[She thinks she hears something that might be her name. It's so faint, she doesn't even know if it's her imagination or the wind, but she turns her bloody face looking for a source even still, desperate to find the person who had uttered it. Her hands grope about for cloth or flesh as she strains to pull herself up, forward, the wounds along her arms bleeding and slicking her fingers, staining the grass.]
Liem, say something...
[How weak does her voice sound? She can't even really hear it, but just imagining it would make her burn with shame if she weren't already eaten up with pain and the panic of blindness.]
Louder... I can't hear you...
[Her back legs kick weakly, her hands keep reaching, feeling only dirt and sick rot roots and plants and... crystal. Her hearts clench painfully as her hand recoils from it, from the very idea, even though she's always known there would be death in her path, death at her hands, that she would die in fire and pain-]
Liem... ?
[She forces herself to reach out again, to feel along the edges but it is not... the shard is the same size, the same shape as the one that had been in that crystal skull, and relief floods her voice without ears to hear the start of it and prevent such a pathetic display.]
Just... hold on...
[She doesn't know why she clumsily puts it in the wrap around her waist. She didn't care, but everyone... so many people wanted it, the whispers and screams are still rattling around in her skull. Whimpers and wet, blood-filled breaths fill the clearing as she continues her search, pushing aside pain and rage and the desire to just lay down and die for the sake of duty and the scraps of honor she'd always liked to pretend to have. She and he had come into this together, so she had to... She owed him... She'd sworn she'd repay her debt and she hadn't yet-]
Say something-
[Her fingers find another shard, but this one... she cannot tell herself belongs to a beast that they have slain. It is sharp at eight points, it nearly pricks her, or maybe it does and she just doesn't even notice as her grip spasms over it. It feels like... She doesn't know why, or how, but it feels like...]
Liem...
[It's his shard.
He's dead.
Had he said something to her, and had to listen to her blind, deaf, and dumb, searching uselessly and never reaching, never responding properly? Had he died the moment the root-wreathed monster gave its final violent gasp? She doesn't know. All she knows now is that... She is alone, in the dark, in blood and rot and pain and she...
Hayame weakly cradles his shard close, following only the vaguest of recollections from her own cracked memories that once... once, she had given a man comfort, called him back from a brink with the terrifying, vulnerable touch of her shard and all that came with it. Whether that worked if the only thing left of a man was his shard, she can not guess. ... But she would gamble "not". Slowly forcing her mangled body to move it (him) into her top, she winnows the sharp crystal into the tight embrace of the binding she wears on her chest, between the hateful press of her breasts, tucking it away in the safest place she knows.
She needs her hands to push herself off the ground. To grope her way through the forest, stumbling and half-dead and leaving a trail of blood behind her as the dawn begin to break.
no subject
Liem, say something...
[How weak does her voice sound? She can't even really hear it, but just imagining it would make her burn with shame if she weren't already eaten up with pain and the panic of blindness.]
Louder... I can't hear you...
[Her back legs kick weakly, her hands keep reaching, feeling only dirt and sick rot roots and plants and... crystal. Her hearts clench painfully as her hand recoils from it, from the very idea, even though she's always known there would be death in her path, death at her hands, that she would die in fire and pain-]
Liem... ?
[She forces herself to reach out again, to feel along the edges but it is not... the shard is the same size, the same shape as the one that had been in that crystal skull, and relief floods her voice without ears to hear the start of it and prevent such a pathetic display.]
Just... hold on...
[She doesn't know why she clumsily puts it in the wrap around her waist. She didn't care, but everyone... so many people wanted it, the whispers and screams are still rattling around in her skull. Whimpers and wet, blood-filled breaths fill the clearing as she continues her search, pushing aside pain and rage and the desire to just lay down and die for the sake of duty and the scraps of honor she'd always liked to pretend to have. She and he had come into this together, so she had to... She owed him... She'd sworn she'd repay her debt and she hadn't yet-]
Say something-
[Her fingers find another shard, but this one... she cannot tell herself belongs to a beast that they have slain. It is sharp at eight points, it nearly pricks her, or maybe it does and she just doesn't even notice as her grip spasms over it. It feels like... She doesn't know why, or how, but it feels like...]
Liem...
[It's his shard.
He's dead.
Had he said something to her, and had to listen to her blind, deaf, and dumb, searching uselessly and never reaching, never responding properly? Had he died the moment the root-wreathed monster gave its final violent gasp? She doesn't know. All she knows now is that... She is alone, in the dark, in blood and rot and pain and she...
Hayame weakly cradles his shard close, following only the vaguest of recollections from her own cracked memories that once... once, she had given a man comfort, called him back from a brink with the terrifying, vulnerable touch of her shard and all that came with it. Whether that worked if the only thing left of a man was his shard, she can not guess. ... But she would gamble "not". Slowly forcing her mangled body to move it (him) into her top, she winnows the sharp crystal into the tight embrace of the binding she wears on her chest, between the hateful press of her breasts, tucking it away in the safest place she knows.
She needs her hands to push herself off the ground. To grope her way through the forest, stumbling and half-dead and leaving a trail of blood behind her as the dawn begin to break.
The tree. She needs to make it to the tree.]