my held breath fills the room with blood
hurting in ways I can't describe
Normally, she would not be surprised by such an entrance. If the bond were not shuttered, if Sunjata was at her side to be her eyes and protection, if she still had Atlas, if if if…but she is surprised. Yet she doesn’t react with more energy than a twitch of her shoulders. Draconic deaths from above have always been a terrifying enough prospect to make such reactions second nature for any who lived in Halo, but Hotaru doesn’t have much self-preservation to spare.
If she tries to speak his name it doesn’t show, face porcelain; perfectly painted with a magical golden veneer, but utterly frozen. Maybe the click of a tongue that tries to form a syllable, and the echo of Attunement whispering Sah. Unaware he can hear it now, though it is a gesture not unlike the instinctive rise of a hand toward a life ring.
Her eyes track him more than her head. It’s energy she doesn’t have after her endless flight - so alike the one she’d taken the horrible night she’d fled to the Greatwood and gave birth to the twins she has now lost. As he extends his arms she creaks and topples slowly sideways. There is no dramatic crash of sound as she falls into Sah’s embrace; does a Valkyrie make any noise when it dies, like a tree felled without audience? No. They are meant to shepherd the dead, never to join them. It’s a cruel enough that her lips finally crack, and the sound of her laughter is a groan of cracking wood that the ocean and Sah’s chest hold private. As if she has any dignity left that matters to her.
If she tries to speak his name it doesn’t show, face porcelain; perfectly painted with a magical golden veneer, but utterly frozen. Maybe the click of a tongue that tries to form a syllable, and the echo of Attunement whispering Sah. Unaware he can hear it now, though it is a gesture not unlike the instinctive rise of a hand toward a life ring.
Her eyes track him more than her head. It’s energy she doesn’t have after her endless flight - so alike the one she’d taken the horrible night she’d fled to the Greatwood and gave birth to the twins she has now lost. As he extends his arms she creaks and topples slowly sideways. There is no dramatic crash of sound as she falls into Sah’s embrace; does a Valkyrie make any noise when it dies, like a tree felled without audience? No. They are meant to shepherd the dead, never to join them. It’s a cruel enough that her lips finally crack, and the sound of her laughter is a groan of cracking wood that the ocean and Sah’s chest hold private. As if she has any dignity left that matters to her.
my heart bends and breaks
so many, many times
HOTARU
