ever since childhood, she has had an affinity for beautiful things; an expected outcome when everyone tells a child that the flattering shape of her eyes and curve of her lips come together to create a most pleasing, most beautiful face. if everyone tells a little girl that the thing about her to be most valued is her beauty, then she will grow up to stare at beautiful things. but, dafina doesn't want beautiful things, not to have, not really. they are not things that she wishes to have in the palms of her hands or on the soft bed of her tongue. they are things that call for much more, a sort of worship that bruises the knee and stains the sternum with the red wine of communion ( this need to worship stems also from childhood, the rocky bed of it where people are telling her that she is blessed, that she is so lucky, that someone carved her face by hand and cast her from the heavens in fear of what they created ( and, by god, did they create a monster — she should be ashamed of what she does, she should be begging for forgiveness for the blood she has shed ) ).
she told dilara this once, laid beside her and rested her head on her chest, looked up at her through her brows in a way she knew made her visage distorted, haunted, wrong. her eyes must have been too round, too droopy at the bottom and her lips must have been too red from the light through the window and she must have looked not like a worshipper but a woman crazed, a maenad left without something to kill for. dafina poured her secrets to dilara with blood in her mouth. said, i need something to pray to, something to believe in. listened to dilara say something with a curve on her lips so beautiful that dafina can't remember anything except the shape of them. that must have been her mistake. blinded by the beauty of her dearest, closest companion ( close enough that they share one, beating heart, dafina swears, one heartbeat, one organ ... ) that she can't remember the things she said.
"i'm sorry." repentance. penitence, if she chews on the inside of her cheek. a long pause draws itself out. the small, sharp rain of the city cuts her skin but lands safely atop dilara's crown. "i had this target, before i left. you didn't know, you weren't there when i got back — you didn't hear what i did to him or what he did to me or what they were going to do to me ... he lived in this mansion. white walls and crown molding and these tall, tall windows. do you remember when we were girls? that home we built with our words? i swear on all things holy and beautiful, dilara, he had a home exactly like it. while he was ... well, when i was waiting for clean up, i thought you'd like to see it." another long, long pause. "i asked if you wanted to leave because i wanted you to see it." dafina's eyes are heavy with saltwater and vanished futures. "i left because ... i didn't leave you, dilara, i have kept you. i had to go without you. i didn't have a choice."