Seventeen

𝖝𝖎𝖎𝖎. under french balconies

The pain whispered a mantra in Solaris' ear: I'm the only one here for you. She had set herself on fire, letting the flames go through her skin like needles inking her rage and embers stitching itself onto her. She's half-fire now. It forged her heritage, she had become the same fiery girl to anyone and everyone she had come across, but nobody ever bothered asking her why.

           They say that the human thigh is stronger than concrete, so if it was— then why has she been on her knees for somebody else, to be treated like she was a layer of skin shrinking into nothingness— her bones were strong but she never was. Death was the ink in her pen and she would write until her fingers bled and broke. All of them, humans alike, had their bodies made to be this strong but disregarded the one thing beyond their flesh: their soul.

             Hermione had a mouthful of forever, a bouquet of promises but it was all discarded when she had decided to leave. Their skin-to-skin pledge breaking into tiny pieces that Solaris swallowed but before she knew it, every fragment grew back to its size and she felt out of her body. Every tiny piece had carved zigzag lines on her heart.

"Where are you going?"

"Anywhere but here."

"Why are you running from me?"

"What was that?" Hermione paused, a hilt to her fast walk.

"What was what?"

"You told your sister we were together. We're not together, Solaris."

"Oh," Solaris said. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, no, you should be."

Hermione walked quicker than before, Solaris walked beside her with a sullen frown.

"You're leaving me, then?"

Hermione stopped.

"Yes."

"Hermione," Solaris said, Hermione kept walking. "Hermione. Listen to me."

"What?"

"Do you think it was easy for me to tell you everything I told you? Do you think it wasn't hard for me to let you in the way I did? I never do that for anyone. Anyone but you. You promised you wouldn't leave, but now you decide to?"

"Solaris," Hermione sighed. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah," Solaris scoffed. "You should be."

She had cut herself for Hermione, shedding her skin, letting the secrets spill out like blood— it wasn't painless— she had been waiting for her body to feel like a body rather than a museum of mosaic mourning.

                  "Solaris, wait—"

                  "No."

                   "I'm scared because—"

                    "Do you think I'm not?"

                    "I think I may love you."

                    Solaris stopped.

                    "What?"

                    "Forget it."

                    "No, I think I want to hear it
again." She smiled.

                    "Stop it."

                    "Come on," Solaris teased. "You've been breaking me up the whole night, this could mend me."

                     "Oh, shut up."

                     "You love me." Solaris sang.

                     "Not right now, I don't."

                     There were pinpricks in her chest. A knotted romance tangling itself into the echoes of her heart, sketching circles and infinite lines of fear in the pit of her belly and she had never been this scared. Her soul was turning in her body, a force shaking against her spirit that made the ice cold horror kiss every space between her spine and she stood frozen but smiled, something she hadn't managed to do until now and it's a silken grin that made her cheeks fuller with her paling joy. She hadn't been mourning them. For once, she lived in the present and it wasn't a nightmarish hope that glimmered the sparks in their dying ghosts, they were happy. Truly. Solaris raised her eyebrow.

                     "Fine," Hermione sighed. "I love you. I think."

Girl with a sword for a tongue had been left empty-handed. Venera's ballad swimming into her ears. She stood like a pile of ash, dissolving into the cracks— Hermione's words are slicing her loose— her reciprocation is staining like pomegranate on your fingers and mouth, burgundy juice resting on the sides of your lips, she smiled at Hermione. Solaris was volatile, a single sin that could have plagued all of Hermione's gardens: the dying perianth, the serpent's venom and with every breath Hermione takes, Solaris can feel Hermione's crown falling off by the second. So she hesitated.

(cause she could have sworn she had felt the knife)

Hermione frowned.

She hesitated because isn't the seraph the truest monster? The gentle creature with a placebo in its catacomb— the kindest ones have the sharpest daggers— but her mind repeats it. Again, and again, and again. Constantly. She loves her. It's her favourite pastime, her greatest tradition. Solaris blinked.

                     "I love you, I know."

Her words were as intimate as a jaw, as gentle as mandible grounded over the crimson floors.

Hermione smiled.

"That's a very clever hypothesis,
I think I may wholeheartedly agree."

"What about your mind?"

"It agrees, too."