[attr="class","basil"]
an origin within a nest
...September 2023, a few days after returning from Eclipse...
The forest floor is littered with moss-strewn corpses highlighted in strips of moonlight, human and witch, familiar feather-fested, daemonic, bubbling corruption seeps into leafy grass blades as tall as she, infests the stagnant water pools and follows river-path, diluting itself. A slow but inevitable decline. The trees pick up their hand-roots and drag themselves away from the damage to soils unknown. Baz pushes through tall grass shoulder-height, runs, panting, her eyes on the trees that stretch up to the sky. Shade from sun and moonlight. Grass whips at the hands she holds up to protect her face, invisible naked sharpness. One of them,
any of them-
Up here where the darkness below cannot reach, familiar though it is. Old habits die hard.
That one will do. It looms sudden against the thick and Baz reaches for the low lying branches. The bark juts rough under her bare hands, splinters, her fingers sinking into the age lines of the trunk higher and higher until she pulls herself up onto a thick branch with a sigh of relief. Of course she cannot negotiate with dreams and (words from Hermione without the filter of kindness) with nothing to offer. You seek a safe place, a vantage point, and wait for the danger to lose interest. Wait for the sun to peek through the trees. Tie yourself to something that will keep you alive when you are weak. Maybe even to wake up. The world is in opposites here, waking when she sleeps. But sleep does not come so easy.
A rope in her bleeding/not-bleeding hands, stinging, it has always been in her hands in the way that dreams provide, knots familiar enough to be dream-like even conscious. Pressed back against the trunk, Baz glowers down at the mass of hands bubbling out of the ground, grasping for signs of life. They’re tall, taller than she remembers. Or is she smaller than she has ever been?
"Climb higher if you wish to be entirely safe from them.”
Mija says from the branch above her, and Baz does not look up. Knows the sound of her own voices when she hears them, knows their speaker is real at least now, if not other times. Opens the other mouth and closes it, then the eyes not looking down.
"They will hold you.”
Mija insists, answers to unspoken questions.
"Besides.”
A mocking tone bleeds in, sing-song but she’s really only angry at herself.
"If you’re that worried about how weak they are, fly.”
Flying with no wings is just falling, but they don’t understand. They’re the incorporeal aspect, they were born into this realm with the sky at their feathered fingertips.
As if to demonstrate how simple it is, Mija flies and falls, landing on her knee and peering downwards. Her weight is comfortable. Is this real too? Eyes closed she/they sit/s, perch and person and problem in this nostalgic nightmarish dreamscape. An excuse then, to be together -- A longing self-inflicted and undisrupted by further speech. Unprovoked. Only when the sun chases the Reach away do they sleep, do they wake.
Her hand throbs. A thwip, a lash, slashed or tightened. In the dark she cannot see the flesh unmarred.
"...Finally. Pay attention while you can.”
Tired, they are so tired and their limbs so heavy. She has waited for too long now.
The witch pushes her body upright in bed with a grunt of discomfort and the bed creaks audibly with the weight, no sunlight filtering down through the canopy to chase away that which lurks, sneaking around the curtains, blinds. Still their eyes meet the other even without vision to assist them. A throb unbidden chases pain shooting up her arm, breaks the staring contest. Baz hisses, cradling her arm, pressing her fingers into the flesh but there is nothing there so then, quite naturally--
"Your wing-” Panic. She with little control over the matter but recovering, the room has remained unturned since arriving back in Delphi. A mercy during their recovery, Basil didn't quite dare to hope. And so she cannot understand what has possibly happened, and the questions beyond speech fly-fall only one way. Mija shifts on the quilt, sinking deeper. Blood, then, hers in corporeal, drips into the sheets.
"You’re hurt.”"/We’re/ hurt. Pay. Attention.”
Correction. Basil leans over and draws their bodies close, the pair of them hissing in unison. But there is no resistance to the gesture. How is there so much blood, Basil thinks, or maybe it isn’t her thought at all? Tears blur their eyes and double images shimmer into existence of hands and wings stained, they look around into the darkness and see nothing, two of nothing. And the words pour out-
"Heal then- ah, /ow/.” They can do that, they don’t need to suffer like this. But she’s pointing out the obvious for the reply rather than for the logic of it all because of course she can heal and yet she remains
unhealed.
"Why? The only time you listen to us is when there’s something you want. If this is the blood price we must pay for your attention, we'll pay it. And if it bothers you that much-”
"This is absurd! I’m not going to. Do that.” Baz hisses, pain bleeding through. What? Every time? This can't be their continuing existence. When did everything become so
extreme, so drastic, the silence, the tantrums, and now what-
"I will never do that. Not even if you want to leave. It’s your choice and-“"I am not going to leave us, and it is... outrageous."
Mija struggles, enraged.
"-that you have deluded yourself beyond logic into thinking there is even a sliver of a possibility of that happening with my blessing.“
"...But it’s your choice-”"You brought me into this world and I keep you in it, let us be enslaved to one other openly without this false capitulation.”
"Not like this. Please, just-”"Do not force the matter? I am done with...”
Mija’s voice is unsteady, getting weaker. A little body slumping in a hand, feather-drenched crimson. The owl is so
tiny. In a palm. Blood drips through their fingers and onto their knees.
"This is not a one-way transaction... We are the gateway, we are the guardian… You promised me… I promised you… Idiot."
Voice almost inaudible but still. More than they've exchanged in months. Their ears strain, their hands lift the vessel higher.
"-head so full of nothing at all...”
Quick to her feet then, to what, to nothing at all, blood not hers and hardly any blood at all to lose, the pair of them crumple to the floor. Precious. Close to the chest. It’s wet. Numb and getting colder.
And she doesn’t demand Ma’at do it herself, but the wing finds itself healed anyway. It’s their body too, how it stitches, how months of building a an equivalent filled the gap.
A sigh of relief. Both mouths, beak, lips. Was this where it was always heading? Eventually, a mumbles:
"Everything hurts, yet only the wing... A knife...”
"Yeah. Blood loss does that. You still don't know how to be alive.”"Says you. And you born to it.”
"I- Yeah. M’sorry.”"Useless apologies. What is the point of them."
"Because it's getting worse and so are we and-” Excuses.
"No.”
Mija wriggles.
"It’s always been this bad. We just never noticed, ignored it, refused to witness. But we don’t get to be sad about it, we don’t have the luxury of being angry at ourselves for being ignorant. Find an outlet that isn’t us, or I promise you, promises on promises- every night- if I don’t get to have peace then neither do you-”
"You're right! You're right.” They push themselves up from the floor, the room less dizzy-making even though the blood is still outside of the body clutched like a heart to the chest.
"I get it. I just-“"Getting better feels like a betrayal... It’s what all the stereotypes say isn’t it...? They wouldn’t want that for us.”
Strange to hear stale platitudes from
Mija about death.
"We... don’t know what he wanted.”"Yes we do, we do when it comes to us. All the rest is... superfluous.”
"But /you/ said he… You cried. You don’t-“"I know. I was wrong. He’s not coming back. I don’t know what to think about it either.”
A shiver ripples through them. Is there nothing in this world that is reliable? Not even them?
