Flora’s silence stirs up a nest of moths in the hollow of my stomach, their wings brushing panic against my ribs as I brace for rejection that doesn’t come. Her sound, her shift, the way her voice threads into something gentler—something fragile and breathless inside me starts to tremble. I hadn’t realized how close I was to falling apart. What would become of me, untethered, if they turned me away?
I nod, my smile blooming. “Cousin, right,” I echo, and the word spills from me like warm sunlight melting through cracks in cold stone. I have a cousin—soft-hearted, steel-spined, radiant in kindness—and this is the first time we’ve met. “My mom overreacted. I’ve been trying to convince her to talk to them for years.” I shake my head, a slow, rueful thing. “And she became paranoid. Convinced if she stayed in the fight, she’d lose me.” I don’t want to say she’s already lost me—because she hasn’t. I love her with every thread of my soul, and I swore I’d return. I will. She’s my mother. But this was a path I had to walk, even if it meant walking away first.
“Good idiots”—the phrase turns the corners of my mouth upward like a flower following sunlight. Hope rises in me like dawn cresting the horizon, brilliant and impossible to contain. I sit straighter, and though my hands still tremble, I can breathe. Really breathe.
“I’m glad you’re human,” I say, voice quieter, steadier now. “Put-together is smoke and mirrors, you know? No one really is behind all that.” I shrug, a flicker of mischief rising to meet the warmth in my chest. “I mean, if you were hoping for a cousin more useful than a gnat, sorry to disappoint. I was fourteen last season.”
but my god, you're alive and it's spectacular
