No Rhyme Or Reason Here

Scott and Xornoth

Frodo intermission

And you know that saying, "you get to tell people how to solve their problems to the degree you're willing to help"? It's like that. If you want to have a say in the way humans add their artistic mark to their environments - and they will - you need to fund people adding and maintaining beautiful art that other artists respect. Simple as that.

She sees them out of the corner of her eye sometimes. Both of them. Ever since they turned all the beacons red, let the dark forces consume the surrounding land for the sake of their freedom, Pearl catches flashes of red and yellow at the edge of her vision with some regularity. At first she thought it might be one of the other vampires, having hung back and decided to mess with her. Scott probably, no one else who was still alive would do something like that. But Scott wouldn’t let out the high pitched giggle that follows a red streak as it leaves her peripheral view. And he certainly wouldn’t keep leaving sunflowers everywhere.

Her first proper encounter with the red thing doesn’t come until months of these quick looks have passed, getting bolder each time. Pearl looks out into the woods as the sun rises, tired from a night spent with Cleo searching for the vampire tombs dotted around the vast forest. Two red eyes flash at her from the tree-line. She thinks it must be Cleo, but they’ve gone back inside, or another vampire, but they would have written ahead. Something else then. Palming the handle of her sword she walks up to the eyes, ready to fight if need be.

The woman wears strange clothes, some sort of white shift of a shirt with a red hooded jacket over it that is somewhere between overcoat and cloak, but closed with a strange metal clasp that goes all the way up both sides in the front. Her trousers are short, reaching midthigh, and made out a dark fabric that looks like something Pearl has seen on some sailors who came to Sunnyside Cliff’s docks.

But the most important thing about the woman is that it’s her. There’s some minor differences, her hair is lighter and unkempt, her eyes are deep crimson rather than a bright red, her frame is much thinner. But it’s Pearl’s own face looking at her when she finally gets a good look at it. She smiles up at Pearl with teeth that border on canine, shorter than Pearl’s fangs but just as sharp. It reminds her of how she gets closer to full moons, when the werewolf part of her overtakes the vampire part.

“What are you?” She asks her. The woman’s grin twists into something crazed. She laughs that same high pitched giggle that’s been haunting Pearl for weeks.

“I’m a demon, he said. Crazy too.” The woman, the demon, laughs again, more manic this time. It’s then that Pearl sees the axe in its hand, dripping with fresh blood. She doesn’t know why but she can’t smell the blood, even with a combination of her hunger for the stuff and her lupine senses. Pearl reaches for her sword again.

“Who have you killed?” She meets the demon’s eyes, daring it to attack her. Pearl is a monster hunter. She kills things that kill people. Sure that’s only extended to vampires and werewolves in the past, but a demon should be no different. Even if it wears her face.

“I killed Impulse and Bdubs first, they killed my wolves, even my Tilly. My pack. They deserved it.” It turns the axe over in its hand, reminiscing fondly. Pearl follows the path of one of the drops that falls from the weapon and finds that somehow it never hits the ground. More drops follow, more than the surface of the axe should be able to hold. The names are unfamiliar to her. The look of an excited predator is not, “Then I killed Cleo and Martyn. I wanted to be their friend but they were just so mean. They deserved it too.”

Pearl’s heart shoots into her throat and her sword is at the demon’s throat before she can think. Cleo? No, that’s impossible. Cleo is back at the castle right now, resting after their trip. She can’t be dead. And Martyn… he’s been dead for months, collapsing in Legs’ hands. But Pearl doesn’t have time to think about that right now.

“What did you do to her?” She demands. The demon’s face hasn’t fallen from that twisted grin, but it does twitch a bit. It tilts its head like a dog, and fittingly barks a laugh.

“Not your Cleo silly! My Cleo! Your Cleo loves you. I think mine did too one upon a time. She promised to talk to me later. They said I didn’t have to be lonely. But the next time I saw them they called me crazy. They didn’t want me. They burnt my dog.” Its ramblings don’t make any sense, and Pearl is starting to feel nauseous. She presses the tip of her sword to the demon’s throat and-

It passes right through. The demon sighs, finally dropping its grin and switching on a dime to a deep angry scowl. It growls at her, an inhuman noise but not an authentic one like Pearl’s own growls. It's the sound of a person imitating a beast, and doing it well. Then Pearl blinks, and the demon is gone.

For weeks after, she will hear the sound of dripping and turn to find nothing there, only a blast of cold air that makes her hair stand on end.

It takes much longer for the saint to speak to her. Sunflowers sprout from the ground in odd places. Her and Cleo have planted a field of them, for Martyn, and have been tending to them carefully. Cleo tells Pearl that the birds must be picking up seeds and spreading them. It doesn’t explain the feeling Pearl gets when she looks at them, a terrible déjà vu. In one of her bouts of melancholy, Pearl goes to cut one of the flowers at the bottom of the stem, aiming to take it back to the castle for a closer look. Before her dagger can make contact, a voice speaks from behind her.

“Such a shame to kill a beautiful thing.” Pearl freezes. It’s her own voice. When she turns, she does so with dagger clutched tightly, prepared to see the demon again. What she’s met with is anything but.

The woman glows, the sun bending itself around her like a friend of hers. In the style of Pearl’s own dress, hers is shorter in the front and flows behind her. It’s made of layers of green and yellow fabric, pooling around her shoulders and at her feet like it's something organic. Sunflowers sit in a ring around her head, and golden wings spread out behind her.

The closest word Pearl has for her is holy. She's never been particularly religious, always had to be distracted by her mother when sitting in the pews of church. The only thing that could hold her attention was the stained glass window above the priest and the way the multicolored light would bathe him. The idea of a higher power didn't interest her until Oakhurst, when she gained the ability to imbue water with divinity. All this to say that Pearl sees that stained glass light over this woman, this version of her.

“Who are you?” She asks, dumbstruck. The woman laughs a light and beautiful laugh and the air seems to smell sweeter around her. Like a leaf that's been torn open.

“I'm a saint, at least that's what Sausage calls me. Santa Perla, Madre de Girasoles.” The Saint smiles brightly.

“Sausage? Like, M? You know him?” If M had met a saint he would have said something. He would have written five books about it.

“No, no. Well, yes. But in another life. Less of an author and more of a priest. A Protector.”

“I don't think the M I know would protect anyone.”

“I'm sorry, then. That you haven't met the man I know.”

The Saint kneels down next to Pearl, Her dress pooling around Her. She reaches out Her hand to touch the soil around the sunflower that Pearl has been about to cut and a faint light radiates from the tips of Her fingers. Small sprouts pop up around the two of them, and Pearl can only guess that they will grow into a flower identical to this one. The Saint gestured towards the original.

“You can take this now, if you still want to. He’s spread his energy out. He’ll survive even after he dies.” She says, pointedly. Pearl flinches back.

“I'm not a threat. I know vampires are unholy and all that but I’m just trying to live my life.” Pearl’s grasp on her knife tightens. The Saint turns to look at her. Her eyes are so blue that it's almost unsettling. It's not like the blue-green that Pearl’s eyes were before they were turned, Her eyes are like the surface of an ocean dappled with sunlight.

“Don't worry. You're not the only one whose death turned them into something more.” The Saint soothes, her voice honeyed. Pearl’s muscles relax, almost against her will. She thinks if she touched Her it would burn, the way holy water does. She longs to anyways.

tangotek....!!