09-06-2021, 04:40 PM
She was born there.
Asterope had been born in the darkness and then led into more darkness by a father who seemed made of the darkness. Her gaze falls heavy on the flowers and her heart spasms and she reaches for one, touches it gently with her nose, thinks maybe it will fill her with color, too.
Sickle is her most treasured friend, she thinks. And not only because she is the only friend who has ever bought her gifts. But because she is the only friend who has ever stayed. The only friend who has ever come back. The only friend who has spoken freely, candidly. The only friend who has ever acted as a salve for the great loneliness that lives inside her.
And she knows that the colors of the flowers will wilt and fade and be lost to the sediment at the bottom of the pond, but she will remember them always.
She shifts her focus back to her friend at the mention of a brother and notes the shifting of her expression. She knows it well, the sadness. The kind of specific grief that goes along with losing a sibling. So she finally reaches out to touch her, bumping her knee gently when she extends a coltish limb into the water.
She looks at her a long moment and says, “I have two sisters.” And in this, she hopes that Sickle understands that what she really means is, I know, I know, I know. She knows what it means to love and lose. Because it must go without saying that she has not seen her sisters since they were taken from her one at a time, marched away into the darkness until she was the only one left.
“What happened to him?” she asks quietly, an invitation for Sickle to trust her with her grief.
Asterope had been born in the darkness and then led into more darkness by a father who seemed made of the darkness. Her gaze falls heavy on the flowers and her heart spasms and she reaches for one, touches it gently with her nose, thinks maybe it will fill her with color, too.
Sickle is her most treasured friend, she thinks. And not only because she is the only friend who has ever bought her gifts. But because she is the only friend who has ever stayed. The only friend who has ever come back. The only friend who has spoken freely, candidly. The only friend who has ever acted as a salve for the great loneliness that lives inside her.
And she knows that the colors of the flowers will wilt and fade and be lost to the sediment at the bottom of the pond, but she will remember them always.
She shifts her focus back to her friend at the mention of a brother and notes the shifting of her expression. She knows it well, the sadness. The kind of specific grief that goes along with losing a sibling. So she finally reaches out to touch her, bumping her knee gently when she extends a coltish limb into the water.
She looks at her a long moment and says, “I have two sisters.” And in this, she hopes that Sickle understands that what she really means is, I know, I know, I know. She knows what it means to love and lose. Because it must go without saying that she has not seen her sisters since they were taken from her one at a time, marched away into the darkness until she was the only one left.
“What happened to him?” she asks quietly, an invitation for Sickle to trust her with her grief.
Drops of dew from their hair
@Sickle