such a wild, screaming weight; black-bodied and porous-boned

Time is inconsequential from there. Everything hurts in some way; her eyes burn, her temples throb with the rictus of her face, her fingers spasm from where they clench her brother's shirt, her veins ache as each heartbeat tells the rest of her body all it has lost. Every time this happens she believes no pain could be worse. That it is laughable to consider it survivable. Every time, she is forced to face the dismantling of that assumption; though she has never underestimated this kind of agony, it drowns her further with every loss.

Arya. Romina. Ru'in.

Ru'in again.

Enzo.

How long until she loses Flora? How many years, months, days until the only child she has left is taken from her arms?

The pain doesn't fade, but the tears do. There is no water left in her body to sustain them, or so it feels with how wrung out she feels. Eyes swollen nearly shut, she removes herself from Deimos enough to force them open, reaching higher on his shirt to lessen her grip and leaving wrinkles in her wake. "I need -" it's the roughest croak she has ever heard her voice create, but she soldiers on, "I need reasons to go on. So I - I came here." To Deimos. Right now, she only lives because of her family, and she could never break down this way to Flora.

Feel the fear and swallow back the tears
Let weakness disappear, there's nobody but me here

Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.