Swallow's Flight

Patroka had killed birds before. Hundreds, probably, by this point. Ate the meat, sometimes, for recreation. The cleaner her strikes, the more whole and substantial the individual pieces remained. She liked executing in one fell stroke; didn't favor a drawn-out struggle with airborne fowl, if only because she rarely saw them head-on, could never look into their beady little blackbird eyes and wonder what it was they thought about, as they plummetted, hung by a pin, from the air.

She wouldn't think about it. Never. When she went, she wouldn't be falling; she'd already be on her bloody knees, never prostrate, ready to thrust up her final argument before she eroded into dirty ether with only the vaguest afterimage of the suggestion of a corpse remaining. She'd reasoned it out that that was the way she preferred - others' corpses, she wanted to see; others' evidence of the struggle, she wanted to taste, but her own failure, she'd decided she was content with it fading to invisibility, the scorch of her presence impermeable but the trophy of her body unrecoverable.

Patroka had killed a lot of things.

Birds fascinated her - as much as any living thing, in itself, truly could. Were she not busy mooking around for Torna, she'd probably try out falconry. Rhoguls were too big for most Ardainian pissants to wrangle, but she'd do it. She wouldn't wear a glove. She'd let the talons take their tender clutch on her arm, and see which of them was intimidated; see if it was malice that made the talons' power bite, and not sudden, immediate, crotch-clenching terror.

Maybe next time she'd eat the bird alive. Any truly powerful bird had to have more than just feathers folding up its wingspan.

Yes, Patroka would admit, she was a violent person. Whether grudgingly or not, she admitted that your environment and circumstances shaped your personality, and thus that if Akhos was going to be sadistic but playboy and Malos was going to be a sleep-growling lapdog for drama-king Jin, Mikhail's total feather-brained-ness entirely discounted, she'd be the brutal one.

It was fun! Who here would deny her that it was fun?

See, no one believed you, when you said that being that angry was fun. That having a piss-poor pissiness permanently slung over your shoulder wasn't draining, and more muscles than it was worth, and all what could be expected from a rotten lot like Torna.

They didn't understand that she was already well and truly drained, and in her rights for being so blunt. She knew what she was on about, so she kept on about it.

Pretty little dove like Fan la Norne? She hadn't a clue.

Jin said they weren't allowed to touch down in Indol. Weren't allowed to do any more than observe from high up, because humans were delicate little fucks, and everything needed to be laid carefully into place before they could blow it all to hell, to ensure that some of the dynamite wouldn't blow early.

Obviously offing her had to be no less than the first inglorious step in that reaction chain.

And Patroka wasn't...mad, exactly - why the hell should she care? Haze wasn't her precious Driver's precious lapdog, strung through as a fake-up five centuries on. Haze wasn't hers to claim anything over, or about, or through. It was more like...

Humans were stupid, right? Right. Always. Forever. And Blades could fend for themselves, when they actually had the agency to, because they'd come up indifferent to humans' bullshit.

Most birds, Patroka would carve through without a second thought. Some, maybe, maybe, maybe she'd think better suited to treatment in a cage.

But Haze?

Patroka wanted to see her fly. Wanted to release her, dove-light, from bare hands, and watch her soar. Wonder, mirrored in both faces.

Hope...the thing with feathers.