JUDE
you're like the sun, you wake me up
Jude sinks into her arms like a stone before he can understand the truth of her arrival. He met her so late in life, too late, but she is grander in his mind than life and death combined. Countless whispered stories and distant, awed expressions from Harper and Maeve had brought him to her side long before his legs brought him here for the first time. But what is she to him now? And he to her?
Her celestial existence and demand for loyalty is a cruel array of perfection. He wants her to cradle him like this forever, maternal but incapable of dying or vanishing. He wants to find her traits in the world around him, so that lovers will never stray and friends will never break their promises. But he can’t trust them even if such virtuous people existed. Because they are cursed to be human.
She is eternal. She is safe.
Her hands are a temperature he can’t describe as they tilt his face upward, and his eyes sting with tears the moment they meet hers. He is shameful and flawed and has nothing to offer her - but she calls him her sweet boy anyway. “Always,” his voice cracks as if he’s far younger than he is, cut open and pinned like a framed butterfly, hurting all over with the weight of her murmured comfort.
“Give me a name,” he begs her, something as tangible as smoke and distant stars that will settle as a comforting lie of her favor across his shoulders. “I don’t want to be theirs anymore. I don’t want Quinn, or Steadman or Ansel.” Jude shouldn’t ask her for more than he’d quested for, but he wants to pretend he can be hers in a way more meaningful than devotion. “Let me start over.” He has nothing to offer her that her chosen can’t fulfill, but perhaps he can atone for the shame of his family line by starting a new one. A truly faithful one.
Her celestial existence and demand for loyalty is a cruel array of perfection. He wants her to cradle him like this forever, maternal but incapable of dying or vanishing. He wants to find her traits in the world around him, so that lovers will never stray and friends will never break their promises. But he can’t trust them even if such virtuous people existed. Because they are cursed to be human.
She is eternal. She is safe.
Her hands are a temperature he can’t describe as they tilt his face upward, and his eyes sting with tears the moment they meet hers. He is shameful and flawed and has nothing to offer her - but she calls him her sweet boy anyway. “Always,” his voice cracks as if he’s far younger than he is, cut open and pinned like a framed butterfly, hurting all over with the weight of her murmured comfort.
“Give me a name,” he begs her, something as tangible as smoke and distant stars that will settle as a comforting lie of her favor across his shoulders. “I don’t want to be theirs anymore. I don’t want Quinn, or Steadman or Ansel.” Jude shouldn’t ask her for more than he’d quested for, but he wants to pretend he can be hers in a way more meaningful than devotion. “Let me start over.” He has nothing to offer her that her chosen can’t fulfill, but perhaps he can atone for the shame of his family line by starting a new one. A truly faithful one.
but you drain me out if I get too much
