#writeinktober

day 2 (#TarotofMagic): ace of planets - fate

don’t you think it’s funny, morgana says one day, after all of it is over, after akira has returned to the home that is not his home, only to count the days until he can leave again.

what? akira asks. he isn’t paying much attention, idly stirring his coffee as he watches the rain outside the kitchen window. the storm leaves tear-streaks across the glass, each one swallowed up by more rain.  

i was just thinking, morgana continues. i was just thinking about all of it.

reaching over to pat morgana on the head, akira says, you’ll have to be more specific.

morgana, who really was, had always been, the most in-tune with the metaverse and its fickle, unyielding desires, replies, you. you and akechi.

akira’s hand freezes over the tips of morgana’s ears.

arsene and loki. a trickster thief and a trickster god.

akira sighs. i thought we’ve been over this. yaldaboath? was a thing? remember? played us all like a fiddle until i shot him in the head?

『faces, doorways, masks, smiles — just say you’re a fake bitch and go! 』

akechi does not expect to summon a second persona. he hadn’t even thought it possible, because the man in the velvet room had said your persona is the manifestation of your rebellion and in the haze of confusion and pain he had assumed —

robin hood is first, and the white of his clothing burns sun-bright in the back of akechi’s eyes.

「the ocean, time, and you」

everything came from the ocean, the waves whisper to you, and in the end, everything will return.

you sit at the shoreline, moonlight splayed across your bare shoulders and white foam gathering at your toes. the ocean spray is cold on your skin, the seashore wind a chill wrapped around you like a blanket.

and how do you know this, you ask as the tide surges to meet you, drawn to the pull of the moon like moths to a flame. but there are no torch-lights here, no fires to follow, nothing but you and the ocean and the moon.

easy, the waves reply. everything comes full circle. what begins will always end. what ends will always begin. i am the first and i will be the last.

and where do i fall into this cycle, you wonder out loud, of endless time?

even easier, is the answer. it comes from the ripples on the ocean’s surface, the cresting of waves in the far distance before it breaks into something vicious. the relentless devouring of the sand, the shoreline, the land beyond the boundaries of this beach. (everything returns to the ocean, after all.)

even easier, is the answer. you, in your existence, have carved out a portion of this time for yourself. that is all.

in the beginning —

there is a madman chasing after her, high-pitched cackling ricocheting off the walls, accompanied by the harsh clan of scythe-iron against brick walls. somehow, rachel makes it into the elevator, frantically jabbing the close button as he charges, bloodlust spilling out of every crevice of his body.

the doors close, and rachel hears nothing but the sound of her own breathing and the thud of her heart.

a savage, she thinks to herself, still reeling from the adrenaline, the fear. she doesn’t think twice of the bird she’d left behind, stitched together, painstakingly. she’d fixed it, after all. there was nothing more to think about.

rachel meets zack, properly, and this time he cares less about killing her and more about getting out of this damn place.

a savage like him should have no problem killing a sinner like her — she remembers, now, what she’s done. why she should be punished. why she deserves to die.

but zack blows all her expectations out of the water when he points his very sharp scythe at her and says hell no! , even though he’d just killed a man not ten minute prior.

eventually, he says, help me get out of here and then i’ll kill you. and rachel is smart enough to see a good deal and so she agrees. maybe, however, maybe she’s still a little too young to understand the weight of a promise.