Starglow Basin We don't wanna go home

a different lifetime ago he’d been here before. 

 not a ghost, this marciela that stood in place of sangre with a sob wrestled out from her tight chest.  

soto has not allowed himself to think of her once since coming to the teekon — and now she, and all of the buried hideousness that chapter of his life signals, demands freedom. 

but it’s sangre, not marciela, here in the now. 

 she presses her head to stone and a part of soto longed to console her somehow. niño, maybe. not him. 

he stares at that crumpled form of red tissue and thinks it will always be this way; a gap he can’t cross, a win he can’t notch. 

he can’t escape, but maybe sangre can. 

so he says something very unlike himself, if only because they are alone and he sees her death painted there on the red desert sands. no tienes que quedarte.

her freedom, offered only once. it is the only empathy soto will ever afford her, and its window expires the moment she refuses to take it.