11-01-2025, 11:53 PM
who could ever leave me, darling,
but who could stay?
but who could stay?
From a shadowy copse of trees, she watches him, silent. Her eyes, large and dark, brim with a curiosity she can hardly contain, purposely keeping her breathing soft. She doesn’t know why she does this — why she watches instead of approaching, as if she is trying to steal a glimpse into the side they show when they think they are alone. Usually, she watches them from above, hidden within the wisps of cotton-candy clouds, crafting stories about them to weave into her daydreams. From up there, they were always exactly as she needed them to be.
She had decided earlier today that she would work up the courage to meet one of them. To see if maybe she has been missing something by confining her idea of them to her own mind and imagination.
There is no particular reason that she chose him, at least, not in the beginning. She listens to the soft rush of the river, wondering what he is thinking as he hovers above it. There is something dark, something strange that seems to cling to him, and perhaps this has been embedded into the very fabric of her making, but his darkness is what pulls her from hiding.
“Hello,” she says to him, her voice soft as the stardust that drifts in lazy motes from her wings as she walks. She does not know yet to be afraid; no one had ever been unkind in her made-up versions of the world, and even in the case of her own father her mother was an unreliable source. Still, she does not close the space between them entirely, her dark eyes watching him from beneath the honeyed glow of the halo above her head. “Did you do that?” She asks, gesturing toward the trail of frozen and wilted vegetation he seems to have left in his wake.
She had decided earlier today that she would work up the courage to meet one of them. To see if maybe she has been missing something by confining her idea of them to her own mind and imagination.
There is no particular reason that she chose him, at least, not in the beginning. She listens to the soft rush of the river, wondering what he is thinking as he hovers above it. There is something dark, something strange that seems to cling to him, and perhaps this has been embedded into the very fabric of her making, but his darkness is what pulls her from hiding.
“Hello,” she says to him, her voice soft as the stardust that drifts in lazy motes from her wings as she walks. She does not know yet to be afraid; no one had ever been unkind in her made-up versions of the world, and even in the case of her own father her mother was an unreliable source. Still, she does not close the space between them entirely, her dark eyes watching him from beneath the honeyed glow of the halo above her head. “Did you do that?” She asks, gesturing toward the trail of frozen and wilted vegetation he seems to have left in his wake.
Empyreal
@bael