Chapter Text
I think that love is the most powerful force in the universe. It’s no wonder why the Ancient Greeks believed in the way Aphrodite and Ares would come together. They’re two huge driving forces, not necessarily of nature in the world, like the sky, the earth, the sea — but of people.
Love drives people .
It is infinite, it is strength, it is more than a biological imperative. It can leave you feeling high, feeling whole, feeling powerful, proud, everything good in between. It can build you up to the greatest heights. But love, it can also knock you down to your knees. Without love, there is no grief, because why grieve something you never cared for? Without love, there is no hope, because why have hope for something you cannot love at least a little bit?
Love can wreck you, leave you broken, betrayed, lost. It can tear your heart out, blacken your soul with your lifeblood, leave you empty and shallow and bleak and hopeless.
How apt it is, the description of romantic love being an arrow, you know, the sort with a notch? Arrows are made that way so that it hurts more to pull it back out. And romantic love could be like that, no?
You’re shot. Maybe you feel it the moment of impact. Maybe you don’t realize it until you look down and you’ve been hit. But eventually, you pull it out. Or it goes through you. And there’s relief or pain, the realization of feelings returned or brutal rejection, the start or quick death of a relationship.
So it begins with a balm, something to soothe the pain, to heal. The arrow may have had poison, and so starts the ill-fated love affair. Perhaps it heals over, so the poison remains under the skin until the wound is cut open and the rot drained away to allow you to heal again, properly, with no toxin in your blood.
But if there was no poison? The wound heals, forgotten under the balm of the gentler side of love. It becomes a story to tell, funny or beautiful or embarrassing, but healed properly so there is no sting.
Love is raw. It bleeds you when it’s fickle, wounds you or heals you. But love, it’s not always capricious. Sometimes it is the anchor at sea instead of the roiling waves. Sometimes it is the gentle strength of a breeze in the sail instead of the buffeting winds of a storm.
And sometimes, it’s gentle and warm, easy as sitting down in the comfort of home after a long day.