[Nona smiles, and despite the sadness she seems a little amused at all this, and the anger that bubbled to the surface.
She rather likes Waltaquin. She thinks that the ferocity is a very attractive look on her. Of course, she's still a little cross at her for wanting to kill her in the first place, but...]
I may not like it, but the world needs people like you as well. Why apologize to me? I've never apologized for who I am. [She's not about to either. Why should she, when people will already look at her and claim to understand or know? Why give them the satisfaction of shame or remorse?]
But I do want to hurt you. [And will. And won't apologize.] I think your anger is understandable.
[She can't promise Crea or Beel will see it that way, but...]
I'm not sorry for who I am. I like being me. I was lucky to be me for these six months. It's selfish, but I think I'd prefer to die as me than live as someone else.
This body isn't mine. My soul is rejecting it. Devouring it.
[And from someone else, it might bore her. Would bore her. But Waltaquin walks closer, not sitting yet to maintain whatever control she has as the one with the nail bat and the one who came here knowing what she planned to do in the first place.]
I wager you're probably a lot more powerful than this place will allow you to be... [Like her, clawing and clawing for whatever's missing, and whatever's pulled in is satisfying but not filling.] But that kind of power is difficult to contain nevertheless.
I hate it here. [And Nona will be able to tell that this is the most paradoxical of statements: A lie that is also true.] But for you it must not have been a bad vacation.
Mm. [Nona is thoughtful, her eyes are heavy.] That's what everyone says. They want me to win the war against the Necromancers for them.
I don't feel powerful most of the time.
[She's not sure she wants to.
She tilts her head at Waltaquin, closing her eyes and humming in consideration. It's a paradoxical set of values, and it's one that Nona understands better than she thinks Waltaquin expects.]
I don't know what happened to my friends. I won't know, because I'll never see them again. Sometimes I can close my eyes and pretend they're fine but... [She doesn't think they are.] ...I like the people here. I like the ocean. I like that I was able to be me fully, with no expectations for who I was before that.
[She lets out a little mirthful chuckle at the "war with the Necromancers." Taking that into consideration, they're both playing right to some of those expectations, aren't they? If Nona has been happy to exist without the yoke of what she was supposed to be, then Waltaquin, perhaps, hasn't changed at all. Who can say?]
Maybe there's no such thing. Maybe you'll find it. What an exciting possibility.
[She has to wonder how she stacks up to those people who swept entire worlds up under a wave of death. Lacking, now, surely, but still with a chance of carving something out for herself if she can cut the vein on this dark font of power and lap at it. Her skin itches.]
Go right ahead. If it's not a waste of my time, I'll certainly consider doing it.
[Even the drabbest of requests can sometimes reap the most interesting rewards.]
There's nothing else it could be, besides worthless, a gesture of petty care in this place that would sooner stretch them into bones than care for them, and - ]
All right.
[Perhaps she only agrees because no one would expect it from her. Who looks at Waltaquin Redditch and sees someone who is capable of being tender?
Resting the bat against her hip, she finally sits behind Nona, bringing her gloved fingers to her hair. Only a few weeks ago, it would be a more unpleasant experience, Quin's hands working with the finesse of a child who pets a cat so hard it bites because it doesn't know any better. But tonight it is practiced and controlled.]
That would make you the twins, by the way, not the crab. But I shan't tell.
Well, it's only my half birthday. And it's only my half birthday as Nona.
I don't remember who I am, you see. Nobody does. My body is nineteen, but she's not mine.
[Nona smiles when she feels Quin's hands in her hair. It's nice. This last few moments of care. At least she can die as Nona. At least she can die with someone she loves.
Hahaha, I'm not going to stop you if you want a different birthday. Do as you please... even something sentimental like dying as yourself, you might as well act without anyone telling you what to do.
[She works through one braid as she talks, in neat, precise tugs.]
Do you hate being cooped up, Nona? I was always happier being freer. Maybe your body feels it too.]
There are people who still like you just the way you are, I can promise you that.
[This is a farce, she thinks, not for the first time, moving to part her hair against instead of cracking her across the skull, sudden and unavoidable and unwarned for, an assassin she's pretending not to notice.
The problem isn't that she feels remorse, because she doesn't. The troubling thing is understanding now, a little better, what that would feel like if she did.
She might feel more affinity with whatever bound itself up inside Nona, posing as this small normal mouse of a girl. She has always felt like something others want to stuff into a canister.]
[The rabbit turns, and it meets Nona's alien eyes with eyes just as altogether strange. The world begins to fade out, giving her time to ask her final question before she truly remembers.]
What's it like to be capable of loving something?
[And then, they're in the cold void of space, and Waltaquin will catch sight of what "Nona" truly is.
A sphere. Blue and green in equal measures, spanning so far in so many directions. The shining jewel of the Milky Way. They're together now, though Nona might already be gone.
She spies her siblings, before they became her siblings. Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune.
And even the smallest of them, their little baby sibling Pluto.
Waltaquin will feel every root, every plant, every beetle or ladybug or snail on the side of a rock, she'll feel the bloated greedy trillionaires suffocating in their own indulgence, she'll feel the impoverished and destitute drowning in their own poverty, she'll feel every piece of coral bleached and dead after a century of abuse.
The world loves her, the world loves everything inside of it, every grain of sand, every patch of grass, every newborn baby.
The world is dying. It is heaving through corrupted lungs, and nobody is helping it. Nobody cares. They want to assume it will be okay, even as it lays there bleeding, they don't want to lose sight of their indulgence and wealth.
But the Earth hasn't given up. And neither has He. John G-. A scientist that loves it so dearly, it can see Him. It can bless Him, because He is the only one that truly looks at it and speaks to it, the only one who understands.
And so it gives Him a gift. Corpses. Death. Life. All fall under His/Her domain. It takes him so long to understand. He fights for it, for the Earth, and the people scorn him. The bloated parasites that suck the blood from it's veins plot their escape, they destroy his efforts, they create a monster and tell the world that's what he is.
It isn't until the very last moment that they realized their mistake. It isn't until ten thousand years of destroyed planets, of razed cities, of their descendants working in mines, of dead Kings and felled armies, that they truly understand.
He continues to fight for her. He gathers a following. He cures their ailments, their diseases. He cures cancer, he reshapes bodies, cures dementia, cures it all with his miracles, and they start looking at him and seeing a God.
He goes by another title.
He says he's a "Necromancer." It's Pyrrha (P-), who it loves, who Nona loves so dearly, who tells him that he should embrace the cowl and cloak of the dark, that he should make them truly feel fear. And he does. He discovers how truly addictive it is to take life with one brutal sweep of everyone in the immediate vicinity that was threatening his coven.
The story continues. It's weeks, months, maybe even years, but for the Earth and for Waltaquin, it's a blink. A plan is made, and a government of a nation that stopped mattering the moment it existed comes to him with a request, one he fulfils. And he leaves their palace with a nuclear bomb.
Nona's voice is a faint whisper on the wind.]
I don't want to remember. I don't want to remember what it felt like to have all of it. Please don't make me remember. I can't do this again...
[Nona's braids are finished; Waltaquin's hands flinch, but they don't have the time to pull away before they hold the form of all things and no things, a seam ripped open to be filled and emptied and filled and emptied without limit.
The condensation of everything into so small a space and time, a billion hours of pain and love and the thing in between that's all of them, every worm that balls at the center of it and writhes beautifully, every algae, ant, pauper.
It blends so easily she doesn't even notice how John G is a beacon - a magnet - that in clinging to how distinct and understandable he is it already feels like the boundary of consciousness there is as thin as jelly. Who can blame her for clinging to the Necromancer, the thing that can be understood?
Waltaquin has always followed knowledge; sometimes the darkness has even beckoned to her, shown her exactly what she needed to find and know and do. In that way, she's always felt fortunate, guided by her strong will and superior curiosity. It is, perhaps, that reckless curiosity that leaves her so impressionable and open and so unable to stop anything from coming in. Not for herself. Not for Nona. Not for the earth.
[It all changes. It's powerless to prevent it's fate. It left it in the hands of it's children, it's subjects, itself, and it was still powerless. The parasites that drain her like a mosquito drains a carcass plan their escape, and John G- plans to force them back to it's earthly grip.
There's a wedding. Two of his followers. It pays attention. The love is there, and maybe that could save them. He is their best man. It pays attention.
It's barely a blink before morning comes, far less than that really, and it's barely a blink before the richest men in the world make their escape. He threatens to nuke it, telling the governments and the self important humans that their systems and fortunes don't matter, that they are to be left to die, that he is not to be fucked with. The thing he has fought so hard to protect, he will destroy it before he sees it abandoned. It still loves Him.
Deep in the laboratory where it all started, a woman comes to him, one of his friends, a priest who has lived her life with a fanatical faith to a god that does not exist. But she found a new god. And she tells Him that she's solved it. What it has truly given Him, and how to unlock it's true potential.
And she takes the nine millimeter pistol, an instrument of murder created from It's bones and flesh, and she shoots herself in the head.
It's hard to comprehend what happens next. Only that it hurts. The Earth has no nerves, no pain receptors, but it still bleeds when it is hurt, and now? Now, it is screaming. The men who are overbloated in their own wealth escape, and he breaks, and he will never come back. Every death that follows is fuel for His vengeance. All ten billion of them. The acts of someone who has stopped caring about saving you. The acts of God.
The Earth dies. All at once. It never once comprehended what was it's own lifeblood, what was the mere basis for it's existence. Until it did. It's siblings die too. The colonies are sacrificed and wiped out, any faint trace of life is snuffed out. All to make them pay.
All because He cannot let it go. All because you cannot let it go.
When he finds it, when it starts to reawaken into the result of His crime, a revenant of such catastrophic size that even perceiving it is maddening, being touched by it feels like being flayed alive by something greater and more incomprehensible than it is possible for human eyes to perceive.
A resurrection beast. A monster. A ghost that runs on pure grief and hatred.
And when he finds it, he creates a body. A doll. A barbie. And he forces it into her, under the impression that he could save it from becoming what it truly is. When it looks up at him, it can see it's face through the light on his eyes, and she thinks it's disgusting. An ugly monstrosity. She sees the golden light of his eyes fade, and be replaced by her own eyes. Jet black, as empty as the cold vacuum of space. As hateful as a dying star.
She's a body now. She's meat. She's a monster and a sin. She looks at him with trembling fear as she perceives her new eyes. His golden, luminous eyes are now in her sockets. He's hurt her. Irreparably. And he's made her into a hideousness.
And the first words that come screaming out of her mouth are what would become her name many millenia later.]
[She's inconsolable as she looks at the Necromancer. And as she becomes almost comprehensible, Waltaquin will see the truth. Nona is Alecto. Nona is a creature created from pure grief, and pain, and rage, and hatred. The collection of billions of souls all crying out before being snuffed out by the hands of the one who loved her the most. To her, there is no difference between the man who became God and the girl braiding her body's hair. To her, there is no difference between love and hate.
She still loves them.
And Alecto will devour them both.
The memory fades out then, leaving Alecto to stare in open-eyed shock as she remembers what she should never have remembered.
[Nona's final question wasn't something Waltaquin herself could have answered, so perhaps it is a blessing that she's the one who was asked. All week she's been fed the memories of these people, the experiences and longing that made her want to itch out of her own skin like a fire bursting through wood.
At least this way it is just another curse thrust into a soul full of them.
So it burns her, Alecto's love that is hatred that is a star that burned out of existence millions years ago and is still a pin of light in the sky (because she knows light years now, somehow, inexplicably, an idea she does not have the science for). Everything is in pain, and everything is screaming.
The scream in the memory is not as soul-wrenching as if it had been turned on her in the waking world. Or is it? Or is she screaming out loud, has her horror made it outside of her? Before, she was looking at Nona, but the thing she sees now is - meat.
And this is not even the worst of it. This is only opening the cover of a book that cannot be shut.
As if from hot coals, Waltaquin rips her hands away and struggles for the bat she left leaning against her leg, stumbling with uncharacteristic panic. She is too, too close.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
[Nona smiles, and despite the sadness she seems a little amused at all this, and the anger that bubbled to the surface.
She rather likes Waltaquin. She thinks that the ferocity is a very attractive look on her. Of course, she's still a little cross at her for wanting to kill her in the first place, but...]
It doesn't matter. I'm not going to fight you.
I'm already dying, you see.
no subject
[She leans the head of the nail bat on the arcade floor and rests against it, listening intently.]
Then you're thinking about lying down and dying to make things easy on me?
[Waltaquin doesn't mean it. She doesn't want it to be easy. That's not why she -
likes this girl (she truly does), who nevertheless she feels no remorse towards.]
no subject
[She sits down, leaning against one of the machines.]
I don't want to fight you. I don't much like fighting, and I don't want to hurt you, even if I'm a little cross.
no subject
But I do want to hurt you. [And will. And won't apologize.] I think your anger is understandable.
How were you dying?
no subject
[She can't promise Crea or Beel will see it that way, but...]
I'm not sorry for who I am. I like being me. I was lucky to be me for these six months. It's selfish, but I think I'd prefer to die as me than live as someone else.
This body isn't mine. My soul is rejecting it. Devouring it.
no subject
[And from someone else, it might bore her. Would bore her. But Waltaquin walks closer, not sitting yet to maintain whatever control she has as the one with the nail bat and the one who came here knowing what she planned to do in the first place.]
I wager you're probably a lot more powerful than this place will allow you to be... [Like her, clawing and clawing for whatever's missing, and whatever's pulled in is satisfying but not filling.] But that kind of power is difficult to contain nevertheless.
I hate it here. [And Nona will be able to tell that this is the most paradoxical of statements: A lie that is also true.] But for you it must not have been a bad vacation.
no subject
I don't feel powerful most of the time.
[She's not sure she wants to.
She tilts her head at Waltaquin, closing her eyes and humming in consideration. It's a paradoxical set of values, and it's one that Nona understands better than she thinks Waltaquin expects.]
I don't know what happened to my friends. I won't know, because I'll never see them again. Sometimes I can close my eyes and pretend they're fine but... [She doesn't think they are.] ...I like the people here. I like the ocean. I like that I was able to be me fully, with no expectations for who I was before that.
I think I just want to go home. Wherever it is.
Can I ask you a favor?
no subject
Maybe there's no such thing. Maybe you'll find it. What an exciting possibility.
[She has to wonder how she stacks up to those people who swept entire worlds up under a wave of death. Lacking, now, surely, but still with a chance of carving something out for herself if she can cut the vein on this dark font of power and lap at it. Her skin itches.]
Go right ahead. If it's not a waste of my time, I'll certainly consider doing it.
[Even the drabbest of requests can sometimes reap the most interesting rewards.]
no subject
You have lovely hair. I can't do my braids right. I've tried but it used to be Pyrrha who did my braids.
Could you do them for me? I'd like to die with lovely hair. That's all I'd like for my birthday.
no subject
There's nothing else it could be, besides worthless, a gesture of petty care in this place that would sooner stretch them into bones than care for them, and - ]
All right.
[Perhaps she only agrees because no one would expect it from her. Who looks at Waltaquin Redditch and sees someone who is capable of being tender?
Resting the bat against her hip, she finally sits behind Nona, bringing her gloved fingers to her hair. Only a few weeks ago, it would be a more unpleasant experience, Quin's hands working with the finesse of a child who pets a cat so hard it bites because it doesn't know any better. But tonight it is practiced and controlled.]
That would make you the twins, by the way, not the crab. But I shan't tell.
no subject
I don't remember who I am, you see. Nobody does. My body is nineteen, but she's not mine.
[Nona smiles when she feels Quin's hands in her hair. It's nice. This last few moments of care. At least she can die as Nona. At least she can die with someone she loves.
She really is the luckiest girl in the world.]
no subject
[She works through one braid as she talks, in neat, precise tugs.]
Do you hate being cooped up, Nona? I was always happier being freer. Maybe your body feels it too.]
no subject
[Chains around her ankles, chains around her wrists... Lacus saw it. Was that her? That hideous blonde monstrosity?]
Maybe my soul doesn't like being confined to this body, but I think it's beautiful. I think I have the most beautiful face in the universe.
[She's silent for a few moments.]
Can I ask you something, Waltaquin? What's it like?
[Nona looks out the window. The rabbit passes by but it doesn't turn to look yet. Nona doesn't think to look away.]
no subject
[This is a farce, she thinks, not for the first time, moving to part her hair against instead of cracking her across the skull, sudden and unavoidable and unwarned for, an assassin she's pretending not to notice.
The problem isn't that she feels remorse, because she doesn't. The troubling thing is understanding now, a little better, what that would feel like if she did.
She might feel more affinity with whatever bound itself up inside Nona, posing as this small normal mouse of a girl. She has always felt like something others want to stuff into a canister.]
What is what like?
no subject
What's it like to be capable of loving something?
[And then, they're in the cold void of space, and Waltaquin will catch sight of what "Nona" truly is.
A sphere. Blue and green in equal measures, spanning so far in so many directions. The shining jewel of the Milky Way. They're together now, though Nona might already be gone.
She spies her siblings, before they became her siblings. Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune.
And even the smallest of them, their little baby sibling Pluto.
Waltaquin will feel every root, every plant, every beetle or ladybug or snail on the side of a rock, she'll feel the bloated greedy trillionaires suffocating in their own indulgence, she'll feel the impoverished and destitute drowning in their own poverty, she'll feel every piece of coral bleached and dead after a century of abuse.
The world loves her, the world loves everything inside of it, every grain of sand, every patch of grass, every newborn baby.
The world is dying. It is heaving through corrupted lungs, and nobody is helping it. Nobody cares. They want to assume it will be okay, even as it lays there bleeding, they don't want to lose sight of their indulgence and wealth.
But the Earth hasn't given up. And neither has He. John G-. A scientist that loves it so dearly, it can see Him. It can bless Him, because He is the only one that truly looks at it and speaks to it, the only one who understands.
And so it gives Him a gift. Corpses. Death. Life. All fall under His/Her domain. It takes him so long to understand. He fights for it, for the Earth, and the people scorn him. The bloated parasites that suck the blood from it's veins plot their escape, they destroy his efforts, they create a monster and tell the world that's what he is.
It isn't until the very last moment that they realized their mistake. It isn't until ten thousand years of destroyed planets, of razed cities, of their descendants working in mines, of dead Kings and felled armies, that they truly understand.
He continues to fight for her. He gathers a following. He cures their ailments, their diseases. He cures cancer, he reshapes bodies, cures dementia, cures it all with his miracles, and they start looking at him and seeing a God.
He goes by another title.
He says he's a "Necromancer." It's Pyrrha (P-), who it loves, who Nona loves so dearly, who tells him that he should embrace the cowl and cloak of the dark, that he should make them truly feel fear. And he does. He discovers how truly addictive it is to take life with one brutal sweep of everyone in the immediate vicinity that was threatening his coven.
The story continues. It's weeks, months, maybe even years, but for the Earth and for Waltaquin, it's a blink. A plan is made, and a government of a nation that stopped mattering the moment it existed comes to him with a request, one he fulfils. And he leaves their palace with a nuclear bomb.
Nona's voice is a faint whisper on the wind.]
I don't want to remember. I don't want to remember what it felt like to have all of it. Please don't make me remember. I can't do this again...
no subject
The condensation of everything into so small a space and time, a billion hours of pain and love and the thing in between that's all of them, every worm that balls at the center of it and writhes beautifully, every algae, ant, pauper.
It blends so easily she doesn't even notice how John G is a beacon - a magnet - that in clinging to how distinct and understandable he is it already feels like the boundary of consciousness there is as thin as jelly. Who can blame her for clinging to the Necromancer, the thing that can be understood?
Waltaquin has always followed knowledge; sometimes the darkness has even beckoned to her, shown her exactly what she needed to find and know and do. In that way, she's always felt fortunate, guided by her strong will and superior curiosity. It is, perhaps, that reckless curiosity that leaves her so impressionable and open and so unable to stop anything from coming in. Not for herself. Not for Nona. Not for the earth.
It was too late for that thousands of years ago.
Even if this time she doesn't want to know.]
no subject
There's a wedding. Two of his followers. It pays attention. The love is there, and maybe that could save them. He is their best man. It pays attention.
It's barely a blink before morning comes, far less than that really, and it's barely a blink before the richest men in the world make their escape. He threatens to nuke it, telling the governments and the self important humans that their systems and fortunes don't matter, that they are to be left to die, that he is not to be fucked with. The thing he has fought so hard to protect, he will destroy it before he sees it abandoned. It still loves Him.
Deep in the laboratory where it all started, a woman comes to him, one of his friends, a priest who has lived her life with a fanatical faith to a god that does not exist. But she found a new god. And she tells Him that she's solved it. What it has truly given Him, and how to unlock it's true potential.
And she takes the nine millimeter pistol, an instrument of murder created from It's bones and flesh, and she shoots herself in the head.
It's hard to comprehend what happens next. Only that it hurts. The Earth has no nerves, no pain receptors, but it still bleeds when it is hurt, and now? Now, it is screaming. The men who are overbloated in their own wealth escape, and he breaks, and he will never come back. Every death that follows is fuel for His vengeance. All ten billion of them. The acts of someone who has stopped caring about saving you. The acts of God.
The Earth dies. All at once. It never once comprehended what was it's own lifeblood, what was the mere basis for it's existence. Until it did. It's siblings die too. The colonies are sacrificed and wiped out, any faint trace of life is snuffed out. All to make them pay.
All because He cannot let it go. All because you cannot let it go.
When he finds it, when it starts to reawaken into the result of His crime, a revenant of such catastrophic size that even perceiving it is maddening, being touched by it feels like being flayed alive by something greater and more incomprehensible than it is possible for human eyes to perceive.
A resurrection beast. A monster. A ghost that runs on pure grief and hatred.
And when he finds it, he creates a body. A doll. A barbie. And he forces it into her, under the impression that he could save it from becoming what it truly is. When it looks up at him, it can see it's face through the light on his eyes, and she thinks it's disgusting. An ugly monstrosity. She sees the golden light of his eyes fade, and be replaced by her own eyes. Jet black, as empty as the cold vacuum of space. As hateful as a dying star.
She's a body now. She's meat. She's a monster and a sin. She looks at him with trembling fear as she perceives her new eyes. His golden, luminous eyes are now in her sockets. He's hurt her. Irreparably. And he's made her into a hideousness.
And the first words that come screaming out of her mouth are what would become her name many millenia later.]
N̶̜̎͂̋̿̐͗̎͋́̽͝ǫ̴̛͔͙̠͓͇̗̟̞̲̒̏̇͛̅̂̾̇̑̊ ̴͔̫̼̺̳̖̯̗͎͉̼̘̥̄͛̎͌̓̅̓͊́͒̾́͆͜ṉ̵̤͕̫̘̺̿̓͗ǫ̶̡͕͉̺͉̒́ ̷̺̯̥͓̰͇͎̻̪͙̗͓̜̿́̄̂̈́̋̓͜n̸͈̜͎̰͉͔̗͚̊̑̓͑̇̍͐̇͜͝͝͝͝ȯ̷̧̡͍͙̩̭̺̼̥̝̙̥̈́̄͗̽̔̿̇͘ ̵̡̨̨̛̫̗̙͓̲͓̘̬͂̏́̅̀̀͆̆̕͝n̸̘̮̟̮͉̣̦͙̗̫̝̬̮̙̈́͒͐̽ơ̶̢̦͔͉̻͈̪͌͒̆̃̌̉̌̈́̂͜͝͝ͅö̸̱̺̱̟̙͙͈̫͚̱̦͉̆̀͜ͅo̸̮̬̹͚̖̼͓͓͗͊̃̀̓̏͆́͛̊̉͐͆͘͜͝!̸̟͕̖̟̖̭͎̟̻̤͙̳̗͗̏̊̂͌̀͝!̸̮̏̉̅!̶̢̛̛̟͇̘̬̼͍͔̮̦̱̫̀̐̏̿͗̅̀͘͘ͅͅ
[She's inconsolable as she looks at the Necromancer. And as she becomes almost comprehensible, Waltaquin will see the truth. Nona is Alecto. Nona is a creature created from pure grief, and pain, and rage, and hatred. The collection of billions of souls all crying out before being snuffed out by the hands of the one who loved her the most. To her, there is no difference between the man who became God and the girl braiding her body's hair. To her, there is no difference between love and hate.
She still loves them.
And Alecto will devour them both.
The memory fades out then, leaving Alecto to stare in open-eyed shock as she remembers what she should never have remembered.
John loves Alecto.]
no subject
At least this way it is just another curse thrust into a soul full of them.
So it burns her, Alecto's love that is hatred that is a star that burned out of existence millions years ago and is still a pin of light in the sky (because she knows light years now, somehow, inexplicably, an idea she does not have the science for). Everything is in pain, and everything is screaming.
The scream in the memory is not as soul-wrenching as if it had been turned on her in the waking world. Or is it? Or is she screaming out loud, has her horror made it outside of her? Before, she was looking at Nona, but the thing she sees now is - meat.
And this is not even the worst of it. This is only opening the cover of a book that cannot be shut.
As if from hot coals, Waltaquin rips her hands away and struggles for the bat she left leaning against her leg, stumbling with uncharacteristic panic. She is too, too close.]