Phoe

Breathless Dead

The unyielding ground welcomes her like the arms of a lover. It drinks the blood that weeps from her imperial roses and the tears that spatter from her half-divine eyes with equal rapaciousness. Its cold surface steals away her warmth with the greed of water, and emphasizes the softness of her form where it presses her flatter and wider as she twitches, convulses, writhes, and trembles against it.

Her vision is white. Her vision is all-in-black through wide open eyes. Her ears are buzzing, ringing, hollow silence and her spine is a blazing forge through which love long since chipped and pitted has been crafted anew. Her sigh is full of drool and ecstasy and reverence, misery, and pity in exacting measure, swirled together in her throat as by the universe's most supreme bartender.

There is a sensation of sudden weight across her shoulders. A single cube of ice has been tossed into the glass that is Bella, and when it clinks against her insides the world once again fills up her senses. Shining halos and kaleidoscopes break up her vision, but as she clutches what she realizes at last is a jacket wrapped across her to cover her shame, these brilliant hallucinations fade down to nothing.

Bella turns her head. It is not Redana but Vasilia who she sees standing above her, watching her with neither words of care or admonishment but rather only a single cool and calculating expression buried somewhere in her eyes. Bella watches her for long moments before suddenly turning away and making a show of wiping her lips dry on the back of her hand. She shivers as she pushes herself up onto her knees.

Now her ears fill with the soft threshing of a billion-billion tails all swishing in anticipation. She tastes sweat in the air, smells the blood pumping through the heart of this machine of war, listens to the whine of gears winding up to perform the next step in a perfect ritual dance. She smiles at it all.

As her lips spread her mouth fills up with glinting daggers. Her eyes flash with the sharpness of a thousand spears all pointed in a single direction. Inside her heart, a sword is drawn. She clutches her weapons tight and she laughs with a broken chime of a voice even as steam issues from between her teeth.

"There is nothing to be worried about."

She is singing. Her voice was made for that before any other considerations, and here at the end she lets it fill with the aching lilt and joyous tremolo that were whipped into her as a small child. They weave inside her body and turn weakness into power. She stands, slipping her arms inside the sleeves of the jacket and dipping into a bow in a single motion as smooth and certain as the bouncing of a river.

"I will be the only one who touches a single hair on your beautiful head, Lady. Show us the way! Bring us to Her! Come, come, come, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry hurry hurry HURRY!"

Her howling laughter does not join the chorus, but splits it like a leaf against an evil blade.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Kat is afraid of cats.

She has been most of her life, though it isn't the kind of terror that would leave her quaking in her foxy shoes, the way that certain kinds of demon or a particularly large and edgy looking bug might. It is more correct to say that she is intimidated, and that she has yet to internalize that she is now significantly larger than most of them (a fact which was not true for most of her life).

A cat is perfect. A cat never loses anything. A cat is proud and unafraid and must be coaxed after long effort into trusting you before they will accept anything you have to offer as better than what they can get for themselves. But mostly it the absolute lack of fear that makes them so imposing.

It's not impossible to briefly corner a cat, or to pick one up without its permission. It is impossible to do those things without being injured, and even a quarter moment's hesitation for fear of pain is too much reflex advantage to give these proud, fierce hunters. But this is a war, is it not? She had forgotten, until she saw Berserker move.

She's not going to get away with anything less than her best effort.

Katherine ducks under a vicious swing of the cat tower, which costs her a chunk of rock from the shattering storm drain to the shoulder. She winces, but there's no time to focus on that. It's a necessary risk to get position, to slide into this narrow corridor and use her body to head off the cat's most obvious escape points. It can outjump her, surely, but Berserker is rapidly seeing to that even being an option, let alone an issue. The storm above or the fox below? Your move, kitty.

As a pair they bound and bounce off of the walls of the stormwater system, narrow passageways cutting off the benefits of agility and creativity. They may reward small size over long arms, but Kat will wear every bruise with pride in just a few minutes time. Around they go, and around, three times in a loop. Berserker's rage is cutting off the escape points, whether she means to or not. And Katherine is well past the point with her Servant where she feels the need to call out and stop her.

No, it's time to trust her partner. It's time to trust her knight.

At last she finds her window, which hisses and arches its back in defensive posture. The cat growls around the bird still dangling from its mouth. But Kat does not flinch. She bends and she lunges, and she closes her arms around that furry belly. Yes, she is scratched. Yes, she is bleeding. From her arms, across her collar, one really nasty one on her left cheek, on the back of her hand where once burned three Command Seals. But she does not let go.

"Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow owwwwwiiiiieeees!"

It's not her bravery that gets rewarded so much as the kitten-esque pitch of her exclamation. There are paw-knives dug deep into her wrist and it's hurting a lot more than she told herself it would. Tears bead in her soft eyes, when all at once the pain stops. She feels the wait of a robo-bird drop into her palm. The cat watches her calmly, clearly reassessing. Kat offers it a smile, carefully closing her eyes the way she was taught, to show trust and support.

And then she feels a bunch of sharp cat teeth sink into her arm. She screeches in pain and alarm, and is so surprised she drops the cat back onto the ground. Its eyes gleam in the dim before it lifts its proud snoot into the air and scampers off, slinking through the rubble and disappearing from view.

It's important this be realized: this is not a victory. No cat has ever lost a fight, and certainly not a kill. This is merely pity for an inferior opponent. An offering to an inferior huntress, as an act of generosity. Kat would do well not forget it.

"Got iiiitttt~" she chirps, thrusting the bird up out the shattered ground as proof. It takes her quite a while to scramble out. It takes her no time at all to pat Berserker on the back until she finally settles.

"I thought it was a nice tower," she says, "I mean, I'da gone in there. If I was a cat."

And that's really about as fair of a compliment as anyone can give or get. Kat glances down at her trophy, trying not to look at how many stingy cuts she's covered in, and smiles.

"At least we have this. Now we can... oh. Uh, hm. Hey Berserker, d'you know anybody who knows how to trace magic? 'Cause I got nothin'. Leastways without my phone..."

Breathless Dead

The tiny breath she draws in is the only acknowledgement she makes of the pain. Bella watches her thumb back farther and farther, twisted and pulled to unnatural lengths, and her lips stay set and proper. Her eyes are curious but passive. She inclines her head to the slightest degree while she waits for the digit to break, and she watches.

But the Shogun releases her. Gingerly, she spreads her finger wide, and then balls them into a fist. She turns her back on the woman whose information she craves. Her feet carry her in four careful, perfect steps to the place she should have been from the beginning. She takes her wife's face in both her hands. She pulls close, close enough to feel the warmth of her body radiating onto her forehead. Close enough to feel the splash of startled murmuring against her lips. Close enough to drink in every star and sparkling detail lost within her quivering eyes.

She pulls her closer. The kiss is hot and angry, and it tastes like blood. It is dizzying, to drink in something so beautiful and complete and yet so far away from the splinter of obsession now pulsing in her eyes. When she pulls away, she nearly stumbles. When she pulls away a trickle of blood dribbles from the corner of her lip. She laps it away as she squeezes Ember's wrist one last time. This is the touch of the Anemoi, this is the quiet thank you and I love you and goodbye.

"Do not interfere!" she barks.

Her voice is loud and firm, with the inevitable and rolling depth of absolute authority carrying every syllable. Her crown blazes on her head brighter than a sun and in this single moment Bella is an Empress in her own right. Her posture is proud and defiant even as her face is carved as a statue of absolute composure and grace. The air around her crackles with power. For one shining moment, long enough only to notice and admire her, she is the most powerful figure in the room. There are no shadows on this ship. Only wolves bending their knees toward a queen.

Then the light dims and the magic dies with it. Though she does not slacken or show fear, she is simply Bella again. This was never an act of defiance or aggression. Her orders were only ever toward the people who were supposed to be counting on her. As if any of them could ever understand. The noise in her throat is called Revulsion.

With a maid's pride and a maid's delicate precision she unclasps her dress and lets it drape around her waist. She can hear the scraping of the glittering chains of jewelry against the metal floor. For one last elongated moment she stands as tall as she is exposed. And then she lowers herself with reverent gentleness onto her knees. She dips low and places her hands in front of her head, touches her forehead to the ground. She presses further. Bends her spine. Lowers herself until she feels the sharp sting of cold metal kissing her breasts and pressing them into her ribs.

"Please." she says, and her voice is nothing more than the desperate longing of a child only just rescued from a Box, "Do what must be done."

What light there is in the room seems bent entirely upon her. In this moment the scars on Bella's back glisten so sharply they seem freshly carved. Nero's field of roses stands out against the paleness of her skin so clearly and unmistakably that even the dead and the blind could not fail to see it.

Return to Thellamie

"May-"

Wait. How is? But she should be! There's no reason for her to! No! None! None at all! Why is this happening?!

"May-"

No but, the amount of money she was given is staggering! She could go anywhere! She could do anything! It is simply not possible that she could need to do this! Does she just get off on waitress jobs or something? And why would she come to a place like this to do it?! Wouldn't she at least want to travel somewhere warmer for once in her--

"May, May, May, Maymaymaymaymaymaymaymaymayz!"

Erika claps her hands over her mouth and squeaks in scarlet faced horror. Her legs snap together and she turns from that accusatory stare to squirm under it. She mustn't! She mustn't! She can't! Erika Fullbright does not know Mayzie Sighs! But Mayzie knows her. Mayzie knows everything about her, down to the smallest details of what's underneath her skirts. She! Sh-she! Mmmghn!

AHEM!

"M-may I please suggest you head back down the stairs, uh, miss? There's a, erm. I mean it's, not, uh. Not safe up there. We were just playing cards! But then someone went and accused the table of cheating! And now it's all, well, yes. If you could, erm, that is... goodness that's a really lovely purple, where did you-- I mean no!

"I was! on mY way! T-to get help! I'm a detective, Miss, I can't subdue troublemakers all by my lonesome! S-so please! Just, t-turn around and! And go! Over there! For, for help! Yes!"

'I could never let a pretty girl like you get in trouble' is what Erika Fullbright would want to say, with a wink and a smile like lightning, but wants are not the same thing as capabilities. Caught or not, she can't mess this up. She can't drop the act.

She peers at the starewell through the crack in her fingers, twisting on the ball of one foot. Is she gone? Is the coast clear! Please! Why did it have to be her?

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Kat's spine is so stiff with fear that for a moment she can't even turn her head to see what just happened. Her tails are floofed at maximum, and her ears lay crushed so flat into her hair that she could be mistaken for an ordinary human girl sitting on a pair of bristly mint-green pillows.

It takes an embarrassingly long time for it to sink in that she's not in trouble. And not in danger, either. She clutches her chest with one hand and feels the hammering of her poor terrified heart. For a moment she'd really believed that, that, that...

Katherine blinks. Realization strikes like the grinding of a particularly ill kept clock.

"Oh nyo!" she exclaims as she rises to her shaky, shaky feet, "Oh nyo oh nyo oh nyo! Kitty put that down, it's bad for you! That's not a regular yummy bird, it's full of... uh, oils! And bad attitude! And terrible opinions! You're gonna get sick!"

But no sooner does she go running after it than does the cat decide to get serious about avoiding her. Or at the very least, serious about toying with her. Goodbye, jaunty swagger. Goodbye, piercing and arrogant yet somehow adorably endearing stare. Hello, adroit weaving through posts decorated with very fragile looking vases and lanterns. Hello, death defying leaps at the last second onto difficult to climb rocks. Hello, incredibly irritating move where you appear caught but then wriggle through the space between her legs and somehow in this exchange she's the one who caught claws?

Katherine dives, desperate. She eats dirt, desperater. She spits, not so desperate but still with fervor.

The gears grind on. The clock chimes the second revelation.

"B-B-Berserker!" she squeaks in horrified astonishment.

"You gotta help me, Ms. Berserker! I mean don't, don't hurt Kitty ok? But we need that bird! It's a clue! It's a really super important clue: we can't trace its oil bird magic back to the source of all this if it gets eaten! Plus it's gonna be reaaaaaaaaaaalllllll nasty if Kitty gets, like, possessed or something y'know? You ever tried arguin' with a, oof! Dang it!! Cat? Arguin' with a bird's one thing, but never never never get into it with a meowmeow! Just, just, trust, argh! No come back here, I neeeeeed thaaaaaaat~"

Breathless Dead

In spite of herself, Bella's mouth has turned completely dry. Her lips beg for moisture, and she scans the room for her glass and finds it frustratingly empty. Her surprised swallow catches in her throat. The air is filled with the smell of gasoline and shaved iron, with hot spices and tannin. It makes her nose itch, but she does not dare to scratch it.

She leans back, folding her arms across her chest in the face of this intruder. Though it is not the shock of her arrival or the threat of her legions that has stopped her heart like this.

"Y-you..." her voice cracks with longing.

The crowds are cleaner, sweat and swagger and metal, all of the pride and none of the misery underneath the tide of pheromones waiting so patiently for anyone to make a move that they can meet with aggression. Here is gathered perfection. Here lies the shadow that an immortal, perfect empire has wasted precious resources and many of its best ideas trying to biomantically engineer a solution that might at last run it through with light. But that shadow is not named Ceron. It is not even named Nemesis.

It is Tellus. Tellus as Nero dreamed it. The secret wish inside the heart of an Empress.

Bella's chest constricts around the point where she once felt the screams of that divine heart breaking. Tears stream gently from her grim red eye.

"I, I don't care about any of that," she says, and she cannot keep the reverence or longing out of her voice, "J-just... just tell me."

She reaches out and places her palm on top of the Shogun's.

"Do you see Her? Does She speak to you? Wh-when. Was the last time you?"

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Her eyes are wet.

For all that she is filled with a thing that someone might call strength, Katherine is unused to violence. That is, the suddenness of everything shocks her, and the shock is enough to spring a leak in her smile.

But she does smile. Her teeth sparkle in the firelight, and the shadows pull out the dimples in her sharp and delightfully foxy cheeks.

"It's really nice to meet you Pedro, I'm Kat. I've had so much fun today."

Her voice quivers when she speaks, but by the end of her sentence she has managed to put so much sparkle into her words that the period reads more like a heart emoji. Her hands let go of the brush and Berserker's hair: she's been at it so long that it has turned the kind of soft and lustrous that would make it a sin to carry on even a single stroke further.

But now that her hands are empty, she doesn't know what to do with them. She tries resting her chin in her palms but she can't find a comfortable place to put her elbows. She tries rubbing her eyes but she doesn't like how wet her face feels after, so she stops. She tries holding her arms behind her head to look cool and relaxed, but she's too self conscious to say goodbye like that.

So she ends up waving, instead. She is not messing this up.

"You're always welcome for tea, ok? Yue just found some super interesting pu-erh that I didn't think I would like? But it's surprisingly tasty, I bet you'd like it! Next time you're in the neighborhood come say hi, ok? I'll keep a cup ready for you! You've gotta, ok? It's a promise, ok?"

She flops back onto the grass, feeling the heat in the air all around her. She watches the glittering sparkles close by mix with the bursts of glittering lights that now dot the stars, and smiles wider than ever.

Return to Thellamie

"Oh," says Erika Fullbright through the hand clasped over her mouth, "Oh dear."

It is at the very least not necessary to feign surprise. It really had been her intention to adjust the card game only, and here she'd gone and somehow flipped the entire table over! What had done it? Did Miss Osorio Scarlett catch an implied double shell game when she saw the extent to which the cards had been read? Is this some sort of Aestivali rivalry thing?

She hastily dives for her sketchbook and starts scribbling a rough estimation of two fox women clashing in a little duel: one with a fan, the other with (please forgive her artistic license, she can't see right now) a sickle dagger. It's a rough thing, abstract, there's no time to make it better and Erika isn't the sort of person who cares all that much. What matters is the information it conveys.

"Hey, um," she glances up from her book where her pencil is currently dancing, over to the woman still on the near side of the table with her, "She sounds like she's losing over there. Your friend I mean. Shouldn't you, like, help her?"

It shouldn't be surprising that a sellsword would be quick to blows when accusations of foul play are in the air. What is very surprising is that Timtam wasn't prepared for this. Now it was a question of battle lines. How tenuous were the connections Timtam was counting on? Were these two fighters hired separately, or together? Was it significant that Osorio Scarlett had gone right for Timtam and not for the pillar of a woman across from her, or was that down to positioning or a nose for trouble? A lucky guess?

She makes a noise under her breath that's half giggle and half a colon followed by a three Tell her more, dear guests! Please please please, spill all your secrets while you're busy, if you do not much mind~!

Erika ducks and scrambles down from her seat and scooches along the wall as fast as she can, ostensibly to get away from the fighting. There is a very frightened look plastered across her face. How could this have happened? And what is she supposed to do about it? Fight? Oh dear me goodness no!

Although.... as she eyes the door to the stairway.... well, there are a bunch of very strong looking, erm, "nuns" downstairs who would no doubt be highly interested in breaking up a fight~~

A maid knight's duty is to honor, and to her mistress. But a detective's duty is to justice, so if you'll just let her, uh, oops don't bump into anybody now ok? Easy does it Erika.

Breathless Dead

No soft touch of hand on wool. No comfort sought in the tactile sensations of friendship. No pleasure or allure in the chiming of a bell or in sharing an old drink again. No comforting touch. No reassurances.

No.

"Why do this to yourself, Dolce? You didn't have your shit together on that side and you don't over here either. None of us do, it's all the same. What, like remembering every vivid detail of all the times I tried to plot your death is some great treat for me. Give me a break."

Bella sighs. She rolls over onto her stomach and rests her chin in the crook of her elbow so she can glare properly at her friend. Above her head, her tail flicks irritably back and forth. The signal for agitation: only the tired slack across the rest of her body keeps her from looking like she is ready to pounce.

"Everything I remember is a punishment. It got put back in my brain so I would have to keep living with myself instead of getting to run away into that stupid wall of meat that called herself Mosaic. There's no answers in it. I'm not lucky. I'm not fortunate to 'have Gaia to aim at', I was just desperate enough to see the Rift and think, 'yeah that's better than keeping like this'. It -- do you --"

She takes several deep sniffs of the air, and snarls. It's all the same. He still smells the same, that frustratingly incomplete scent and total lack of guile that renders him incapable of reading all the cues he needs to have in order to fit in where he belongs. Which is the problem. Which is the point.

A hand sinks into the wool. There is no comfort sought there, only substance.

"...Right. It's not fair of me. Is that the point you were making? I'm sorry. You and I have never had a juicy tell-all sort of relationship. So you're gonna have to take it with a grain of salt when I tell you that as far as I know you didn't have a wish that you could have said out loud before the crossing. So if you don't have one now, that's just more of the same to me. You're still broken, Dolce. That's why you left, because there wasn't anything for you back there."

She uses him as a lever to push herself back onto her feet. Her palm on his skull is enough to knock him over, but when she rises she pulls him back up with her. When she lets go she shakes her head, and watches him with the closest approximation to gentleness she can manage at the moment.

"I'm not... I'm not telling you to fuck off. I'm telling you to trust the idiot heart that whispered my name to a monster that wanted to drink your blood. I'm telling you to trust whatever voice inside you that made you think you had to thank me for what I did to Sanalessa. I'm not telling you a story. I'm telling you that when you realize who that knife is really for... you'll know what your wish was. What it's always been."

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"Mmmm, mmmm-- mhm?"

Kat is engaged in the act of sitting on a hill just a little ways above her Servant, taking a brush to Berserker's hair and making it glisten in the fading light while her eyes flutter closed, open, closed, and open again in short and happy little bursts. It is not that she has forgotten the urgency of this moment or of the job she'd wound up tasked with. It's just that, when the sun gives you scritchies, the only proper thing to do is take a second to enjoy them.

She looks over at Caster after a moment and offers him a little shrug.

"Well sure, right? I mean, what else is there to say at the end?"

Berserker stiffens when Kat's brush hits a knot toward her tips. Kat tenses, ready to spring into action, but everything quickly settles down again. The first kindling for the bonfire is being lit just now; as the massive pile of unwanted things begins to catch and be consumed by the flames, the clearing is bathed in a radiant orange glow that plays off of Kat's minty hair to give the impression of syrup on ice cream. Every now and again a burst of sparks crackles across the crowd as something tips and cracks, or someone new comes up from the outside edges of the gathering to add their own goodbyes to the pile.

Up above, the sky begins to fill with flowers, singing their song with the distant rumble of thunder. There is not a cloud in the sky: it is the most beautiful sight Katherine could hope for.

"Don't worry, it's not as scary as it sounds. 'Cause, like... after goodbye there's usually room somewhere for a new hello. Y'know? Besides, all this stuff still has a home, even now. There, see? Look! It's just not ours anymore, that's all.

"Not everything's gotta be."

Far away, a fox named Cyanis sneezes with the force of a typhoon.