Chéri saw their beauty as a tool, a reflection, really, something they had learnt to see from other people. Their relationship with beauty was more child-like, focused on the details. What they had said about beauty wasn’t about them. It was about Darius.

Darius took Calliope’s hands and they barely managed to avoid sobbing, or at least that was what it looked like. They seemed to calm only when Darius held their hands. Chéri sighed deeply “I…I am sorry,” they used one of his hands to get rid of a tear they had produced with a lot of effort. “I didn’t mean to startle you earlier. I… wanted to touch you…” they whispered that, as if they barely dared putting the words together “I wanted to caress your face,” maybe putting it in slightly more elegant words could do. It was risky, but they had tears in their eyes and it would have meant Darius was very different from what they had thought if he refused on the spot.