#this is when we collectively cry over ten year old philippa tbh

[snarkomancy]

❛ We make ourselves really safe. And no one ever gets in. ❜

Scrawny little girl. Messy hair, scabbed knees.Small round face, big eyes. Serious. Brow furrowed, nose scrunched up. Yellowdress, two sizes too big. Bare feet, dirty. Dried blood under her nails, scabs covering her arms and legs. Scratching her skin, always itchy.

Philippa looks up at the rectoress, the mostmagnificent, most powerful, most impressive person she has ever met in herwhole life (all ten whole years of it!).

This place is safe. She is safe. No morewords that cut, no more taunts that wound. No more being excluded, ignored,invalidated. Here, in the great towers of Aretuza, she is seen and she is heardand she is exactly where she needs to be.

Eager little heart fluttering its wings like abird inside her chest.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but it’s thewords that hurt the most.

She wants to forget the words, wants to forgetthem so bad but they keep replaying in her head, over and over, untilshe wants to cover her ears and scream.

Don’thurtmedon’thurtmedon’thurtme !!!

She shakes her head, her face contorting with theeffort of clearing her mind – she will learn to control her face, in time. Herface, which will eventually be remade, reshaped, no longer her own. 

For now, she wantsto believe Tissaia, she wants to believe her with all her heart, but she can’thelp but wonder about the ins and outs of it, the ifs and buts.

I bet no one would ever hurt you,she thinks. No one would dare to.

In that moment, Tissaia is everything she wantsto be, powerful, untouchable, respected. All-seeing and all-knowing. It’s allPhilippa wants, and she wants it so badly it makes her insides twist.  She wants to trust this woman, withevery single fibre of her being, but she has learned far too young that trustis easily betrayed, is not something to be given freely, if it must be given atall.

“No one at all?” her own voice soundsstrange inside her head. Should she be asking questions? Is she about to ruinit all like she ruins everything else?

“But how do I stop them? And what do I do withwhat’s already gotten inside? If nothing can get in, does that mean nothing canever get out? I don’t want those words in my head anymore, I don’t want-“

Oh.

A touch against her mind, against her soul. Coldand precise and both disconcerting and comforting at the same time.

Just like that.

Philippa understands.