you pour the water —
Baptiste only knows how to engage with the sad things, the tragic things—the things that call her name even though she knows she should avoid them. So she is disappointed when he doesn’t speak more to the shadows surrounding his situation and then feels a warm flush of shame that she should want that. That she should hunger for something so dark, so bleak, and something that he would surely want to avoid.
She didn’t know how to be different.
So she chastises herself and re-focuses her efforts on finding the silver lining, giving him a wane smile at the idea of turning it into a game. “That sounds…” her voice dies off as she tries to find the right word for a game that is centered on him turning to stone before she settles on a sad one of “fun.” But he is equally dismissive and quiet of her second question and she tries to shrug off the shame that settles in her belly.
Instead she shakes the dust from her coat, setting her dark wings over her back and bringing her gaze back up to him. “Does one choose the thing that is chosen for you?” she returns his question with one of her own, knowing that she has brought the conversation to this with her own choice of words. “I choose it because I know in my heart that it’s meant for me and I for it,” her mouth turns downward.
“But that doesn’t mean that I don’t wish it was different.”
A soft laugh in the back of her throat.
“I’m sorry, I know I’m not making much sense. I don’t understand it myself most days.”
— I would haul the stones
@Nemeon