Fowlhunter [GL]

Crimson wool came apart. It had been loose to begin with. Now Ennanis saw for herself the expanse of pale skin hidden under it, tense musculature and jutting collarbones. Just as she had seen on the Cockatrice, moments before they had enacted their plan in Kanch, it was as empty as a blank page. But now, Ennanis was up close, and she could see the freckles and tiny blemishes dotted across her skin… and see where they stopped short.

Her fingertips brushed over a spot that she had memorised all too well. She’d seen it one too many times in her dreams, after all.

The daub of concealer came away with her sweat. And there, nestled at the base of Jemi’s throat, was an ugly scar. Once a bloodsoaked puncture wound, now it was a mass of curdled, black tissue.

Jemi’s breath stopped short. Suddenly, she sat up, shoving Ennanis off her.

“Whoa-”

Ennanis tumbled back on the tiled roof, blinking as Jemi stood, wrapping the scarf back around her scarred neck, pulling her skirt down with some awkwardness. Jemi’s expression was as if someone had just dumped a bucket of cold water over her.

Ennanis stood up, too. Jemi just about jumped back, stumbling away from her.

“Don’t come closer!” she roared when Ennanis stepped toward her. The angel paused.

“...But I can’t go back now,” Ennanis said quietly, barely audible over the sound of the wind rustling in her feathers. “And I wouldn’t, even if I could. Not when I’ve figured it out.” She took another step forward.

“I mean it,” Jemi leapt back another metre. She spun around. When she stamped her foot on the roof again, it was with a tall obsidian heel. The Cockatrice glared at her, ebony skirts billowing around her, crested tail raised defensively. “If you come any closer, I’ll kill you.” She was evidently trying to threaten—but she only sounded scared.

Ennanis continued to walk. Even as the Beast’s gloved hands caught silver fire, the angel walked. She would have walked to her, even if she were barefoot, and the rooftop made of shattered glass.

“You once told me, you wanted me to hate you properly. And I did. I wanted to hate you, and only hate you. So, so badly. But even to the last, even till the moment of your death, I can’t say that hate was all that there was.”

“I mean it!” Jemi shouted, alarmed as she raised her hands.

Finally, Ennanis stood in front of her. Gently, she curled fingers around the woman’s thin arms and brought them down again, meeting no resistance. The fire died. Through her mask, the Cockatrice stared up at her with disbelief.

“I figured it out,” Ennanis repeated, letting go of her. “Or maybe I’ve always known. There are many reasons why I could trust you this much despite it all. I could be blind, or naive. Maybe I regret what I cannot reverse, repent for those that can’t be revived. Maybe I chase a thrill, something to excite my jaded soul. But there’s one more reason.”

With slow movements, Ennanis reached out—and snagged her nails under the rim of the beaked mask. Then she lifted it away. Stripped of the mask’s flash and glamour, the Cockatrice’s face looked much smaller, enveloped in the cascade of her moonwashed hair.

“Because I love you,” Ennanis stated. “I love you, as heartless as I am, as hopeless as it is.”

She brushed her hand over the scar on the Beast’s exposed throat, rising and falling with her breaths. If one put their imagination to it, its shape looked like a crude, deformed heart. The Cockatrice’s eyes were naked to the starlight, the colour of faded amethyne. Her left eye was a bizarre, unsettling thing to look at: iris of clouded silver, an engorged pupil of the deepest black. This was the weapon that had killed thousands in front of Ennanis’ eyes, thousands more before then. The Death-darting Eye. Yet, now, none of its deadly light hummed from it.

“How?” Jemi’s voice trembled. “How could you know all that I am, and still look at me that way?”

Ennanis tilted her head. Their foreheads touched. The night was cool around them—their opposing magics intermingling.

“You’re the reason that I live, Jemi,” she said simply.

Foreheads pressed together, Ennanis’ eyes were wide open, taking in the entirety of Jemi’s gaze. Fiery, molten irises, completely devoid of fear. Once, sitting soaked in the water of a lotus-filled lake, Jemi had asked—begged, for Ennanis’ trust. But now, these eyes were filled with something greater than that. The worst, most devastating of emotions.

Ennanis cupped her cheek. Slowly, finally, the angel’s eyes closed.

And she kissed her.

From an angel only ever known for brute strength and grand displays of power, her kiss was a fragile thing. As if she was trying to convey, in her gesture, the weight of her realisation—the enormity of what she had learned to feel.

But even that wouldn’t be enough, would it?

Eventually, Ennanis pulled away. Jemi was still, her lips stiff and unmoving, as if she had become one of her own statues, silent as a grave. Somewhere along the way, the Cockatrice had melted away, leaving her as Jemi again. As opposed to the intensity of Ennanis’ expression, hers had become eerily flat, her violet eyes dull.

“...Jemisha,” she said.

“What?”

“Jemisha,” she echoed. “That’s my real name. A long time ago, I told you that once I had your heart, I’d give you my name. So there it is. But you can’t have any more than that. I can’t give you… what you’re looking for.”

“Why not?”

The woman stared out over the dark, sunless horizon, her scarf wrapped closely to her face.

“I’ve always gone by Jemi. But my mother told me my real name when I was seven. She told me that it was the name that my father had given me. Not the farmer who took care of my six other siblings. But the angel she’d had me with. She told me that she’d only done it to help our family. During their period of hardship, she thought that a sunblood would bring them better fortune.” Jemi laughed bitterly. “Would you look at that.”

The wind grew colder. Jemi’s figure hummed silver. Sparks danced off her shoulders.

“You know what the name Jemisha means?” Jemi went on. “It means ghost of the night. Ironic, isn’t it? How accurate it was. Do you think my father meant to curse me with this name?”

“You don’t have to live out the meaning of your name,” said Ennanis, the island.

“But I have,” Jemi countered. “Spirit of the night, creature of darkness. If that angel hadn’t meant to curse me, then I have been nothing but a plague to others. Everyone who gets close to me gets hurt.”

“Not everyone,” Ennanis murmured, but she knew the other wasn’t listening. Jemi turned away from her, walking toward to the edge of the roof.

Ennanis surged forward. She grabbed ahold of Jemi’s wrist.

“Aren’t you tired?” Ennanis asked. “Can’t you just… stay, for once?”

“There is no rest for someone like me,” Jemi replied, back turned. “Goodbye, Commander.”

Slipping her hand from Ennanis’ grasp, she dashed forward and plummeted over the edge. The velvet of her scarf unspooled through the air, and soon she disappeared into the shadows of the street down below. For once, Ennanis did not follow her.

…….

The angel standing on the roof raised her head. The sky up above was dark and twinkling. The air had become warm again, stiflingly so. And she was alone.

A moment of hesitation. Then, Ennanis lifted and turned about her right arm. She dug her fingers under the gold rim—and with a smooth click, she unfastened her right armbrace.

Back at the Agniparvata, Amethyst Mountain, at least a hundred Beasts had been raining Lunaki down on her. She’d stuck by her word and never retaliated, only dodging. But though Ennanis was a gifted angel, she was far from infallible. She’d had to remove her right arm’s restraint just to get enough of a boost to demolish the lava grates, plus contain the volcanic backlash.

Sweat and grime had collected under the brace in the time she hadn’t removed it. Ennanis wiped it away, peeling back the dressings she had placed over her wounds. Most were healed completely; where long, Lunaki-poisoned scabs had once raked down her forearm, the clots had retracted, leaving thin, barely-visible lines across the skin. Those had needed dressings, as luminarial gold armbraces tended to suppress angelic healing the same way it suppressed Soleki. They still healed, like the other injuries across her body, just much slower.

All had healed, except for one spot.

There was a cluster of scar tissue centered on top of her right wrist. At first, it had been a festering wound that refused to close, painful friction against her brace every time she moved her arm. On the way to Archizoun, Ennanis had bought and dumped the most expensive medication she could find on it; when that didn’t work, she foraged for medicinal herbs in the forest and slathered their poultice on. Eventually, through time or her efforts, the skin forced itself together in a twisted, dark knot. Ennanis didn’t expect this scar to ever heal.

After all, an angel wasn’t supposed to be able to heal from a wound to the wrist. It was their mortal weakness.

Somehow, the scar reminded her of the one on Jemi’s throat.

Ennanis stared at her wrist for a long moment. Then she looked up to the sky.

“Was it you?.......” she uttered.

It was unclear who exactly the angel was talking to, if she was talking to anyone at all.

Far behind her, shimmering and vaporous, the spectre of the Cockatrice remained, watching in silence.