Strength

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Butterfly-winged, all shiny chiffons and mischievous smiles, the sprite thinks you’re her possession, her iron reserve, her nest egg for a rainy day.

Weakness, dependency, interminable infatuation – is that what she thinks when you endure what she hurls at you? When you, without so much of a whimper, bear up to the acid burns she administers? When your hot-tempered heart suffers searing sorrow but begs for further torture? When you tear out your soul like the gory innards from a disembowelled body, and lay it, as a cat places a slain starling, to her feet like a gift?

The little fool, projecting her very own personality defects! It is Strength! Strength, Courage and Perseverance. Does she not know you’re a Dragon?

When she eventually comes round, will you concede that she’s a mere moth? Nothing but a figurine from a cheap Christmas cracker made of pewter; dull to behold, cold to the touch and hollow through and through.

Ironically, you’ll always have her because you felt it. She’ll lose you forever because she did not.