03-22-2022, 10:11 PM
AUBERGINE
She feels the way he watches her, and where once she might have wilted beneath such a studious stare, she is no longer that apprehensive young girl. Now, she is the one with the power to make things wilt—to send rot crawling across the earth with every step, to take brilliant blooms and shrivel them until they crumble into dust. If she wanted she could take every bright and vibrant thing and maim it into something dim and dull, all the while plucking their thoughts from their skulls until they are just as stripped and bare as the desolate hellscape she might create.
And yet, she never does.
Even though she could weaponize her mind and use it to bend others to her will, even if she could force the world around her to submit to her blight, she is not nearly so ruthless. There is a sharpness hidden beneath that ethereal glow, an echo of her father that exists not just in their matching eyes, but despite all that, she is still very much her mother’s daughter. She was raised in that softness, knew the familiarity of the warmth that came from unconditional love, and it is, perhaps, her greatest moral anchor.
Being raised in the lightness of her mother is the only reason her powers are kept on hand, but not immediately ready to use.
She looks at him—appraises him in the way he does to her, as equally brazen and not at all bothered by him noticing—and she does not see anything soft. She sees the bones that plate him, sees the way the skin that borders them shows a history of being torn and chafed, and wonders what it would be like to live in a cage of bones.
“No, I came here for entertainment,” she says with a coy smile, her green eyes flicking from him and to the eagle with just the faintest hint of amusement on her lips. He didn’t seem to like her much. Maybe all birds hated her and she's just never noticed. She returns her attention instead to the stallion, briefly catching his eyes with hers before gesturing to the eerie quiet that surrounds them. “And I suppose I was curious about this new…place…that mysteriously showed up.” Here, her gaze lingers a little longer on the nearest formation, feigning to be more interested in it than she actually is. She isn’t sure yet if she actually cares what this place is, why it’s here, or what happened; but it is a good conversation piece. “Do you know what happened here?”
And yet, she never does.
Even though she could weaponize her mind and use it to bend others to her will, even if she could force the world around her to submit to her blight, she is not nearly so ruthless. There is a sharpness hidden beneath that ethereal glow, an echo of her father that exists not just in their matching eyes, but despite all that, she is still very much her mother’s daughter. She was raised in that softness, knew the familiarity of the warmth that came from unconditional love, and it is, perhaps, her greatest moral anchor.
Being raised in the lightness of her mother is the only reason her powers are kept on hand, but not immediately ready to use.
She looks at him—appraises him in the way he does to her, as equally brazen and not at all bothered by him noticing—and she does not see anything soft. She sees the bones that plate him, sees the way the skin that borders them shows a history of being torn and chafed, and wonders what it would be like to live in a cage of bones.
“No, I came here for entertainment,” she says with a coy smile, her green eyes flicking from him and to the eagle with just the faintest hint of amusement on her lips. He didn’t seem to like her much. Maybe all birds hated her and she's just never noticed. She returns her attention instead to the stallion, briefly catching his eyes with hers before gesturing to the eerie quiet that surrounds them. “And I suppose I was curious about this new…place…that mysteriously showed up.” Here, her gaze lingers a little longer on the nearest formation, feigning to be more interested in it than she actually is. She isn’t sure yet if she actually cares what this place is, why it’s here, or what happened; but it is a good conversation piece. “Do you know what happened here?”