Hotaru
nothing's fair in love and war
The carcass is swiftly deconstructed, until the animal that once had been is scarcely recognizable to the untrained eye. As it is parceled out and wrapped securely, the woman listens, bloody head bowed but ears trained on the wraithlike girl in her peripherals. She outlasts the questions and philosophies, and then she leans back on her heels nestled beneath her hips and turns to look at Maea, pale eyes strange and piercing. “You don’t.” Wiping her hands - habitual instead of functional at this point - she cleans her knife with painstaking care to prevent the blood from rusting it, and returns it to its holster before she even contemplates elaborating.
Standing, leaving the remains that cannot be utilized or otherwise packed out, the Valkyrie turns to Maea fully. “You can’t go through such intense ideological changes without breaking. That’s ridiculous. It’s like attempting to shove a wood peg in a square hole - the edges will be chiseled and shaved away, even if with enough force you can claim it fits.” Hefting her bag over one shoulder, now freshly filled with meat, Hotaru cocks her head at Maea. “So you break. Who cares? Would you prefer to bend, break, and be remade? Or would you prefer to be dead? Those are your options. The rest,” she waves her hand in some vague approximation in the air, “is just snow. Details that don’t make up the bigger whole.” And that is the realization that has kept Hotaru alive for so very long despite all she has suffered and lost. “Compared to death and all its permanency, what is a little agony?”
