It was not a thing she enjoyed
-
It never was a thing she enjoyed. Not like this.
She felt the dampness of the flesh start to seep through her gloves. She'd have to wash them if she did not want to smell like a fish market. The smell didn't cross the threshold of her personal shield. Her perfumed mask. She knew it was there though. It was always there afterwards and she hated it.
The head sat heavily in her hands, but it had a certain beauty and symmetry about it. And just below, the awkward angle of the neck and the body below that had already half fallen to the ground. It's friend cowering in the corner.
She had run up behind it, dropping her bow to the ground and leaping through the air she caught hold of it and using her momentum from the jump twisted with such force. She could still hear the sickening snap in her ears. It was the only way to describe such a thing, "Sickening".
She let go. A soft thump. Her gloves were still damp.
She turned and retrieved her bow. She would kill the other one mostly because there was nothing else to do with it as it cowered in the corner. A single arrow would do; two if it was unlucky. The way it held it's spear just stuck in her head days later. She had seen it so many times before, but this time it decided to stick.
She would drop from a tree on the unsuspecting creature outside. Same death, different place. Sickening crack.
But later there was another with a shield. It saw her and she would have to fight it. Block. Duck. Stab. Spin. Stab. Stab. Stab.
Blood now. It had splattered all over her in a way that drove her crazy. She could use a minor spell to clean it but she couldn't help thinking that maybe one day the colors would fade and the threads tear and it would just crumble away on her like everything else did. Everything always just crumbled away and left nothing behind. Nothing was permenant. No one was permenant. No word.
They didn't believe her. They never did. Even when she was right. Well some of them cared and listened to her, especially when she insisted she was serious. But they were all dying, leaving.
Kyra now, none had seen her. She told herself that Kyra would be safe and could protect herself from the invaders, but it had been months now. Kyra was gone now like all the others. They always just disappeared and faded away and no one even remembered who they were.
Famous bards, Mirkali. Infamous thieves, Leti. They were all gone now and no one even remembered who they were. When Sam came back she could hear all the stupid little kids who insulted and mocked him. Respect was worthless if no one remembers. Names are useless if no one passes them on. Names, a temporary thing. A facade, hiding beneath someone who had come on entirely different reasons. She had not pretended at first, not hidden anything except for a mere name. But time went on, and everything got worse. Things fell apart in front of her eyes and the only reason she went on living was because she was selfish. She was selfish and she didn't want to let herself die. Everything always got worse and worse and worse. Nothing got better. Everyone was dead now. The ones that counted. The rest were all gone, away. She wished she could get away.
She had tried to get away. In a way. She had prepared everything she could want to prepare and neatly arranged it in a letter. A simple letter that screamed some simple truths about her louder than any of her words could. Getting her voice back was pointless. She should stab the wizard that fixed it, and maybe his spell would go away and she'd be silent again.
No one would care.
They only cared when she tried to get away. They had stopped it, an inch before it happened and they stopped it, saved her. She was alive when she didn't want to be and it couldn't go on. She had to stop pretending and let everyone know just how damaged she was.
But then she had changed her mind, she had covered the damage. Covered it with art, and no one could see the way her cheekbone had been crushed. No one could see if they didn't try and look close enough. If they didn't know her that well.
She couldn't keep her mind made up. She never could. She had already forgotten the words that were said. She couldn't remember if she had said what she wanted and been denied, or been denied even saying the words she had wanted. The accident was supposed to be her relief and it ended up being her biggest letdown.
Her second biggest letdown.
There had been a letdown before that she had never come around from. One that left her without feeling, or so she said. She should have faded away and died like she was supposed to. But instead she decided to stay and it had made her such a terrible thing. She couldn't let herself get close like that, she couldn't because then she would do a terrible thing to try to make everything alright again and she didn't want to.
But then she looked around herself. Seven dead. She had done it without thinking. They were all over.
She had half of a jaw hanging off of her shield. She didn't know how it got there. It disgusted her.
She was bleeding. She would heal herself but it hurt. It always hurt so much, her greed. It had attached itself permanently to her arms and it hurt. And Kyra was gone, and that hurt to.
She wanted to cry, but crying never fixed anything. It only made people pretend to care and she couldn't stand that now. One of her last pillars was crumbling into the distance and she couldn't cry.
And her gloves were still damp.
She cried and the only seven that would ever see the tears were dead.
She cried.
-
Hate. Such a strong feeling. Too strong for her tastes, really, with all the concentration it required. It trailed her like a plague though, devouring people she might have liked under other circumstances perhaps.
She had figured the paladin girl had maybe forgotten her dislike, but approaching in an all too friendly manner she had driven off the girl and her posse that had gathered around in Norwick. A couple staged comments to get the girl going and then a couple cheery comments drove the paladin nearly to attacking.
Civility confused people when it came out of her. It is like they expected some thing vile and evil in her to crawl out slowly and brood in the background so they could ignore it until it grew too large and then they would chop it up. When she came out cheerfully, though, they were so ready to go to arms. It made them uncomfortable, she guessed, to have things surprise them.
The paladin hated her though, just like the woman who didn't kill her, and perhaps a few others. Several others, really. It was only a matter of time before the sails set in on it too. She was not very nice to them. They deserved better from her, she knew, but she could not bring herself to be anything other than distant and mean. Many of them did not have what it takes to really succeed, but that did not make them lesser people.
That's probably why the paladin hated her, too. She couldn't remember.
Then there was that bothersome elf. He seemed to care no matter how hard she tried to put him off. No one cares that much. She had found out that even the person that she had thought might care that much did not even, and then there was that elf. She would do something to make him hate her too. She almost didn't want to. She almost wanted to care back again… but she knew she would do something.
It was a wonder no one had tried to have her killed, but perhaps she was out of touch with real emotions too much to gauge that sort of thing anymore.
She hated that she did this ... and perhaps that was the only way she could hate anymore and she couldn't let go of that.
-
Expressing herself. After HE had gone, it had become something she did in moments of weakness. Feeling was to open herself to the possibility that she would think about the pain.
She looked at the painting in front of herself and at the gruesomeness of the whole thing. She had barely thought while doing it, she just painted and the scene came out of her like blood gushing out on the canvas from her hand. In retrospect, she had been a little heavy on the depiction of the blood. It would frighten the students if she carried it out of her room and put it on display in the hallways. Frightening the students was not something that she minded on the whole, but taking back up residence in the college was something that she had done to cause as little of a stir as possible… and to get away from the water... She despised the water, but she burried herself in literature about sailing and learned so much.
Knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
She knew things.
Not that they listened.
She missed those that listened and missing brought back the pain. Pain was not something that she enjoyed. Those that listened had almost all gone away. Friends, they were called. Friends wanted her to go back all the way to how she was. Friends wanted her to be the stupid little girl she was. She was happy then, happy to throw her life away for stupid little things. And she did. Friends were supposed to be supportive in time of need, but Friends do not think hurt is a time of need. They look down on you and you see how worthless it is to depend on people.
She carried the painting out into the hallway underneath a dirty sheet so that she could take it to the warehouse and maybe Mercy would get a kick out of it. A dying soldier reaching for a sword that is just out of reach as his enemy comes down on him for the kill.
She had been the dying man. What no one will ever notice is that in his eyes, he wants to die. He wants all the things that have gone wrong for him to be over. He will be granted relief, she will not.
She was done painting. She would go out and be cold and people would stay away. Pain could be avoided in the little things. A cruelly humorous remark. Send another of the silly noble girls dashing away in tears.
And Gold.
One day gold would buy her a solution to her broken self. They would never understand why she tried so hard, but one day she would be fixed and she could cast away them all. A last hope, a little one, but a last hope.
-
Shouting. It hurt her head and she didn't want to be doing it, but he deserved it. He deserved everything she said to him in that sarcastic tone before she shouted and he deserved everything she shouted.
It wasn't much, but the point was made. She might not ever talk to him again. She had warned him and he had disbelieved her. He told her she was wrong and that he would never change his mind. She even almost believed him, but in the back of her mind she knew she was right, even though she didn't know exactly what she was going to do at the time she warned him.
Then, when it came down to it, it turned out exactly as she had thought it would. She was not sure if he even realized what had just happened, but she was aware, painfully aware, of what had just happened. When it did happen it all fell into place like some sort of great terrible puzzle wrought of anger and misery … and truth. No one liked truth, it made things miserable and unhappy and when you tell it to them they don't like it at all.
A girl was upset in Peltarch. She had told the girl that looking like a whore was why she was treated the way she was. The girl had left in tears; the mystran priest had been amused by the exchange, just a little bit. She had looked like a whore.
Being right was not something she enjoyed either. Every time she was right something bad happened. Something terrible and frightening came to pass and it made everyone unhappy. She wished she could stop being right and then things would get better.
No one was listening anyway. Why would it matter if she was wrong about the bad things? If she had been wrong she wouldn't have had to shout.
