10/17/21.

jordan.

jordan isabel greaves never thought she'd fall in love. at least, not this soon. not here. not now. not with this person.

she loved falling in love with things. items of interest. the stars, books, stomping on dry leaves in autumn. music and rain and cool rings found at dingy thrift stores. they fell in love with a piece of clothing or a line in a novel.

but people were not her specialty. they couldn't fall in love with people, unlike their best friend, ashley, because they didn't understand people. she understood the stars and music and books and could study them and learn about them forevermore, but people were not the same.

the only people they really understood was ashley and finian, and even then, the latter was iffy sometimes. (finian did not understand people, either, but in a different way. he didn't care about people, and therefore did not get them. jordan tried to understand people, but could not. the two were not interchangeable.)

she understood people at school the least. teenagers were complicated. teenagers were sometimes monsters, sometimes backstabbers, sometimes creeps, and occasionally kind of nice. jordan did their best to avoid most teenagers. (yes, she was a teenagers herself, but that changes nothing about her evaluation of them.)

at the end of the day, they didn't think they'd fall in love with a person. she didn't understand people, so who was she to love them?

she was nobody.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

embry.

embry lily holloway was busy. always busy. too busy to get a boyfriend when her friends pressured her, too busy to go to parties and get fucked up, too busy to do anything but study and work.

her friends despised her for it. her parents loved her for it. adults admired her, teens either envied or hated her. it didn't matter, because embry didn't care.

she wanted to build a future for herself. she didn't want to get into an ivy league school because of her parent's money—but because she worked for it. she made it here, because she deserved it.

but in between school and work and studying, in between a day and the next, embry was allowed to dream. to imagine life as different. to imagine life as magical. wonderful. full of life, and love, and joy.

but she knew she would never have that life. she needed to work. she needed to fill herself with work so she didn't wish for more. so she didn't ever look at herself and ask. for. more.

because she knew, if she asked for more, she could have it. and she didn't want to go too far. she didn't need more, so she didn't want it.

she didn't want it.

raven speaks.

(0.4k words)

hi ! i'm very happy to have this prologue out, and i'm very excited for this book ! please don't mind me projecting myself on these characters...

have a wonderful day, loves <3