HOTARU
If there’s any redeeming quality to this new, terrible, hideous land she has found herself dropped into, it is that she’s not left wandering for long. Certainly a change from the days of the Threshold, trolling about on lazy patrols waiting for some idiot to come busting through the shrubbery to try and bait them into following her home instead of some other insipid recruiter. Considering her festering, apoplectic rage, it’s for the best that someone attend to her need for knowledge before she sets fire to the place. Her heart leaps into her throat for a moment at the thought, delving immediately for any sense of her magic in her soul. It rushes forward at her command, weak and unstable, manifesting in her hair rising and the soft crackle of electricity coming to her ears. It’s the most comforting sound she has ever known, her first magic. There is nothing else to command, no other responses, but she doesn’t care. This was enough, a starting point if nothing else.
Still, it’s only one question answered out of hundreds. Hotaru is no spring chicken when it comes to portals. After Helovia there had been others. Brief, meaningless in all ways except the loss. Her mate, all of her children, her best friend, her twin, her soul-bonded. They had made it safely to the other side, and then some of them had just...disappeared again. Including Hotaru.
Until there was nothing. Just...Hotaru. More alone than she had ever been before, since her conception alongside her sister.
So yes, she’s pissed. Because it’s a rightfully felt emotion, and it’s easier to feel and wield than the grief that chokes her.
Hotaru comes upon the woman just as she begins to speak, her dark hair short and gleaming ebony in the light of the moon. Her voice is familiar in a way she can’t place, but she bares her teeth in a wolf’s smile nonetheless at the answer she receives. Caido.
”No need to announce it so grandly, it’s certainly no sight for sore eyes,” she finds the words sweet and mocking on her tongue, a twitter of laughter cloying in the corners of her mouth. Familiar rebuttal, if nothing else. Though her steps slow they do not stop until the woman turns, amusement clear on her strange face. There is nothing special or significant about her, and Hotaru is ready to sink her claws into the femme to wring and wile out as many answer as she can about this land when her gaze travels up and falls upon the woman’s eyes.
Brilliant sapphire. A color she has seen in few others, but one she cannot look away from with the way recognition grips at her ribs and jerks her to a stop. It can’t be...but if it had happened to her why not to…?
”Rexanna?” she whispers, hope like a knife in her stomach, slowly twisting. She cannot bear the thought of being wrong, no matter the wide-eyed recognition she can see reflected in the woman’s face. To lose her best - and only - friend a second time would be too much to bear so soon after arriving in another strange land. Even still she can’t help how that hope drags her feet forward, stumbling, hands rising shakily as if to touch her palms to the Rex - to the woman’s - face. Needing to touch, to embrace, to know this is real.
it's our nature, we destroy
it's the constant of our kind
no matter the color of blood, man will always fall
