[ At the peripheral, there is an uncertain something wrong. A dancing flame on the skyline, at a distance unclear if it is a pyre of celebration, grief, or of warning. Before it can be ascertained, the flames diminish and disappear, leaving behind only a singed smell of smoke, the dirtiness of ash that Ilde carries around with her now that the embers have extinguished. Quieted, but not quite silenced sullen in pollutant. She appears for Angel privately, quiet and tired. ]
[ and there is no consideration, no backwards glance as she steps close to her, to take both Ilde's hands in her own, and steps back with her, leading her as Ilde had lead her when she had been just the same - all burned out with the misery and weight of it all.
But each step is purposeful, she takes her away, away, away. Out of the commons, out of Concordia, away from the city with its walls of light that she knows is foreign to her. They turn a corner and go through a door that as her markings ebb to life, they step from cold walls to a garden. A distortion, an illusion, but one she thinks Ilde could want, it's safety of high walls of glass on an impossible sky, the wrap of vines with heavy drooping flowers, warm earth and stone below her feet. Heavy leafed plants that droop with their own weight, the pepper of strange ones that she knows from Pandora that glow in a bioluminescence from the corners and the soft curl of mist like water ( better at making them feel real now, and she has Ilde and the hive to thank for that. Reality, more aching than anything that can be conjured ), it's special, it's built out of her mind for Ilde. Just for Ilde. The only one she lets into these corners of her. Lets her feed into her, into all of her empty dark.
She leans around her to shut the door behind them. There is no one now, just them, just this place and its false removal from reality. Privacy as much as they could have being so connected. ]
[ There is no resistance from Ilde, there is something brittle in her usual careful restraint, something sore that knows if she struggles any further she's going to injure herself. So she relaxes into Angel's mind, almost the exact same sensation as when they relax into one another's hands.
The idea piques as they take the slow tumble into interconnection that this is the same emotion. The same emotion she had expressed aloud to Ren and had rejected. A fizzle of emotion, like a spark from a frayed wire. Heartbeat just that little bit more painful. ]
I informed my broodmate Kylo Ren that I loved him.
[ That seems the easiest place to begin. They will get to it all eventually. She will get around to telling Angel how much she hates her friend's own beloved broodmate. ]
[ she steps back a little, taking a moment to look her over more keenly like - love could be seen as a physical thing, but she had that, she supposed, didn't mean others did.
Leads her closer then. A guiding hand to settle them together into a corner, her arm wrapping around Ilde's waist, letting her lean into her side. Sweeping warm up her side, over her clothes in a comforting gesture, an easy generation of shared warmth. ]
(And it... ?) [ Not sure what to say: 'it went well?' 'he didn't hurt her?' ]
(He broke like a crystal. I have never felt so far away from him.)
[ Is that what she's doing here with Angel then? Second best for her loneliness? No, that doesn't seem fair at all, Angel is an entirely different entity. ]
(All of these emotions suffocate me. I do not know whether to scream or to weep, the only relief is to let them loose and then... I long to take them back again, but they are gone.)
[ It is good that Angel has her, now that the gate has crashed open it continues to flow, ]
(I want everything from him, from you. And the intensity of that emotion is just the same as how desperately I want to slaughter that boy tied to you.)
[ She can't help it, the gory vision of what she would do to Petre if she were to lose her restraint burgeons. ]
[ She closes her eyes against the image, feeling it in her mind - and it is not just that she is used to seeing such things. It is that it is Ilde, and she would accept much for that alone. Even the way that seeing her own broodmate, another part of herself, makes something grip tight in her throat.
Her own concerns could be for another day.
Because she knows how much being pure mattered to Ilde. Her hands sweep against her, settled to her hip and the other moving up to draw her fingers through her hair. ]
(No, no it has not. It just... draws parts of you out of yourself you didn't know existed yet.)
[ She wilts into Angel's shoulder, bursting at the seams just as she had described, unable to decide between relief or rage or nothingness. ]
(Who is to say I did not know? I merely had better control when I was hidden away surrounded by the dead.)
[ What does she do in a world where people live? Where life is valued and people seek to protect one another. She can hear tiny little Ahsoka telling her so sincerely: "If I could help even one person suffer less... then it's worth fighting for."
[ She hums, soft, the flowers bloom open, the smells she had taken from Ilde's memory drift through the air. ]
(We are learning - ) [ something they have expressed between each other before. ] (To learn is to discover, and to know that all things are possible before we do them. We have a million thoughts, and as many options open to us with them. I know people that take life by the millions, they are an apocalypse unto themselves. But they still care, they still find a way to direct themselves to help, even at their most destructive.
They do not have to be exclusive. )
[ They are clear in her mind, they have a smile made for slaughter and eyes on a far off point. They destroy, they destroy, their names are like whispers of the impossible, but they are just people, bathed in fire and death, maybe, and where they go, even as they it seems tear the earth apart, they bring hope that tearing down will bring rebirth. ]
[ In this moment, it is not a door that Ilde wishes to open. Within the confines of dogma she has absolute control, a dichotomous system where particular articulations are righteous and all else inevitability. She aches for control. For certainty. Somewhere in the drone of that desire is a whisper for power, ever greater, ever growing. Not indefinitely. It eventually reaches a weight that she can no longer sustain and she too shatters, like a crystal. There is a limit to even her most ravaged emotions before she loses all strength to feel it any longer. She sags down to the dirt floor of her fantasy garden, a hand trailing in her wake to keep hold of Angel's.
[ It stills her, watching Ilde break and it aches, not just because being so close bled the connection into each and every word.
But because oh she knew, she knew - ]
(Then I will be there. When it happens. I promise. )
[ Hitches, soft, heart-beat wing-beat. Her fingers threading through Ilde's, gripping her like it was all of that made real. ]
(I'm told that's what people do when they... would do anything for each other.)
[ Can't say it, can't say it, can't say it, but she hopes she feels it, in between each word, settled in close. Wanting and hovering and nervous for her but only out of concern, and always patient and waiting. ]
[ There's something terrifying in the idea, of any of them sacrificing for her. Those she loves. Her brood, this Angel. It goes beyond just Ilde herself and to the culture of death she came from. Death was coming for them all... Ultimate sacrifice would be made, in unison. Why hurry it along?
[ She trickles her fingers against her jaw, tilting her face up to her, leaning close then to bury her face into her hair, nuzzling against her in a languid sigh of contentment. ]
(Or you for me. I don't have to, but I think that's what makes it... special. I've sacrificed so much more for so much less. What's any of that, to this?)
[ it's earnest, light as far off rainfall. Taking an easy breath, feels sunlight inside of her mouth that comes from being close to Ilde. ]
[ Is that how it works? She stares up into Angel's face with a look of utter surprise. Sacrificed so much more so much less. Everything in her life has always been given such doomed gravity... What was the weight attached to all of this? Ilde's heart beats fast in her chest, feeling the furious rise of emotion again. Too soon again after the last crest of that horrible wave.
She turns her head, catching the corner of Angel's mouth with her lips. ]
(I don't know.) [ It echoes, her utter uncertainty, but in its echoing is a kind of certainty. ] (But I cannot cease to love.)
[ She has seen when lava hits the sea, how it turns to stone and utter stilled captured moments and she feels the same - frozen in place. She cannot stand the word, oh it hurts, it hurts, she cannot associate it with anything good, only being trapped, confined. ]
(I can't say it, I'm sorry - )
[ But she can give it all the same. Her head turns into the kiss and it's as soft as she's given. Leaning forward and closes her eyes. The breath she pulls in is thready and rattles in her chest like the birds that roosted there had taken flight. Tossed up and about inside of her as she leans in close.
A first kiss, she realises, and she thanks the hive over again for the things she never thought to have. Had deadened herself to. It doesn't feel like when she felt spiking heat flood her when she looked at Lexa. Embarrassed and overly aware. This was holding something sugary and sharp in her mouth and being overwhelmed with it. The high, high note of the connection that comes with close contact and she cannot imagine being closer except too close again. ]
[ Her love hurts them. Ilde lifts one of her hands and curves it to the side of Angel's face. Her love hurts them. Like Dreus's fingertips burning into her skin when he would lay even the most thoughtless of touches upon her. He had loved her, and his love had burned, left little purple scars across her arms and shoulders, the outsides of her knees, up her shins. Her skin lights up with the memory of it, the stinging touch of a man who loved her, protected her, placed on a pedestal, and swore that no man would ever have.
She will have to be very gentle with them. So as not to frighten them, so as not to agitate the wounds that others left upon them. Guide them carefully to know that her love came with no demands. The word need not be said.
Ilde has only been kissed once or twice in her life. The others had been boys in the night, the kind of juvenile pecking that one placed upon a weeping girl after surviving the terrors of the night, to live another scorching day in the wastes. This is by far the superior experience. With a girl she knows down to her bones, one with strength and gentleness who struggles to make sense of her newfound freedom after a life beneath a tyrant's burning love.
[ Her eyes are shut and her fingers locked with Ilde's and she sits so very, very still, because she wants it is so - and it's the wanting that scares her so. Because she is so empty of sunlight, she knows, so desperate to grasp for it.
But she finds as then, she knows not what to do with herself. Feels her breath speeding up, the quick rise and fall of her chest. The prickle she can feel in the back of her throat. The flowers of the day dream pick up on a breeze that is the unsurety of herself. Twisting about in the haze of it all.
It's no rejection, far from it, it's simply to be overwhelmed and she doesn't know what to do with herself even slightly. To push back even a little, to pull away - how, how to do this? ]
(How... how do I kiss you?)
[ Let her have this again, please, as often as she may. She is so addicted to touch, it feels all the empty hollows that eridium left. Addicted to the light the hive gives her on her otherwise dead skin and Ilde is warm, so warm and she just - she makes a noise, soft and quiet and it's thought and caught in her throat without form. It's so, so much. ]
[ That white-knuckled determination reminds Ilde of those boys in the firelight for a moment. The desperation to feel, for relief. It brings her an odd kind of nostalgia, the kind of sad memory that is not exactly pleasant but quaint in its own way. In this remembering, however, it seems obvious to Ilde that such desperation is of no use. She is just as guilty, had turned her head to meet with Angel out of utter overwhelming need for relief, but some things become clearer to her when Angel needs her guidance.
One stumbling deer leading the other in turns, growing a little stronger with each attempt. ]
(I will kiss you as I would like to be kissed. You will do the same. And we will learn.)
[ She slips down then, sinking so she's more level to Ilde, shifting to be comfortable, trying to let the tension slip out of her shoulders, shake loose the breath stuck in her throat. Takes effort, little by little, until she looks up from under the fall of her hair at her.
It's not so much saying it - but she leans in this time of her own accord, and kisses her again in barely a brush of a thing, catching against the sulk of Ilde's lips, lingering to pull away slowly. A thready exhale as she pulls back so far as she can look her in the eyes again - and figures that is enough to say that - alright, she could do that. They seemed far too suited to meeting in the middle, it seemed. She was thankful for it. ]
[ Ilde's soft brown lashes lower, eyes closing, still and patient like a child courting a butterfly to land. She has no expectation, no demand from all this. For all her talk of love and kisses, she is overall chaste. Had Angel merely fluttered at her cheek it would have been more than enough. All of this was for affection and closeness, comfort and care.
She strokes the side of Angel's face, tilting her head forward and down in order to place her lips at her forehead, a physical gesture that this needn't be such a tribulation at all. ]
[ She stays still for her. Eyes shut, and smile tucked into the corner of her mouth. Something whimsical to all of this. Not sure where to go with it all - but finding herself unable to care either way. Warm and light and happy to have her in close. ]
(You are to me. It feels so good to finally be able to be with other people. But with you especially...)
[ There is something to that, even for Ilde. Other people had been there, physically, but they had all kept a deep emotional divide from one another. There was no point to doing otherwise, not when death claimed another and another and another, not when they were all waiting to die. Watching the phoenix grow larger and larger every night when the Godking would release it into the sky.
But Ilde did know about tenderness, despite it all. Dreus had taught her. For all his evils, he had shown her how to treasure what one loved most. To keep them safe and whole, no matter what. Fuckin' ominous as shit........ ]
(I was not so kind when we first met, but you made it very easy to change my mind.)
(You don't have to be, if you don't want to. I'd have you as you wanted to be. )
[ Can't stop, won't stop, probably aren't very good at stopping.
That being said, she shifts herself up then, another kiss, this one is not so delicate so much as taken quickly. A peck she steals with a giggle. Eyes lowered to watch her mouth, eyelashes soft against her cheek, the pink flush up her neck and in her cheeks. A little bit embarrassement, a little bit the heat of being so close and kissing her. ]
(I think I like this.)
[ nope they're still gross and awful. someone stop them. ]
[ Although Ilde's smile does not fade, there is something serious there to talk about, so she rubs the back of Angel's hand with her thumb thoughtlessly. ]
(I have been... ) [ Afraid isn't the word. It really doesn't encompass her emotions at all, the hunger and delight that also comes with the uncertainty and guilt. ] (Conflicted, on what is right now.)
[ And if anyone knows what she means it is assuredly Angel. All the things different between their troubles are set dressing to the core kernel. Vaunted as precious, special, perfect so long as they did the duty tasked to them. One angel above keeping watch, the other one below tending the earth.
But only so long as they did the duty tasked to them. ]
(It was not right for women like us to be powerful. But I am also tired of being powerless.)
[ She swallows, her eyes down. Nodding, she understands. Jack would be writihing in rage to know the things she had done - least of all needing other people but him. In pressing these feather light moments against Ilde's skin. He reserved the right to her love.
But it makes her only more determined now. ]
(We are not there anymore. Here, we need to be powerful. As... far as I understand. The hive is as strong as we are. )
[ She knows. She knows it rationally but shaking loose this piece, like a physical thing inside of her body where all that guilt collects... It's difficult. Always easier said than done.
She does not know what it will take to sever it. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
circumspector) wrote2016-03-14 03:55 pm
no subject
no subject
But each step is purposeful, she takes her away, away, away. Out of the commons, out of Concordia, away from the city with its walls of light that she knows is foreign to her. They turn a corner and go through a door that as her markings ebb to life, they step from cold walls to a garden. A distortion, an illusion, but one she thinks Ilde could want, it's safety of high walls of glass on an impossible sky, the wrap of vines with heavy drooping flowers, warm earth and stone below her feet. Heavy leafed plants that droop with their own weight, the pepper of strange ones that she knows from Pandora that glow in a bioluminescence from the corners and the soft curl of mist like water ( better at making them feel real now, and she has Ilde and the hive to thank for that. Reality, more aching than anything that can be conjured ), it's special, it's built out of her mind for Ilde. Just for Ilde. The only one she lets into these corners of her. Lets her feed into her, into all of her empty dark.
She leans around her to shut the door behind them. There is no one now, just them, just this place and its false removal from reality. Privacy as much as they could have being so connected. ]
no subject
The idea piques as they take the slow tumble into interconnection that this is the same emotion. The same emotion she had expressed aloud to Ren and had rejected. A fizzle of emotion, like a spark from a frayed wire. Heartbeat just that little bit more painful. ]
I informed my broodmate Kylo Ren that I loved him.
[ That seems the easiest place to begin. They will get to it all eventually. She will get around to telling Angel how much she hates her friend's own beloved broodmate. ]
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[ she steps back a little, taking a moment to look her over more keenly like - love could be seen as a physical thing, but she had that, she supposed, didn't mean others did.
Leads her closer then. A guiding hand to settle them together into a corner, her arm wrapping around Ilde's waist, letting her lean into her side. Sweeping warm up her side, over her clothes in a comforting gesture, an easy generation of shared warmth. ]
( And it... ? ) [ Not sure what to say: 'it went well?' 'he didn't hurt her?' ]
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[ Is that what she's doing here with Angel then? Second best for her loneliness? No, that doesn't seem fair at all, Angel is an entirely different entity. ]
( All of these emotions suffocate me. I do not know whether to scream or to weep, the only relief is to let them loose and then... I long to take them back again, but they are gone. )
[ It is good that Angel has her, now that the gate has crashed open it continues to flow, ]
( I want everything from him, from you. And the intensity of that emotion is just the same as how desperately I want to slaughter that boy tied to you. )
[ She can't help it, the gory vision of what she would do to Petre if she were to lose her restraint burgeons. ]
( I cannot be trusted. This power has tainted me. )
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Her own concerns could be for another day.
Because she knows how much being pure mattered to Ilde. Her hands sweep against her, settled to her hip and the other moving up to draw her fingers through her hair. ]
( No, no it has not. It just... draws parts of you out of yourself you didn't know existed yet. )
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( Who is to say I did not know? I merely had better control when I was hidden away surrounded by the dead. )
[ What does she do in a world where people live? Where life is valued and people seek to protect one another. She can hear tiny little Ahsoka telling her so sincerely: "If I could help even one person suffer less... then it's worth fighting for."
That is not Ilde. The difference is so stark. ]
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( We are learning - ) [ something they have expressed between each other before. ] ( To learn is to discover, and to know that all things are possible before we do them. We have a million thoughts, and as many options open to us with them. I know people that take life by the millions, they are an apocalypse unto themselves. But they still care, they still find a way to direct themselves to help, even at their most destructive.
They do not have to be exclusive. )
[ They are clear in her mind, they have a smile made for slaughter and eyes on a far off point. They destroy, they destroy, their names are like whispers of the impossible, but they are just people, bathed in fire and death, maybe, and where they go, even as they it seems tear the earth apart, they bring hope that tearing down will bring rebirth. ]
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A sigh. ]
( No... something will give way. Sooner or later. )
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But because oh she knew, she knew - ]
( Then I will be there. When it happens. I promise. )
[ Hitches, soft, heart-beat wing-beat. Her fingers threading through Ilde's, gripping her like it was all of that made real. ]
( I'm told that's what people do when they... would do anything for each other. )
[ Can't say it, can't say it, can't say it, but she hopes she feels it, in between each word, settled in close. Wanting and hovering and nervous for her but only out of concern, and always patient and waiting. ]
no subject
[ There's something terrifying in the idea, of any of them sacrificing for her. Those she loves. Her brood, this Angel. It goes beyond just Ilde herself and to the culture of death she came from. Death was coming for them all... Ultimate sacrifice would be made, in unison. Why hurry it along?
She thinks again about Ahsoka's words.
"If I could help even one person suffer less..."
How terrifying. To love. ]
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( Or you for me. I don't have to, but I think that's what makes it... special. I've sacrificed so much more for so much less. What's any of that, to this? )
[ it's earnest, light as far off rainfall. Taking an easy breath, feels sunlight inside of her mouth that comes from being close to Ilde. ]
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She turns her head, catching the corner of Angel's mouth with her lips. ]
( I don't know. ) [ It echoes, her utter uncertainty, but in its echoing is a kind of certainty. ] ( But I cannot cease to love. )
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( I can't say it, I'm sorry - )
[ But she can give it all the same. Her head turns into the kiss and it's as soft as she's given. Leaning forward and closes her eyes. The breath she pulls in is thready and rattles in her chest like the birds that roosted there had taken flight. Tossed up and about inside of her as she leans in close.
A first kiss, she realises, and she thanks the hive over again for the things she never thought to have. Had deadened herself to. It doesn't feel like when she felt spiking heat flood her when she looked at Lexa. Embarrassed and overly aware. This was holding something sugary and sharp in her mouth and being overwhelmed with it. The high, high note of the connection that comes with close contact and she cannot imagine being closer except too close again. ]
no subject
She will have to be very gentle with them. So as not to frighten them, so as not to agitate the wounds that others left upon them. Guide them carefully to know that her love came with no demands. The word need not be said.
Ilde has only been kissed once or twice in her life. The others had been boys in the night, the kind of juvenile pecking that one placed upon a weeping girl after surviving the terrors of the night, to live another scorching day in the wastes. This is by far the superior experience. With a girl she knows down to her bones, one with strength and gentleness who struggles to make sense of her newfound freedom after a life beneath a tyrant's burning love.
Ilde's kiss is warm like the sun. ]
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But she finds as then, she knows not what to do with herself. Feels her breath speeding up, the quick rise and fall of her chest. The prickle she can feel in the back of her throat. The flowers of the day dream pick up on a breeze that is the unsurety of herself. Twisting about in the haze of it all.
It's no rejection, far from it, it's simply to be overwhelmed and she doesn't know what to do with herself even slightly. To push back even a little, to pull away - how, how to do this? ]
( How... how do I kiss you? )
[ Let her have this again, please, as often as she may. She is so addicted to touch, it feels all the empty hollows that eridium left. Addicted to the light the hive gives her on her otherwise dead skin and Ilde is warm, so warm and she just - she makes a noise, soft and quiet and it's thought and caught in her throat without form. It's so, so much. ]
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One stumbling deer leading the other in turns, growing a little stronger with each attempt. ]
( I will kiss you as I would like to be kissed. You will do the same. And we will learn. )
[ Until they found each other in the middle. ]
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It's not so much saying it - but she leans in this time of her own accord, and kisses her again in barely a brush of a thing, catching against the sulk of Ilde's lips, lingering to pull away slowly. A thready exhale as she pulls back so far as she can look her in the eyes again - and figures that is enough to say that - alright, she could do that. They seemed far too suited to meeting in the middle, it seemed. She was thankful for it. ]
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She strokes the side of Angel's face, tilting her head forward and down in order to place her lips at her forehead, a physical gesture that this needn't be such a tribulation at all. ]
( You have been a good companion to me. )
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( You are to me. It feels so good to finally be able to be with other people. But with you especially... )
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But Ilde did know about tenderness, despite it all. Dreus had taught her. For all his evils, he had shown her how to treasure what one loved most. To keep them safe and whole, no matter what.
Fuckin' ominous as shit........]( I was not so kind when we first met, but you made it very easy to change my mind. )
[ Ew gross, bitches, stop flirting. ]
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[ Can't stop, won't stop, probably aren't very good at stopping.
That being said, she shifts herself up then, another kiss, this one is not so delicate so much as taken quickly. A peck she steals with a giggle. Eyes lowered to watch her mouth, eyelashes soft against her cheek, the pink flush up her neck and in her cheeks. A little bit embarrassement, a little bit the heat of being so close and kissing her. ]
( I think I like this. )
[ nope they're still gross and awful. someone stop them. ]
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( I have been... ) [ Afraid isn't the word. It really doesn't encompass her emotions at all, the hunger and delight that also comes with the uncertainty and guilt. ] ( Conflicted, on what is right now. )
[ And if anyone knows what she means it is assuredly Angel. All the things different between their troubles are set dressing to the core kernel. Vaunted as precious, special, perfect so long as they did the duty tasked to them. One angel above keeping watch, the other one below tending the earth.
But only so long as they did the duty tasked to them. ]
( It was not right for women like us to be powerful. But I am also tired of being powerless. )
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But it makes her only more determined now. ]
( We are not there anymore. Here, we need to be powerful. As... far as I understand. The hive is as strong as we are. )
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[ She knows. She knows it rationally but shaking loose this piece, like a physical thing inside of her body where all that guilt collects... It's difficult. Always easier said than done.
She does not know what it will take to sever it. ]
( It will come with time, I have to believe this. )