i do as i must (please always trust)
Chapter 01: messier actuator
Chapter 02: gemini controller
Chapter 03: ald manipulator
here, of course
Far be it from Lora to pine; to wish for anything more than everything she has immediately before her, in a brief and brimming life. She has her Blades, her mercenary companions, food in her belly and songs in her footsteps. She has memories and the framework for making more every day. She has the natural world, ever-inviting, all around her. Now she even has something like a family - extended, that is.
Lora has everything she'll ever want, save the promise of immortality that eludes every human and their most precious incarnations of Blades.
So this feeling, of incomprehensible melancholy... Lora has to wonder when Jin started rubbing off on her, instead of the other way around.
It comes whenever she looks at Mòrag-- Sorry, that is, Chief Enforcer Mòrag. Not Hugo's sister, but the Emperor's loyal watchdog to counterpart Aegaeon's stance as guard, ever faithful and never complaining.
Complaining is the wrong word. Bending, perhaps. Not doing so. Not being allowed, or even able. Never mind how quick Mòrag is, how muscular must be her calves and thighs to propel her as quickly into peril when she feels that she must, against practice, act. A wellspring of infinite potential, and Mòrag would defy unspoken orders if ever she thought to tap.
Lora feels, by contrast, discomfitingly liquid, amorphous and without trellis to cling to as she tries in vain to grow. She has never felt this way before; never been so lost, even when searching fruitlessly for Mother. Haze would be aghast at the thought. Jin, in fact of his own existence, would prevent it coming real.
There's something stagnant about the air around Mòrag, when Mòrag is the air around Hugo. And that simply isn't right. It shouldn't be so.
How selfish, to want Mòrag alone, to herself, to the wilds.
Maybe it's that Mòrag is the one who wants, who wants for something unnameable or ungraspable. Lora tries not to be cocky, but she does as she says; can read people, true to her word.
That still feels uncomfortably arrogant, though. How could she ever know the innermost desires of one such as Mòrag? Far be it.
(If they are not the same as hers, even. If Mòrag merely wants to belong, to linger in the glens and dunes of a gorgeous sunset on Torna, glorious Torna, with Lora, beautiful Lora.)
Oh, but she wants to. She so surely wants to.
vanea is a big gay woman - and flora is a little gay woman
Flora is used to looking up at people - just the slightest amount, but enough that when someone is actually close to her height, she starts to think that maybe she's taller, because she's never been at eye level before. She discounts the scant inch gained by way of her gilded heels, because shoes are shoes are shoes. Aren't they?
This impression had come from a life lived sans Machina. That life is no more, lost of an age. Flora is more than gracious to and grateful for that fact, however.
One thing Flora can say of all the Blades she knew: they loved to eat as much as any human did. Each was drawn to a different cluster on the spectrum of all flavors: some loved sweet, some loved savory, some ate fish and some ate vegetables.
But Machina eat nothing at all. They sip on water and ether throughout the day, and it's rare for them to fall faint. In that respect, Flora truly can see how they are inorganic beings; so sterile, is that the word?
None of it betrays Vanea's cordial, elegant nature. Flora knows she shouldn't need convincing, but all the same...
She is so pleased that her guide is such a pleasant, patient, and pretty Machina woman.
Vanea welcomes her, brightly and briskly inquisitive as to the nature of the Homs customs familiar to Flora. Their families, their growth patterns, their interpersonal relations...
"I'm as discreet as you are, Vanea," Flora says, blushing a marvelously flesh-toned pink. "We are...loving, and we are careful to cultivate our relationships, when we are in the best of minds to think of it. We try to forgive misunderstandings and to explain them. We try our best."
"But your personal affairs are your own?" Is Vanea always this oddly persistent? Or are all Machina this way, and that's what Vanea's driving at?
Flora gazes up at Vanea, noticing that the stripes coiling up the other woman's body make her seem much thinner than she actually is, at a glance. Really, Vanea is rather wide and solid.
Flora does love to have someone of such stature to lean on.
"Of course," she answers at last. "What we do is our own business, so long as we conduct ourselves...honorably, you might say?"
"Then it would be my honor," Vanea bows just the slightest inclination, her headpiece swaying, "to conduct myself along with you, Flora."
i hate the word gremlin as used in millennial-type humor but like. chaos gremlins
"How I can drive you crazy? You already are!"
Horrible, rotten girl. X just taunts, taunts, taunts.
And since Moebius are the will of humanity... Ryyz should stamp her out just the same.
Compromise. X is dealing in absolutes, of a fashion, and she doesn't go for compromise, either. But she does tend to toy with her prey, and while Ryyz is a tetchy type of fiery, she's not indecisive like that - not gratuitous and wanton. Well, maybe just a little bit.
"I'm not crazy," Ryyz snorts, stamps. "I'm just dedicated. You play with your food far too much, X."
X giggles, wandering closer to Ryyz and attempting to arch herself up close enough to nibble (that is, to snap and bite) at Ryyz's ragged right ear. Held together with bolts and pins, asymmetrically hooved with impossible rung-ringed prostheses, Ryyz is greater than X's most bombastic apparation; certainly stronger than the flitting flap of a butterfly, shimmering as specks in silver hair.
Actually, Ryyz is bald. The tattoo, X realizes, travels right up her neck - that's a neck that X would bite if she could, and she could, if she exited Consul armor and entered Moebius form. But then she'd be all gangly and robotic, and she'd much rather look at those features on Ryyz than feel them on herself, and with a scythe to lug around, to boot.
Instead, X sticks out a stubby-fingered hand and hangs the bulk of her weight onto Ryyz's shoulder, upper back, whichever it is. That clunky array of handles, just sized and mounted for X's toes to leave the ground. Ryyz, annoyingly, doesn't tilt, refuses to give. Maybe a past pest has done it before. Maybe it's there as a jungle-gym distraction.
"You're getting on my last nerve," the Ganglion grinds out through black-gummed teeth. Could it be there's a twitch in her shoulder? "Quit playing games with me."
Oh, and that just makes X shriek. Yes, this is a delightful one! A pin-tempered outcast with only bloodlust to her name - and not even that, because she's a fair bit too close to frightfully boring, when she gets down to her duty. Even right now, she's not smacking X away like she seems to threaten she can.
This situation could so easily be turned in X's favor; a vital volte-face toward ever unfair but advantageous play, Y would say. X would just say dinner's on the table.