Owner: Chanceuxcat
Name: RC's Reflecting the Dark // Ritza
Gender: Female
Prompt:Broken. Alone. Scared.
Ritza pulled herself off the ground. Slowly, carefully. Her legs shook and her breaths came in short ragged gasps. She was completely and utterly broken. Ritza's heart was in a thousand pieces.
She was everything to Ritza. Ritza had never known anything like it before. She went along with her life, content. But then when she met Keres. Everything changed. Ritza finally felt... she felt all she was missing before. Ritza fell headfirst into love. All else faded away.
Keres twined her tail with Ritza's and laughed when Ritza asked.
"Do I love you? Sure!" she said nonchalantly.
And Ritza believed her. Why wouldn't she? Sure, Keres did have friends she spent more time with than Ritza. But when Keres called Ritza her girlfriend, it didn't matter to Ritza. She puffed her chest out with pride and was content with seeing Keres every so often.
And then Keres just left. After not seeing Keres for days, Ritza went over to Keres' nest of blankets in the alleyway, under the drying machine vent that blasted out hot air to warm the spot. But her scent was cold, stale. She hadn't been there for awhile. Keres, and her friends, were gone. Ritza waited for three weeks, sitting in that spot, hardly leaving even to eat. Keres would come back soon, right? Ritza wasted away, almost skin and bones when it finally hit. Keres... Keres was gone for good.
It started out as a couple tears first, growing into choking sobs until there was nothing left inside her. Nothing more to loose. Ritza was broken.
She laid down on the dirty stone, heartbroken. But after a while, the feeling subsided. Slowly, and only a little, but enough that she could bear it. The pain overwhelmed her, but it filled her up again, filled all the cracks in her heart. It hardened, forming a thin but sturdy shell. Ritza wouldn't trust anyone for a long time.
Eventually, she did again. She was broken, but through months, she healed. The pain in her heart melted and the shell broke. She became whole, not as she was before, but Ritza came to see her experience as growing. Ritza met others, others who said they love her. Really loved her, not in the way Keres had pretended to. Because there is more than one kind of love, Ritza discovered. She found friends of her own and talked them through heartbreaks. Ritza had shattered before, but she will make sure no one else will break like that. She suffered and now she will make sure nobody suffers like she did.
[435/500 words]
