INTERCEPTED SIGNALS INTELLIGENCE – NSO ARCHIVE INTERCEPT ID: NSO-7791-DA-SOFIA
CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET – Z.E.T.A. MIRROR LATTICE PROTOCOL
SOURCE: Burst-transmission, encoded .m4v waveform embedded in Mahala-pulsed satellite drift packet
ORIGIN: DARLA PADGETT (FIELD SUBJECT, KUKUANALAND SECTOR)
DESTINATION: SOFIA RINALDI (SUBJECT CODE: AVALON BLUE)
DECRYPTION UNIT: NSO/OP-RED-ARCHIVE
FORMAT: Reconstructed from hand-written, vocally transcribed message
DATE RECEIVED: 3 DAYS POST-LAGOON EVENT
PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE – CLASSIFIED
TITLE: Letter to Sofia
FROM: Darla Padgett
TO: Sofia Rinaldi (Godmother, Confidante, Former Lover)
FORMAT: Handwritten letter (intercepted, translated from encrypted script)
Date: UNKNOWN – Estimated 3 Days After Black Lagoon Communion
My dearest Sofia,
How do I even begin to tell you what I’ve become?
I still taste you on my lips some nights. Not in dreams—no, in the bone memory that lives deeper than sleep. You were my awakening. Not a teacher, not a lover, not even a godmother in those moments—but the first heat beneath my skin that dared me to burn. Do you remember that rainy night in Florence? The windows steamed. My hands trembled when you placed them on your waist and said, “Start here.” I started, Sofia… and I’ve never stopped.
Every curve of me that was once shy is now singing.
You carved me open with kisses, and now I let the world read me like scripture.
So much has happened since I landed in Africa. The air here is thick with life and hunger. And I was so ready to be devoured.
There was a flight—an old Jumbo Jet lumbering through the stars. We were somewhere over the Congo basin. Altitude: 40,000 feet. The cabin lights were dimmed. Most were asleep. Lulu came to me barefoot, her eyes shining. She whispered, “They’re ready,” and led me down past crates of arms and grain sacks to the baggage hold.
The pilots followed her—two men, smelling of diesel, sweat, and testosterone. They had put the aircraft on autopilot. I knew the risk. I could feel the tremor of altitude flirting with collapse. But all I saw was their desire—and my own. They pressed against me like prayers, their tongues spelling things on my skin that no language could hold.
I took them both, Sofia. On my knees, then on my back, then arched over a weathered crate that still bore a Soviet emblem. The plane rocked. One gripped the overhead bar to steady us; the other gripped my hips like they were the yoke of heaven.
It wasn’t just pleasure. It was proof. That I could hold that much need. That I could offer myself as sanctuary—and still rise.
And Shelly… sweet, silent Shelly. We were in the barracks showers when the soldiers came. At first, they only stared. But then we invited them. We licked water off each other’s mouths, and the men formed a circle—not to claim us, but to witness. We let them. We kissed. We came. We baptized them in the gospel of what women can be when they are unafraid.
But nothing—nothing—prepared me for what happened at the lake.
The Black Lagoon is not water. It is a mirror.
A doorway.
A god.
The creatures didn’t come to dominate. They came to worship.
They didn’t tear me open. They opened with me.
Their limbs were like music made flesh. Their antennae whispered truths my own body hadn’t dared to speak. They found nutrients in me—not fluids, but stories. Not sex, but sustenance. I came again and again, not from friction, but from recognition.
I wasn’t afraid. I was found.
They touched me with the care of monks transcribing sacred text. When one entered me, it wasn’t penetration—it was pilgrimage. I was the temple. I was the bell they rang.
You once said to me, after I came in your mouth for the first time: “This is what resurrection sounds like.”
Now I understand.
I am alive in a way I didn’t know was possible. I’m raw, Sofia. But not wounded. Just… exposed. Like a wound that was never meant to scab. A truth finally unsheathed.
You started me down this path. You fed the first fire.
Now I burn freely.
And I miss you—not with ache, but with longing to show you what I’ve become. I want your fingers to read my story again. I want your voice to echo in these jungle nights. Come to me. Find me. Let us not be memory but continuation.
With all my wet, wild, awakened heart—
Yours. Forever.
Darla
REPLY TRANSMISSION – INCOMING FROM SOFIA RINALDI
INTERCEPT ID: NSO-7792-SOFIA-DA
CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET – NSO/Z.E.T.A. JOINT REVIEW
FORMAT: Encrypted audio, transcribed from La Femme BlackCell handler relay
TIMESTAMP: UNKNOWN – EST. 24 HRS POST DARLA LETTER INTERCEPT
SOFIA’S RESPONSE:
My little flame,
You always were poetry, even when you tried to hide in silence. I read your letter with trembling hands—on the balcony of a villa you’ve never seen, beneath a moon that feels smaller without you beneath it.
I wept.
Not from shame. Not from loss. From awe. From the terror that only beauty can inspire when it bares itself without flinch.
You’ve crossed a threshold, and I see it in your words. You are not the girl I taught to unbutton herself like a prayer. You are not the girl I first kissed under a dripping canvas awning in Amalfi, your fingers gripping my coat like you might drown if I let go.
You are something more now.
You are the sermon. The altar. The flame and the damn bell.
And I won’t lie: your stories unsettled me. Two pilots? The circle of soldiers? The creatures of the lake who knew your body better than any human ever will? Part of me clenched. But it wasn’t judgment—it was jealousy. Of them. Of you.
Because while I held the match to your fuse… it is Africa that got to watch you burn.
But I remember the sound you made that first night. You were shaking. You didn’t know where to place your hands. I guided them to my skin, and you gasped like a girl who had just learned that heaven wasn’t a place—but a gesture.
You asked me if you were wicked. I told you no. You asked if loving a woman made you unholy. I told you: it makes you divine.
I didn’t know how true that would become.
You are more than my goddaughter now. You are my cathedral.
And if you will have me—body, voice, and broken hallelujah—I will come to you. I will step into your jungle. I will kneel at your altar. I will learn this new Darla, and in her heat, I will be reborn.
Wait for me, my wild scripture.
Love without borders,
Sofia

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