moral of the story is, i will gut you if i need to
i will carve my way out
For a moment, a single moment, Hotaru places her faith in her beloved niece and the Shield that has devoted herself to the young woman in the time Hotaru was gone. She focuses instead on Loren, on helping pull him backwards, on the intensifying flames that explode like streaking comets across skin and vision alike. Loren’s success topples them both, Hotaru crashing to her knees and hissing at the fire that sears her, ripping away the material of her shirt wherever it tries to fuse with her skin. In that moment she looks up, eyes tracking across the sky, because Kiada is immediately her first concern even as her skin burns.
She watches the familiar flighted figure spiral, sole wing flapping hard against the scorched air around them. Watched Amalia’s long tail reach, reach, an offering of hope, a lifeline -
And she’s gone.
Hotaru never makes it off her knees, is given no chance to try and reach out and clutch that vibrant life in her hands. To switch their places. For a moment, despite the discordant noise of everything happening, the speed at which it all occurs, there is nothing but cotton softness in her ears. ”KIADA!” It’s immediately shattered by her own screeching cry, a grief so volatile and immediate that it breaks apart her chest, tears through her throat as it wildly seeks freedom from the newly broken heart that bore it. Perhaps she would beg, cry, deny. Any other woman might.
But Hotaru has watched too many children die; bleeding on snowy cliffs, walking proudly to their deaths, locked outside a door she was not here to open. This is an agony she knows well, one she goes abed with every night. A macabre, skeletal lover who will never keep her warm. So instead she merely tilts forward, still on her knees, and curls into a useless ball of grief. The tears are hot against her cheeks, but she makes no sound. Instead Hotaru curls up there, heart ripped asunder, having lost her sister and her niece within weeks of each other. There is nothing left now, and she doesn’t give a damn about the deity they’ve just saved. It will be a miracle if they even manage to drag Hotaru back down this mountain. In this moment she’d rather die here, join the young woman she’d helped raise from birth, and find her waiting with open arms and a cheeky smile somewhere in the afterlife.
She watches the familiar flighted figure spiral, sole wing flapping hard against the scorched air around them. Watched Amalia’s long tail reach, reach, an offering of hope, a lifeline -
And she’s gone.
Hotaru never makes it off her knees, is given no chance to try and reach out and clutch that vibrant life in her hands. To switch their places. For a moment, despite the discordant noise of everything happening, the speed at which it all occurs, there is nothing but cotton softness in her ears. ”KIADA!” It’s immediately shattered by her own screeching cry, a grief so volatile and immediate that it breaks apart her chest, tears through her throat as it wildly seeks freedom from the newly broken heart that bore it. Perhaps she would beg, cry, deny. Any other woman might.
But Hotaru has watched too many children die; bleeding on snowy cliffs, walking proudly to their deaths, locked outside a door she was not here to open. This is an agony she knows well, one she goes abed with every night. A macabre, skeletal lover who will never keep her warm. So instead she merely tilts forward, still on her knees, and curls into a useless ball of grief. The tears are hot against her cheeks, but she makes no sound. Instead Hotaru curls up there, heart ripped asunder, having lost her sister and her niece within weeks of each other. There is nothing left now, and she doesn’t give a damn about the deity they’ve just saved. It will be a miracle if they even manage to drag Hotaru back down this mountain. In this moment she’d rather die here, join the young woman she’d helped raise from birth, and find her waiting with open arms and a cheeky smile somewhere in the afterlife.
with only my teeth
HOTARU
