2.2 Nfierre (3)

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"Hey, ◼."

"Hm?"

"Do you think friendships can last longer than one lifetime. . . ?"

They thought about it for a long moment. 

"I don't see why they can't."

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Nfierre stayed for a few days longer. In all honesty, I really would have liked to apologize to her.

But, I don't think I ever made the effort to try.

She was leaving today, and I had made no effort at all.

I would continue to make no effort when she got ready. . . I would continue to make no effort when we ate breakfast. . . I would continue to make no effort as we sat in the living room, doing nothing at all. There was never a time that came, where I simply uttered the words, "I'm sorry for my behavior."

And then, she left. Just like that.

I still hadn't done it. I hadn't even tried.

It wasn't until her shoes made sounds like bells ascending the stairs and she dissipated into nothing but golden touches of snow beyond the threshold with no more than another jingle, that I, despicably I, finally had the courage to apologize. 

But now, inexcusably, I couldn't. I had waited until I couldn't apologize to say I had the capabilities to do so. 

So, I just sat. Waiting on and on for the world to end and for my uselessness to fade. 

I should be doing something.

I didn’t want to sit, really. I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t have any advice for myself, and all my options simply died away. I was useless that way. 

Uselessly so, I opened a book.

And I kept opening books, hoping for some divine, godly use to make its way over to me. 

Sorry, M. I keep using your shit without asking first. But, I gotta find a purpose somehow, and if I can't find it in me, I better as hell find it in someone else's discoveries. 

First one was labeled, Dungeon Messi.

The art was great. Used it for inspiration to draw. I didn’t make anything good out of it. It seems that the discovery made in this book was not a discovery made in me.

Tried another book.

Fire Kick. Screamy, metal shit. Tried drawing again.

Wasn’t as good as what was on the page. Wasn’t as good as “Tatsumi Fujiwarau.” Not anywhere close. The style was beautiful though. Still, I could find inspiration, but not discovery. 
I couldn't find a reason to exist alongside the pages of true artists.

I took grasp of another artist. The third book was soft. Gold, blue, and pale lines. The people in the pictures weren’t real people, but I wanted to taste their spectrums. My hands shook a little turning the page. Anxiously, my excitement was. . . . inspirational in a way. Inspiration, I think is what we call it, that obsessive reverie. Good Morning Punpun, that art was called. I tried to draw again. I couldn’t draw. I didn’t know what I was doing. 

I ripped the page. Started over.

Ripped the next on a second aborted attempt. 

It took five, or six tries, but eventually, I just, stopped.

There was no point in wasting more paper. I had made nothing of value, and I wouldn't.

Not with a million pieces of paper. 

I just sat at my desk and watched the pencil roll off the desk. 

Though, the pencil dropping made a loud sound. A confusingly loud sound. I did actually pick it up, just to try it again. Dropped it in the same position. Rolled it off the same way it did before. Not even close to what I heard the first time. Then I heard it again, somewhere distantly 'elsewhere.'

Just. . . there. Not where I thought it was. Almost like it was moving through the floor.

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"A god is but a story.

And what does a story matter?

You're nothing but cosplayers of the past."

I felt his hands grab me by the collar, and lift me up.

I had been through this, so many times.

So many hands had done this same act to me, and I had done the same to others.

How many more times must I struggle in vain, to bring back the ones I love?

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“Androktasiai?”

Not a thing.

I got up, shaking off my sleepy legs. I checked the kitchen. Empty. Her coat was gone. She wasn’t upstairs. She wasn’t anywhere.

I heard it again.

Closer this time. From the room I ain't supposed to touch.

The door was kinda cracked open. Red light spilling out into the living room. Her room always looked dark from the rest of the place. I stopped in front of it, my hand hovering over the wood, ready to push it in. 

What if she was hurt? What if something happened? What if–

I didn’t touch the door. I stood there. Listening, unbreathing.

And somehow, on its own, the door just. . . opened, like a gust of air took it or something. Red light cut across the floor. It bled out from the walls, strung along in lines like veins, pulsing faintly. The air inside was still. Just. . . the feeling of something caught in a line.

Like something my head hears, but my brain refuses to acknowledge.

A line, calling out to me.

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"There's so many hurting people in the world. I wish I could hold them all in my hands, hug them to my chest, and keep them safe. But I'll never be able to. You will be my first. And then, you will have a first of your own. And step by step, hand by hand, this world will change."

And her hand, reaching out to me.

Lifting me above water, she took me, and raised me high.

I promised her. . . I would do the same for others.

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I just had to step inside.

In her receptacle, were books. Piles. Folders stacked without order, spilling over each other all given up. Pages torn, bent, dirtied. Something smelled sweet, a sorta scent that makes ya think of flowers left too long in water. The bed was shoved against the wall, unused. Too big. It probably could’ve fit two people. Maybe a third if you really, really squeezed in.

But, it was clear that no one slept in it. No one had, in a long time.

Did Androktasiai sleep?

Photos covered the walls, nailed into the wood. Androktasiai, smiling her head off. A woman beside her with her black hair shining. Their faces were pressed together, laughing, grins so wide. A child. Hair that same black shade. Holding their hands. In every photo, they were happy. Wilted flowers wrapped around the frames. Petals still clinging to life.

In the corner, there were. . . two large boxes. Long metal boxes. One large. One small. The big one had a ‘B’ engraved on it, sharp and deep. The smaller one ‘M.’

And, laughing to myself in my chest,

Without a doubt of hesitation, my hand touched the top of the one engraved B.

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“It’s a common thread between all living things, all dying things, and all things in between. When a geocentric theory is raised and disproved, when a heliocentric theory is raised and despised, it is a cycle that binds all living things together in disgusting stageplay, raveling and unraveling to get the rocks of society off.”

I told her that.

Did I really mean it?

Did I mean it at all?

I feel such regret at this instant, but, I remember.

Those last things I said.

Those bitter words, that carried all my life. Dovefeather words.

You will see me again. 

Every time you shut your Eyes, you’ll see me again.

Every inn you enter will have a speck of me in its architecture, I promise.

 And when you die, my furtherance will link to yours in the cycle that starts anew. 

They will feel compelled to help you, my glorious knight. 

They will love you as I love you now. We’re bound to find eachother again. 

In perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

I have no room to give up. I have no room to stop.

I made a promise, to the ones I love.

I will save you. . . this time, I promise it. I will save you from this merciless ending we march on towards.

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. . .

The trees had no reason to wave or whistle today.

Snow stretched between them in long, white wounds, clean and cold. Their branches cut through the sky in a mess of broken ribs, the places where light had stopped trying to come through. There was no wind, only footfalls, muffled in ice. A trigger of sorts crunching beneath every falling boot.

Where Androktasiai stepped, great footfalls blew away the powder and made deep imprints. As she walked behind Nfierre, smoking slow, her breath mixed in swirls with the smoke, the cigarette held between those lanky two fingers. Her coat was long, black, sharp at the edges. It ate up at her frame, but the blood-red hair didn’t hide. That mess of splotch spilled out behind her, alive against the snow, dragging shadows along in its echoing wake.

In her right hand, that axe hung low.

Nfierre walked ahead, coat tight around her shoulders, arms crossed. Her steps were careful, light, deliberate catlike steps. She made no sound, and no imprint. She didn’t look back, and so, neither spoke.

The woods ate up their silence, and Androktasiai broke not a pace. The cigarette burned down slowly. The axe swung a little with her stride, just another empty part of the body. Pole-limbs being tossed around like fidget toys.

Her eyes stayed glued onto Nfierre’s back.

The snow crunched under their steps, and in the stillness between, there was space for everything simply not said.

It was Nfierre who broke the silence first. At a decibel level just loud enough to be heard.

“You should put him in art school,” she said, still walking ahead, eyes on the path. Her tone was flat. Bland. Typical drivel that had no emotion behind it, as anyone who heard these words would call it.

Androktasai didn’t respond. It was hard to tell what she thought at this given moment, that blank face, those frozen features.

The cigarette burned low between her fingers. Smoke curled up into her face, clinging to the lines beneath her eyes. 

The smaller woman kept going, as if she were presenting a case.

“He was looking at some paintings this morning. Some stuff by. . . . Goya, I think. One of Boa’s books.” Nfierre paused. “He picked it out himself.”

Androktasai’s voice returned that flat tone. A useless response.

“. . . Goya’s alright.” A long breath. “Too dramatic.”

Nfierre tilted her head. “Like you’d know.” 

She answered with a cold, joking tone, the type that was tossed around amongst close friends. But, Androktasiai seemed to fail to pick that tone. . . or return anything at all. A breeze passed through, slow and cold. Nfierre’s cloak moved with it. Androktasai’s coat didn’t. Her hair shifted, blood trailing in the air before settling amidst the fog.

They kept on walking.

Nfierre: “He’d be good in art school, you know. Not all cooped up in a cabin in the woods.”

Androk grumbled. She took a drag of the cigarette.

“He’s not ready for out there yet,” was all that she landed upon.

Nfierre: “Then, give him a little bit, and see if he’ll like any of the art schools still left. It's a ticking clock in Etoria these days.”

Androktasiai: “It’s unreasonable to think he’d like that.”

“Unreasonable? Why not let him try? Even bring him it up to him," Nfierre said, shaking her head. And then, under her breath, she mumbled, "It's silly to delay. Boa would say the same things I am.”

Androktasai stopped walking.

The axe stayed on her shoulder. Her other hand came up, pressed fingers to her forehead, slow, careful. She didn’t look at Nfierre.

Her voice barely held together. “. . . Don’t.”

Nfierre finally turned.

Her eyes were blank. Not cold. Not cruel. Just. . . blank. They lacked that green sheen to them, full of life. They were black things now, full of desperate frustrations.

“He has potential,” she said, clearly irritated. “You don’t get that, because you’re not accustomed to that sort of life. She was. The moment she saw his passion for it, she would’ve done something for him. Why can't you listen to the things your loved ones believe in?”

Androktasai didn’t move.

Smoke curled out of her mouth, caught in the cold air, and vanished amidst brethren strands of mist. Nfierre watched her, patient. It was a small movement of the lips, where Nfierre stood stunned.

It hadn't even processed what Androktasiai had said, audibly, but her lips spilled out those words, far before they had been spoken.

Androktasiai: “S' what? She’s dead. The fuck her opinions got to do with me?”

With those delivered statements, there was a silence. 

Androktasiai’s hand tightened on the axe, but it didn’t lift. Her eyes stayed on the ground. The cigarette dropped, hissed in the snow. She crushed it under her heel.

Nfierre’s voice came out hoarse.

“You think I don’t know that?”

Androktasiai: “. . . I ain't care what ya know, and I ain't care what ya don't. S'got nothing to do with me."

Nfierre spoke curtly, turning around to face Androktasiai. “I don’t know anything. You don’t tell me anything. It’s been over twenty years since you’ve sent me so much as a postcard. I don't know what happened to anyone! I thought- stupidly, I thought the three of us were friends! I thought we'd talk about things, get over things together!”

Androktasai laughed once, sharp, broken at the end.

“Yeah. Yeah, fair.”

The snow fell between them, slow and calm.

“It doesn’t help that I killed her,” Androktasiai grinned. “Hard to talk about that. Being the filthy sinner I am and all.”

Nfierre’s hand moved, and from her sleeve slid silver. A polished and alive vein with a single crimson thread that pulsed like a heartbeat. At the tip, purple fabrics spiraled around themselves into geometrics, shapes the eye slipped off of. A staff. This was Nfierre's weapon itself, Kyūdōsha.

She didn’t look at Androktasiai. Not at first. But, the moment her eyes came to glare upon her, they would never leave.

Her voice, barely audible, came out unsure.

“. . . Seryat-m. . .” Nfierre didn’t finish. 

Androktasai’s axe dropped from her shoulder.

That weapon dissolved. A thousand red particles scattered into the air, coalescing mid-fall, re-forming in her hands in a single breath into a clean spear, its straight edge flickering, red light devouring the air around it. Her eyes snapped up, and the snow melted around her boots, a ring of steam hissing outward. She hurled the spear, and as Nfierre blocked it with her staff, Kyūdōsha disappeared, melting into black-red flames. The spear vanished in the distant mist of frost. 

“Don’t,” Androktasiai breathed, holding an axe in her hand again, but the fight had already begun. "Le'mme explain myself, Nfie-"

Nfierre turned, face calm, eyes unreadable. She raised a second rod behind her back in a similar fashion to a conductor’s baton. And suddenly, the space around them fell flat.

The forest itself was bending around, tilting in the view of Androktasiai. 

Androktasiai was already moving, realizing her efforts were wasted. Nfierre would no longer listen to the words she said. A sprinting pace where red streaks carved the snow, her figure a blur of motion and wrath, her axe cleaving a scarlet arc through the cold air. The ground beneath her cracked, the places where very movements broke it. She came at Nfierre with a quiet frustration that split trees, her weapon hungering to destroy.

But Nfierre was gone before impact. No movement, no step, no noise at all. A silent disappearance. 

Above.

She stood midair, the rod leveled.

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"Everything that has ever happened has led me to here. Everything that I have ever done has led me here.”

“It’s wrong! Please. Please don’t go. I’ve come to appreciate you- I can’t handle the absence of-” 

“Of?”

“My friend. You’re my friend. I care about you. Stop. Stop hurting yourself, stop trying to leave me! I want you in my world!”

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Above Androktasiai, Nfierre pointed her weapon down. Runes ignited along its length, violet and silver, etching themselves, and the sky twisted behind her, the clouds warping into a spiral of lightless color. Her cloak flared, untouched by gravity.

Androktasiai looked up, eyes wild, furious, and her axe shimmered. Red became gold, fire licking along the blade as it elongated, transforming into a spear of flame, massive, royal creation given form.

She hurled it.

The forest exploded.

The snow turned to steam. Trees shattered like glass. The air screamed. And the fight had only just begun.

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Author's Note.

I'm a day early. I hope I surprised you with an early release.

I'm on a plane for twelve hours tommorow, so you may have this one early.

Remember, next Friday will be the end of this arc, and I'll be taking a hiatus.

- L