Wild ​Reverence

by Rebecca Ross

War only makes love flame brighter, defiant. It seems to bloom from the bloodshed you leave behind, unfurling from the most unlikely places. From the broken seams of the world. From the graves and the anguish and the fear you inspire.”

You are winter as you are fire and cunning, and I need your advice.”

“Do not let the dreams make you too soft,” she said. “Guard your own soul, child.”

For men are like eithrals: they are drawn to shining, quicksilver things, keen to tame them. And while I trusted Vincent, I did not trust any other mortal.

And I wondered how it was possible for my heart to miss something that I had never experienced.

This is the beginning of the end, I thought. If heartless gods can be made soft by such love, we are all doomed.

In that moment, I realized how right Alva was: sleep did expose glimpses of the soul, but it also revealed fragments of reality.

pray that my days will be long at your side. Let me fill and satisfy every longing in your soul. May your hand be in mine, by sun and by night. Let our breaths twine and our blood become one, until our bones return to dust. Even then, may I find your soul still sworn to mine.

“There are some things that are doomed to be, no matter what divinity believes.”

Her fate is woven with yours. A knot that not even I can unravel.