held on tightly, anyone

[basilica]

She begins to shiver.

And the child wishes that her mother were here or that she’d never left her here in the first place. Because she is shy, perhaps shyer than she’d realized, and children are pairing up all around her and she feels so dreadfully exposed out here in the open. She wishes for something to pitch herself against, something solid to lean on, but this magic is not available to her and she has no choice but to go on standing out there in the open, her teeth gritted and her eyes burning.

Would her mother be upset if she slunk into the shadows and waited for her there? The child swallows and listens to the earnest beating of her own heart, her strong, strong heart just like her father’s.

She is looking for a way out when he comes closer, abruptly distracting her from her plans for escape. The child turns her head sharply, all wide-eyed, and blinks at him. He is pale where she is dark, a stark contrast to the blackness to which she has become accustomed. Her mother, her father. And she has to blink thrice before she convinces herself that the way he glows has nothing to do with his light refracting the sun. His glow is born from something inside of him, just as hers is born from something inside of her.

The child grins.
And this time it bears no resemblance to a grimace.
It ignites a smoldering ember in her eyes.

“Hi!” she blurts, perhaps too eager. But the child is too young to know how to temper her happiness. She will learn eventually, for better or worse. But for now, she does not know how not to let all that delight show plainly on her dark face.

“My name is Basilica,” she tells him, just as her mother had taught her, “what’s yours?”

heaven's gate had such
eloquent graffiti

basilica