tea from a silver pot just like any picnic

Nia goes left. Melia goes right.

Those hands hold the knives. Those hands are bound to fight.

The opposites, right and left as black and white, court prettily with each other. So prettily. Daintily, as parties and dances and games.

Never to say that this endless war is, to them, a game. They'd have to be much more headily corrupted than they currently are, for that.

Perhaps together, they will be. They shall be.

"I heard you welcomed quite a few end-of-terms last night, Lady Melia." She does not grin, does not gloat, even as she seems to.

"Your mind is too sharp, Lady Nia." She means her tongue; bites her own; tastes bitter metal before the blood.

Nia's is no clever conclusion. Of course the clones come in batches, sometimes. Keves operates with just such an efficiency. Agnus does naught but follow - always follow, as though Melia's factions were not those to fall into the world with a crash and a smite, brutal machinery disguising broken people.

If she stabs the Flesh Eater here and now, will it be not so difficult after all to draw the perversely persisting schism to a close? Or have their affects and effects rippled too far, too wide?

When will something, anything, come to end this? Nia doubts, even despises the potential return of one such as Malos, and as far as Melia knows all the Telethia have been expended (cruel word, cruel efficiency) as fed into the rift, long ago.

They each had their cataclysm, their pre-apotheosis. Now, they are only the shallow lodestones, perched catbird so pretty at the top of it all. As Melia acts, Nia retaliates. As Nia flashes the tip of her blade, Melia gives a careful, delicate, wicked sweep of her own dagger.

They should have stopped long ago, should have taken control and not just this petty "control" they seem to preside.

They should have acted when they had others besides their mirrors to prey on.

Your move, queen.