Her wings had become a blessing and a curse – a reprieve from the persistence of being stuck on the ground but a terrible reminder of the closest thing she had, lost and alone in some random world, probably looking for her too though she wouldn’t be found. It was brutal and frustrating, and the more she thought about it the sourer her mood grew. Though it was hard for her to
not think about it, and it kept her face in a perpetual state of something between a frown and a grimace.
So she chose to remain in bird form, to scout and see what the world around her had to offer. It at least beat the idea of trudging from place to place – having to
talk to people when all she wanted to do was roar at the skies, to wonder if the dead helovian gods, if Kisamoa could hear her cries from so many worlds away. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes, she even felt like death on swift wings. She could imagine the destruction she could reign from the skies – the trees and earth blackening as she soared over them. It would be a blessing, to be able to destroy something. It might placate her heart enough to be docile, to be able to interact with others without craving their blood.
They were innocent, of course. At this point Kiada didn’t
care. They were just as guilty. She had been thrown into yet another world where she
refused to grow attached to anything. Attachments meant betrayal when they inevitably left. She thought of Kianzo and her attachment to her brother who had abandoned her. She thought of Ru’in who’s attachment had been to his
twin instead of
her; who followed Romina into the great arms of death. He could have been safer with her, they could have moved on. Gods knew she moved on well enough without Kianzo.
She thought of Kisamoa, and how she pledged herself to the mismatched god, had asked for his protection and strength, to be able to satisfy her craving for revenge, and how the god himself had nearly drowned in the river had she not saved him. How she returned to the surface with a plaguing illness that was thankfully gone now, but she hadn’t forgotten. And that other god, the deer with the lights on her antlers – the one that had everyone bowing at her feet, yet Kiada
knew there was something terrible about the air around her. Then, her attachment to Rixen and the beautiful, slow cascading love that had formed between them.
The harpy hadn’t even a chance to tell him she loved him.
Their last encounter was a swift embrace over the kingdom, the moon shining down upon the both of them as they spoke their concerns and their fears. “
I’m always here for you Rixen, should you need to talk.” She had said to him. No I love you’s, no acknowledgement of that feeling that had buried itself deep within her, alongside that darkness that had been pushed aside for the love of something pure and kind and sweet. But it had been ripped from her too, as she barreled into the other world, and she lost a part of
her too. Khairi, gone and missing, a strangely familiar creature finding her on the beach and mentioning other helovians.
Kiada didn’t care. She wanted her bird back, she wanted her life back. Most of all she wanted to make others suffer as much as she. A child of war, with bloodstained feet and bruises. Someone had to pay, and she intended it to happen.
Huffing a sigh as she flew over the outskirts, her scarlet gaze captured nothing of interest. Just boring, dead ground with nothing else in sight aside from a terrible feeling in one direction. So she retreated, drifting back toward the middle of the outskirts, finding a lone tree and shifting back into her human self as she sat on a branch, staring off into the distance.
Feeling numb, broken, and alone.
Ru'into keep you warm. and with bloody knuckles,
you'd follow me anywhere.
