Shrike's Heart (#4)

[idolpro]

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

Comments

Re: THE BATTLEFIELD

[worthathousand]

Perhaps I'll replay one of my own memories for you, sometime.

[ another pause, and she reaches behind her shoulder to grab a lock of her hair: sure enough, as white as Shrike or Persephone's ]

.....Ah. I suppose I should have expected.

Re: THE BATTLEFIELD

[gigadevilbreaker]

[Jokingly,]

Did my hair change colour too?

[Ha ha, no. But his eyes ARE red now!!]

exalted characters just talk like this.

[worthathousand]

[ GUITAR RIFF ]

[ a touch amused ] As white as ever.

...But your eyes have taken on the shade of spilled blood.

why...

[gigadevilbreaker]

Whaaat? And here I was hoping for rose red.

Re: why...

[worthathousand]

[ an amused snort ]
Alright, so I am still not a poet. But the battlefield is on my mind—for understandable reasons.

...The point is: I think we are like her, here. Not just retracing her footsteps.

Re: why...

[gigadevilbreaker]

[Glancing down at the utterly overkilled body of Crow, then the mansion]

...Doing what she wished she could've done, maybe.

Re: why...

[worthathousand]

[ following his gaze ]

If this teaches her that she is not helpless in the face of such cruelty, then I will be glad of it.

Re: why...

[gigadevilbreaker]

I hope that's what we're doing...

[His jaw tightens, but - nothing to be done about it now. Heart logic. Who could say for sure.]

Re: why...

[worthathousand]

[ she clasps him firmly on the shoulder—somewhere between mom-in-law(??) and Big General Energy ]

Act as you believe is just, and do not submit to hopelessness.
These qualities are in her already, when she seeks them.

Re: why...

[gigadevilbreaker]

[ONE OF THESE IS MORE INTIMIDATING THAN THE OTHER, AND IT'S NOT THE GENERAL ENERGY. Griffin, awkwardly, freezes for a second.]

Right... okay.