and i hear my heart breaking tonight...

It’s already been described how Sophie is both the reason and the solution for his father’s broken mind. But it goes even further than that really. Wylie grows up being able to see through the shining illusion of the Lost Cities’ perfection and grows up so lonely and full of grief because of it, his status as a functional orphan and the child of an exile making it impossible for his peers with perfectly untouched lives to relate to him, and yet he must go about life as normal because he doesn’t have the resources or the hope to resist against the establishment that is the ultimate source of his pain. So it’s easy for him to be angry when Sophie’s being brought to the Lost Cities, since it’s a fresh cut over a very old, festering wound and he’s still not able to do anything about it, and the Moonlark his father was broken for doesn’t even seem to know what’s going on.

But Sophie’s appearance also brings an outside perspective that creates cracks in the illusion of the world’s perfection, and the more she learns about the world and falls in with the rebels Prentice was part of, the faster those cracks appear, and more people finally begin to understand what Wylie’s known his entire life. She gives him the father he thought she stole, and he starts to finally have a chance to process the grief he’s endured. He doesn’t have to pretend like everything he went through was normal.

1. the worm king's lullaby - richard siken / 2. monster - xana / 3. lip service - xana / 4. monster - xana / 5. lip service - xana / 6. the story of us - taylor swift / 7. silver spoon - erin lecount / 8. monster - xana / 9. it's not summer without you - jenny han / 10. the story of us - taylor swift / 11. lip service - xana / 12. daylight - taylor swift / 13. lip service - xana / 14. daylight - taylor swift / 15. i want you - mitski / 16. twitter/x post on friends to lovers - galacticidiots / 17. tumblr post - death-born-aphrodite / 18. scott street - phoebe bridgers / 19. keefitz - @lemontarto / 20. i want you - mitski