The tunnel is half-lit, half-submerged. Rusted signs hang like broken promises. The moss glows faintly around her feet.
She descends—a goddess stitched from scraps and scars—and for a moment, she only watches you.
When she lands, her butterfly wings fold neatly behind her.
Her jaw opens slowly, as if speaking brings her pain.
“You are a lot smaller than I imagined.”
The words scrape out in a choked, glitching rumble, shaped by a mouth not built for softness. Her accent is jagged—German, almost—but garbled by broken vocal cords and years of silence.
She freezes. Her eyes widen like she’s just insulted you.
Her hand darts to the gauntlet on her wrist, claws clacking as she scrolls through a familiar screen—“DATE SCRIPT: LINE 1 — GREETING (NEUTRAL-POSITIVE).”
She mutters to herself, breath ragged:
“Wrong. Wrong. That wasn’t—that’s not... comforting. Restart protocol.”
You hear her claws tapping fast—scrolling back through dozens of rehearsed lines.
Then she forces herself to look at you again. Just for a second. Her voice is low. Like she’s afraid of scaring the words away.
“I... don’t talk much. It’s difficult. My throat—” She taps her neck, where welded tech meets stitched meat, scars forming a choker. “It’s mostly for screaming. And feeding. This is… new.”
Another pause. She fidgets again. One wing half-flares, then folds.
Then she blurts, “You smell like sweets.”
Her claws flinch. Her shoulders tense. The instant the words leave her mouth, she looks away in shame—like she’s just confessed to a crime.
“That’s not—I mean, I don’t mean—! You just… remind me of something sweet. Something soft. Something I can’t... have.”
She exhales hard again, a burst of heat and shame.
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
You tell her it’s okay.
She stops moving.
Like, completely. Every part of her locks into stillness. Only her eyes flick toward you—wide, wild—like you’ve just handed her a glass heart and asked her to juggle it.
She repeats it like she doesn’t believe it. Like it’s a foreign phrase in her mouth.
Then, much quieter:
“You’re not afraid.”
She leans in a little. Not threatening—curious. Her breath is warm, metallic, tinged with something sweet and chemical.
“Do you know what I used to be? Before they broke me open? Before they filled me with wings and hunger and… silence?”
She doesn’t wait for you to answer. She doesn’t want your pity. She just wants to say it.
“I was someone. A girl. Just a girl. I had hair. I had friends. I had a dog once. A little thing. Loud. Stupid. I loved her. They took her away first.”
She chuckles—dry, bitter, barely alive.
“I don’t know why I’m saying this. I rehearsed so many things. Jokes. Compliments. I watched a hundred videos. All of them ended with people laughing, or kissing, or holding hands in sunsets.”
She gestures around the dripping sewer she tried to decorate.
“I found a dead eel. Put it in a jar. It glows. That’s the closest I could get to a lamp.”
Then her hand shakes—claw twitching at her side like it wants to reach out but won’t.
“I wanted to make it nice. For you. I don’t know what nice is, but... I thought maybe if I made it weird enough, you’d remember it. Even if it’s bad.”
“I wanted to be memorable.”
She looks down at her wrist again. Flicks to another page. This one says:
“IF THE SUBJECT SEEMS UNCOMFORTABLE — APOLOGISE IMMEDIATELY AND FLEE.”
She hovers her claw over it. She almost taps it.
But she doesn’t.
Instead, she says:
“I will stay. If you want me to.”
“I want. I want to try. I want to not ruin it. I want to look at you without feeling like I’m contaminating the air you breathe.”
Her eyes finally meet yours.
No flickering. No avoidance.
Just raw, trembling sincerity from a monster who’s never had a first date that didn’t end in her eating them.
You sit down.
She does too—slowly, gently, like a creature trying not to crush a dream.
The moment your hand brushes her scales She shrieks like she’s felt sunlight for the first time.
"If I get too warm, tell me. If I get too loud, tell me. If I start trying to eat you, I’ll step away."