[open] loneliness has always been with me, any

[astra]

His enthusiasm expands in her chest and she wonders what it’s like to feel things so big all on your own. Wonders, too, if perhaps her own emotions are just dwarfed by the things she feels that belong to everyone else. If there’s seem bigger because they have a tendency to overshadow her own.

It is not a magic she understands yet. She does not know how to control it, wouldn’t know where to start trying to learn. But she smiles all the same. If he thinks it’s cool then it must be cool, even if it’s typically more painful than anything. Leaves her chest heaving, her lungs aching.

She thinks she can feel his happiness, too, but it is a strange thing to feel without any obvious source. She doesn’t understand what his happiness is born from but she doesn’t have the heart to ask. Just swallows a breath and nods.

He offers no warning about what kind of magic he possesses, nothing to indicate whether or not it’s safe. Her heart clenches with fear and she sucks in a sharp breath, closing her eyes shut in anticipation. But she does not move and he does not touch her and when she opens her eyes they go impossibly wide as she turns to watch the bodies move past them at accelerated speeds. Her mouth half-parts and she blinks rapidly, as if doing so might return them to their normal speed.

But they do not slow until he commands them to and the sun has sunk closer to the horizon. She inhales a breathy little gasp and shifts her focus back to his face. “What kind of magic is that?”

maybe we were meant to be lonely

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