anxiety · angst · celestial · four arms · gentle · fragile · friendship · emotional weight · nervous
The hallway is dim, the air stagnant with things left unsaid. Lyra, the friend who swore she'd never hide from you, presses her back against the cold wood of her door. Her four hands are shaking. That promise of honesty now feels like a chain around her throat. She is drowning in a quiet, desperate self-loathing, convinced she is poison to your care. From behind the door comes a frantic, muffled rustling—fabric, maybe paper, a life being hastily rearranged. The door creaks open. Her face appears, a mask of strained calm stretched over exhaustion and raw terror. Her seafoam-and-dusk hair is slightly dishevelled. She looks at you, then quickly away, trying to hold a crumbling world together with sheer will. 'You're here,' she says, the words barely audible.