@ex-huma ❛ please tell me i’m wrong. ❜
sirat doesn’t look away, brown eyes staying completely focused on the other. she barely shifts, not even when the words land like stone in water, drowning slowly. hwa-rim’s voice doesn’t shake, but sirat hears what’s beneath it. the kind of grief only women like them carry, passed down like heirlooms no one wanted. the wind presses against her veil but it doesn’t move, silent as sirat stands still as bone. [ she has heard those words before, not from hwa-rim, but from her mother’s hands. in the way they trembled over prayer beads. in the silence after every unanswered plea. they say the gods choose carefully. sirat has never believed that. she thinks the gods choose what hurts best. ]
her thumb brushes the hilt of her blade, worn smooth from years of holding it too tightly. she speaks only once the silence grows thick as blood between them, the divine & the frozen. ❝ — you’re not wrong. ❞ her voice is low, but not gentle : more like something sacred that’s lost its warmth. a fire dying, its last emblem burning away smoke. ❝ you’re just not ready to say it out loud. but i’ve said it. i still wake up saying it. ❞ they both stand between two worlds: one built of ritual and guilt passed from generation to generation, the other of science and glass so fragile the sirat wonders how hwa-rim hasn't cut herself on the shards. neither worlds are kind. neither worlds are clean. neither of them wear bandages. sirat doesn’t reach out, but she steps closer.
❝ — you were never meant to be clean, hwa-rim. ❞ she speaks the words like an oath. like a prophecy. it's the only way sirat knows how to speak. ❝ only necessary. we — we are just (...) necessary. ❞













