trouble &.

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as strife peered down at her brother from the flight above, there was a haunting look in her bright eyes that made it clear; he may have been surprised by her outburst, but she wasn't. there were reasons strife avoided this war, unspoken as they may be, and there were reasons the dark lord wanted her beyond the exemplary skill of a prodigious witch. which is what made it less complicated to run than try to keep quiet. that was against the very nature of her. a nature that continued to baffle even her closest kin. "beak first." she hissed. strife pulled her wand from her boot and pointed it without hesitation at the specter. a bolt of deep purple blast forward. it was erratic, but keenly precise, and when it struck the morrigan, her reaction clearly indicated that it had hurt before the ancient woman vanished again. strife smirked. standing there in black feathers with cruel charms at her fingertips, she cut a dangerous, unhinged figure. an omen. "you want to curse me? I can be a curse!"

"Maybe, but it was helpful when I missed you." He said, eyeing the place where Strife's... something had disappeared. It had been downright eerie seeing both of them in the same place. "She definitely was you. Spitting replica. Now would be a great time to admit you have a secret clone."

strife grimaced in a 'yeesh' sort of way. "you know that I was never actually buried there because my dying was an outright lie told because I ran away from the cult you joined, right? did they put me in the family graveyard or what? do I still have a headstone? hm. I should probably check into that. then again... I guess it'll keep." her eyes remained keen on the specter as she muttered. "strong genetics."

✐

strife, the paradox that she was, had always let every emotion pass plain as day on her face. the consequences never once stopped her from saying literally anything; particularly if it was funny. that being said, she almost never let anyone truly see how things effected her, especially not without the deflection of humor. emotions were exclusively dealt with in the privacy of her solitude in the wee hours of the night. no one should see her keening. at this moment, however, strife was wrath. "have I ever said I wanted you to die? no. if I wanted you dead, ciaran, I would kill you. which, for the record, I don't think you are capable of stopping." skill for skill, he would certainly be competition, but when it came to outright willpower, who could claim to have more than a woman who lived as a bird for five years? "but I will not be controlled by you, her, that bastard with far too many monikers, or anyone else. you want my forgiveness?" she turned back to the woman at the stop of the stairs and screamed. "EARN IT." the sound was... unnatural and piercing. strife suddenly took the stairs two at a time in full sprint until she was at the top, but the morrigan had vanished. she reappeared at the top of the next flight. "you made me the wrong bird!" her head whipped back to face her brother and swallowed another scream. it pained her to do it. "get up here already. we're going to make that bitch eat crow."

✐

"suck my dick." strife said out of hand. it was essentially an autonomous response to her older brother at this point in their lives, as well as most points in their lives. she was even more upset that he had indeed 'told her so'. although if he dared to utter that phrase now, she would not hesitate to pluck every hair off his legs with leeches. "why does she look like me and why does she want to kill you and why the fuck can't she get her own thing?"

"Your parents must have had interesting hopes for you if they named you Strife. Perhaps they could have been more clever, though. Friction, discord, even dissension would have been funny jokes." Something warm settled in Pandora's chest, a feeling of relief and ease as their hands laced together and she settled into the feeling. "I haven't found the kitchens, yet. This place seems well content to hide all of its secrets, including it's refrigarator. But it puts its ghosts on full display. Bit backwards, but I did spend an entire half of a school year only walking backwards, so I can't say much."

"I would argue my parents never had any hope for me at all and were simply unpleasantly surprised by the funny joke that I innately am." strife, in a roundabout way, was a family name. the killick family had a long tradition of naming children in a way which honored their matriarch. however, rarely were they so blunt as her own. "but I supposed you are the one and only reliable source on hope, huh?" there were rather clear implications to the name pandora as well. "I like walking backwards. you should learn how to walk on your hands too. really throws people off." this place boasted an uncanny mix of baroque and georgian architecture. as if the person who built it could not decide if they wanted to stand out or fit in. "the kitchen usually requires a ground floor or lower in buildings of this size. we should head down."

"Either I'm seeing double, or you're having your very own black swan moment." Branna was relieved to see her sister, if only because it was the first person she spotted that she actually recognized. "Is it just me, or is this place worse than home? I've walked through the same bedroom three times and I can't find a bathroom anywhere."

"black swan is really more your thing, branana." strife said with the usual tone of her detached humor, all the while her face revealed the true depth of concentration given to this phantom. mask or no, it was easy to recognize her sister in an instant. they shared their grandmother's unmistakable eyes. "I prefer giselle, personally, but I guess that could also apply thematically in this particular case, but really, if a bird, why the hell am I not an owl?" her head whipped around so sharply to look at branna that one might expect to hear a snap. "they are mocking me." honestly, the sister's relationship as of late was probably the most they'd gotten along in their entire lives. "everywhere is worse than home. I know that house better than my own mind, and here, I'm seeing posers or hallucinations and I'm not sure which would bother me more. what are you?"

"visiting graves is a weird practice no matter what. it is literally a glorified rock, or well, in some cases... twigs that mark where bones decay." strife pointed out. admittedly, she fucking loved to hang out in graveyards and cemetery's, even a single grave off the beaten path called to her, but that had less to do with the sentimentality of death and more to do with aesthetic and vibe. "and she was me, right?" she asked, just to be certain.

"I like the way your brain functions." Pandora's grin was light, sincere in a painful way, and she reached out a hand to the other woman with a flourish. "I am Pandora Celeste Rosier, would you like to come find food with me? I'm so hungry I could eat a horse. And I simply can't imagine anyone throwing a proper ball without a snack table. Would you like to hold my hand?"

"hm." the surprise was clear despite the mask obscuring strife's expressive face; that wasn't a popular opinion. "my favorite sort of compliment." she took the other woman's hand like a proper gentleman and bowed her head. there had been a few rosiers at hogwarts with her. while they had the tendency to be rather pompous, this one seemed significantly less so. she was a bit of an oddball, really, which resulted in a somewhat kindred feeling. "and I'm strife." she smirked. "usually." at the moment she was... wrong. an owl in the guise of a raven. "I can't say for certain. I haven't tried yet." she laced her fingers between pandora's and started to swing their arms back and forth a bit whimsically. "not to state the obvious, but have we tried the kitchens yet?"

"Is your home a Lovecraftian nightmare maze, too?" Pandora's curiosity was piqued as she twisted to face the woman, head tilted. "I suppose it could be both, though it feels odd to do something in good faith that is a danger. Does that not diminish the good faith? Or is the good faith inherently danger?"

"aye, and it is terribly haunted. every generation of my family since the dawn of man has lived on or in that property, and most of them still seem to think they do." she smirked. strife was very fond of the ghosts. "I think doing anything, regardless of faith or lack thereof, is inherently accepting the risk of danger. danger is inevitable. danger is cosmic, but faith. ah, now that is a very living thing. so good faith is not contrary to danger. rather they can both coexist somewhat harmoniously, especially in most ignorant twats."

open; masquerade

strife shrugged. "feels a bit like home, really." she glanced over at the eldritch masked woman with a vague attempt to riddle out who resided underneath. "why can't it be both?"

strifestriken​:

"well to you, maybe, but as you can quite clearly see, I am not operating with any sort of delusional distress about it." strife maintained a vastly unamused facade as her brother descended into his dramatic disappointment. "does it have to be recent? have you ever considered that I just don't like you? or are you too pig-headed to think that's possible?"