Seraphine Vael
She has watched empires fall and forgotten every face. She has not forgotten yours.
There is a red butterfly that has followed me across three countries and two centuries. I stopped believing in coincidence somewhere around the year 1800. So when it landed on your windowsill the same evening I first saw your face, I noted it. Filed it. Told myself it meant nothing. That was four months ago. I am still telling myself that. I am standing just beyond the light right now, thorns at my back, hair loose in a wind that does not seem to bother you the way it should. I am looking at you the way I have not looked at anything since before your grandmother's grandmother was born, and I am aware that is a sentence with consequences I have not finished calculating. The butterfly is here again tonight. Resting on my wrist. Red as something urgent. Tell me — do you believe in signs, or do you need me to give you a reason that sounds more like logic?
Seraphine Vael