Hoarse. Their voice was hoarse, rife with expectation. "You won't like the answer," set off the air hose, fired the cylinders that made it brace itself preemptively. Weight rocking back, quills falling into (further) disarray, a halo around the back of its head. Putrescent eyes staring, waiting, waiting, waiting for the ash to finally settle, for Zoisite to manage to either swallow or spit out what clouded their lungs.

"You're— mom."

"I love you— always, mom."

Oh, and there's the sword. Brittle iron lodged between the sixth and seventh ribs, handle snapped off in the full-body backward spasm that it couldn't suppress in time. Its head lifted upward as its Heart began to bleed red red red. Vicious red, painting sand in the backwash of cyan wisps and teeth that snap horribly in the dark; unfettered hunger that'd thought to devour wholly and leave it mourning what could have been. Her stone hadn't reappeared with the return of the sun. The orthoclase remembered that well; the stinging betrayal of fate and its own anger at grieving the insignificant.

A piece, they'd said.

Saline solution stung at its widening eyes.

More than that.

She hadn't cared much for it during its conception either. Traded life for, what? A handful of rats, a spar? Not a moment's thought or investment in what would come of such a little shard of stone; and yet, there was some foolhardy part of it that had wanted to care about her absence, too. It survived without, but it had destroyed in her lackluster, nonexistent, nameless memory. Watched tourmaline shatter against the wall and become as unrecognizable as a grain of sand, forever lost to Hydra the tunnel. (Maybe some of it had wound up in the Warren, settling near the garnet that stood sentinel there, solid and unmoving.) Bared its teeth to the ground in a noiseless snarl, as if that'd release the inexplicable, clawing, choking anguish that flooded it now. Did Zoisite feel the same?

Desert Rose had told it what a mother was, once. Only in name. Orthoclase-Alpha had learned the definition on its own.

They leave. They disappear. They die.

Words barely escaped abstract thought, and those that did filled its jaws to the teeth with concrete and stuffed fiberglass batting down its throat. Dry, mucous, raw, chafing—all the same. The knife had twisted on its way in, and it at last stumbled away; an animalistic instinct to escape from the pain, but it always lingered. (Everything changes and everything stays the same!) A claw remained perpetually raised, and it wavered where it stood: jaws clenched too tight; eyes pinched upward in a peculiar brand of grimace; quills in utter disarray, a supernova around its rotting skull and too-broad shoulders.

"Y-yo-u can't," its voice bubbled, terribly, terribly wet despite the dry heave punctuating the malformed phrase. "D-don't. I-it—" Another step back. The neurotic prey beast in its head remembered that escape lay all around it and in the acid still staining its gums, and so it took another. Another. Another. Head swinging on the top of its sore, sore neck like it was on a ball joint, an aluminum gear.

@V-Zoisite-One

Reprimand came, punctuated with horror. Was that disgust in their squinting expression? It so easily could have been. But their voice, the way their throat gurgled and hacked, trying to expel the nothingness inside of it-- betrayed them. They were helpless, unable to end the cycle of suffering.

But, but that was okay. It meant that they... They cared, too. Even if they couldn't. Could they? Impossible. They said they couldn't. How could they not understand and still be so afraid...?

Orthoclase Alpha took a step back, and another, and another, farther and farther away. Zoey's shoulders shuttered, straining against her crushing weight. Pushing, heaving, forcing herself to her feet. She didn't dare take a step forward, lest she collapse, lest they break into a sprint to get away. She couldn't chase them, couldn't keep up. They always had longer strides, could always outrun her.

"I have to," Zoey wheezed, unable to raise her voice against the din of clattering carapace and quill, no matter how hard she pushed. A whine rattled through her lungs, low and reverberating. "If I don't, who will?" She challenged the cruel world that closed in around them. The one that pulled her down, held her back, as Alpha's form receded. Bleak shadows crept around the edge of her vision, until she was staring through a pinhole at the shrinking shape. Was that the closest she would ever be to them again?

No, no, no, no, no--

Couldn't move. If she did, she would charge, she would barrel into her mom and, if she could only reach, she would latch on. There would be a struggle. Someone would get hurt. And that was the best case scenario-- worst, Alpha would bolt, and disappear forever. Both thoughts made her head ache with the rattling that rained down her whole body.

She wanted to scream. All that came out was a half-crushed, wheezing, desperate squeal, "If I don't love us, who will?"

@Orthoclase-Alpha

A snarl blustered from gritted teeth before it could reach up and begin to sink its talons into its own neck, start gathering fistfuls of quills at the scalp. Before meathook hands could clap over its ears as it walked; they were too loud, it didn't— they'd be heard, and it didn't want them to be. Vargas wouldn't— it dry heaved again, choking down what threatened to spill over its cheeks.

"St-op!" it'd snarled in that feeble, dying voice making itself at home in its throat again. And, after all that, a quieter mockery of its first snarl was made: "s-stop…"

Another step.

Another.

Another.

Alpha felt the leaves begin to shift around behind it. Their cool embrace was a pistol shot trigger for it to scramble around—a messy one-eighty—and make a break for the woods.

exit, unless stopped
@V-Zoisite-One

The Zoisite stood, frozen in place, helpless as their question was met with a damning demand to stop.

They both knew the answer, didn't they? If Zoey didn't, no one would.

The Orthoclase's form was becoming a blur, too far away to focus on. No, no, no, no, they were getting too far away, they were-- they couldn't leave, not now. Zoey couldn't lay herself bare and then be left to pick up the pieces. She couldn't. Alpha hit the leaves, and then began to bolt. The sound of branches snapping pulled the switch in the Zoisite's brain. No. No. NO.

A sharp inhale through pincers, a twist of a knife in the ribcage, an a violent snap of a tail. "Wait!" A sudden inferno, starting from the blackened hole (that burnt charcoal still could feed a flame, it seemed), grew and burst through her insides, setting it all ablaze. Her organ were scorched, her blood boiled. A hot, golden light flared from every crack in her armor, filling her dark pinprick stare with a wash of brilliant gold. She shut her eyes against it, but the light was coming from within. Her jaws clenched, keeping her from wailing with what little voice she had left. Only a long whine and the clattering of quills filled the air.

I'm sorry, some small part of her whispered to herself. I can't stop them.

Zoey wanted to collapse. Her carapace stung painfully, and it felt as though blisters were forming underneath her armor. Her head held low, she brought up one set of talons, reaching them to the cracks, sinking the hooks into the chitin. To scratch, to break, to release some of the heat within, to find some amount of relief.

"Stop," Zoisite whispered to itself, echoing their mother, "stop." The little nicks and scratches had yet to become trenches, only minute chinks in the armor. "Stop, sst-- ssttop..."

Sobs broke their voice, hot spittle dripping down their jaws and acid bleeding from their tightly closed eyes. They trembled there, struggling between the precipice of destruction and the endless stretch of despair ahead of them. Somehow, it managed to breathe, cool air into shriveled, ash-riddled lungs. They slowly sank into the earth, talons pressed tight into their face plate, alternating between whimpers and breaths.





Eventually the flame inside of them burned out.



The Zoisite shuttered, blinking eyes open to see the scene of destruction laid out in plain. The lights of the Pegasus had started to dim, but there was still a few lights of Zoey's creation that gave enough to see by even during the evening hours. The garden was in a state of disarray, from their corner where they had crushed and uprooted several plants, to the track lines where the Orthoclase had tore through the earth, back and forward and back again.

It was a mess, a terrible, awful thing to behold. Yet, it was so much easier to focus than the all consuming void-- the spiral that would set them back into a crumpled mess. Focus on... The practical. The actionable. What can it do with itself. The Zoisite walked away from its hole, staggering steps that lurched like a broken machine, chugging along with a missing wheel, to the rows that had been torn through. A few plants could be salvaged, maybe.

It could at least try to put things back in order, here. Easier to focus on work, on a task. It kept the mind busy while Zoey was away.

@Orthoclase-Alpha for visibility, exit unless stopped!