You can effortlessly turn something pure in-nature, a character; a flower to be corrupted.
Upon nurturing something bred twisted, deformed, unnatural. To become even decent is a contested battle. So close, when someone wicked attempts to be understanding reach balance. They're met with a catastrophe in which, breaks the wheels of the vehicle... Derailing the destination.
Challenges formulate upon all acts of life. On the precipice of a new tinted-view. The smell of aromatherapy of nature coursing in the Seeker. Peace was so terribly close, so narrowing, his ownership.
Rejoined with a tranquil walk into the Shrouds. His splintered side required regrowth. He confronted his future and made vows his steadied courses, were committed and reclaimed more than just a Crew, his purpose, promises.
Thinking of the dread, named Past. It no-longer ached. He felt unprecedentedly brave enough to anti-steer, conqueror them.
Two-eyes, held those focus. His hands were filled in the ample consideration of that. But in doing so... One necessary thing was forgotten, abstracted and taken away. He wasn't looking at the Present.
His stride march gave a pause in the meadows, he felt watched. Scanning around. Something felt unnervingly wrong; instinct attempted a hook. --He misunderstood, when he took up a challenger in a new youth, a formidable pirate nonetheless. Hungriness came and it'd do anything to make a statement.
Masked eyelids camouflaged into the trees opened suddenly and a stealth man on a mission lobbed a nasty ambush on the Seeker. A trip to the leg's sending him down and elbow to the back of the head, lifting him up with dominant display and hurling him and every time resistance was attempted, he was lobbed into a series of brass knuckles butchering and busting up flesh.
A new lion was here to eat the old. His name was Sinbad, and he wouldn't be ignored, or allow snarky comments. Letting out an animistic outcry.
The Seeker raked the eyes before attempting a leg lock and although pushed back the Highlander he dropped a formidable knee crusher onto the ankle. Snapping it like a twig.
Did he ever think someone like him was capable of keeping solace, in the world of chaos? The sea's rumbled skies followed in mimicker.
Whilst this Seeker reflected on all those other things, learning to be decent. He was brought down by the hammer of indecent. What it means to own raw tenacity. He read up on his opponent, tricked scents, followed and did what any would do to claim victory. He targeted the most fragile thing, hope.
Breaking that kept the bad man insane. It made good kneel and run tears to their fellows and brought down everyone in association. Captain tried to fight back but wasn't any match for a surprise onslaught. This was carnage incarnate.
Leaving him blurred in a heap of his own inadequate mess. The Seeker found barely any air. Before his highlander opposition pinned his arm and then picked up a sizable gravel almost nearly a boulder and brought it crushing down.
A scream echoed agony throughout the forest brought bird's to shake out and flock from the gruesome foe.
Message couldn't be louder.
"You're a nobody, a hack and as I said, bad decisions... Your time in this sun has sailed. I'd like to see you even try showing up in Seven Sun's to our showdown. This isn't even a fraction of the brutality I'm capable of administering." He'd provoke and taunt the rubbish. Before ripping off his link-pearl, and communing with one, he recalled before their battle Judas his First Crewmate carried an identical, in an uncanny declaration.
"You've got trash to pick-up." Not only sending the signal to one, but the whole Crew on notice. He savagely spoke the coordinates before throwing the communication device in the continent. This would be taken seriously. This wasn't a showdown between honorables.
This was securing his survival. Because under the tribunal and barbaric battle they had scheduled, things wouldn't remain ever the same. It'd all be flipped up-side down.
Heaving his lung's depleted, wheezing. Left trying to catch up with evolution, cruelty's world, attempting to turn back all the progression-made. He was about to become outright, to mean a fate crueler than death, to be poisoned by doubt.
So close. Although so terribly, far away. This wasn't a world, where a-nobody could prevail in, he wasn't chosen, not blessed by light, not a herald of anyone remotely important. Where someone like him could rise in. This all came back to just not being born with it. Bastardized, orphaned, he was being reminded of the cuffs, and restraints on him. How he paraded and offered liberation, but was the most imprisoned, of them all.
Crushed figuratively, literally. He attempted to get his arm out of the rubble, but was caught, and broken. Tear's from the cloud's wept down on him, cause he couldn't, do it.
He wanted that fix under the moment. All succumb too often; above even lust. To give up, not be involved with it. And that brought opening to the door, which always presents the great flood dubbed, doubt. It's so incredibly hard to swim against that once it takes hold.
Then a soft miraculous thing came over top of him, or well, crashed onto his chest. The spiritual-guide and butterfly of shared representation. Its wing was clipped, almost identically. It struggled, was trying to flutter, take off, levitate, loom but was unable. It looked so pathetic, trying...
But there was the 'guide'.
Sure, it couldn't fly. Didn't function, was a
butterfly still one, after clipped wings?
Captain let out rage, pent-up anger, not yet came to grips with. At-least this butterfly tried! If an insect can... Then why can't he do the same?! Gritting fanged-teeth he hurled over the boulder crushing his damaged arm and found a removal of a shackle.
This was all the means to a story of learning to fly; stand again as tallest.
Wobble, crawl pathetically like an insect, do whatever it takes, but he'd see-through to his course. Gnarling back he wouldn't surrender, not again. Scenario were different, if he allowed it, then the whole ship goes under, and his Crew too suffer. Unmistakable his last-chance.
Under break-through, a fellow bolt of lightning broke throughout nearly blinding him from worming with his chin, dirtied, bloodied, violated and beaten, unable to get up on his own.
A towering presence of a silhouette gave forth over his declension. What did the rain pour now...
Fleur in wintertime is as picturesque as picturesque comes. It is as though it has been ripped right from a scene in a painting. Snow blankets the ground. Trees, towering overhead, wear crowns of icicles that threaten to drop at any moment. Men, women, and children go about their daily lives, bundled in warm clothes, cheeks rosy and smiles abundant. It’s different enough from what he’d expected to find that he is almost startled by it. If it weren’t for the cloak draped over his shoulders, he’d have been content to simply sit there and freeze.
It has been some time since he last got to indulge in peace, even the mere notion of it.
The men he’s taken with him for this particular foray from Val Faim seem to be in as much shock as he is. They trail behind on their own mounts, stopping every few minutes to look at wares that shine regardless of how brisk it is outside. He has to call back over his shoulder more than once to spur them on -- something that would normally irritate him, but this time, Michel can’t really begrudge them for it. The Duval Estate is easy enough to spot after they are given proper directions by the locals. It’s as dreamy and grand as the rest of this little town, although the air has more of a weight to it. For Michel, the feeling doesn’t take long to identify.
He feels like he’s just stepped onto a battlefield after the bloodshed has concluded.
He might as well be, he thinks, as his men go to tie up the horses and he is left to approach the front door and knock. This should be simple. He’s praying to the Prophet that it is. It’s a servant who answers, their face mask, and he gives them a polite nod. “I’m looking for Lady Duval,” he begins, and then, unsure of Yvon might have returned in the wake of her sister’s end, “ah, the eldest. Gisele.” The opening widens, he is invited inside -- and then, standing there in the grand foyer of the home, he is left to wait while Gisele is fetched.
27 YEARS OLD. PRINCIPAL DANCER AT THE NEW YORK CITY BALLET.
❛ and that’s no apple but a heart torn out of someone in this myth gone suddenly aztec. this is the possibility of death the snake is offering: death upon death squeezed together, a blood snowball. to devour it is to fall out of the still unending noon to a hard ground with a straight horizon and you are no longer the idea of a body but a body.
❛ this is how you learn prayer. love is choosing, the snake said. the kingdom of god is within you because you ate it. ❜
𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐋.
𝐅𝐔𝐋𝐋 𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄: eva madelena riviere, known professionally as eva miro
𝐍𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒: swan queen; the swan
𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐇𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐄: march 18th 1934 — 27 years old
𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐇: arlington, virginia
𝐎𝐂𝐂𝐔𝐏𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍: principal dancer at the new york city ballet
𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐓: HERE
𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐍.
EXT. ARLINGTON / a midsummer day; old southern gothic; dawn breaking over a horizon; the scent of magnolia and vanilla sweetening the air; homemade iced tea at the height of noon; secrets sealed in closed lockets and closed rooms; sun swept afternoons; the feeling of grass beneath your bare feet; wet blood streaked across palms; picking wildflower bouquets; the skeletons buried in the family closet
if this was a fairytale we would begin not at the beginning, but here, in the still antebellum calm before the storm. here is the amber-glaze veneer of old world nostalgia, curled at the edges like a faded photograph; a moment in time slipped between acts, between prelude and prologue: it begins in a garden.
a girl, half-sunbeam and half-wildness, twirls across the grass barefoot, lighter than a wayward breeze. there’s a woman watching her dance, an exclusive performance for an audience of one. the piece ends and the girl sweeps into an extravagant bow, dipping her head to the imaginary shower of roses raining down upon her impromptu stage of weeds and wildflowers. her solitary spectator bursts into jubilant applause, her laughter incandescent, filling her from throat to limb to toe. the both of them, radiant, the colour of sun swept afternoon, sprawl in the golden hour shade beneath the willow oaks. the girl lays her head in the woman’s lap as she soothes her fingers through the dark tangles of hair so like her own. she closes her eyes, breathing in the tenderness and blooming summersweet in the air.
her name is eva.
—
there is a way of telling this story that makes it bearable, but only just. enduring, in the way of the tide wearing away a thousand years of sand and stone, returning everything to seafoam.
perhaps we start with once upon a time, because it’s familiar and feels handmade. once upon a time, there was a prince. he was handsome and charming — two things too easily mistaken for good — and beloved by all that encountered him. magnetic by nature and flirtatious by disposition, he deflected the rumours and speculation swirling around him about marriage by declaring that he would go down on one knee only when he had met the most beautiful woman in the kingdom. but summers passed and the prince remained inexplicably unmarried. you see, though the kingdom was rife with dainty high-born ladies and heiresses, the most beautiful woman in the kingdom was not a lady or an heiress. she was the daughter of the castle’s steward, kept out of sight and mind by the humble circumstances of her birth. her beauty is fairytale, dreamlike, unrivalled by any woman the prince had ever graced with a smile or a kiss to bare knuckles. he thinks, at last, i’ve found you.
in the story, the prince and the steward’s daughter fall in love. against the king and queen’s wishes, the prince announces his engagement to his newfound love. they are married in the palace gardens, a simple ceremony with only a priest in attendance. nonetheless, their happiness glows with tangible sunlight.
a year later, the steward’s daughter gives birth to a princess. the last thing she sees in the world is the sight of her daughter’s eyes peering up at her, dark and starlit as her own. the prince takes his daughter into his arms as his wife draws her last breath, his greatest joy and most terrible loss coalescing with his daughter’s first cry.
despite the tragedy surrounding her birth, the little princess’ childhood is full of life and laughter and simple pleasures. she is raised by a nursemaid who becomes like a mother to her. what more is flesh and blood, after all, than the woman who cradles you at night and sings you lullabies to sleep, who kisses your scratched knees and teaches you how to dance? she is her world, and her world is everything the nursemaid nurtures within her, stoking the embers of imagination and zeal, courage and fearlessness. the princess learns to dance almost as soon as she learns to walk. she is raised with music and song, the rhythm of hands and feet barely a step from instinct. she dances as she breathes, intrinsically, innately, like the music is another facet of bone or artery. when she is seven years old, she begins classes with a private master. by the next full moon, she is ready to leave the kingdom to dance, to dance forever.
INT. NEW YORK / the cold curling around your skin and through your bones like a well-worn blanket; the loneliness of being inimitable; the becoming of a star; the aching of muscle and sinew; gazing out at the city skyline at 3 in the morning; the whispers trailing in your wake; tongues and nails sharp as razor blades; hunger blooming in the dark
interlude: eva is twelve when she wins a scholarship to the school of american ballet in new york. sixteen, when george balanchine handpicks her to join the new york city ballet. eighteen, when she becomes the first black principal dancer.
she is one of only two dancers in the ballet that is not white, and mariana was at least born and bred in spanish harlem. eva, with her burnished skin and southern lilt, sticks out like an unruly hair from a bun, like a ballet master’s correction. she is good, unrivalled for her age, but not the best, and it doesn’t take long for the muffled whispers and cutting glances to score and scrape away at any last shred of resilience. the isolation and playground tyranny, she can live with, but it is the loneliness, the distance from her aunty celia, the homesickness that festers in her stomach like spoiled milk, that makes her bend until she feels like she could break. she writes dozens of letters home to her beloved nursemaid that she doesn’t send, and resolves to wait out the year until summer when she decides she will quit.
the magnolia trees are in full bloom when she arrives in arlington, and maybe it is the smell of home, or the jetlag, but when she sees aunty celia, she dissolves into a cloudburst of salt and tears. she spends the summer in a daze of blissful relief, tucking ballet from her thoughts like a chest of old dolls in the attic. it isn’t until the second last day before she is to return to new york that aunty summons her to the garden. aunty, who is nothing like an aunty, really, with her petite frame and miles of thick, dark curls framing a painter’s muse of a face. tell me what is wrong, aunty celia says. you haven’t danced a single moment since you came home. eva bites her lip and stares skyward. i’m quitting, aunty. i hate it there. i don’t belong there, it’s cold and i miss home. i miss you, and papa, and being here. aunty arches a picturesque brow. but what about dancing? won’t you miss it? eva clenches her teeth, insistent. i can dance here, too. i can dance anywhere.
listen, little bird, aunty never calls her that anymore, not since she was tiny and still begged for bedtime stories. aunty holds out her hand and eva takes it, reluctant but with a quiet thrill at the easy gentleness of her touch. aunty twirls her slowly in a semi-circle, arm raised elegantly above her head. you will never belong anywhere because you weren’t meant to; you were made to be brilliant. you are a star, and stars only shine brightest in the dark.
so eva returns to new york, carrying a music box — her parting gift from aunty, specially crafted just for her, to play whenever she feels cold and misses home — and an inimitable light inside her that refuses to be tamed for anyone or anything. she is relentless, driven by more than mere ambition and pride. everything she does, she becomes the first. the exception and the exceptional. the trailblazer on an ever-ascending meteoric rise without a summit.
this is her becoming.
INT. VIRGINIA HOSPITAL CENTER / the smell of antiseptic clinging to skin; an expressionless mask; sickly saccharine platitudes; the knife of betrayal sinking into raw flesh; a broken locket; a sea of faceless strangers; the long soundless scream of grief; mourning lace; the suffocating weight of revelation
three days before eva is to dance the defining role of her career at age twenty-three, she receives the call. it’s papa. there’s been an incident; aunty is in the hospital.
in the midst of final rehearsals and preparations, eva leaves. the director threatens to drop her from the show altogether, threatens to blacklist her from all future roles and performances. with her career hanging in the threadbare balance, eva nods, gives her full blessing and best wishes to the cast, and leaves.
she arrives that night at the hospital and finds auntie swathed in the stark white sheets of a hospital bed, smaller than she’s ever seen her. a stroke, papa explains, hemorrhagic bleeding, a rupture in her brain. eva clutches at aunty’s hand, tears blurring her vision even as she scrambles to drink her in, by eyelash and smile line, the last glimpses of her she will ever have. aunty wakes with a small rasping inhale when she sees eva at her side and not in new york, getting ready for her stage.
of course i’m here, eva says, how could i be anywhere else but here? aunty shakes her head, lifts a shaking hand like a marionette extending beyond the life of her puppet strings to brush her fingertips down eva’s cheek. my eva, my beautiful girl. eva swallows, throat thick with love and apologies she doesn’t know how to speak, i’m sorry i did not write you every day, i’m sorry i did not come home last summer. i’m sorry i don’t know how to tell you how much you have made me who i am. worry creases the lines of aunty’s face, sunken deeper than ever before, in the sketches of time through across her features. she asks about the show, and what will happen to her career, and all eva can think is, i only wanted to dance because of you, because so much of me is just you.
you have to go, little bird. aunty smiles, and it reminds eva of endless afternoons in the garden, their very own kingdom, whirling barefoot beneath blue sky. time for you to blaze like the sun.
—
this is the end of the fairytale: the steward’s daughter dies in a hospital bed holding her daughter’s hand. the princess rises to discover she is gone from this world, as if every star and the sun itself has gone out.
this is the truth, which will be brief, because when the truth comes, it comes hard and fast like a knife in an alleyway: eva was born out of wedlock, a wealthy heir’s bastard daughter. when his parents gave him the ultimatum, the girl he loved, or the business empire of his inheritance, he chose empire. the truth of eva’s birth was concealed, obfuscated when her father married an heiress selected for her surname and birthright. they told her that her mother died in childbirth, and allowed celia to care for her as her nursemaid, raising her not as a daughter but a ward.
after celia’s death, eva is given a letter from her father with her mother’s dying wish, and the terrible secret she had taken to her grave, sealed within. in the letter, celia tells eva the one fairytale she had never spun for her as a child. she tells her about how the prince and the daughter of his family’s groundskeeper fell in love, and everything that came after. she tells her that she never regretted a second of it, watching the supposed love of her life marry another woman and build the family he was always meant to have with them. he made his choice, and i made mine, and i would do it all again in a heartbeat because our love gave me you. my daughter, my eva.
tucked inside the envelope is the locket celia used to wear but never allowed eva to open. and inside the locket is a picture of a seven year old eva.
eva packs everything in her suitcase and leaves for new york the next day. she never sees her father again.
INT. NEW YORK CITY BALLET THEATRE / a single silhouette beneath a spotlight; silk sculpted to a perfect body; the headliner that the crowd has been holding its breath for; gilded thread on golden skin; the blaze of a meteor; the coil of anticipation in your gut; adrenaline pounding through your veins; the exhilaration of perfection; the metamorphosis of the swan
the evening of the first show of swan lake by the new york city ballet, eva goes on stage. she dances odette, and it is the defining performance of not only her career, but of american ballet history. she is the first african-american principal dancer of the new york city ballet, and the first to dance odette in swan lake. it is a triumph and a magnum opus of a performance.
she takes her final bow before an endless sea of faces, her heart going cold in her chest knowing the only one that she wanted to see is not there.
𝐅𝐎𝐎𝐓𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒.
after her history-making performance as odette, the media and arts society gave her the name swan queen. patrons and friends of the ballet frequently address her as odette or the swan at NYCB galas.
eva’s most prized possession is the music box her mother gave her during the summer she had made up her mind to quit ballet. it plays a version of the lullaby she used to sing to her as a child and features a specially hand-painted black ballerina as the miniature figurine that dances when you wind up the mechanism. she keeps the locket her mother used to wear inside it.
to watch eva dance is an experience — she makes ballet feel alive. while famous for her thirty-two fouette sequence in swan lake, it’s the emotions and tragedy she breathes into each performance that makes her dancing unforgettable. she lives and dies on the stage, dancing as if each show is a swan song.
largely alienated from the rest of the corps throughout her training at SAB and within the NYCB, eva is accustomed to solitude and keeping herself company. a combination of prejudice and envy at her exceptional talent kept her isolated, but rather pushing her to the margins as would have been preferred, it thrust her directly into the spotlight. over the years the whispers and rumours that she has only excelled and outstripped her rivals because of her unique circumstances have shadowed her. she’s proven them to be blatantly and objectively false time and again but it doesn’t stop the insidious nature of the hearsay from spreading. the instinct to brace herself for the worst when she meets new dancers, even those untouched by the poison of the NYCB corps, is deeply ingrained in her. it’s a habit she’s never had reason to break.
there have been a handful of flings and stolen kisses with dancers from the corps, girls and boys alike. her longest and most serious relationship was a brief but volatile affair with a renowned artistic director visiting from paris. it was a passionate but disastrous love, and they ended things as the season came to an end and he returned to france. eva has never had relationships, or even dalliances, with anyone outside of the ballet. in her mind, it’s unlikely anyone that isn’t involved in ballet could ever capture her attention long enough to spark her interest.
she’s well-versed in a variety of dance genres and still enjoys dancing for the simple pleasure of it outside the ballet. she frequently dances without music, on the rooftop of her apartment in the late hours of night, occasionally humming music notes and melodies.
since her debut as a principal dancer, she’s had a number of suitors — mainly wealthy patrons, older men with fortunes to spare — that would send gifts and bouquets. other than wine or champagne, eva tends to give away the lavish gifts of perfume, makeup and jewels to other dancers.
she has a younger half-sister and half-brother from her father’s second marriage. they don’t speak much anymore but she still sends them tickets to NYCB shows.
eva speaks slightly beyond conversational french and is fluent in spanish. other than ballet, languages are the only thing she has ever put her mind to seriously studying and learning. she’s interested in learning russian, particularly while she’s immersed in the culture at the bolshoi theater.
status: closed for @degares.
date: 18th of odilon, 934.
location: the lion’s mane.
In his younger years he’d frequented The Mane, especially during his time as a Captain. In spite of its flagging drink quality and shadier business dealings, he hadn’t cared at the time -- it’d been a port in the storm well enough. Now that it’s fallen into the hands of Degaré Lambert, well-to-do and clever, it’s seen a striking rise in business and the talk on the streets spears of vast improvement. He’d be impressed if it weren’t for the reason he’s here, backed by two others -- Amelie and March -- who are both scanning the room, looking for a place to sit. They’re not here for any reason beyond posterity, so Michel waves them off and goes towards the bar.
It might be the armor, gleaming, or the shield at his back, but anyone in the way makes space immediately. Usually, he wouldn’t mind it, but tonight, it disgruntles him. It’s a reminder that he is very much in a place he doesn’t belong, if the strange glances being sent his way tell him anything. He flags the bartender down, and while chatter in the Mane had hushed for the smallest of moments when they’d stepped over the threshold, the volume is right back to roaring, and he has to enunciate clearly to be heard: “I’m looking for Lambert!”
She doesn’t look convinced, brow furrowing, and it’s not until he draws out the envelope with Calandre’s seal across the front of it in wax that understanding dawns over her face. She turns, presumably to fetch him, and Michel is left to wait, to discern how exactly he’s going to start this sort of conversation.
The world is missing your poems
so, I will write a whole book
in, hopes that its verses will fill the hole
that you have left in my universe.
PRELUDE. but i can never find a pen.
aesthetic: scattered, fallen papers. old notebooks. bleeding pages. constellation sketches. saturn rings. cigaratte butts. lipstick stain. band aids.
lyrics: do not go gentle into that good night. more poetry is needed. i’d give anything to hear you say it one more time. that the universe was made just to be seen by my eyes. you taught me the courage of stars. you explained the infinite. how rare and beautiful it is to even exist. do you remember. changing the minds of pretenders. i heard there was a secret chords. im gonna give all my secrets away. sick of all the insincere. a feather could float. i leave my heart open and it stays right here in its cage.just gotta get out of this prison cell.be in my eyes. be in my heart. we try to tell a story. i can’t let him in. if i lose myself i lose it all. blossom of snow, may you bloom & grow. don’t you cry for me. i’ve been on fire, dreaming of-. i will feel aglow just thinking of you. first things first imma say all the words inside my head. oh, it’s what you do to me. time is taking it’s sweet time erasing you. and if you read this somwhere i wrote you a verse. i’ve been afraid of changing ‘cause i built my life around you.
The tower was not unlike any other tower she had seen. It was old. It was tall. There were windows scattered about. It had been there before Evangeline was, and it would probably remain there for many years after she passed. She glanced at it as she walked to market, but much to her surprise someone looked back at her. Evangeline stopped in her tracks and stared up at the man. She had probably walked past the tower thousands of times without seeing anyone. She tore her eyes away from the window and continued walking, but she couldn’t help but wonder about the man in the window. It was odd that he was in the tower. Surely she would know who he was or at least be able to recognize him. Yet again she stopped in her tracks and stared at the tower. She had to know more. She had to talk to him. Evangeline gazed at the thick ivy on the tower, and she smirked. It was fortunate that the window wasn’t too high and the ivy wasn’t too thin.
Though, Evangeline quickly learned that climbing ivy to get to a window was no easy task. She nearly fell three times, and if anyone saw she would definitely get in trouble for climbing the castle’s walls. It was improper for a lady, and it was dangerous. However, Evangeline was lucky. She didn’t fall and no one saw her climbing into the tower. She gracefully slid through the window into the tower. It wasn’t quite what she expected. She expected it to be tiny and crammed and dim, but it was actually a pleasant space. And there was her mystery man, looking at her. He was much cuter up close. She smiled awkwardly, “Hi, I’m sorry. I saw you through the window and...” Her voice trailed off. There weren’t any words to explain herself. She realized that she really hadn’t thought this through. Climbing into the tower seemed like a good idea on the ground, but now it seemed completely mad, but she was stuck with her decision. At a loss for words, she looked at him. She had never seen him before in her life. He was... intriguing. That was the word for it. Handsome, but intriguing. “I’m Evangeline.”
You hang on to your pain like it means something. Like it's worth something. Well, let me tell you - it's not worth shit. Let it go. Infinite possibilities, and all he can do is whine.
