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May 13 - May 15, 2025
“Better to die free than live on your knees,”
my choice had already been made—long before I’d come to stand in this place.
It was in that moment that I recognized the beauty of the way Estrella saw the world, of the way she interacted with it and appreciated all life. She would not have hesitated to interfere and save the centaur and her daughter. Because she loved.
“You, girl. Your soul. Your very being and your inner strength. Anyone can have magic, but not everyone is worthy of keeping it.”
“Because you, dear Tempest, were first born in the Cradle of Creation,” she said, stealing the wind from my lungs.
“Knowledge is power and not all here would see you stumble in the dark,”
“Everyone has their own motives, and you would be a fool to forget that. Everyone will use you to their own advantage, especially here. You are the tides, constantly shifting. We would all guide you in a direction that serves us. We were merely the ones fortunate enough to be tasked with it.”
Suffering to gain strength was a ridiculous excuse crafted by abusers and the privileged.
Loyalty to the faith above all else became far, far easier to achieve if they could limit the people we cared about and turn us against one another. It was easier to keep us subservient if we were stranded islands living in proximity to one another, rather than a community that looked after our own.
I was not just a tempest. I was the storm as something new surged through me.
“Every monster is the hero of their own story, and every hero the villain of someone else’s. You will always be Mab’s villain, just as she is yours,”
“Our love isn’t gentle or kind. It’s rough and all-consuming; it’s a raging inferno that destroys the world in its wake.”
There was a reason those who had power, and respected that power for what it was, didn’t want to keep it forever. There was a reason Kings and Queens who lived forever would one day pass on their rule to their heirs—a reason the Primordials had retreated from our world and given it to their children. Nobody should bear the weight of that responsibility forever.
You make me want to be better. You make me want more than I have ever dared to dream of, and you make me believe in light, when all I’ve known is night.”
He was a song of beauty in the wind, a harmony moving enough to make listeners cry.
“There’s so much pain out there. So much suffering, and I know it’s only a matter of time before it steals someone else from me. The more time I waste, the more I think I’ll lose in the end.”
Your fear of yourself is your greatest weakness. Be the fucking monster, Estrella. For they will judge you as one either way.”
“You will in time. It is your destiny to end the cycle that has existed since the dawn of creation. It is your destiny to remake the world as you see fit and begin anew. It is your destiny to destroy us all, so that we can be reborn from the ashes of your wrath,”
“You, my love, are the Tempest of the Fates. You were born to shift the balance of power, for you carry a piece of the Fates inside you that can never be carved out,”
Age hardened you. It tore the kindness from your soul and ripped the care from your bones.
Age tore the innocence away. Age took your ability to be hurt and morphed it into a fever dream, a breathing, tangible thing that you could never seem to shake. Age made it so that you anticipated the pain of that betrayal with every step you took.
“How am I to say if I am worthy when I do not know what it is I will become? I don’t think there is anyone who is worthy of the kind of power the Primordials and Gods possess. All I can do is endeavor to be fair and just, to give those around me the best life possible and not allow my magic to corrupt me in the same way it has so many others. Does that make me worthy, or does that make me blinded by my own idealism that I might be different than those who came before me?”
