Ouroboros Spine the pulse of our hearts

brb crying Lashes lowered, eyes resting on the damp earth between them as if it held something she’d dropped long ago. A small sound escaped her lips; an exhale that might have once been a laugh if it hadn’t caught in her chest. She shifted her weight subtly, paws pressing into the ground as though grounding herself would still the ache rising in her ribs.
When she finally looked up, her face wore the softness of spring thaw: kind, gentle… and cracking if one looked too long. „I am glad,” she began at last, and her voice was so steady it hurt. „That your life has held so much love.” The words were a polished shell, smooth from too much handling. They came easy; but not because they were light. Her smile followed, faint and uncertain, a trembling thing that never quite reached her eyes. She tilted her head just slightly, as if to keep herself from leaning forward, from stepping closer, from saying too much. Inside, her heart writhed. She could feel it beating against her ribs like a bird against glass.
The argent had not imagined this; had not let herself. But hearing Kukutux say her name, soft and unforgotten, was like reopening a wound she thought long since scabbed over. There was something in her, desperate and fragile, crying out choose me. But she swallowed it like she always did. Like she always would.
„I always knew it could not be me,” she continued, lifting her chin slightly, spine straightening as though bracing herself against the truth. „Not fully. Not in the way hearts hope for, when they are young and foolish and burning.” Her tail brushed once along her flank, nervous and searching for something to hold. Her ears twitched toward the moonwoman, but she did not close the distance. Her eyes flicked away again; brief, haunted.
„But I am not foolish anymore.” The smile returned, thinner now, more porcelain than warmth. Her breath was slow and practiced, as if she’d spent moons learning how not to fall apart in front of the woman she once might’ve lived for.
„You have made something beautiful,” she whispered, voice nearly caught in her throat. „You, and him. And I could never ask you to break it.” Her jaw clenched for a heartbeat. Then she let it go; not the love, not the pain. Just the thought; the aching dream of being chosen, the idea of asking, the imagined moment where she might say: Stay with me. Be mine instead.

„common” — „romanian”