Snippet #2596061

Tallyho sat there unflinchingly as Haru left, then Harper, and soon Kyle spoke. She did not show a sign of life until food was placed into arms reach and though she ate and grasped the food feverishly, remnants of fodder staining the area around her mouth and tumbling down the front of her dress, her eyes did not move from the door and her lips did not flinch.
Xabier came in and left as quickly, typical behavior. Kyle kept talking. Friendship this, new start that. She did not pause to pick out the food that slipped down the collar of the dress. Didn’t he know that it was far too late for all of this “peace making”? Even if he wasn’t the one who really bothered her? Didn’t Haru know? What did Haru know?
“I will never forget,” she said, voice hushed and barred between her teeth. Smothered. Her voice was the people and her teeth the government. “I won’t!”
Her outburst was punctuated by the curt noise of a dish smashing to the floor. Her small body posed forward on the sofa. Mid-lunge and the hand that involuntarily destroyed a dish clenched into a fist of shame. Green eyes twin planets quaking in the whites of her eyes. And when they glazed she blinked herself free.
“I apologize,” she said to Kyle. From the sofa she slumped to her knees like an unattended blanket at the edge of the bed. Pathetic and cotton-soft, and worn. She gathered the pieces of plate with cusped hands and held them. She found no place to dispose of them so dropped them again. And then the shuffled forward on her knees like a toddler or an ape until she could stand up right by the miracle of some evolution of psyche. And she stumbled out of the door. Winded and weathered, not nearly as pretty as she began. And as she trudged down the hall, she worried about having another seizure. And the shaking... Then she stumbled over Haru’s words. Be alone and die alone. Be alone and die alone.
Since becoming a month warriors Tallyho never experienced so much emotional distress in her entire life. After the untimely death of her mother she learned to suppress her disappointment and troubles. This was the case of many orphaned. There was no consistent person to confide in so she confided in self-reliance. She was the baby who learned to yearn for pure sustenance instead of sustenance and the comfort of touch. And something about this situation (or perhaps these people) had broken her walls for worse.
And she had already made it out the door to the main ballroom when she realized that she wasn’t storming off to confide in herself for once.
Whether he saw it or not Tallyho wordlessly burrowed her head into Dorian’s shoulder with force, a time bomb ready to explode with scarlet face and ugly tears. And she really didn’t want to cry in front of everyone else but she didn’t want to be alone and die alone. And suddenly she felt bad for dismissing Kyle’s invitation to friendship, or any other person’s legitimate invitation to friendship. But a minute ago she wasn’t ready for it because a minute ago she had trouble distinguishing who was the enemy and who feverishly loved her for all of her brashness and alienating nature. And she believed that Dorian practiced this from the beginning and so she had to begin with him.
Haru had taken a beating today. Between the ceremony and the warriors and Mildred it felt like his day was spiraling at 100 miles per hour. And it felt like every time he was about to fall into the ocean the wind pushed him closer to the face of a cliff full of hard, red rock. And the final gust of wind, one that would finally end his day with rock to the face was the sight of a familiar figure up in the darkness of a balcony, tucked (in an almost insultingly casual way) out of the sight of some of the most vigilant. To be quite honest Haru would not have caught this face had a drunk lady nearby not jumped and sent the wine from her glass flying inches above her with some of the spirit draping a damp curtain over Haru’s shoulder pad. And that glob of red liquid, which was suspended against gravity for less than a second happened to highlight the figure of Amber in the balcony, wrist rotating a glass of whiskey casually. And Amber caught his eye and he smiled. And they found a mutual understanding. And Haru left the ballroom discretely to confront the arsonist without causing much attention.
“I see you didn’t heed my warning,” Amber sang through a sip, “about staying out of our way?”
“I see I didn’t either,” Haru said coldly from the chair adjacent to the one eyed man.
“Listen. You and your warriors… You’re nothing but pawns in this whole fiasco—“
“With the government? Oh I know. But we need numbers to protect ourselves from arsonists and traitors…”
“You are trapped in the cycle. You know not what you do.”
“What cycle? Enlighten me.”
“I am cursed, I cannot. But I warn you, stay back. Or Shepard, we will not hesitate to slaughter your herd.”
“Then we will not hesitate to slaughter you.”
“Then let us save you.”
“Save us?”
“Save you.”