when one looks back to their childhood, one remembers the vivid springs of laughter, climbing trees and reaching out for the stars, and making flower crowns in fields of flowers. but when [name] looked back at her youth, it was void of those colorfu...
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chapter 73. dear freedom, may you last
[ luna is gone...and [name] will carry it on ]
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....there is beauty in burning.
(end's words, not hers.)
...but perhaps hecate believed them too.
[name] had been told the story many times before (in fragments that sounded less like explanations and more like warnings whispered through that sharp smirk): the black flames were born from hatred. they existed to consume whatever the vessel hated most. and because [name] was the vessel now...her hatred became their direction.
yet there was always a difference between herself and the goddess sealed inside her.
hecate looked upon the world and wished to reduce it to ash for what it had taken from her.
[name] looked upon herself...and reached the same conclusion.
hecate hated the world that ruined everything she loved.
[name] hated the girl who failed to protect it.
and so the flames obeyed accordingly.
end had once told her that controlling the flames was simple.
'...you just gotta want to hate something.'
hatred needed no justification, he said. hatred was pure because it did not beg for permission to exist.
again, that word haunted her.
want.
she had never wanted to hate anyone. even with all the reasons in the world resting in her palms like open wounds, she could never fully bring herself to direct that hatred outward.
[name] only wanted happiness.
...right now, happiness felt impossibly far away.
she wondered where happiness even began, in what form.
in the pursuit of happiness...what pathway must she take?
she lay motionless in the shallow water, half-submerged beneath its still surface. one side of her face rested beneath the dark reflection, [h/c] strands drifting slowly around her like drowned moonlight, while the rest of her body remained exposed to the cold air above.
