Hmph.
As much as she enjoyed raving and ranting and
preaching of her martyrdom to rescue others at the cost of herself, she is not so silly as to become deaf to her surroundings. Petalnose is a conniving wretch, far as Ven is concerned, one who cannot pick her own battle and so chooses to invade another- it is an unfairness unbefitting a
lead warrior. At least Snakeblink has his honor.
Kicking out a back leg like a frightened mare sent into furious bucking, her growling rises from a guttural place vastly differing from the simmering, heavenly quest she spoke of. If she's lucky, that'll be enough of a surprise to stop her advance long enough to finish what she'd started- she could bury celestial-blessed blades into his pale ruff and be done with it. Send another to line the night's sky in eternal silence. It would make three liberated from the shackles of their flesh, of their suffering...
He is clearly unsettled, rattling his tail in defiance, screaming of injustice and lack of divine wisdom to be making the final mark. But who was? Certainly not StarClan... and yet they stole. And were even thanked for it. So why shouldn't she be? Why did they not see the gift she was offering? She was quick... she was merciful. It feel like a thorn bush has rested around her heart.. as if it is to be wrested in gashing dribbling of star-dappled blood.
How desperately she wanted to belong to them too.
"Spite..." What a piteous misunderstanding. It felt as if she were speaking in a forgotten tongue, having half her speech relegated as if she were someone who was but a blood-hungry denizen of shadow rather than the gentle, sharp scissors of fate. Again he fixates on minor details... a rising crescendo of his fears losing traction on the stinging teeth-gritted grip of the barbs at her chest. He is faltering... and she feels the fickle red thread draw tight.
They lunge at each other not unalike adders, venom-spit teeth bared. Interlocked like perfect scales as they tumble, shifting and sliding back and forth to tip the forces of their opposing justice. Whose heart weighed heavier... who had coiled too tightly?
Her paws slam into his chest, crushing him underfoot as his shoulder blades dig into the ice- it cracks, threatens to absorb them both under it but fractures in a hundred tiny creases. It isn't unalike destiny, she thinks, admiring them from just behind his head, his eyes crinkled in a wince, lips drawn back in grimacing snarl.
How interesting... that the reflection just beside them stares back and he looks so similar.
I wonder...
It is all the hesitation necessary to teeth to find flesh- for his actions to finally speak as loudly as his words do.
"Embrace it, then." And as much as it is a gift, her body betrays her with its most primal instincts towards fear. She jerks back, trying to wrench her neck free of his bite, pulls a second time when it doesn't work. Her claws, though imbued once by her strong sense of duty,
now lean, shove, crush him to force him to let go, dipped in the poison of terror, weaker than they once were.
Her jaw hangs open in a silent protest, twin verdant eyes staring in pupil-shaking horror at the ones that stare back with so much hatred. So much frustration. A tiny part of her cries to behold its anger, to know it is directed at her.
I was doing... what was right... her panic screams, as if pleading for retribution of a soul thought untarnished until confronted with its mortality.
Her stomping loses its luster quickly, her jerking becomes pitifully soft. Where fright reigned supreme, a wash of calm takes its place. His eyes... they match hers. They are not so different... and in his own, confused path he has found a way to give mercy too.
"Thank you," she murmurs as iron fills her mouth, drips from its corners to line his neck in perfect mimicry.
"At least... it was you."
There is no one better to take up the mantle of her cause... than a boy who's eyes remind her of her sister's.
// gone
@Snakeblink @Petalnose
