l i v i n i a
such is life, such is death.
The corpse stumbles to a halt a few paces from her. She watches it sway, watches the fog and smoke coil around its legs, then unravel again. Mera, from her perch above, chitters her displeasure. The large bat, despite her appearances, is the vegetarian of the pair. Livinia pays no heed as she observes the creature.
Her eyes immediately lifted to find him in the shadows that the pair had always called home. He looks the same and not the same. He still carries the same eerie stillness, but there is something different in the edges. For a heartbeat she wonders if he is real. Liv doesn’t have to account for the considerations of magicians and their intent. Of the consequences of fractured friendships. She worries only for her weary mind. Perhaps something had splintered and broken.
Time had not passed cleanly for her in her absence. It had stretched thin, then folded in on itself until the years were unrecognizable. The days had been swallowed by smoke and mist and dark. Sometimes she thought she’d been gone a season. Other times, she feared the world had forgotten the shape of her entirely.
The thought passes as his voice threads through her mind. Welcome home, sister. She can feel the sound in her bones more than she hears the words.
Home.
The word settles somewhere deep and unwanted. She tastes iron on her tongue, not from blood but memory. The fog ripples at her feet. Hunger churns.
“Home,” she repeats aloud, the sound hoarse from disuse. It sounds foreign to her own ears. “Is that what this is?”
She steps closer, slow, deliberate. The fog and smoke tightens around her ankles unwilling to let her drift too far. Keeping her grounded in its own way.
“I didn’t know what I’d find if I returned,” she says quietly, her eyes still studying him - her brother, her other half. “If there would be anything left at all. Or anyone.”
Her gaze seeks his, steady and unflinching. “I suppose I came to see what remains.”
She tilts her head slightly, the faintest ghost of a smile curving along her mouth revealing the barest hint of a fang. “And to see if you still would.”
The fog presses closer, ever present, but her eyes remain bright through the dark and the haze. She can’t help but think that for the first time in a long time she feels terribly alive.
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