my held breath fills the room with blood
hurting in ways I can't describe
She doesn’t get the return letter from Sah. She is already gone. If her wings hadn’t given out halfway around the mountain range, perhaps she would have already been in Torchline by now. Just another failure.
Her head is a mix of currents, but chief among them is the dark, yawning pull of blackness that promises depths she’d prayed never to see again. The rhythmic hush of waves as she waits for the next skyboat - or regular vessel, she doesn’t truly care - is the only thing that keeps her breathing, as if the crawl of foam across sand is pushing air into her lungs against her will. Hotaru wouldn’t be surprised if it was; this isn’t the first time she’s been disappointed by the blind dedication to survival that human bodies insist upon even when the organ devoted to its existence is withering and cracking into nothing. To inflict such pain but still demand life is a cruelty she longs to exact revenge for.
But who is there to blame but herself? She should have intervened, shown Flora the error of her ways long before now. Not been so swept up in the ring on her finger and the euphoria of access to her son. Flora was wrong - but now she is dead. So Hotaru sits on the beach like a stray piece of sea glass, overlooked by milling travelers waiting for the same boat, her former prismatic shine muted and dulled to nothing by the endless pressure of the ocean’s disregard.
Her head is a mix of currents, but chief among them is the dark, yawning pull of blackness that promises depths she’d prayed never to see again. The rhythmic hush of waves as she waits for the next skyboat - or regular vessel, she doesn’t truly care - is the only thing that keeps her breathing, as if the crawl of foam across sand is pushing air into her lungs against her will. Hotaru wouldn’t be surprised if it was; this isn’t the first time she’s been disappointed by the blind dedication to survival that human bodies insist upon even when the organ devoted to its existence is withering and cracking into nothing. To inflict such pain but still demand life is a cruelty she longs to exact revenge for.
But who is there to blame but herself? She should have intervened, shown Flora the error of her ways long before now. Not been so swept up in the ring on her finger and the euphoria of access to her son. Flora was wrong - but now she is dead. So Hotaru sits on the beach like a stray piece of sea glass, overlooked by milling travelers waiting for the same boat, her former prismatic shine muted and dulled to nothing by the endless pressure of the ocean’s disregard.
my heart bends and breaks
so many, many times
HOTARU
