held on tightly, anyone

[basilica]

She doesn’t know where they’re headed, but she likes the way the earth rolls away from them. Expanding as they travel. And she tries to imagine what it would be like if they were flying, how the landscape might look from above. It gives her a little thrill just to think it and she smiles a secret little thing, grateful for the earth and his company and the way the heart beats just a little more earnest.

But she can’t stay lost in her thoughts too long, not with the way he’s smiling. She wonders what it’s like to have a sibling, someone whose parts perfectly complemented hers. Someone tough and smart. Someone who would have no choice but to be her friend.

“That must be so nice,” she says and grins. “Your family sounds wonderful.” She says it earnest, bright-eyed, no trace of bitterness in her tone. Even though her own father had looked at her, called her beautiful, and then told her mother that they shouldn’t have come. She thinks of him often, wonders about him, convinced that he must be more than the raw, bleeding wound.

She does not dwell on him long now. She can’t lest it get her insides all blue again. She doesn’t recognize sadness, doesn’t know how to call it what it is.

“That’s okay,” she murmurs, watching the circle of trees fall away, oblivious to the fairies that watch them disappear across the edge. “Strangers can be scary sometimes, so I don’t blame her.”

heaven's gate had such
eloquent graffiti

basilica