Snippet #1788609

I don’t… understand.

Vance left. Simply stood up, and marched out the door, leaving the rest of them there to handle perhaps the single most volatile situation she’d ever found herself in. If she were being honest, she’d admit that he’d left her to handle it, because it seemed that Kaine was exhausted by whatever he’d done and Falwich and Gabbe were doing nothing but making it worse. Kiera’s singular ally in the fight to calm raging tempers might just be the Aduro itself, and there was precious little comfort in that.

She didn’t know what to do. Kiera knew how to kill things, how to raise dead things, and how to keep her mouth shut. Everything else was beyond her expertise, including dealing with the mercurial emotions of those she considered her friends. The entire situation was too absurd, and she felt like a little robin, shoved out of the nest, only one of her wings was broken already, and she knew well enough that in this situation, she could only watch her inevitable plummet towards the ground. She was… what? Frustrated, yes. Perhaps even angry. A little hurt that she seemed to be ignored entirely in her efforts to calm the situation. Mostly, though, mostly she supposed she was despairing at the chances of making this right at all.

Falwich leveled his anger at Kaine, and for the first time that day, Kiera’s carefully-constructed mask broke, and she flinched, her hands slowly curling up into fists, fingernails leaving red furrows in the skin of her palms, biting almost deeply enough to bleed. She was not angry with him, precisely, merely with the situation in general and her complete lack of anything resembling a capability to handle it. They were fracturing, turning on one another like starved dogs, and she was too weak, too entirely powerless to do anything about it. That cut more deeply than any lash, any words ever had. Her rebellion, her escape, were supposed to have been the beginning of a time when she was finally allowed to be strong, and here she was, incapable even of giving voice to the things she was thinking.

Which was, perhaps, why she ultimately honed in on the sound of Elei’mei’s voice. She listened, truly listened, to what the Aduro was saying, and understood the tones of warning that ran a countercurrent beneath the surface of mere exposition. It was not difficult to believe that they needed to leave; she knew that already. With a dread certainty that only those whispering voices at the back of her mind could give her. She did not want to remain here, and yet, and yet, and yet. She was as tethered as the rest of them, perhaps more so. Chained by memories she could not escape, by deeds she could not forgive, by feelings she could not express. She did not close herself off because she wished, to, but because she needed to, lest the corpses far beneath the ground and the spirits lingering in the air feed upon them and rise, unbidden.

She lacked the eloquence to even explain it properly. Or perhaps she only lacked the courage. Either way, it would not be. And so she quenched the spark of temper, cooled the heat of the blood rushing through her veins, muted the heavy sound of her heart thundering in her ears.

Elei disappeared from her vision, but Kiera was not as concerned with this as she could have been. Were the Aduro of a mind to harm anyone too badly, her Death-sense would have warned her of an impending demise, and that part of her consciousness was mercifully quiet. Instead, she followed the appearances and vanishings with her eyes as best she could, apparently unfazed when the creature appeared beside her and threw a smile at one of the others over her shoulder. Falwich, probably.

Please, don’t torment him. she did not know if anyone would hear, but it probably didn’t matter. It would do no more than the rest of her urgings had done, which was precisely nothing.

An idea came to her then, as she watched the floating being and heard its proclamation. Kiera cocked her head to one side, then lifted her shoulders in an elegant shrug and held her hand out. “I should like to experience this teleportation, if I may.” It was a peace offering, or as much of one as she could give. Maybe, just maybe, if the others saw her do this and come away unharmed by the stranger, it would be enough to start a better accord, or at least assuage their most immediate fears about Elei’mei’s intent. It did occur to her that if the worst of the suspicions were correct, she would not survive, but, well… life was risk, and death a certainty anyway.

For a moment, her vision clouded, and she imagined that she was facing another being, hand extended in the most tentative overtures of trust. The hand that had grasped hers then was warm, rough, and attached to someone who smiled far more than she’s thought anyone could. Take my hand; I won’t hurt you, I promise.

If only she could have promised the same.