[Not mine] The Blood of The Covenant by Arokh

This last weekend I went to an online furry convention called Furality. Every year they hold a community showcase built around a central theme (this years being "Connections"), and there are some talented artists in this fandom, but rarely do the submissions hit me deeply, until now.

I'm not even exaggerating when I say I was *sobbing* over this, my whole group was in shambles. I keep going over it and crying all over again.

Here's the video if you'd like to watch it yourself, he has a wonderful voice and his acting is enjoyable, but I'll post the transcript too:

In the twilight hush of this forsaken room, where dust dances like faded ghosts of half-remembered dreams,
I find myself adrift in contemplations too sorrowful to be uttered aloud.
The heart, that fragile instrument of longing, trembles within my breast like a caged and wearied bird.
And in its tremor, I recall the old adage whispered by those who know the deeper agonies of love.
'The blood of the covenant runs thicker than the water of the womb.' Once I believed such words mere poetry,
an embellishment fashioned by those who had lost their way.
But now, beneath the waning glow of a moon too pale to comfort me, I feel the truth of them seep into my bones like winter's chill.
For those whose hands first cradled me in innocence have receded into shadows.
Their embraces hollow, their affection but a brittle shell. They were my origin, yet never my refuge.
And then, oh, sweet and tragic miracle, there were others, souls unbound to me by birth, yet drawn
to my ruin as though some secret chord in their hearts answered to the sorrow in mine.
They came not with the obligation of kin, but with the quiet courage of lovers who dare to linger beside a wound.
And how strange, how exquisitely cruel!
that the family I yearned for was not written in the ink of blood, but in the soft, trembling strokes of devotion freely offered.
They became the gentle architecture of my solace.
The ones who gathered the remnants of my broken spirit and held them as though they were made of something worthy of being mended.
In their eyes I found not judgment, but recognition, not duty, but desire, not heritage, but home.
Yet, even love in its purest forms carries a melancholy tincture.
For the heart that has known abandonment clings too tightly to the warmth it is given, fearing always the inevitable hush that follows joy.
And so I love them with a desperation both beautiful and doomed, aching to be worthy of the bond they bestowed so freely.
But still, in their embrace, soft as morning doves, fierce as midnight vows, I have glimpsed something eternal.
A covenant not carved by bloodlines, but by longing.
A family born not of shared beginnings, but of shared survival.
And though the world around me crumbles into dust, their chosen love binds me more completely than any inheritance of flesh.
If this be tragedy, let it be sweet..
For in the delicate ruin of my heart, they have planted something luminous, something that shimmers like dawn against the dark.
And in that glimmer I find a reason to remain in this world a little longer.
A reason to breathe, a reason to hope, a reason to love, even as the shadows close in.