,” she admits with a funny little grin, “these flowers make me think that there are colors in the world that I don’t even know exist.”
It’s the truth and she feels no shame in admitting it. It is merely a fact of life that her world has been reduced to this body of water and the drab trees that press in around it.
She cannot allow herself to dwell on this either, though, and summons up another smile. “What is it like to be able to change yourself?” she asks, eyes alight with her own kind of wonder.
Because there are weeks that pass with nothing at all, the woodland creatures venturing to the edge of the pond to drink but never staying. And then there is Sickle, who comes and stays and brings her the most beautiful gifts.
It is like a feast after so long spent starving. She cannot get enough and she knows that Sickle’s departure will be hard to swallow, even if there is a promise that she will return. Because knowing how sweet it is to have company here in the dark makes the solitude even more bitter.
But she wills herself not to focus on the inevitable. She wills herself to enjoy things as they are now, with her friend sprouting fins from her shoulders, grinning when she says that she’d thought about Asterope. And Asterope has no choice but to smile, too.
“I’ve thought about you, too,” she admits, though there is something bittersweet in it. There has been nothing else to fill her time except missing the sweetness of her company. Perhaps it is this that has driven her to the brink of madness.
But again, as if privy to her thoughts, Sickle swiftly changes the subject back to flowers and Asterope softens, glancing at the tropical flowers still floating on the surface of the water. “I don’t know,” she admits with a funny little grin, “these flowers make me think that there are colors in the world that I don’t even know exist.”
It’s the truth and she feels no shame in admitting it. It is merely a fact of life that her world has been reduced to this body of water and the drab trees that press in around it.
She cannot allow herself to dwell on this either, though, and summons up another smile. “What is it like to be able to change yourself?” she asks, eyes alight with her own kind of wonder.
Drops of dew from their hair
@Sickle