I Love You

i love you

happy vallientines day cuties <3

the confirmed allie fleur method to stop crying or being angry is to spell 'be like a duck let it roll off of your back'

allie's gift is a pair of customized cowboy boots, with a multitude of flowers (badly) handpainted across the leather and pink glitter stuck on the heels. ✨

        warm tears spring at the corners of her eyes, glittering and kept at bay by only her joy. " oh my gosh, they're sparkly and they have flowers! that's just like me! like, my brain! " she cradles the boots to her chest as if they were something very small and alive, looking at ishtar with a look full of love. " thank you so much, i love them! now i can be just like you! " and she never wears shoes, but she thinks now, she'll never take these off. keep them on forever and ever, and now she'll always think of ishtar. squishing the boots between the two of them as she throws her arms around ishtar, she laughs over her shoulder, almost into it. " i love you, i love you, i love you! "

        the firm sound of his voice surprises her, not quite shaking her out, but shaking her something. for a moment, she's not worrying about her flowers or her mother, but about henry. he sounds the closest to angry she's ever seen him, and she doesn't know how to fix it. she doesn't know how to fix anything. " i- i can't do any of that. i can't ... i can't ... you don't get it. "

        she still has so many things to what if and worry about, she hasn't even started. she's afraid to forget all of it. that if she looks away for even one moment the shrivels of hope deep, deep in the soil will know and die, alone and afraid. that her mother might feel it. that her mother might never come back. she's a terrible daughter. a terrible friend, making him sit with her like this. making him hold her. she's afraid that if he lets go, she'll fall apart, and she doesn't know how to hold him back. but in her desperation to keep him there, she tries. allie holds on as much as she can, her fingers stretching to hold onto the underside of his arms.

        " find- find them? " in the midst of her tangling, one more vine threads in, knotting in with the others. why would he want that? why would he want her to? " i never wanna' see them again! " she didn't mean to be so whiny, but it jumps out of her, shamefully abrupt and ugly and another too much on top of a world of too much's.

“ lighthouseborn. ”

  Alright. No. Henry’s patience for being extra gentle evaporated - it did not seem to be lending anything to Allie, no rope to grab or thought to bolster to. Henry left it where it was and settled his hands on her arms. He did not squeeze or grab, it was only pressure. Holding.

“Come here,” he told her firmly, “Get out of whatever that may be, come on. Look at me- breathe. Do not wander or what if, just breathe in… out. Are you alright? Not in your head, in your body. Does anything hurt? Can you count your fingers, move your toes? Focus on that.” It was a list. A lot to demand all in one go, he knew, but that could very well be the merit of it. Stir something and keep it going. Focus her here and now and not on anything else. “Are you able to stand?” He would lend her support, if she needed it. And if she managed to muster the will to protest, tell him to stop, he’d let her. So long as it was something. Anything to keep her from falling all to pieces, to stop her shrinking, sinking into emptiness. He combed debris out of her tawny hair with gentle fingers.

  “Ask me,” Henry said, suddenly sharp in his own way. “Ask me.. and I will find who did this.” Surely they would come to regret it. That, he thought, answering it in such a way, it would not bring her the kind of comfort it would others. Him. But it might make her argue with him.

  Or she might ask him.

  But he doubted it.