[P] steep hills of vicodin tears,

[Rhoswen]

 The emotions that bloomed and snarled within Rhoswen's chest whenever she so much as glanced toward that blue-eyed boy were indecipherable, so she chose to name them herself as Loathing, Bitterness, and Anger. A triad she knew so well. They had bolstered her in the long dark night, kept her head above water when she would have otherwise drowned. There was no room for anything else; she could not let anything else in for fear of losing this blistering grip on her composure. And yet, when she looked at his godforsaken face - every choice she had ever made seemed to melt away into obscurity. Like a bird crippled by high winds she found herself faltering beneath the weight of her own beautifully ugly truth; how long could she keep up this lie? They had shared youth together as untouched children, gilded in gold and innocence and the sweet caress of shadow. Theirs was that magic moment between sunset and nightfall when the crescent moon hung upon a cobalt autumn sky. Rhos remembered it all: the feeling of the glassy Denoctian air biting at her lungs, the twilight shrouding boy and girl as they stood watching a haze of fireflies dancing across the lake: she had felt infinite, then, catching his eye in the black-gold light.

"Yes."

And suddenly she knew. Rhoswen clenched her jaw, eyes shut tight to conceal the fervor in her stormborne gaze, how could she bear to look at his expression a moment longer? It was gossamer, translucent - painfully so: his truth, so tragically identical to her own. But beneath her fear and beneath her bitterness there was something else; something she had not felt in years: since, perhaps, that moment by the lake when a young girl had felt the searching embrace of a boy's gaze, as though Raum were seeing her, truly, for the very first time. She felt infinite, just for that single second. 

Her eyes open at last, seeking his before she could turn to ascend the great stone steps away from Raum, for she cannot bear his presence a moment longer. A final parting whisper, gossamer and paperthin:

"Pain is the price we pay for love." 

@Raum o ma gaddddd edit to include rhos' departure!