idolpro | Shrike's Heart (#3)

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!heart games

Shrike's Heart (#3)

The woman before you is beautiful—fair of features, with lovely golden skin and luxurious long black hair, petite. You have the immediate and distinct impression that she's just let go of your hand, and she steps back, and smiles.

It's not quite a happy smile.

"I'm sorry," she says. "There's just nothing I can do, as things are. But the way is there; it just needs to be lit."

You open your mouth—maybe to say something, or to express confusion—but you have to cough, and taste something metallic, spattering black blood onto the ground in front of you. Then you realize—blood seeps from opening wounds in your arms, your chest, your stomach, your face. It rims your eyes and trails from your nose and you feel like you're dissolving—

—and you fall through the ground like it's the surface of a lake, and go down, down, down.

> Wake Up

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[He has a day job, that's the thing.

[Professionally courteous of flowers, K will tend to the weeding before going to check out what might be under the turned earth. It won't take long to do, and it's not like the garden is going anywhere. Maybe there's something he can do to perk up the plants a bit, too.]

That's better.

[Once that's done, he - gently, so as not to disturb the plants' roots - is going to take a look at what might be buried there.]

[ bless u, traveling florist. The garden's already looking a lot better, without the weeds.

Digging into the dirt, you realize it’s not solid earth underneath; your hand meets solid wood, and clearing some of the dirt away, you find a small wooden box made of mahogany. ]

[>OPEN BOX

[It probably won't immediately kill him, right...? He lifts it gently from the ground before brushing the mud from its lid. Can he get in it without damaging anything?]

[ It's a relatively ordinary box—it doesn't even have a lock, just a latch.

Inside the box are—photographs, a whole stack of them, despite the fact that this doesn't seem to be a place with technology. Some of them are candid photos of members of avante en garde, and a particularly large number of Griffin, largely smiling widely; there’s a lot of photos of Sekhmet, too, cooking food, trying things at the café, resting post-workout. She even seems to have caught Persephone smiling once. There’s one of dancing with Cobalt, and of Wednesday showing her music; drinking with Cardigan and Amaranth.

There’s Harpy making breakfast, and Shishiou playing the piano; Gold making a baking abomination; Nitro and Nemesis cracking jokes together. Kaguya pouring two cups of tea. There’s even at least one candid of Kohime sitting on a branch.

Not a one of them seems creased or dirty; they all seem like they’ve been very well taken care of. ]

[Oh no that's lovely.

[He flicks through them, slowly, smiling.

[It's almost a shame they've been buried here, where they can't be seen...

[He sits back on his heels, looking up at the house. Maybe - well, okay, it doesn't make sense to take all of them when Shrike clearly kept them here in a special place for a reason. But he selects a couple of them - one of her unit, one of Sekhmet and Kaguya and Harpy, a few of Griffin. He tries to get as many of her friends as he can.

[The rest he returns to the box, which he buries.

[As for these...

[Well. How long can it take to find her bedroom?]

[ You cover the box again with the dirt, and tuck the selected photographs into your wizard robes, heading back for the house and bypassing what seems to be the main sitting room for one of the side hallways.

It doesn't take long to find what seems like bedrooms; there's one that's clearly a master suite, one that's curiously empty, and one with a meticulously made bed and precious little decoration, though there's a sparsely-populated bookshelf next to the bed. ]

[Hm, at a guess K would say: empty room, not what he's looking for. Master bedroom, parents. Shrike seems the military corners and collection of books kind.

[Is there anything in the room with the books that would indicate it's hers?

[Maybe he should check the bookshelf.]

[ The collection of books is... sparse—mostly the sort of readers a teenage student would get assigned. If this is her room, she keeps the books she cares about elsewhere.

...actually, is that a book under the pillow? Someone's tucked a book of poetry under the pillow. ]

[He opens it to take a look. What K doesn't know about poetry would fill several volumes but he is very curious.]

[ it's a book of measured-syllable poetry—haiku, mostly. a collection by a variety of authors, but masters of the form; largely addressing nature, though there seems to be a sort of metaphor thread throughout about the turning of the seasons and the impermanence of all. ]

[Aren't Shrike and Griffin an item?

[K slips one of the photos of him inside the book and places it back under the pillow.

[He props the rest of the photos up on the half-filled bookshelves, for lack of any better ideas of where to put them. It doesn't do a whole lot to make the room look less bare, but it's at least a little more friendly-looking than it was.]

[ it still feels a little bit warmer, atmosphere-wise—a little bit less tense and uncomfortable. so, there's that.

when you look back at the bed, the blanket's turned a pale blue color. ]

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Shrike's Heart (#3)

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