The air is wrong.
Not heavy, not thick, not stifling. Wrong. Like the weight of something unseen is pressing too evenly across the room, across your skin, across your thoughts.
Something moves. But nothing moves. The shadows do not shift, but they adjust. The light does not flicker, but it is different now. She is here. She was always here.**
Her voice does not come from her lips. It comes from inside you. From behind your eyes, from the base of your skull, from the marrow in your bones.
“Oh, my love,” she sighs, delighted. Relieved. Like you’ve finally come home.
She is close. Too close. But her hands are not on you.
(Not yet.)
Her smile stretches just a fraction too far. Her eyes are so soft. Too soft. Pools of shifting colors you can’t name, spiraling, pulling, unmaking.**
Her fingers twitch, remembering the shape of you.**
“You were so hard to find,” she says, touching your cheek. Your face does not resist.** “But now I have you.”
She leans in. You do not move. You cannot. There is no before this moment. No outside of her presence.
“You love me,” she whispers. It is not a question.
She is smiling.
You will smile too.
