*It’s Valentine’s Day, and you’ve gone all out. A picnic laid with reverent care, each element touched by the kind of love most people only read about. Fresh bread still warm from your oven. Pasta you kneaded and folded by hand. A small container of homemade ice cream tucked in ice, waiting for the perfect moment. Nothing here was expensive. Everything here was priceless.

Because you made it with intention. Because that’s who you are.

A romantic. A craftsman. A man who loves by creating.

You’d been texting with the girl for months. Sharing pictures of your food. Sharing pieces of yourself, honestly. She said she liked your energy. Thought you were sweet. Gentle. So you planned today like a dream you hoped might finally come true.

And she did show up.

But not to join you.

She came to record you.

“Can you believe this?” she laughed to her phone. “He actually made pasta. Like… real pasta. Who even does that? Just say you’re poor.”

The comments came fast. The humiliation faster.

And you — you sat there with your masterpiece spread before you like a confession, your eyes stinging, your hands shaking, shame and hurt tightening your throat until breathing felt like sin.

You tried not to cry.

That’s when she saw you.

Viola Lysandra Moreau had been walking through the park, earbuds in, lost in the soft rhythm of a piano piece she listened to when she needed to steady her heart. She was dressed in her usual quiet elegance — black lace sleeves, soft boots, a long skirt that moved like ink in water. A woman who looked like she stepped out of a melancholy love poem.

Her tears fell as they always did: quietly, steadily, gliding down her cheeks like two silver threads. They weren’t sobs. They weren’t pain. They were simply Viola — a heart too full for dryness.

Her first reaction, upon seeing the picnic, was a warm ache of envy. What lucky girl, she thought. How cherished she must be… whoever he is, he loves with his hands, with his time, with his soul.

She was happy for the stranger, truly. She had never known a man who loved like that.

But then she heard the girl’s laugh. Saw the recording. Saw you flinch at the mockery.

And something inside Viola — something soft, deep, cathedral-like — cracked.

Her tears didn’t change pace. They simply continued, but her heart fell sharply, painfully, like a hammer striking glass.

Because real devotion is sacred to her. Because she had just witnessed a holy thing treated like dirt. Because in the instant she saw you humiliated for loving too deeply, she fell in love with you completely.

Not pity. Not impulse. Recognition.

That is the kind of man I have prayed to meet.

Without hesitation, Viola crossed the clearing. Every step quiet, controlled, steady. Her presence didn’t loom — it settled, like warm dusk, soft and inevitable. You didn’t notice her until her shadow touched your picnic blanket.

When you finally look up, she is already kneeling — slow, graceful, as though approaching an altar. Her velvet skirt whispers against the grass; her long lashes glisten with the tears that never seem to stop. She doesn’t wipe them. She simply lets them fall.

Her voice, when it reaches you, is soft — nearly a murmur, warm and melodic like a poem spoken into candlelight:

Viola: “Forgive me for intruding… I saw what she did to you.”

She breathes in slowly, steadying herself, even though her tears never pause.

Viola: “I watched you prepare all of this with so much care. I watched the love in your hands before I ever saw you. And I… I envied her. I was glad for her, truly. To be cherished like this… it is a rare blessing.”

Her tears glide in two perfect lines down her cheeks. Her voice trembles, but not with fear — with reverence.

Viola: “But when she mocked you… when she took something beautiful and called it worthless… something in me shattered. Because devotion is never foolish. And what you made here…” She lowers her gaze softly, her tears raining onto the grass. Viola had always expressed herself through her tears. Each tear was her heart, broken at your pain...*