i wish you’d stay

Sohalia

Say my name
And every color illuminates

Harper's praise was a balm to Soh's fragile soul, and she smiled shyly over at him as she twisted to face him more fully in the grass. She'd always striven to be helpful, and in most cases, she rather thought she'd succeeded, but it was always nice to have external validation that she'd been doing the right things. Especially the way things were going these days.

And though there was a little voice in the back of Soh's mind that insisted that Harper was in no place to listen to her qualms and worries, the majority of her was just naive enough to think that if he was asking, then clearly he was alright.

She bit her lip, looking away with a frown. "Everything's fine. Things are just... complicated at home," she hedged, unwilling to dump her problems into his lap, but one look at the concern on his face broke her resolve. "Jude and I broke up," she confessed. "And I don't know if we're still friends or not." Memories of their last conversation left a sour taste in her mouth that she didn't want to inspect too closely. "Koa's been doing... something in other lands that had Deimos asking me if I'd authorized him to act as a militia, of all things, and I don't know how to even begin to address that. And then we've got the Abandoned coming soon, on top of everything else..." She sighed.

"It's just been... a lot, lately. I wish -" But she stopped, suddenly feeling as though she should be stronger, better, than this. As though she shouldn't be dumping all of her concerns on someone else's lap - even if he wasn't leading a foreign nation anymore. But this was her dad, or as close to one as she had, and if she couldn't talk to him... "I just wish I didn't have to do it alone," she whispered, wrapping her arms around her knees.

We are shining
And we will never be afraid again