[open] lay all your troubles down, any

[leliel]

i’m a foolish, fragile spine—

This she knows for sure: she is loved. She knows it in her mother’s softness and the persistent worry in her father’s eyes. She knows it in the warmth of her mother’s embrace and how, though he never touches her, her father smiles like something secret.

And it is such a brilliant thing, to be loved. To find courage in the knowledge that, should she fall, her parents would be there to lift her back up. It makes her brave, curious. It makes her soft, too, to be loved. There’s a heart that beats strong in her chest, stronger than most, it is her father’s heart, and it is not immune to aching. This she has inherited from her father, this penchant for worry. But she smiles like her mother.

Leliel, she is such a stunning combination of the both of them, Israfel and Selaphiel. It is her mother’s innocence that saves her whimsy, it is her father’s seriousness that keeps her grounded. Her head is in the clouds, you see, but her feet are heavy on the ground. She laughs but there is some weight to it, because she is equal parts her mother and her father.

She has been wandering farther and farther from the safe glen of love in which she has spent her youth. Her legs are longer now, stronger, as is her desire to know the world beyond the light of her parents. Her father does not want her to go, but he understands that he cannot keep her. Selaphiel, he would not dream of dampening his daughter’s spirit, though sometimes he thinks he can smell death on her already.

It is warm in the meadow, the height of afternoon, and she delights in the way wildflowers slide past her knees, her belly. How delightful it is to be alive on an afternoon like this, she thinks. How splendid it is simply to be alive.

She thinks to nap here amongst the wildflowers, let the steady hum of wind lull her to sleep. But she is thirsty for knowledge, a glutton for learning. She wants to explore every corner of the world, keen to lay her eyes on every creature that calls this place home. And she finds some strange, some wondrous, some that do not appear to be creatures at all.

She has wandered farther than she ever has before and, as evening begins to creep in and shadows begin to lean down across the meadow, she realizes that she has lost her way back. She does not panic, though, only scans the horizon for a figure. And when she finds one, she approaches slowly, cautious only in the way she does not want to startle them. And she smiles without shyness when she asks, “excuse me, do you know the way back to the ruins?”

—i want all that is not mine