(Untitled)
The cold bitterness of winter tends to drive people inside. They don't like it too much. It's harsh and uncomfortable when the burning heat of indoors brings feeling back to your extremities. So not many people are outside, in the midst of winter, despite it's frigid beauty
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Words, even silent ones, make shapes in the air - and the snow catches sunlight, tosses colors, like glass. She has this friend, you see, one who makes the snow. Oh, and the lake is almost frozen enough that anyone can walk on it.
There's a faint chime (sliver bells around one ankle) as Lethe drops down beside her - just two sudden shocks of color in a world of powdery white.
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She looks, a faint, distracted look; strained smile doesn't even reach her lips. They need a plan and for all their writings and little girl determination, they don't have one.
"Hey."
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A slow blink and then another - lips curving and she tilts her head back almost decisively, nose wrinkled and smile easy.
She can't quite get it to reach her fingers anymore (limited empty quiet) but it's almost there all the same - some sort of calm.
There's sunshine today, it's going to be alright.
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She wonders if Lethe remembers when she could speak...when things were different and it's only a small pause before she says something a little stupid, picking at the edges of her fingers.
"I don't want to be human anymore."
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She used to be able to hold whole worlds at her fingertips, to show - happiness, love, warmth, fear, despair - with the slightest touch. She could speak lullabies and she could understand things without having to face that horrible, clawing panic of the nothing that the whispers left behind.
Her eyes close and she breathes slowly - things have to be larger, have to be far more grand when you can't use simple words for them.
It's a flicker, a hop, and she's on her feet again - chin tilted in a show of defiance and pale fingers braced upon her hips. She looks rather silly with her tattered skirt whipping around her knees and bare feet settled in the snow, but it's the best 'epic hero' impression that she can think of on such short notice.
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Lethe wouldn't be entirely ill-suited to being royalty, one would think.
Kaye makes a decision. She might be small and insignificant, but she's not lost dammit. She grew up in the weaving labyrinth of cities, sleeping on subways and ignoring possible threats; playing brave and managing things. And isn't it time to be brave again, even if it's hopeless?
"What about a sword?"
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You're only lost for as long as it takes you to find something - and maybe, just maybe, they are something enough to not be lost anymore.
A quick flurry of motion and Lethe holds out her hands, waves one (nothing here) and then the other (nothing there) before clapping them both together in front of her and arcing an eyebrow.
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There's not a spot of green to be seen.
"There always has to be a sword." Her eyes whip to the lake. Some Lady might rise and give them one. She thinks of silly children's productions of the King Arthur story and...late night TV. Fantasy and myth; that's what she is, used to be, will be again.
"Unless we defeat her through cleverness." Cleverness and bravery. She wishes Roiben was here now, to tell her how clever she was. That a simple name could solve all of her problems.
Yet when she thinks of it, Styx isn't half the adversary Nicnevin was. She's in no danger of dying. They could do this. She knows that much, when brown eyes meet turquoise.
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She offers out her hands again - still pressed, palms flat against each other. It's different, perhaps, then hairpins and nick-knacks but it is what they need. What they want to find.
Think hard, she wants to say. Think of exactly what you are looking for.
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The part of her that doesn't believe in faeries. That thinks someday she'll wake-up and none of it will be real. That she'll be alone, stuck in a dingy apartment with Lloyd and her mother lighting up in the next room.
That part demands that she cock her head at Lethe and frown her eyebrows in confusion.
But that part has been bred from distrust and what other people tell her. How could she not believe? She saw them. She saw them even before she knew what she was.
"Tell me you're not thinking what I think you're thinking."
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The nymph merely blinks back at her, blue eyes sharp with a challenge and lips curved into a grin. She isn't always a sad girl, she dances on water and laughs like bells and likes extra marshmallows in her hot cocoa.
(Come on then - feel like you exist - take a chance.)
Kaye's been green before, has laughed at raindrops and turned sweaters into vines - there are stranger things to believe in.
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She'd say to Roiben about a magical bar and he'd blink in disbelief and assume it was another one of her 'fancies'. The make-believe of a messed-up kid. Then Lethe wouldn't exist. A million of the mistakes Kaye had made would be pardoned.
To close her eyes and think of a sword instead is a much easier thing. Just like glamour. Long, straight and simple. Nothing fancy about it. A bit battered, like herself. No gemstone would ever have rested in it's hilt. She doesn't think anything will happen, of course.
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They are simple things for all their long-winded tales.
A nod, sharp and satisfied, and her fingers fold around hers. Kaye's are small - more like her own - though the motion makes her think of (long, silver hairpins -head against his shoulder - and gods she misses it) - she breathes and there's a rush of something completely unsolid, a swirling sort of tug.
Something that leads you.
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The cause of all this mess. Love doesn't half make fools, she thinks, as Lethe's fingers touch hers.
Stops thinking completely. Nothing but the sword and definitely doesn't open her eyes.
Don't be afraid.
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The trying?
The tug grows stronger, flickerfinding right to there and, for a moment, it's simply Lethe laid out in bits and pieces and this part - dark dark water, secrets of a thousand forevers (no sound in the stories) but yearsandyears and the tangled lean in parts of left behind his hers yours mine - this part she rarely shows anyone.
A ripple of (shy) laughter along her fingers - found it - and then she pulls.
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With her eyes closed it reminds her of that very much. A frightening thing, until Lethe laughs and she opens her eyes. The world is all bright again.
And they...they have a
sword.
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