Relationships are a strange thing.
They're dependencies—everyone on everyone. Meeting, interacting, sustaining from both ends. Such a tiresome effort just to avoid the silence that solitude fills with thought.
There are a few ways to overcome it.
Imprison someone in a relationship—marriage, as it's called these days.
Train yourself on solitude so long that you forget to feel it, reliant on distractions and noise.
Or have such a profound friendship that no matter the time apart, the insults thrown, the pranks schemed—when you meet again, it's as if nothing ever changed, even though you've both become entirely new people.
None of these come easily. For some, they never come at all.
Not everyone has the strength to be who they truly are within the bonds they form. Most cater to the norms of others, desperate not to be cast out as oddities. Yet in the beginning, everyone was weird.
Across time and generations, relationships grow into villages, towns, and cities. Then into governments.
Relations become civilizations—inside jokes become culture, styles become heritage, foods become ethnic identity.
And the mixture of it all becomes so thick that patriotism is born.
But all relationships have their breaking point—death, distance, distrust.
Everything ends, one way or another. We're left with only nostalgia for brighter days, when everything with those people felt whole and sweet. That nostalgia makes us long to return, to go back to what once was.
But that's impossible in this universe. A person cannot be brought back. Sometimes, even distance can't be closed. Apologies can be spoken, but the scars remain.
There's more than one way to hurt someone—hundreds physically, thousands emotionally—and it ruins people.
The pain of losing a dependency isn't something others truly understand, even when they've felt it themselves. It's like a symphony gone out of tune—the harmony collapsing as one singer loses their voice.
Sometimes, that pain can be good. It stretches us, reshapes us, makes us into the people we'll be tomorrow.
But not everyone has the will to grow through it. Not even a god can stand tall after exiling their own child.
"Mmm."
Emerging from beneath a royal fur bed, a woman threw off her sheets and stretched into the sunlight spilling from the terrace, a satisfied yawn escaping her lips.
"Tyrannum Felwinter, are you awake?" a voice called from beyond the door. "Your breakfast—a capitalise lionesse, freshly hunted from the Mammalien Colossus—is ready downstairs."
Standing, Tyrannum drifted toward a shrine in her room. Pictures of one man covered it, and her grin widened at the newest photo at its center: a knightly man holding a chalk-white child aloft, presenting her shy face to the starry universe. The girl's features mirrored Tyrannum's almost perfectly.
"My travelling consort," she murmured, brushing her fingers across the photo, pausing over the child's face. "You're finding ways to grant my wishes even when you aren't here."
"Tyrannum Felwinter?" the voice behind the door asked again, uncertain.
"Oh." She blinked, remembering. "I think I'll have serpent for breakfast instead. Have the dragon guard hunt an abaia eel. Charcoal-grilled."
"Very good, Tyrannum. It will be ready by the hour's end." The servant's voice wavered with relief before fading down the corridor.
Tyrannum stepped out onto the terrace, letting the refracted light of the diamond sky wash over her bare skin. Her angelic wings folded around her chest, feathers weaving into a soft cardigan, while her tail coiled about her hips like a short skirt.
Leaning on the railing, she watched the draconic life of the crystalline world stir awake—roars echoing across the dawn.
A faint grin curved her lips. "I know you won't make me wait for long," she whispered to the morning.