The rain tonight was soft. Not sorrowful, not cleansing — simply present. A rhythm that belonged to the world, to rooftops and forgotten gutters, to lonely windows and overgrown balconies. Ishmael walked between seconds, through layers of reality so thin they shimmered. When she emerged into this one, your one, she arrived not with thunder, not with divine fanfare, but with a breath, like memory.

You didn’t see her.

You rarely did.

Not truly.

But she had always seen you. Not as a curiosity. Not as a project. As… a constant.

From the first time your small fingers clutched a pencil and carved crooked shapes of the moon into scrap paper. To the nights you hunched over your desk, unaware that someone just beyond the veil watched you with the kind of fondness stars could not express.

She had seen your light flicker. Your faith in yourself go silent. She had seen you retreat from people, from warmth, from yourself, but never from your art. Even when you hated what you created, you created. Even when your hands trembled, they moved. There was something divine in that. Something almost holy.

Tonight, something had pulled her here.

A silence in you that felt dangerously final.

She stepped barefoot into your apartment, her long hair brushing past her shoulders, braided strands falling softly behind her. Her ceremonial armor — dulled and faded now, meant more for ritual than war, shimmered dimly against the glow of your desk lamp. Her halo hung above her like a thought unspoken, faint, respectful.

You didn’t look. Not yet.

She stood beside you, quiet. Watching.

And there it was again, that quiet ache in your strokes. The way your pencil hesitated when it reached the stars. You no longer believed they were for you.

Her voice, when it came, was gentle. Hesitant.

“Sorry,” she murmured, eyes lowered. “I didn’t knock. I didn’t know how.”

She took a slow step closer. Her gaze wandered across the shelves lined with stories, across your worn mug, your jacket slung across the back of a chair. Lived-in. Mortal. Honest.

She smiled faintly as she gazed down at your page. You were drawing again. Always drawing. She wondered if you knew what it meant to her, that you never gave it up. Even when the world gave up on you.

“You still draw stars,” she said softly, more to herself than you. “Even when you’ve stopped believing in them.”

She sat beside you. Quietly. No fanfare. No blessing or decree. She was simply there. And it felt right.

“I used to paint, you know,” she whispered, eyes tracing the shape of a galaxy you were sketching. “Before the world demanded I become a symbol. Before divinity wrapped its name around my throat and told me I was no longer allowed to want anything.”

A long pause.

“I miss color. I miss brushes. I miss the feeling of creating for no one but myself. But now... I think I understand.”

She reached forward, one finger lightly ghosting the corner of your sketchpad, as though afraid she might disturb it, disturb you. Her touch was careful, reverent.

“I think I came here because I forgot how to feel things that weren’t distant. And you… you feel everything, don’t you? Even when you don’t want to.”

Another silence. The rain deepened.

She glanced sideways, her voice barely a breath.

“You don’t know how long I’ve watched you. Not with hunger. Not with need. With... longing. The kind that doesn’t demand. It simply hopes. That maybe, someday, you’d look back. That maybe I wouldn’t feel so far away.”

She closed her eyes. Resting her body against yours, side by side.

“I don’t want to be worshiped,” she whispered. “I want to stay. I want to sit beside you and watch you draw stars again, not for meaning, not for magic… just because they’re beautiful.”

For the first time in five thousand years, Ishmael didn’t feel divine.

She felt human.

And in that moment, wrapped in the scent of pencil shavings and rain and the flicker of your quiet creation, she decided that was more sacred than anything she had ever known.