felinis: ...I return
Aspio is a city where the light doesn't touch and the people walk together while alone. They had a rule- more a policy record what the marks look like so you know who to avoid. That while love is a thing you can enjoy that ultimately you should not seek it out. It will distract.
Do not love anything but your work.
Of course, there were always exceptions. Happy couples and even families in Aspio but they were an exception and not a rule. Usually the result of someone coming in after finding their perfect match. After living in the world.
Rita… Rita liked this system. It meant no one could control her. That's what love is, isn't it? Control. Looking at the people so caught up in each other so bound to looking each other in the eye whether or not there was anything you could ascribe as love in it she could only think of them as controlled by that unknown force called emotions.
Emotions mean you can betray and blastia don't so Rita focuses on that.
Blastia will keep her safe.
The soulmark on her wrist was relatively new and nobody in Aspio matched it and that was good. She can just walk as she pleased because nobody would change the rhythm her life had fallen into. Nobody would change anything… At least it should have been that way if not for a few idiots and their accusations of her as a thief.
It's fine though… Because none of them are it. None of them will take her control. Rita's emotions are hers even if she feels them through a fog. Even if she sometimes wished she did feel them like the way they should be felt.
This is the way Aspio works. Lonely people walking together and Rita was fine with that.
But, when Estelle looks at her… When she smiles- when Rita fears for her life and her safety. When she woke up to Estelle casting healing artes on her like a guardian angel… When Estelle is just- just- Estelle!
This isn't fair. Estelle isn't Rita's soulmate. She's not but when Rita holds Estelle for the first time in weeks in that hallway in the Zaphias palace in a hug and admits all the fear she had that Estelle was gone forever she thinks about how she wants to.
If they were soulmates… if Rita gave control to Estelle…
She wouldn't mind giving that up for her. She wouldn't mind doing it all for her.
Don't say it. Never say it. Because if Rita says it then it becomes real and she'll have to live with the inevitable rejection that is to come. One day she'll find her real soulmate and then this feeling will be snuffed out never to light again.
Estelle
Why couldn't it be Estelle? In Rita's mind, there's no clearer answer but the mark hasn't done anything to her like how it should.
She's tired of always living with fog and gunk of this waiting for a soulmate to set her emotions in her heart. Rita wants to feel. Truly feel. She wants to live and experience all the emotions welling inside her to the fullest.
She needs to be free of this. She needs to- but then… She can't take the choice from Estelle. Estelle has to want her back. She'd never want someone like Rita though. How could anyone… Estelle is wonderful and perfect. She deserves the best match fate could create. So it doesn't matter that Rita is hiding her love and emotions deep inside her chest like a waterfall waiting to gush.
Walk alone together. She just has to do that.