the anxiety of lyune's ball pinched between this woman's is plain on her face. her pale eyes stare hardly at it, expression softening only when elisa offers it back to her and then beckons her to follow. she cradles it against her chest like a toddler and follows at elisa's coattails. 

she thinks of saying thank you. she thinks of asking why. she thinks all of this only after the door is closed behind elisa and she's left alone in the room, struggling to catch up. feeling...tired. 

her altercation with Eva Morales in the parking lot of the bar seems like a million years ago. she certainly hadn't taken the woman's advice and gone home...

or maybe she did. maybe that's what made her drunkenly fly to sootopolis; if she was going to drown out her sorrow, she may as well do it at home. 

clumsy hands sift through the clothes. the bathrobe hangs over one shoulder and then slips down her arm, getting in the way. so she steps out of it and, frustrated, grabs whatever she can get her hands on. and then consequently puts it back because it feels expensive. 

you never quite realize how much of your identity is wrapped up in your clothes. not until you've lost all of them. your favorite sweater, filled with well-worn memories of backyard barbeques, every occasion spent with a friend; the shirt you wore for special nights out, because it made you feel important, made you feel bigger than your meat and your bones. snatches of who you are stitched in fabric you claimed as yours. 

freya feels this loss now, suddenly and ineptly. she crawls into high-waisted brown pants and shucks on a floral shirt that fits just a little too loose around her hips. she squats, examining shoes for no other reason that she wants to imagine herself in heels one more time. 

and that's when she sees it, tucked behind a pair of knee-high boots. she pushes the boots to the side and reaches for a silver string. her hands never had the pleasure of gracing the serpentine mask, so it takes her a moment to place it as she runs her thumbs over the surface.

her gaze flicks to the closed door and she knows elisa wouldn't open it. she wouldn't invade her privacy. 

so she stands and she takes the borrowed bath robe, scraping her fingernails over it to loose the crumbs. she folds it as best she can (that's to say - not well) and places it gingerly on the bed.

quietly getting the window open isn't the hard part. what's difficult is gauging the distance lyune will need to stay aloft. it's not an easy feat when it's dark out and everything is still kind of spinny. but, squatting and clutching the frame of the window, she tosses the ball out and then follows it with a tumble. 

the wind whistles in her ears. she winces as she lands roughly in lyune's saddle; his wings scrape the rooftop and an irritated rumble rolls through him. freya looks back only once, glimpsing a hand reaching towards the green mask she'd left neatly on the bath robe. 

Elisabeth Fiorelli

☉