[open] i could open the door and breathe in the dust

[Hourglass]

— and how long must I stay, will I lay by your side
just to say that I’m yours and you’ll never be mine;

She does not think she was supposed to last this long.

It defied all that she knew to be true, to be one of the things that remains standing after all the turmoil and upheaval that Beqanna has endured. It did not make sense that she—something that had been designed to break from the start—would be one of the things still intact, still whole. 

She had so often thought her mother to be overprotective to a fault; she had refused to believe that she was as delicate as her mother thought her to be. She knew that that glass heart of hers may not be able to withstand the blows that another could, but she did not think herself to be so fragile, so weak, that she needed to be shielded. 

It was not until she watched the world fall apart—watched how easily mountains crumbled and entire kingdoms fell—that she fully reconciled with the idea that she is just as breakable as everyone had feared her to be.

She guards herself better now, because of it. She keeps to the quiet parts of the meadow, watching the world with soft lilac-colored eyes and a quiet longing, but she does not dare to get too close.

hourglass

with this love like a hole,
swallow my soul —

[Gale]

Gale started under neon lights, then it all got dark i only know how to go too far The emptiness on the other side of the river has not changed in the years he has watched it. There was the far bank, and the trees, and then… Each time he tried to look farther, his gaze slid away. His attempts to cross had only ever been that - attempts. There was nothing tangible to find. He had tried far below the earth and miles above it, but each time he had found…nothing. There was no barrier to throw himself against, no complex shield he might dismantle. There is simply nothing at all. He’d tried throwing lightning at it once, only to watch the bolts snap out of existence. It had been a flare of temper, but the results soon had him trying other things, just to watch them vanish. Flames, water, leaves, and this morning he’d even tossed an entire yellow-leafed aspen. What about something living, he wonders. He tries himself at first, jumping, flying, and falling, but with no change to his earlier attempts. He heads toward a seemingly impossible collision and then…doesn’t collide. He tries Erne next, tossing the black osprey across the river, but his companion has the same experience he had. So Gale asks another bird, and this one (a brownish sparrow) disappears just like the aspen had. Intrigued, he tries a small hare. Another successful vanishing. Curious if size is a factor, he next tries a badger, whose thick grey body disappears. Motion at the corner of his eye drags him from his contemplation. It’s a horse, and has arrived at an opportune moment in his hypothesizing. “Would you mind helping me with an experiment?” @Hourglass