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August 9 - August 16, 2025
But this girl—she was the red and orange of autumn leaves in the looming, dark woods. She was the flame of life that burned on and on, the warmth I would never feel again, the embers that had dimmed when I’d forsaken my humanity for an eternity of ice and death.
Live, Little Flame. If you can survive what you have and still burn this blindingly, I have no doubt you will lead a life worthy of immortalization. Not the kind that has killed and buried my soul—but the kind that lives on with your children and ancestors in spoken word, or ink on pages that make it to strangers across the realm. Live. Burn. And never, ever, let them dim your fucking light.
I wanted blood. I deserved blood. The blood of every man who had ever betrayed my own needs and desires in favor of his own. Every man who’d made me feel the crushing, suffocating weight of my own loneliness, who’d shoved me into that empty place where the sound of my own heartbeat was too loud, too much.
“I will ruin all others for you, Scarlett,” he said. “Anything else but us will only feel empty, meaningless, soulless. I will be the only thing you can see, the only being worthy of touching you, of seeing all of you.” His power stilled, a resolute calmness eclipsing his features. “That is what I will demand of you, and what you will eventually give freely. All of you. The parts that you hide, the parts that you hate, the parts that others have made you ashamed of, the parts that you flaunt and wield as weapons.”
“At any given time, you’re likely the weakest and most vulnerable being in the room.”
“And yet you burn. Despite everything you’ve endured, all the pain and the loneliness and the grief and the betrayal, you burn fucking blindingly, like you can’t help but be anything less than radiantly alive. In you I see hope that never dies, and some might call it weak or naive, but I think it’s the most beautiful thing about you, this radical choice to be open and warm in a world that is overwhelmingly cold and brutal.”
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“Nothing you do is like anyone else.”
“You don’t believe in your own perfection yet, but one day you will. I’ll make sure you see yourself the way I do even if I have to destroy the entire realm to do it.”
“Artists, witches, and mystics often speak of the phenomenon of two souls meeting here on earth who knew each other in past lifetimes, or on some other plane of existence that we traversed before our lives began. And that’s why it sometimes feels like we know people before they tell us who they are. That’s why certain beings draw us in and others repel us. Because we’re all stuck in this karmic web together, predestined to love and hurt the same souls over and over until we finally learn the gods’ will.”
Because it was only through knowing the darkness that I could one day find myself drowned in light. I believed in love written in the stars because I couldn’t fathom living in a world without it.
“I’m tired of being alone,” she whispered. “Exhausted from it, really.” She was deflated, her light dimming to gently glowing embers. “I don’t want to absorb another wound by myself. I can’t.” “You don’t have to.”
“There is no competition in trauma. None of it is ever better or worse than any other. Trauma is not what happens to you. It’s what happens inside of you as a result of what happens to you.”
“I told you that I’d bring your every dream to fruition. In your eyes, I see galaxies and oceans, and a deep darkness too. You should always be surrounded by the rawness of life. The lofty beauty and the harsh bite of pain. I want you to experience it all.”
“Scarlett, I would drink your darkness, bathe in it, pull it into me while I held you inside my own.”
Besides death, suffering is what we fear most, what most beings try to avoid at all costs. The stronger are the ones that accept that all pain, emotional and physical, are the most natural and inevitable parts of our existence. Those who find a way to make suffering beautiful again are the strongest of all.”
Don’t accept the half-love that you’ve grown accustomed to. Only accept the full, staggering devotion that you deserve. It’s what we all deserve. To feel wholeheartedly chosen, desired, secure, and nurtured. Anything less is theft.”
“Since the moment those dangerous eyes met mine, I dreamed of putting you in your place, just how you’ve always craved,” he said. “Teach you humility, respect, devotion. Make you into your most powerful self, strong enough to fear nothing and no one but me—the only being in this world you will ever have to answer to again. The only will other than your own you will ever be beholden to. The only authority you ever have to recognize other than that of your own heart.”
“Scarlett, you are the only thing that feels different in a world that never changes.”