like salt in the sea

DEIMOS And in your darkest hour, I hold secrets flame They couldn’t go back – and perhaps that had been the harshest lesson of all. For those hours in her company, there weren’t to be any future ones, not until something else had dealt them a similar hand. Memories, figments, and fractions of worlds melding, molding together might’ve been considered odd anywhere else; but not here, not when they’d been torn away from cherished homes, not when the ones beloved had instilled and wrapped themselves in hearts and souls. Rexanna had the capability of a chameleon – weaving herself in and out of roles, easily polishing her character, her entity, into any situation. It was what had made her so insightful, so duplicitous, so well-suited to her role in the Basin, and to anything else in her multiple lives. “She was cunning and adaptable. She could have made a home anywhere.” In Venice, in Helovia, in Caido, in her own worlds. “But I am certain her preferred one was with you.” Because she’d been content and permitted to be herself – no gilded cages, no arranged shackles, no tethers and lines to other ridiculous figures. “Perhaps she is not truly gone, anyway. Just waiting.” His eyes fell down to the floor and back again, a breath flickering through his chest. Then he continued, not adding in any additional details (perhaps he’d sneak a few more in later), parsing through the clay, ensuring the structure would hold firm, that the strength he mustered and mettled could conform to the memorial, to pieces and fractions of what she was. The Sword didn’t expect Bastien’s comment to segment so rapidly, so precisely; fracturing right down to the edges of his spine, to the way he demanded everything of himself, to the way he bombarded and bruised and bludgeoned his entity with little regard. His nose wrinkled slightly, like that of a pouting youth, while his sights were on the elements, on the fixtures. “I have spent lifetimes ensuring I am not so easily read.” He fixed Bastien with an arched brow, before sighing, tilting his head a fraction to survey his work. “I will try that too.” A lot of upcoming attempts and maneuvers, apparently, room for growth and convictions, in altering, in re-sculpting the way he’d managed his life. Bastien stepped aside, and the General maneuvered out of his range, rendering accord and efforts back into the hastening of the design. Pinpointed again for around the third or fourth time, the Sword shrugged, muffling a snort. “Yes. There were no gods on battlefields.” No one there but themselves, opponents, enemies, conflicts, skirmishes, damnation, and death. master of nothing place; of recoil and grace