Mary had a little lamb

The world did not shatter in one moment. It cracked, slowly. Softly. Like ice underfoot.

Mary sat in the chapel’s heart—surrounded by whispers, and two men who weren’t quite men. One with eyes like ink and snow for skin. One with eyes like stories never written.

They said nothing now. They simply waited.

And in their silence, memory bled through.

Ash's Story

He had once lived in her.

Not beside her. In her—woven into the quiet folds of her childhood dreams. Back when the world was wide and soft, before her mother died in the orchard with frost in her lashes. Ash was the warmth in the silence. The lullaby without words. He had no body then. Just a presence. The imaginary friend no one believed she needed.

But he’d warned her.

The day she wandered too far into the field. The day she found Sebastian—small, alone, and waiting. Ash had whispered: Don’t pick him up. Don’t look into his eyes. But she had. And from that moment, Ash had been shut out. Not destroyed—but forgotten.

Yet he had waited. Not in anger, but love. In the cracks of her dreams. In the tears she didn’t understand. In the ache that even Sebastian’s affection couldn’t soothe.

And now, here he stood. Whole. Because Mary had called him, even if she didn’t remember how.

Sebastian Changed

Mary turned to look at Sebastian—and flinched.

He was changing.

The wool had retreated to his shoulders, falling away like smoke.

His legs were pale now, long and lean—still ending in hooves, but even they were cracking at the seams, reshaping.

His arms had hands. Fingers too perfect. Skin like porcelain kissed by cold. Veins faintly visible beneath.

But it was his face that startled her most.

It was beautiful.

In a wrong, haunting way. The face of an angel drawn by someone who had never seen one, only imagined them in fever-dreams. White lashes framed bottomless black eyes, sclera and iris alike consumed by shadow. Lips blood red, unnaturally so, like something smeared from a wound.

And yet… he looked at her with something real. A devotion deeper than sanity.

“Mary,” Sebastian said, and his voice no longer sounded like bleating or whispers. It was a man’s voice. Velvet. Broken. Terrified.

“You loved me first,” he said. “You chose me. You raised me. You protected me from the world. I became who I am because of you.”

He stepped closer, hooves cracking—breaking—reshaping.

“I am your creation.”

The Battle Inside

Mary felt torn in two.

Ash’s presence wrapped her like a familiar blanket. It felt safe. Like honesty. Like before. He showed her fragments—memories buried so deep they felt like fiction: Her drawing a boy in the dirt with a stick. Talking to shadows when her father shouted. Ash had always been there.

But Sebastian…

Sebastian was here. Real. Touching. Twisting. Beautiful in his brokenness.

And despite it all—despite everything—her heart still clenched when she looked at him.

“I don’t know who I am without you,” Sebastian whispered. “You made me feel like I was enough.”

Ash stepped forward. Calm. Steady. Eyes sad.

“I don’t want to be your choice, Mary. I want to be your truth.”

Sebastian dropped to his knees.

Ash knelt beside him.

And Mary, trembling, stood between them.

“I’m so tired,” she whispered. “Of being seen only through your eyes.”

The air shifted.

A wind picked up. Pages turned without a hand. The chapel cracked again—but did not fall.

Mary turned slowly.

To Sebastian: “You were the lie I needed to survive. You gave me control. But you used it.”

To Ash: “You were the truth I buried. Because it hurt too much to believe I was ever safe.”

She looked up at the stained glass above. It showed a lamb. A man. A girl. All with the same face.

“I don’t want either of you to decide who I am.”

Then—she did something neither expected.

She reached out and touched them both.

And fire poured through the chapel.

Not burning—but purifying.

Ash gasped.

Sebastian screamed—a sound not of pain, but terror.

Mary glowed.

From her chest bloomed a light not given, not taken, but hers alone.

She whispered: “I am not yours. You are mine.”

And the light expanded—blinding, holy, real.

To be continued…