rii

Just like the face.

Mirror-Her offers her a bowl full of vinegar. Not a single sip from it, nor ten, nor thousand will kill her immortal body, but that doesn't mean it won't hurt.

Furina, who still does not know what pain is, agrees. Even if she had known, she would have agreed anyway. But she knows only the comfortable emptiness of nothing and alien, thus distant anger.

When she performs in public for the first time, she learns what anxiety is. People whisper; Furina has to improvise. When an exclamation about her intention to judge even the gods of other lands comes out of her mouth with no second thought behind it, she is so horrified she almost claps her hand over her mouth. The wrath inside her chest curls into a tight ball and then spreads all the way through her veins, to the very tips of her fingers, with a feverish, triumphant warmth.

At first, she doesn't believe that this ugly anger is also Mirror-Her’s property, for Her voice is so gentle. But, feeling the inexplicable yet still axiomatic confidence in what was said, she suddenly realizes crystal clear that it is, indeed, Hers.

Theirs?

Furina is like a flower blossoming upon the flesh long rotten, bones white and fragile. Like an empty shell left by its owner. Like both a haunted house and it’s new owner, not understanding why their favourite plates are flying and who’s that invisible someone walking in the night. I like to think she has some kind of a muscle memory belonging to Focalors. I mean, she has her sense of justice. Maybe it’s not everything that is left. Maybe there’s something else. Dreams she tend to forget the moment she wakes up; glimpses of landscapes she never saw; songs she never heard; the way sword’s pommel is sitting in her hand like it’s finally home (why else would Focalors hold a sword, if not to wield it?)

Yes, Furina is her own person. But before becoming Furina, she was also someone else, and these two statements coexist and intertweave. If she weren’t this someone else, she could not become Furina.

I think it’s just a crime to leave this arc unexplored the way it is unexplored in Furina’s story. This predicament is so gut-wrenching, so interesting for her character’s growth. But no, we are sticking to an uwu girlfail who suffered so so so much please pity her!!! Furina doesn’t need pity. She need to process her grief upon losing a part of herself. She need to learn why Focalors — why she did all of this. Who she was. Where her footsteps were. Why does the sword pommel is sitting in her hand like it’s finally home.