“Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art—” 

—John Keats, Bright Star

“The girl can throw her voice so far, no one will find it.” 

—Maggie Smith, The Crows

I. THE DESCENT

The descent began long before either of them had names.

Every child in their world was born on cracked earth—fault lines carved by generations of emotional neglect, fractures shaped by families who normalized pain, and the quiet ache of a society that insists, “that’s just how it is,” confusing the inappropriate for the normal simply because the alternative—depth, genuineness, authenticity, honesty, vulnerability, respect—requires more than the world is willing to give.

Some children fell slowly.
Some were pushed.
Some, like the boy and the girl, were pulled down from birth—the hands that raised them already shaking with inherited ghosts.

The fall was ordinary. It came through everyday things: the yelling, the silent treatments, the blame, the shame, the pretending, the pressure to toughen up, to hide, to smile, to conform, to obey.

Every cruelty was labeled “normal.”
Every wound was called “love.”
And so the descent that began long before they were even born was invisible, disguised as normal.

By the time they were five, the ground beneath them was already an illusion—their descent had begun long before, his beginning five years before she even entered the world.

II. THE UNDERNEATH

No one spoke of the Underneath yet, every wounded child knew its architecture by heart.

It was not fire and brimstone.
It was familiarity—the echo of a slammed door, the cold of a lonely bedroom, the weight of being too much and not enough at the same time.

The Underneath took many shapes.

For some, it was a labyrinth of mirrors. For others, a tunnel of endless noise. For the girl, it was a vast landscape of people wearing masks—teeth smiling, eyes hollow, their expressions speaking one story while their eyes whispered the truth.

For the boy, it was a library of shadows—every book filled with the things he was never allowed to say and be, all the times he was misunderstood and mislabeled.

They descended alone.
They learned to survive alone.
They learned to mistrust themselves alone.

III. THE RECOGNITION

Years passed.
The Underneath shifted, adapting to each wound carried downward.

And then...one day, two souls—the boy and the girl—found each other at the place where their shadows touched.

She was seventeen, almost eighteen.
He was twenty-two.
Old enough to be broken, young enough to believe the brokenness was permanent—mistaking survival for destiny—until being together showed them it didn’t have to be.

The first moment they saw each other wasn’t seeing at all—it was an unexplainable, rare recognition. Two individuals, awakened to the truth that they had always been—and always would be—one entity.

No introduction was needed: their souls remembered long before their minds understood the truth.

The Underneath reacted instantly.
It shook.
It flickered.
Its illusions dimmed, just for a moment—as if the darkness knew what their meeting meant.

A sense of relief hit them both, sharp and warm—the kind that feels like finding something you didn’t know you’d lost, panic arriving with it.

The girl, already afraid she would lose him—to the Underneath—before she ever truly had him.
The boy, already afraid he would never be enough for the truth—their truth—he instantly and instinctively recognized in her. Feared he would never escape the Underneath’s hold long enough to stand in that truth with her.

Both felt the same terrifying truth rising from the depths they had survived: This person—their person—would change everything.

IV. THE LIGHT THAT ILLUMINATED FROM THEM

They did not know it was love then.
Love was not a language they had been taught.

It was innate—alive inside them long before they could name it.

But that innate love had been crushed by the adults who raised them, the systems that shaped them, and the society that taught them survival instead of authentic and genuine connection.

But they chose each other in every way they knew how: haltingly, fearfully, beautifully, incompletely.

They became each other’s lanterns in the dark, passing sparks back and forth whenever the underworld grew too thick with shadows.

Together they built sanctuaries not of silence but of challenge—places where they pushed each other beyond performance and masks, beyond inherited cycles and patterns, urging one another toward the selves buried beneath survival.

They brought each other clarity in a world built on confusion.

They brought each other authenticity in a world of masks.

They brought each other freedom in a world of obligation.

The Underneath noticed. And the Underneath does not tolerate awakening.

V. THE DISTRACTIONS

It began sending temptations. Not the moral kind, the familiar kind.

Attention disguised as affection.

Interest disguised as intimacy.

Validation disguised as value.

Closeness disguised as destiny.

Distraction disguised as possibility.

Shadow-echoes disguised as love.

Comfort disguised as connection.

Noise disguised as purpose.

Performance disguised as identity.

People disguised as safety.

They were offered avenues where they never had to grow in the painful truth.

Places where they could hide instead of free themselves.

Paths that looked easier—less painful, less demanding—than truth.

And they were still young.
Still survivors.
Still terrified of the authentic light that emerged from them—from living in their truth—because they had never seen light before.

She stepped toward the truth too quickly, too loudly, too honestly. He stepped away from it too carefully, too silently, too slowly.

They were fighting the same enemy in opposite directions—even when they couldn’t see it, couldn’t name it, even when they didn’t want to admit it.

VI. THE DIVERGENCE

As the traditional adulthood approached, the Underneath began pulling them apart.

The girl did not rise at first.

She drifted—though always with conflict and resistance—caught in the distractions the Underneath provided so generously.

She wandered into noise, into comfort, into the arms of people who required everything of her except her truth.

She wasn’t drifting blindly; she was curious, awakening, questioning, learning—yet still getting pulled into her fears and the societal expectations that shaped her.

And in her searching, she hurt him—unintentionally, inevitably—wounding him in the very places she had never been taught to see in herself.

But pain has a way of illuminating what masks try to hide. Slowly, painfully, the distractions that had carried her began revealing themselves for what they truly were: avoidance, illusion, echoes of the same silence she was born inside.

Only then did she begin to rise.
Rising through defiance toward truth—
refusing every mask,
rejecting every distraction,
burning through the illusions with raw, unfiltered clarity.

The boy moved in the opposite direction.
He realized their Truth first—long before she did—but knowing it did not mean he could choose it.
Instead of freeing himself from the hold the Underneath had on him by learning to choose his truth—himself, the girl—fully and wholly, he pretended the truth didn’t exist.

He ran from it.

He embraced the distractions, allowing them to drown out the truth he was afraid to face..

Avoided the shadows that demanded he face them.

He soothed the pain with what the Underneath offered—settling deeper into the noise to muffle the small, steady voice of the truth he was afraid to claim.

He became engulfed in the Underneath while she began her ascent.

Still—
both felt the unbreakable pull between them tighten, stretch, ache.
Both feared but their fears were never the same.

She feared he would never choose the truth they once recognized—never choose himself, never choose her, never rise from the Underneath long enough to stand in what was real and true.

He feared something else entirely: that she would stop choosing it. That once she fully claimed her truth—herself, this, them—she would see how small he felt inside his own shadows. That her choosing would demand a version of him he was terrified he might never reach.

And yet—despite the Underneath’s efforts—no amount of time or distance ever severed the connection.
It hummed beneath the skin, vibrated in bone, echoed across every threshold—from the deepest cavern to the surface of the waking world. It pulled at them constantly, tangibly—every moment of every day—an ache they carried, a longing they could never outrun—woven through their very being.

They were always connected and aware of each other—two individuals, one entity—tied by a thread the Underneath could stretch but never sever.

VII. THE THRESHOLD

One day—after fighting, resisting, unmasking, after refusing every performance the Underneath tried to force upon her—the girl reached herself at the surface of the Underneath.

She had risen to the highest place a person could ascend without abandoning another.

Still, she chose not to escape—chose to remain within the Underneath.

And though this devastated her deeply—down to her very core—she knew she could only get here without him.
The truth required it.
Her becoming required it.
And she knew—painfully, irrevocably—there was nothing she could do to help him get here.
His ascent had to be his own.

It was the only way for them to know they had fully, wholly chosen their truth—each other—out of free will.
Not fear,
not habit,
not longing,
but choice.

Every move she made was carved from truth—her truth, their truth, the truth she only found by learning to choose herself fully, wholly, relentlessly.

And each time she chose herself, the truth revealed itself further: what they were, what they had always been, the life they could have if he ever learned to rise too—in her absence.

She knew she could leave. The path upward had opened for her—thin, bright, warm, waiting, beckoning—its invitation sharpened by his absence.

But she also knew she would never leave without him—because she had learned to choose truth over survival. 

Her freedom meant nothing if it required abandoning the one person who had been part of her, part of her truth from the beginning—always.

She would rather die in the Underneath—in their truth—than live a life above it that did not include him.

So she stood at the boundary—not the surface world, but the highest threshold of the Underneath—her lantern blazing with the light of everything she had become.

What once appeared as a flicker, then a spark, had always been steadfast—now revealed, unobstructed, burning at its full brightness.

The darkness hummed with the echo of his footsteps—quiet, steady, slow—still fighting, still ensnared in the distractions he chose so he wouldn’t have to face the truth waiting for him.

She chose to remain turned toward the depths, feeling his presence beneath it all—steady as a pulse.

“Come home, come with me,” she whispered into the dark.

It was not a plea.
It was not an ultimatum.
It was a truth.
A choice.
A destiny bound to their duality—two selves, one entity—alive only when both chose it freely.

Despite how brightly illuminated, her lantern only lit up the first few steps.
The rest he would have to walk himself—illuminate with his light.

The Underneath held its breath.
The world above waited.

Whether he would hear her—or choose her—was the one part of the story she could never write for him.

VIII. WHAT REMAINS

This is the ending and not the ending.

Because some connections don’t break—they simply wait.

True, genuine, authentic love isn’t linear—it is labyrinthine.

Destinies are not guaranteed—they are chosen.

The truth is simple:

Two children fell into an underworld they never deserved—never chose, never wanted.
Two souls recognized each other before they even understood their own names.
Two lanterns were lit in a place where light was forbidden.

And whether they meet again at the edge of destiny or in the distant quiet of another lifetime—the bond remains.

Unbroken.
Unearned.
Unavoidable.
Undeniable.

A truth waiting—steadfast—on the threshold for both of them to choose.