gilding the lilies
Chapters
Chapter 01: blood oil
Chapter 02: parts noble
Chapter 03: to serve nopon
Chapter 04: lucent glance
Chapter 05: smell trouble
Chapter 06: last resort
Chapter 07: missing tree
Chapter 08: he's using hacks!
Chapter 09: vandham squared
Chapter 10: team princess
What can she say? "I knew not what I did" and other lies that culpable individuals tell themselves?
No, her hands had stopped their shaking eons ago. Still as petrification, obstinate as Egil, she's become. Conscious. Contemplative.
When have Machina ever been frenzied?
The most horrible guilt of it all, what Vanea feels most keenly, is that Meyneth will not hold her in contempt for this: all of these crimes, across centuries; to do no more than verbally oppose Egil, and then in kind to join him. It is worse knowing that her goddess will withhold that judgement which Vanea has levied upon herself two-, three-, four-fold.
When Meyneth returns, it is all Vanea can think about. And Meyneth, of all infinite wisdom's grace, will not even turn her beautiful head.
Is Meyneth nurturing, the perfect mother that the Machina toiled ceaselessly to deserve? Indubitably. She is and has always been soft-spoken, the gentle giant of the Endless Sea. By contrast to Zanza, it's easy to be benevolent.
By contrast to a man, perhaps. But now Fiora is Meyneth's vessel, and Fiora is loud, lashing out, bloody. The pain Meyneth feels as that indomitable spirit drains away into the ether of uncontrolled airspace between warring titans is more than physical - as much as she can even feel Fiora's body's pain, as much as Fiora's own body even owns it, anymore.
Creator Meyneth would be saddened at the sight of any life unduly expiring. Fiora's rampant, lifeless decline, however, threatens to chisel the vertices from Meyneth's own cheeks, as dry tears silently roll.
"You know what you look like?"
Lin had removed Tatsu's glasses for this all-important process, so she can see him blink blearily out at her from beneath a yogurt-flavored malaise.
"Secretary Nagi showed me this video once, of a baby sitting on a kitchen counter covered in peanut butter. And then when his mom asks him if he's having fun, he just says 'Ah.'"
"Ah...?"
Lin absently moves a spatula to pat Tatsu's left side, so he doesn't take a tumble himself (only engendering more frustrated Nopon noises), and then returns to selecting the next jar of whole spices to toast on the stovetop.
"I never got it. Buuut, Secretary Nagi was laughing so much I thought his drink was going to come out of his nose, so I laughed too."
Being that she began this loony life as a Blade, of course Nia can't imagine ever acquiring any of the various markers of aging that Cole has amassed in all his five hundred years. She's already got gray hair, to start with. And a cough like that? Nothing doing for the best Healer Blade in Alrest's history.
The Eidolon of Gormott, that's her.
And there's Cole. King of nobody 'n' nowhere.
Nia can't say it doesn't sound appealing, being able to feck off and get wrinkly like that, and live in a little playhouse hidey-hole. Foster a few kids, tell a few tall tales...
However it ends up shaking out, it'll be the way that her adventures took her. Not like Cole chose to be what he is today.
...did he?
"Oh, I swear I don't know what it is you see in me, Minoth."
"I'd wager that's correct," Minoth drawls. "Seeing as I'm the one looking at you, and into you, and so on and so forth."
"You do seem to spend an awful lot of time..." remarks Addam with a sly smile.
"Not half so much as yourself!"
This confidence is something to behold, in Minoth; a trait he wouldn't defend to anybody else but Addam. Addam seems to embolden him in a way he never thought possible, or particularly important, for a Driver to support a Blade.
Huh. Well, there indeed is his problem.
Minoth's beautiful brown hand comes waved in front of Addam's face just then, letting him know that he'd gone away.
"Alrest to Addam?"
"Eyes front!"
"I never see you wearing Resort III, Fiora." Egils notes this, though without a glimmer of offense, as if he himself would ever be caught dead, living, or otherwise wearing water cowling, especially that so risqué as what he'd designed for Face Nemesis's pilot.
"Well, that's because you made Types I and II so smart-looking!" Fiora gushes in reply. "I mean, they're just darling! The baby pink and baby blue, all buttoned up--"
"You don't like it," sighs Egil, now clearly somewhat dejected.
"It's not exactly my favorite color, no..."
"It was the prototype," he explains. "Didn't want to use my finest paneling while I was still getting the shaping worked out. But regardless, I do like it."
Fiora smiles, endeared to hear about Egil's careful craftsmanship. "Then, you wear it!"
"Do you miss it?"
Melia pulls up a loose thread of speech from her thoughts, then follows it with clarity: "Agniratha, I mean."
"Of course, my love," Vanea replies, touch delicate at Melia's elbow. The Empress always knows when her Chieftain is about to appear, and though she's never acknowledged it, it's a little ritual Vanea dearly cherishes. Always just the merest glint of space between their thoughts, mingling and chiming together.
"The silent city," Melia says softly, trailing off. "The Telethia..."
Forever fossilized in memory.
"...yes. I know what you mean. It was a unique time and place. Special in all of Mechonis."
Turning toward her wife, Melia hides her face in Vanea's chest, and sobs quietly for the unimaginably special ancestral worlds that the both of them came from.
Maybe it is all a giant fish story - a wives' tale for an old codger who never had a wife (and never, truth be told, wanted one). To Triton, any sea that goes on forever is the sea he wants to be on. Any sky that indulges all of his wandering gaze is the one he wants to be under.
And aye, he does dream of it. The great glowing treasures that one could find in a world like that, with tribes and families galore...
If he had the mind for it, ol' Cap'n might even find himself with a head for history, and knowin' one people from t'next.
Now there's young Lanz. And what's he got to say about all this?
Only that dreamin's cheatin' the ghost o' death. Pah!
Obviously, Na'el's the sensitive one; the moody one, the tender one, the one who cares for children and wears their macramé friendship bracelets until the day she, or they, dies. She even has the flickering ears to give it away - those really shine when she's playing incredibly intricate song requests without a lick of sheet music to be seen.
But Matthew didn't get none of the insightful genes. The commitment, the zeal, the intense bonds with his loved ones...yeah, he's got it all in spades. Don't matter if he's a little bit boneheaded.
Na'el still feels like his better half most of the time, though. They've got a lot more growing to do together, in this new City and the sprawling Aionios that surrounds it (yeah, from end to end).
"Well, I've certainly missed out on a lot."
"I don't know if I'd say that." Elma cocks her head, that barest pursed-lip look that Al tells himself only he can read. "You've seen more of this universe than any of us could ever dream of. Meanwhile, all we did was fail at finding the Lifehold."
Al clicks his tongue. Rare self-deprecation coming from her, but maybe their banter's just that good. "Not that, Princess. Your squad. The people you've got around you."
"They're good BLADEs," Elma agrees. "None of them are you, but they've saved my life more than once."
Al knows that's not Elma's real definition of camaraderie, but he'll let it slide. No use dragging it out of her. He'll have to catch up in his own special way.