pretty is cute but power is cooler ❈ [ chastity ]

She waxed and waned in time with the moon: part of herself fading to and from darkness as the time went on.

Strangers expect her to have it all because there is so much going for her — features like a goddess and a mind sharper than the tongue of a traitor — but darkness is needed to see the light. Perspective is what the onlookers do not have, and it isn't through a lack of trying; their words trying to pry her open have often been met with a soft retaliation in the form of a shifty glance and a delivery of a secret they thought nobody knew. They do not realise walls have ears, and when a person uses the town as her company — the world speaks and she listens.

Her neutrality was what people knew to be fearful of. There were no indications of who she was or could turn out to be, most of the men would get caught up in those lullaby eyes and most of the women would try to spark her with their own envy. Darling, she was aflame long before any kind of jealousy tried to force her to feel the heat. The world lies in a state of turmoil, potential ruin, and it has never been more important to keep friends close and enemies closer.

Yet she's neither friend or foe — so she lies in the in between. Collecting secrets, eavesdropping with eyes like stars that only receive their shine when there's a snippet of information that satisfies her thirst. The dirt she has on the strangers who cast a shady glance is a diamond to her; intelligent beyond belief, of course, but too obsessed with the power to decide whether to use it for good or bad.

She knew she liked being bad. Her father was too distant to tell her to be good and she had grown to develop selective hearing when it came to authority anyway. She doesn't know what the attraction is to being bad; something poetic about vanity masking villainy, something about being the baby that got her own back, something about feeling like a liability to someone else and wanting to take back control.

She liked to be good too, though — though that side of her was something she was trying to let go of. The streets were not soft to someone who sent love letters to a school crush. After countless attempts of trying to make it sound so pretty, and however many times she wrote in cursive trying to express her feelings, she was met with silence. It was a cold sensation, opposition for the fire she'd burned herself to be, but she would take it as it was. It made her no better but no worse than before and it made her think that maybe there was room in a person for light and dark.

Her mother's death made her realise the kingdom that could be. The light ran out faster than time did and she vowed to be a nightmare from heaven.

She cut out parts of her heart and stayed all ears. Life had dealt her a hellish hand, and she wanted to prove something to someone about how could play with power too. So she started to stick to the streets, in her aura of mystery, getting lost in the darkness other people put out into the world. Their words like bullets from a forbidden romance, yet her finger was on the trigger and she could decide whether to turn the boulevard noir.

Her tongue twists itself tied with what she knows about the coup and change, about control and command. Loose lips lose lives — and she's still deciding which side of the war she wants to stand on. Because she can't make a judgement about whether she herself is solely good or completely bad because she knows she has to be one or the other at a time like this, and so she can't decide whether the world is right or wrong either. Their words are like bullets and she catches them all, afraid of the harm but obsessed with the danger.

The secret collector is good for nothing and everything all at once.

She doesn't know if she deserves a good life anymore, but she thinks about it sometimes.