quiver

The days had been nothing more than a blur. Nameless and faceless, the people she’d come across made no mark on her mind. It was as if they’d never existed beyond those few interactions, beyond the too-few words exchanged. Whether that made her selfish or weak for even considering it, the woman hadn’t cared. Selfishly and weakly did she not care. Of anything. Of anyone.

Days and nights had passed. Days and nights where the same life was lived, the same torture ensued. Is this what she was meant to be? Nothing more than a hollowed body, mindless as she kept herself surviving. The passion to live had disintegrated, the flame of anger had fizzled into nothing—self-loathing perhaps—but there was nothing left that kept her alive. Nothing that made her feel alive.

What was a life worth if it did not give her at least that? What were all the lives she’d lived worth if this was what they led up to? What was the pain meant to be if she was nothing in the next life, nothing and no one?

The woman’s teeth clicked in disgust. At herself, at the world, at the love she’d lost, the love that stirred her world into an uproar to begin with. No anger had erased his mangled body, no passion was capable of making her forget, no kill had satisfied her. And beyond it, she was tired. The threat of her worth had been ever-apparent, disintegrating as the days went by and she’d done nothing to salvage it. The woman of fire had cooled and her serpentine tongue had died, temporarily void of sound and speech the longer she spent alone.

Hollow.

Everything else forgotten.

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Pity. It was such a festering, wretched thing. Colette had been a strong woman, forged from the gilded fires and molded into something worth being feared. To fall at the hand of something so..unworthy, so minuscule—it was pathetic. She'd grown pathetic. But she was not, wasn't she? She was simply broken—hurting. She was allowed this reprieve, right?

The callous woman tripped over an uprisen root, and it was there that she found the answer to her question. No. Her shoulders straightened and her eyes skimmed the roll of the hills as a fit of birds unraveled from the trees in a blur of black.

The sea was a short walk from where she'd found herself, the air permeated with the sweet scent of salt. She'd heard something, a voice perhaps, but what lies before her remains to be seen. The land was—is—vast, she would be a fool to assume she was one of the only inhabitants but something rather irritable lingered amidst sodden earth and wavering trees.

The closer she pressed, the sooner a figure of pale, tawny silk emerged. Flourished with the heavy pelts of what the woman could only discern as either rage or tantrum, the other stood, the soothing wind catching her pelt and wafting her floral scent outward. Colette stared blankly, unamused and certainly unimpressed as she watched the scene unfold a little ways away.

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Colette would've snorted if she had the means. It was different—witnessing such all-consuming anger harbored by someone else. Is this what she had looked like? Was this truly the picture of misery, of utter defeat in the face of...gods only knew. The woman had been alone for so long, forced to live in silence with every emotion demanding she fall to her knees, she almost couldn't speak when she was addressed. As if, that too, had been forgotten.

A soft click of her teeth left her as she descended, the sound a gentle acknowledgment as she pushed across the soft terrain. "Your guess is as good as mine." The land was far too bland for her tastes—this part, at least—she'd been too wrapped within herself to press out any further.

Colette let her gaze waver on the other woman, sharp eyes narrowing. "You seem...disappointed in being here." She uttered the observation slowly, her head tilting in as predatorial of a manner as it was watchful. Perhaps they could find a semblance of common ground amidst each other's troubles.

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Disappointed in being here. Was she?

Tallulah frowns and stared out at the ocean and then back at her.

“Yeah. Actually. I'm pretty fucking disappointed.” She hadn't intended on surviving what she'd done, hadn't intended on having to worry about if any of the others had survived too. The thought alone made her grimace internally; perhaps fate would smile upon her and keep all of them in the afterlife.

God, she was awful.

“Aren't you?”
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