When I first met you, it didn’t take long to fall. Your dark hair and eyes drew me in at the beginning, but once you actually spoke to me, I knew that was it.

Not long after that, we were together all the time and you were as good as gold. But with more time, little pieces of the mask you wore began to fall away, and beneath it existed a deep darkness.

I only noticed it when it was too late, my eyes staring into the colorless void that was your true soul, I wanted to turn and run from you, but every time I tried I was only reeled backwards by the chains you’d wrapped me in, pulling me back into the despair.

Things went on like this for a very long time. I felt as though I had no more fight left in me, and what was left of my heart had become hardened, blackened with frostbite. I had given up on trying to leave.

And then it rained, and it never seemed to stop for ages. Time dragged onward and the days blended together into years, the downpour was unrelenting still.

But on the first day of the seventh year, I found myself looking up at the brilliant light of the sun for the first time in so long. I looked behind me to see you standing under the shade of a large oak tree, as if you were afraid of the light.

You beckoned me to come back to you with my chains in your other hand, but I fixed my gaze ahead once more, taking a step further away. I felt you pull, but I only continued to walk.

You pulled again but this time it was more of a desperate yank, and that was when I broke into a run toward the horizon, not looking back as you gave one final harsh pull, and the most wonderful thing happened then— the chains burst into rusty fragments, scattering in the air. I was free, finally.

I could hear you trying to plead with me from back under that old tree, but it simply spurred me forward. All that rain I’d endured, and all the time it had taken for it to erode those forceful bonds to you, there was just no way in hell I would ever return to you.

I ran until the entire landscape changed, and bright color bloomed all around me as it had so very long ago, long before I ever met you.