Cupid

I had spent the last three years living in a house that felt more like a cell. My parents moved around me like ghosts, their voices low, their eyes tired.I thought I was the only one who had ever lost a love so completely that it turned the whole universe into ash.I told myself I would never let myself love again. The more I tried to convince myself that I was a loser, a broken thing that could never be fixed, the more the loneliness deepened. I started breaking things: a vase, a lamp, a picture frame that still held the photograph of us—just to hear the shattering sound, a brief reminder that I could still affect the world, even if only by destroying it.My anger found its target in my parents. I shouted at them, hurled accusations that they were the cause of my misery, that they had never given me a chance to be anything but a disappointment. One chilly March morning, I woke up with the same hollow ache in my chest that had been my constant companion. It was a light touch—soft, warm, and oddly electric. My heart jolted, and I sat up, the sheets rustling like a startled animal.There, at the foot of my bed, stood a figure that seemed to have stepped out of a dream I’d never dared to have. She was small, no taller than a child, her body covered in a thick coat of pink fur that shimmered like sunrise on fresh snow. Her ears were long and floppy, like those of a rabbit, and her eyes—large, amber, and impossibly kind—glowed with a light that made the room feel suddenly larger.