She wasn't temptation incarnate, nor a deliberate distraction. She was a friend - a confidant who saw the world a bit different but that's what fancied him. That was the problem. She saw him. And in her gaze, he saw himself in ways he wasn't prepared for.
The danger wasn't her; it was the place she took in his heart.
He knew. He knew the warnings, the parables, the examples of others before him. He knew what it would cost. And yet, he stayed.
And in staying, he fell.
The routine that had once brought him peace dissolved, His fast grew sporadic, his prayers distracted, his thoughts consumed by longing. The man who once saw goodness began to see only what he lacked. He drifted, aimless and unmoored, becoming everything he had sought to leave behind.
By the time she returned, it was already too late.
She missed him. The strength and purpose that had once defined him; it was lost. That man was gone. He knew it even if she didn't. And there in the aftermath of his choices, lay the poetry. A cruel beautiful poetic justice, almost divine in its clarity.
