11-20-2021, 12:16 PM
Her heart twinges and spasms with a stab of fondness for her friend when she promises to bring one in every color so that Asterope can choose her favorite.
Asterope does not know what it means to love someone in the same way you’d love a sister. She had never been given the chance to love the two other nymphs before they had been spirited away, shackled to some other body of water. (At least, this is what she chooses to believe has happened to them because she cannot bear the thought that the Reaper had killed them instead. Or, worse, allowed them to live a life free of bondage when he had seen it fit to condemn her to this dark heart of the forest.)
But she thinks she must love Sickle in the same ways she would have loved her sisters if she’d been given the chance. (Though it is strange to think that she is capable of loving anything in any way.)
“I’m so glad you found me,” she confesses, quiet, before she submerges her mouth beneath the surface of the water so that Sickle cannot see the way it crumples around something like sadness.
And she steers the conversation swiftly away from this and to something much safer, though her heart twinges again when Sickle says that there aren’t many things she can’t change into. She wonders if Sickle could change her, too. If she could take away her useless wings so she could stop dreaming about taking flight and leaving the forest and its pond behind.
The question does strike her as strange but she plunges beneath the surface of the water, swimming fiercely for the bottom. It is not far, just deep enough that she cannot touch the bottom anywhere. (She had known this, of course, she has spent almost every moment of her life exploring this pond and its depths, but it had felt good to demonstrate, too.) When she breaks the surface again, she smiles and says, “it’s a little deep.” And there is a kind of hopefulness in it, as if she’s hoping this is the right answer.
Asterope does not know what it means to love someone in the same way you’d love a sister. She had never been given the chance to love the two other nymphs before they had been spirited away, shackled to some other body of water. (At least, this is what she chooses to believe has happened to them because she cannot bear the thought that the Reaper had killed them instead. Or, worse, allowed them to live a life free of bondage when he had seen it fit to condemn her to this dark heart of the forest.)
But she thinks she must love Sickle in the same ways she would have loved her sisters if she’d been given the chance. (Though it is strange to think that she is capable of loving anything in any way.)
“I’m so glad you found me,” she confesses, quiet, before she submerges her mouth beneath the surface of the water so that Sickle cannot see the way it crumples around something like sadness.
And she steers the conversation swiftly away from this and to something much safer, though her heart twinges again when Sickle says that there aren’t many things she can’t change into. She wonders if Sickle could change her, too. If she could take away her useless wings so she could stop dreaming about taking flight and leaving the forest and its pond behind.
The question does strike her as strange but she plunges beneath the surface of the water, swimming fiercely for the bottom. It is not far, just deep enough that she cannot touch the bottom anywhere. (She had known this, of course, she has spent almost every moment of her life exploring this pond and its depths, but it had felt good to demonstrate, too.) When she breaks the surface again, she smiles and says, “it’s a little deep.” And there is a kind of hopefulness in it, as if she’s hoping this is the right answer.
Drops of dew from their hair
@Sickle