The skies are black with lead-filled rain
a morbid painting on display
a morbid painting on display
Entwined as they are, they look like twins. Maybe that’s why Hotaru feels like she can crumble and break apart in Flora’s arms, like this splintering, terrible grief is a shared thing written in the tear stains on Flora’s cheeks - because Flora looks and acts just like the aunt she never got to know. Hotaru’s twin, who would have held her, and cried with her, and been angry on her behalf in the exact same ways that Hotaru’s daughter does instead. It’s like alcohol that burns the wound it seeks to cleanse. She clings to Flora and sees her plain, but for a moment, even so, she still sees Raeden’s face just beyond her daughter’s shoulder. It makes it too easy to fall apart - show pieces of herself that Flora perhaps shouldn’t be privy to, inspiring dread where it had never thought to grow. Ru prays that Kaisel’s heart will never wither like Sunjata’s; for Flora’s sake.
Tomorrow, she thinks, she will build the pieces back up into something that feels more like herself. She will pray for dreamless sleep and try to remember who she used to be before Sunjata was ever a name she knew. She’s so tired of picking up the pieces, but the Valkyrie has never learned how to quit.
Maybe that’s why a piece of her stirs at Flora’s suggestion. A piece that shouldn’t lift its head, that should let things lie, and just stop trying to force shapes into holes they were never meant to fit in.
“…at the very least if he sees it as my fault it died, maybe fixing it would be reparations?” Even if she’d done little more than keep it safe, keep it close, as she’d promised the day he gave it to her. Peeling away to fix eyes gone red-streaked with tears upon Flora, Hotaru’s lips cease wavering and instead go still and contemplative. Rejuvenated by the slim, impossible chance at fixing things. Maybe not fully, but enough to reach some sort of closure that she has been denied. “He may not change his mind. But at least I won’t be waiting and wondering.” She bites her lip, eyes darting away in girlish shame. “It can’t somehow be something that would upset him…surely?”
Tomorrow, she thinks, she will build the pieces back up into something that feels more like herself. She will pray for dreamless sleep and try to remember who she used to be before Sunjata was ever a name she knew. She’s so tired of picking up the pieces, but the Valkyrie has never learned how to quit.
Maybe that’s why a piece of her stirs at Flora’s suggestion. A piece that shouldn’t lift its head, that should let things lie, and just stop trying to force shapes into holes they were never meant to fit in.
“…at the very least if he sees it as my fault it died, maybe fixing it would be reparations?” Even if she’d done little more than keep it safe, keep it close, as she’d promised the day he gave it to her. Peeling away to fix eyes gone red-streaked with tears upon Flora, Hotaru’s lips cease wavering and instead go still and contemplative. Rejuvenated by the slim, impossible chance at fixing things. Maybe not fully, but enough to reach some sort of closure that she has been denied. “He may not change his mind. But at least I won’t be waiting and wondering.” She bites her lip, eyes darting away in girlish shame. “It can’t somehow be something that would upset him…surely?”
This is the night that young love died
Buried at each others sides
Buried at each others sides
