She needed more than you.

They were a storm and a shoreline, raised side by side until the world convinced her she was too wild to stay.

Mira vanished without a note.

You’re the bird on the cliff’s edge
I’m the serpent in the sand
You’re the cool air that comes in the night
I’m the rage you won't let in
Oh be the sword on my alter
I’ll be the rosemary in your hand
I’ll be the star you gaze upon
From wherever you feel safe, my hanging man

They met the way soft things meet storms—without knowing what either of them were yet.

It was an unremarkable place for the beginning of a lifelong wound. A playground with rusted chains and sun-bleached slides. Two children standing at the edge of separate worlds. One of them already restless. The other already still.

You were the kind of child adults noticed. Not because you were loud—though sometimes you were—but because you felt close to the surface, like a bruise that shows before it’s touched. You laughed too hard, cried without embarrassment, spoke in bursts of questions and half-finished ideas.

Mira watched.

You were the child who could sit through an entire recess and not move much at all. Perched on the swing but rarely using it. On the edge of the sandbox, tracing shapes no one else could see. You spoke softly, if at all. You listened as if listening were a skill you were already practicing for later. There was a carefulness to you even then. A way of holding your body like the world might tip if you didn’t.

It was Mira who crossed the space between.

Her short blue ears twitched at every unfamiliar sound, betraying her long before her voice ever could. A blue tail flicked behind her with a restless life of its own, tapping once against her leg, then stilling, then moving again.

Her long, mousy hair was pulled into a careless bun, strands already slipping loose as if she didn’t believe in keeping things contained. When she lifted her face, her eyes were the color of winter glass—icy blue, bright, and far too honest. She didn’t look at you the way people usually did. She studied you, openly, curiously, like she was deciding whether you were a place she could stand. Then she smiled, sudden and unguarded, and the entire world seemed to tilt a degree closer to her.