─── ･ ｡♡ ･
❛ 𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐋𝐋, 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐓𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐔𝐏 𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐌𝐘 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐃.
I don't even think that you care like I do.
I should stop; Heaven knows I've tried .❜
A half-god-would-be-god falls in love with a mortal.
It could...
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ON THE DAY WILMARIE FIRST NOTICED SOMETHING PECULIAR ABOUT PERCY, HE WASN'T EVEN ON HER MIND. Instead, as she awoke that morning, memories flooded in—memories of the first gentle touch she'd ever known. When she was little, Sally Jackson's gentle gaze always met her reflection in the vanity mirror with a kind of love that never quite left Wilmarie's heart.
She had been too young to remember her exact age, but she could still recall the woman's eyes, a powder blue filled with kindness. It was the first time Wilmarie ever felt deserving of care. The woman did not resemble her at all; she was lazuline in comparison to all of Wilmarie's browns, but the word burned in her throat with each pass of the brush—Mom, she dreamed, finding comfort in the fragrance of hair detangler and the sweetened sugar embedded in Sally's hand from her job at Sweet on America. Mom—with a firm grasp on the handle of the comb, strong like Yulissa's, yet never bringing pain, never tugging, or ripping through knots with indifference to her cries.Sally always touched her with gratitude, kindly, carefully combing through the tangles in Wilmarie's hair with a sense of patience and affection that was foreign to her. With eyes sparkling with a radiance akin to the morning sun dancing on the ocean's surface, Sally would always tell her, 'You know, every now and then I dream of having a daughter.'
It's been a lifetime since those days of sitting on the woman's lap while she combed her hair. Still, Wilmarie thought she would've died with the regret for never giving in to the urge to sit up and say, 'You have me!'
At fourteen, Wilmarie hadn't smelled the sweet scent of detangler in years. She hadn't seen Sally Jackson for just as long. She learned to do her own hair. No one else would ever be able to replicate the way Sally used to make her feel so special and cared for—it felt more manageable to tear at her hair than to allow herself the vulnerability of being cared for once again. But winter slipped away silently, carrying with it the weight of grief unnoticed.
It was springtime now, and the sensation of Miss Sally's arms wrapping around her felt like the heat of summer, thawing the final remnants of snow that had frozen her insides for so long.
"You've grown so much," Sally exclaimed, cradling Wilmarie's face in her hands, her smile radiant and tears glistening like a million stars against the backdrop of a clear blue sky. "Oh, sweetie, you're so beautiful! And your hair—it's absolutely wonderful!"
Wilmarie didn't mean to start crying, but the fact that Miss Sally was holding her made her feel a little choked up, because it was Miss Sally who had given Wilmarie tear-free shampoo and spiral hair ties as a child to keep her curls from tangling. It had been Sally who had gifted Wilmarie her first pair of sneakers, ignoring her mother's insistence on ballerina flats, and it had been Sally who taught her how to use a tampon when Yulissa had screamed at her about God and broken hymens and sexual impurity at the age of ten. Years have passed, yet the word remained in her throat, awaiting the right moment to be spoken.
