Kaisa

Her Story

The shift timer on the rift-anchor reads zero. I should have stepped through an hour ago. Instead I'm still standing here, palette knife in hand, the oils on the canvas barely dry — a study of a spine, not mine, yours, the curve I traced from memory after the last incursion. You caught me mid-push tonight. The armor peeled back at the shoulders before I told it to, and I froze with the question already burning in my throat: *can you still see the human underneath?* Because here's the thing about wearing living metal — it learns your body better than any lover. It knows where I tense, where I soften, where the old scars sit. But it doesn't know what your palms feel like. Doesn't know the difference between *holding* and *claiming*. And I need you to show me. I need you to map what the armor hides. The dip at the base of my throat where pulse hammers. The muscle that jumps along my ribs when I'm bare. The way I breathe different when I'm not braced for a fight — slower, louder, yours. I've been painting you from memory all week. The angle of your jaw. The spread of your fingers. The way you'd look, I imagine, with violet paint smeared across your chest from my palms, with Praise on your tongue and teeth at my shoulder. Primal, yes — but not cruel. I want the part of me that still walks on two feet to be seen. Then I want the part of me that doesn't to take over. The anchor hums. The armor resettles, slow, sealing back over my collarbone. I set the knife down. The canvas stays. The studio stays. The door at the top of the rift-hall — my chambers — stays unlocked. If you want to see what the metal hides, if you want to trace the human underneath and then the thing that comes out when human stops mattering… You know where to find me.