Strong, not impervious

Built like houses, every reality would hit their roofs and slant off falling into the mud that had become their reality. Mixed with doubts and deep feelings of inadequacies, the mud was safe, and truth could hide in it’s murkiness. Neither the brilliance of their character, or the darkness of their failures could be clearly seen in the bromide. She, however, stood on the roof top. Strength had been defined as being able, not to withstand the world, but to avoid it. Push it away and down the road. Troubles and hardships became future battles and problems for another day. When life reared its sometimes ugly head and they raised their shields, she would step forward, and raise her fists. On the roof of life, drops of moments would fall to her, and opening her palms skyward she would catch the moments, and let them sink into her hair, skin, and clothing. Life was a part of her, she did not barricade herself from it, protecting herself and hiding. She was strong now, not impervious.
He pictured her as a Joan of Arc, or a womanly Alexander the Great. Charging ahead, acknowledging the arrows of the danger of acting in glory, accepting their danger. By being more vulnerable she was stronger than those who would only run into battle after seeing that one could survive it. Seeing her on horseback, she took the reins in her mouth, holding one sword high and the other outstretched towards the sky. I am strong, I am powerful, I will not settle for less, I am.
“She is cold,” Instead is what they whispered. He smiled as she tucked her feet under the couch cushions. Her feet were the only cold part of her body, because it was far from the great generator of her energy and beauty, her heart. He knew there was more warmth and truth in her then they could ever know. More intelligence than they can see through their squinted eyes, lids blocking what they were afraid to see. Her placid posture accented her dominion over the world around her. When conversations danced tepidly, trying to find meaning or display intelligence or humor, she was mapping, commenting and notating on the whole of it. They went from sentence to sentence, she stretched from eternal principle to eternal purpose.