The void shifts in the dark of the house, and slowly lifts its head.
Tomorrow is the lighting of the pyre. Talyson had told her that much, one of the only souls brave enough to darken her doorstep a second time. There’d been a question there that had remained unanswered. Enzo’s body would not find its way onto the pyre, and nobody had yet dared to ask why, or to insinuate anything further.
Good.
But she has been draconic and implacable too long. Her years of loss, of grief, have lent Hotaru a certain awareness of her own grieving mind. A familiarity to the patterns and waves of her mourning, her rage, her breakdowns.
She exits the house silently, and all who see her pass avert their eyes. It’s in their best interest, and she is too blackened and cruel in this moment to feel gratitude - only an imperious, arrogant pleasure.
It is easier to be cruel. To be powerful. Easier to be tyrannical than pitiable.
Deimos does not live far. It’s laughable to think she would go anywhere else but here. As she approaches slowly, she reaches out ahead of time. Dei, she whispers, and nothing more. Words don’t come easy anymore. And when she makes it to his door she enters without knocking, and finds herself almost by surprise standing in his entryway. Blinking slowly, she takes her cloak off and hangs it, and only then does her listless gaze search for her brother. The cracks beneath the veneer groan like glacier ice as they strive to make their way to the surface to break her open, and she knows she doesn’t have much time left.
Tomorrow is the lighting of the pyre. Talyson had told her that much, one of the only souls brave enough to darken her doorstep a second time. There’d been a question there that had remained unanswered. Enzo’s body would not find its way onto the pyre, and nobody had yet dared to ask why, or to insinuate anything further.
Good.
But she has been draconic and implacable too long. Her years of loss, of grief, have lent Hotaru a certain awareness of her own grieving mind. A familiarity to the patterns and waves of her mourning, her rage, her breakdowns.
She exits the house silently, and all who see her pass avert their eyes. It’s in their best interest, and she is too blackened and cruel in this moment to feel gratitude - only an imperious, arrogant pleasure.
It is easier to be cruel. To be powerful. Easier to be tyrannical than pitiable.
Deimos does not live far. It’s laughable to think she would go anywhere else but here. As she approaches slowly, she reaches out ahead of time. Dei, she whispers, and nothing more. Words don’t come easy anymore. And when she makes it to his door she enters without knocking, and finds herself almost by surprise standing in his entryway. Blinking slowly, she takes her cloak off and hangs it, and only then does her listless gaze search for her brother. The cracks beneath the veneer groan like glacier ice as they strive to make their way to the surface to break her open, and she knows she doesn’t have much time left.
Feel the fear and swallow back the tears
Let weakness disappear, there's nobody but me here
Let weakness disappear, there's nobody but me here
