held on tightly, anyone

[basilica]

She decides she likes the way he talks when he talks about his parents.
Like there’s too much air in his chest, like he’s real proud of them.
And she knows exactly what that’s like, what it’s like to love your parents so much that it makes you dizzy. She’s grateful that she knows what it’s like and grateful that he does, too.

The sun is hitching higher in the sky, edging up over the trees, hits her full tilt just as her expression dissolves around the soft edges of her delight again. “My dad has wings, too!”

She grins, all that loud, loud happiness, as she listens. Tilts her fine head as she slides her focus back to his face as something occurs to her. “You have two dads?” she asks without a trace of judgment. Too young to know how unusual it is, really. Knows nothing of the magic involved in his conception. Just knows that she only has one father, just knows that his parents are different from hers. “That’s really cool,” she adds, almost in haste, lest he think she finds it strange or wrong.

There is precious little about him that would not pique her interest, this much is abundantly clear when she turns her head to look at him closer, her dark brow furrowed in concentration. But it doesn’t take much at all to make her smile with the way his own mouth quivers with mischief. Her gaze flits easy between the corner of his mouth and his eye as he speaks and she cannot help but grin, too.

“That’s okay,” she says, decisive, “maybe someday I’ll meet her. What’s her name?”

heaven's gate had such
eloquent graffiti

basilica