Fowlhunter [GL]

Eventually, they found that busy street again. At this time of the night, it seemed even livelier than ever, every square of flagstone occupied by a shining boot or sharp heel. From where Ennanis Zoleil and Jemi Garen stood upon the fluted roof of a temple, they could look down on the crowd, a mesmerising sea of heads, brown black blonde, sporadically interrupted by bursts of colour—be they wigs, dyed or natural, no one could tell. The people of the city were ready to party. Their chatter and raucous laughter was deafening down on the ground, but as it floated up through the night air, it dispersed to nothing more than whispers in the wind, tickling past their ears.

It was here that Jemi finally stopped, crossing her legs and dropping to the roof. So did Ennanis, folding her wings as she sat. Between them, the angel lined the wine bottles between the ridges of the roof, prevented from rolling down by its upcurled lip. They each took a bottle.

“Do you drink much, Angel?” Jemi said.

“Not much,” Ennanis admitted.

“Why not? It’s not like you lot can die from alcohol poisoning.”

“I’m not a fan of losing my sense of coordination,” said Ennanis. A pause. Then she added, “Usually.” With no corkscrew on her, the angel commander called for Lienna. Using its Soleki, she summoned gloves of light over her hands, and twisted one of the bottles open by force. She took a small sip while gesturing, “Do you need help with your bottle?”

In lieu of replying her, Jemi put her fingers over her own bottle. The bottlecap turned to silver under her hand; she pulled the cap off like it was a glob of luminescent clay. She tossed the melted bottlecap over her shoulder, where it plinked down into an alley dumpster. Then, she threw back her head of gold hair and chugged.

“Hah,” Jemi exhaled into the air when she was done. “No.”

Wryly, Ennanis remarked, “I don’t think I have to ask about your drinking habits.”

“Yeah, and it was still you who bought this many bottles. Just how well can you hold your liquor, if you ‘don’t drink much’?” Jemi swirled her bottle.

“You’d be surprised. Apparently, if you take enough caffeine, your alcohol tolerance goes up.”

“Do I want to know just how much nectar you drink?”

“No.”

At that, Jemi laughed long and hard. Her laughter was sharp as cracked glass. She downed the remainder of her bottle and grabbed the next.

Ennanis, herself, took slow sips of her wine as she watched her. They drank like this in silence, the warm night growing warmer still, while the bright street moved on below their feet.

Nursing the liquor, Ennanis peered over the rim of her bottle at the opposite row of roofs. Her breath fogged upon the cool glass. When it cleared, she saw it—a dart of movement across from them.

There was a shadow perched atop the other building.

It was too far away for its facial features to be visible, but she knew it was leering at her. Whipping red-green tails, a feathered crown, a dress that was half-armour and half-gown… the spectre of the Cockatrice smiled back at her, tilting a bloody neck.

Ennanis reached for another bottle. The night wore on. As did the silence. The wind blew past them. Wine slid down her throat, burning all the way down. When Ennanis had drunk enough, she felt like she had enough excuse to say what she had been keeping in for so long.

“You know what I think of that day?” Ennanis murmured aloud, still staring ahead. “The day I freed you from the prisons?”

She could sense Jemi’s eyes on her. Ennanis turned to face her.

“I regret it,” Ennanis stated. “For eight years, I have regretted it, every single day of my life. I have never regretted anything like I regret you.”

Alcohol made the world slippery, and soon, the rest of the words came pouring out, words that she had never spoken, admitted to herself, but had nonetheless tortured her mind without cease.

“It haunts me. The faces of the petrified soldiers. The smouldering remains of Jadestone. The photos in the obituaries, of people that would’ve lived, if one eighteen-year-old hadn’t made one foolish choice. If I could go back to that day, I would’ve swum down a lake and buried my keys there. I would’ve come back up the mountain to put a Soleki beam between your eyes. Right here,” she tapped her own forehead, “and then several more, to make sure you were really dead. I’d weld the cell gate shut so that no one would ever come to retrieve your corpse, so that whatever remained of you would be left there to slowly fall apart over a hundred years. I would come to watch it happen—every day of that century. And after you died, I'd put an end to myself. To atone.”

Jemi stared back at her, violet eyes dark as soil.

“So what’s stopping you from doing that now?” she asked.

“Because,” Ennanis exhaled. “Because I can’t go back in time. The moment you called out to me in those prisons, it was over for me. Whatever reason I did it for—it didn’t matter. You were meant to die behind those bars, but you didn’t. Instead you lived, and it was because of me.”

She downed the bottle. She reached for the next; so did Jemi. The second went down smoother, though it was more bitter than the last. Ennanis stared southeast, at the tall, stretching shadow of Mount Casca in the distance. Pierced through the rolling clouds, like a fortress that towered over the rest of the undercloud. For eight years, a grey belt on her waist, she’d danced upon its buttresses, armed with the spear born from her deepest despair. And the devil she’d danced with…

“After that, I tried to convince you to change your ways. Desperately, I was trying to convince myself that it hadn’t been a mistake to release you. But you confused me. You claimed to despise me, yet you continually spared me. You slaughtered strangers without a second thought, but for others you would extend them kindness. I never knew what to make of you. Still… I will not lie. The more confusing you were, the more I wanted to figure you out. Plus, you were the only one who could keep up with me, that gave me the challenge I had looked for all my life. It was thus, once more, that I let you live—over and over again.”

The spectre and Jemi both were watching her. The spectre, with dark eyes through a mask... Jemi, with violet irises smoky under her make-up. They were waiting for her to continue. So Ennanis did.

“Every night, it was like hide-and-seek. Cat-and-mouse. You would hide out on the mountain, causing trouble, and I would come find you. I’d trek over kilometres of bushland, the wind whipping my face, with Lienna dimmed so I could scour with my senses alone. Eight years of this. In those six months, when I finally didn’t find you, I should’ve been happy. But all I felt was the absence. For one night you came back—then you died in my arms. I saw it happen and still I refused to believe it. I turned out to be right… But the funny thing is, even if you had truly died that day, I think I never would have stopped searching. For you.”

At that, Jemi suddenly stood. Empty bottles rolled and clattered around their feet. She brushed off her skirt.

“Sitting still like this is tiring. I want to move around a little,” the woman said blithely, stretching her legs. She glanced back at the angel. “Catch me if you can. You’re good at that, aren’t you?”

Crimson scarf whipping behind her in the wind, shimmering moonlight in her wake, the woman leapt a clean arc to the next roof.

Ennanis Zoleil clambered to her feet. Dutifully, she spread her wings and flew after her.

The streets below were crammed with people. Humans and sunbloods, everyone living their own lives, making the most of their fleeting, mortal moments. Even as they passed each other, gazes raking over the faces around them, none of them could ever comprehend the sheer complexity of what walked around them. But of course: just one life is years’ worth of history, of relationships with others, of feelings and constructed identity, of fortune and struggle. And hundreds of lives pass in front of a single pair of eyes every day. It’s impossible to give thought to each of them, and yet if one stops to think about it, it is beautiful to realise—that every drop in the ocean scintillates, that every star in the sky shines, and each is something unique, something undeniably precious.

Just as the two lives racing across the sky were, unbeknownst to the crowds below them, unknown to anyone but themselves. It was a chase with no destination, with no purpose. They ran because they could. Blood pumped through their veins, dizzied breaths heaving from their lungs. The breeze was warm on their flushed cheeks, the world swaying to the beat of a melody only they could hear. They were running because they were alive.

At last, Ennanis caught up to Jemi—as she always did. She pounced upon her, and they went rolling. At last, the angel held the human fast to the roof, her legs caged around the other’s hips. They had been in this position countless times before. But this time, something in the air had changed.

Ennanis leaned over Jemi’s face, breathing fast.

“I’ve got you,” she declared.

Jemi smirked up at her, not looking the slightest bit surprised. “Right where you wanted me?”

The way they looked at each other, it was unclear who was the hunter and who the prey. Only one thing was clear: they were both unspeakably, irrevocably, foul.

Ennanis lurched downwards, and she heard Jemi intake a sharp breath—before she caught her teeth on the line of the woman’s jaw. She nibbled down Jemi’s jaw, watching red marks as they bloomed across her pale skin. Grasping into tarnished-gold hair, she wrenched Jemi’s head upward so she could get a better angle.

Jemi just giggled, eyes hazy and half-lidded. Her voice was a low, sultry murmur. “I’m not edible either, you know?”

Ennanis pressed her other hand on Jemi’s torso, roaming her hand down over her fishnetted chest, soft belly. “Really? Then why’d you dress up like this?”

At her touch, Jemi bucked up against her palm, arching her spine. “Like what, sunshine?” she said innocently.

Ennanis grabbed her waist to keep her down. She leaned down to brush their noses together. “Like you’re game,” she breathed.

She sensed the shiver run down Jemi’s back. But Jemi was not one to take things lying quietly. With a sudden burst of energy, she snatched hold of the strands of pink hair falling over her face—gripping the slippery locks hard—and yanked. Ennanis went tumbling over, while Jemi reversed their positions. Now the woman was on top of her, staring down at her with dark, ravenous eyes.

“Well, I think you’re depraved, Ennanis,” Jemi sneered in her face. Her breath smelt of sweet chocolate, bitter alcohol. Ennanis wanted to suck the air from her lungs. “How long have you been thinking about doing something like this? Is this what was on your mind when we fought on the mountain? Were you jealous when I flirted with Theseus? Or…” she hitched herself up Ennanis’ leg, her black dress rucking up over her thighs, “...were you just enjoying the show?”

Ennanis closed her hands around Jemi’s thighs. Lienna burning alight on her finger, she sent currents of Soleki flowing through them, and with a surge of hot strength, she dragged Jemi forward by the hips.

“Wrong area,” Ennanis smiled. Then, she pressed Jemi down against a certain spot. Immediately, Jemi’s giggle died in her throat—and melted into a startled gasp.

It was truly ridiculous, what they were doing. But it was also the most satisfying thing Ennanis had ever done in her life.

She brought her knee up, jabbing it into Jemi again, and the woman let out another keening moan. Seizing the opportunity, Ennanis turned them around once more.

Liquor made both of them feverish, the air around them swimming. Pinning the other woman to the rooftop, Ennanis lowered herself onto her, chasing spike after spike of heat through fabric that did nothing to separate them. Ennanis marvelled at the way Jemi came undone, breathless and moaning under her. How the woman’s freshly-groomed hair was a bigger mess than before, make-up smudged, dress scrunched beyond salvation—knowing that she’d done it all. The angel took the moment to slow down, rocking herself languidly against her, admiring her handiwork.

“So much for unsightly, huh,” Jemi laughed raspily. Her hands had looped around Ennanis’ neck, scratching at shoulderblades where wings began. She groaned as Ennanis pushed a hand under her skirt. “Nnn, about damn time…”

“And so much for calling me a prude,” Ennanis replied. Her hand pulled aside the soaked band of her underwear, seeking out the softest parts of her. “Didn’t believe me when I said it, did you?” Jemi hissed in response to her movements, arching as she squirmed below her, desperate to gain more friction.

“Stop talking so much and just- fucking-”

“Just fucking what?” Feeling sadistic, Ennanis slipped a finger inside, thrust exactly once, then completely withdrew. Jemi very nearly growled at her, folding a leg up as if to hook the angel’s hip down towards her, but Ennanis simply grabbed ahold of it and pinned it down. She held her open as she pushed her knuckles inside her again. Immediately, Jemi’s hisses turned to tremulous whimpers. Ennanis had heard her whimper before, but not like this. This was needy. This woman needed her and still wanted for more.

So Ennanis gave it to her. As she did, strange emotions ripped through her, a tangled mess she couldn’t be arsed to pick apart at the moment. She merely sank herself deeper, twisting her fingers harshly inside her, causing Jemi to let out a sharp cry.

“Does it hurt?”

Jemi glared at her through watery violet eyes.

“I hope it does,” Ennanis muttered. She withdrew again. Jemi whined even louder at the loss; Ennanis just stuck her fingers in her mouth. She moaned prettily around them, her lashes fluttering closed.

Staring down at her, Ennanis’ breathing quickened. A final, odd sensation spread from her chest. She realised that it was her heart, hammering fast. And of course it was, but this felt different somehow. A different kind of warmth, not from the night, the alcohol, nor her magic.

Ennanis had done this before with countless other women to relieve boredom, but she had never felt anything like this before. Never felt so intimate, never this… close… to someone.

It was like something being driven into her chest—or rather, something that had been lodged in there for a long time. But this ache wasn’t something death could cure.

Jemi noticed that Ennanis was no longer moving. She gazed questioningly at her, releasing the angel’s fingers with a tonguey pop. Her jaw was swollen, bitten red from earlier. Drifting closer, feeling in a daze, Ennanis pressed her lips tenderly to the bruises… then her hands slipped under Jemi’s chin, undoing the knot of her scarf.