A slice of the Thunderstorms

The ring had been a diamond in my pocket, a jewelled secret. I had loved her once—treasured her, awed at the eloquence with which she moved, her liquid strides, the way she looked like a painting. Each word she mouthed to me had been artistry itself, shaped in the quiet spaces where we oohed and aahed deep into the shadow. Boy, had I loved Raven—with her midnight locs, her fiery temperament, her sharp wit that could slice a man open and still leave him grateful for the wound. Yet on the night before I died—and came back, resurrected into a more terrified version of myself—I knew something terrible: love had not been enough. It is one thing to be in love with the idea of being in love. But love itself—was it ever enough? She was complicated. We were complicated. I was a storm pretending to be a man. Being in love with Raven Featherborn was like being a toothpick in a thunderstorm. Tell me—can even firemen and detectives find you when the storm is over? When the world is picking all the pieces apart, what of you is left? — I met her on a morning that smelled like petrol and rain. She stood outside the studio, paint on her hands like she had dipped them into a sunset and refused to wash it off. The first thing I noticed was not her face—but the motorcycle. Black, sleek, breathing like an animal at rest. And then him. He leaned against it like it belonged to his bones. The kind of man who didn’t enter rooms—he arrived in them, trailing silence and questions. His leather jacket carried stories. His eyes carried endings. “Don’t touch the bike,” he said, without looking at me. “I wasn’t going to,” I replied, though I had been. Raven laughed from behind us, soft but dangerous. “He thinks everything beautiful is meant to be stolen.” “And you don’t?” he asked her, finally turning. That was the moment I understood—this was not my story to begin with. — His name was Soren. An artist who painted like he was trying to outrun something. Who rode like the road owed him forgiveness. His canvases were filled with ghosts—women half-formed, skies that bled, oceans that refused to stay still. I saw myself in them before I ever saw myself in him. He spoke to me differently than he spoke to Raven. With her, he was history—shared laughter, unfinished sentences, childhood stitched into the fabric of who they were. With me, he was possibility. Careful. Curious. A man standing on the edge of a decision he hadn’t yet made. “You look like trouble,” he told me once. “And you look like you’d follow it,” I said. He didn’t deny it. — The ring sat heavy in his pocket. I knew before he told me. “You’re going to ask her,” I said one evening, watching the way his hands trembled just slightly as he sketched. He didn’t look up. “I’ve known her my whole life.” “That’s not what I asked.” Silence stretched between us, thin as thread. “She’s… home,” he finally said. “And what am I?” I asked. That was when he looked at me. Really looked. “You’re the road,” he whispered. And God help me—I understood. — Raven didn’t see it at first. Or maybe she did, and chose to pretend love could outshout instinct. She loved him with a certainty that frightened me. Loved him like the world had already ended and he was the only thing left worth holding onto. I envied her for that. I pitied her for that. I hated myself most of all. — The night everything broke felt strangely quiet. No thunder. No warning. Just the soft hum of the motorcycle cooling outside, and the weight of a decision that had already been made long before any of us dared to speak it. “I was going to propose,” Soren said, the ring glinting faintly in his palm. Raven’s smile didn’t falter—but something behind her eyes cracked like glass under pressure. “And now?” she asked. He looked at me. And in that moment, I wished—selfishly, desperately—that he wouldn’t. “Now I don’t know what love means anymore.” — Love is a dangerous thing when it arrives too late. Or too early. Or dressed in the wrong person’s skin. — I left before the storm came. Because I knew this much: some loves are not meant to be chosen. They are meant to be survived. And as I walked away, I realized something Raven had understood long before I ever did— Being loved by a man like Soren was not salvation. It was weather. And no one—not even a woman made of fire and midnight—can hold a storm forever.