held on tightly, anyone

[basilica]

The only time she had ever wished for wings were those days when her mother had walked her clear across the earth and the knees and hips and shoulders had ached so fiercely that it had made her cry. Big, ugly tears. Tears that had made her mean. But she looks up at the sky now, too, really studies it like she’s looking at it through his eyes instead of her own. And she feels a distant pang in her chest when she thinks that maybe she’d like to know that kind of freedom, too.

She drops her head before he does and capitalizes on the opportunity to study his upturned face. And finds herself grateful to have found a friend, to have found him in particular. Because their magic is the same and there is no room in her chest for anything but relief when she looks at him.

“Yeah,” she agrees, her own smile mirroring his as he finally drops his head, “you could go wherever you wanted.” It sounds lame, even to her, and heat pools in her cheeks as she reorients her focus with the earth unfurling before them.

“What’s your sister like?” she asks, head tilted as she studies the rocks underfoot. She doesn’t have siblings herself. None that she knows of anyway. She’s wondered, more than once, what it would be like to have someone with whom to share secrets.

She perks up at the mention of his friend, Astrum, and her grin deepens when he insists that she’ll get to meet her. “Is she nice like you?”

heaven's gate had such
eloquent graffiti

basilica