this house is postpartum.

it sits vacant, its children absent but the symptoms remain: its old bones, heavy with salt-spray and age, sag as it tries to make room for something that isn’t there. floorboards creak with insomnia. water weeps from every faucet and a heaviness permeates the air, choking out what life remains. what survives in the stillness is a soft, but low hum of a melody: a simple, two-part lullaby haunting a girlhood bedroom, as fingertips draw slowly over little trinkets that adorn the walls.

this mother called her daughter flower.

the humming softens, as she skirts the course of the room. verona draws the curtains and lets in the light. a window latch releases, then opens it. she watches as the sun draw its arc and warms herself in its embrace. the winds flow, carrying out with it what remains of jasmine and citrus. priestess does not turn as she hears approaching footsteps.

painted lips draw into a ghost of a smile, carnelian eyes glossy beneath a curtain of lace as she regards her without looking as she often did. the woman that stands in the doorway is as much an intruder in this place as she. absent her child, she is not a home.

she tucks inky black behind her ear, her hands crossed one over the other as she watches the waves crash against the shore. as she thinks of my-hoa's skull splintering against the stone.

"your roses have died, my dear," she murmurs, reaching just below the windowsill to pluck a bud from its stem.

the roses endure.

she did not see when she died. but, she sees the split in the skull of the woman that stands in the doorway now. a hollowed-out body, vacant eyes: she'd always thought her quite pretty. she thinks she's even lovelier now.

sariel duong

she had heard the humming from the room and followed it, recognizing as a derivative of one of the temple's hymms. sariel had thought that her mind was playing tricks on her. but she thinks, having now seen the actual truth, that she would have preferred to lose her mind than to see the harbinger again. she may only be a messenger, but every message comes with her personal venom; sickening and painful, but not enough to die.

it is the curse of living that haunts sariel duong, not the blissful release of death.

in some ways, the thought gives her comfort, as much as my-hoa's room does. only, there was no solace when her daughter's resting place had been so thoroughly disturbed. and so her objective now was to get this intruder out—by any means necessary.

the window leading to outside this room gives them the full view of sootopolis's cliffs, battered from the sea. sariel had always been so fearful of that window, and a mother worries like no other. she had always imagined herself staring down at those cliffs, wondering if her daughter would ever fall into the slippery currents running underneath.

she doesn't have to wonder now. that is a fault of her own.

"even dead roses have thorns."

sariel has been restrained thus far, but her patience was wearing thin.

she walks to the woman, looming over her and standing so close that she can smell the scents of her perfume. light citrus and the scent of lit incense, burning to the nose. it brings her back to the temple, the ceremonies and prayers pressed into their collective memories. in her eyes is a distant place; she peers out into those cliffs with a bitterness so strong that she can taste it in the back of her mouth, and it coats her tongue with such hatred that she has to spit it out like a spoiled meal.

"and birds that chirp too loud are the first to get shot."

tempting as it was to see the priestess's broken body among the rocks, sariel keeps herself for committing such an act, if only because she needed not to defile the resting place of her daughter. she so badly wanted to make the priestess suffer as the gods had to her.

but even so, she wondered: if she pushed this parasitic bird out of her nest, would it still fly?

verona santillian

she was beautiful—my-hoa.

a june face, warm and inviting with eyes that spoke of a life that knew nothing of suffering. she’d been drawn to her and her mother: liferafts in a sea of indolence and apathy. she’d not spoken to them, then, for fear of darkening their spirits or for making them think her strange in a town where all already did.

she does not fear anything now. she does not fear grasping at what has already been ruined.

verona scoffs, and it is the only sign that she hears anything over the rush of the tidewater.

sariel—is quicker than most.

she thinks to a thousand and one sermons that guide the sheep no farther than the pastures where she’d found them. she thinks to sariel, who mistakes her meaning but understands implicitly that she speaks of grander things than a mere garden. she confuses herself for a rose. verona does not correct her, but instead regards the roots as she crushes the petals in-hand: “false foxgloves suit your garden more.” suit you more, she thinks as she leans part way out the window and knocks over a few of that girl’s things in her carelessness.

the wind catches her hair, and her hands press lightly into the white frame of the window.

she knocks over another trinket, another bauble as sariel stands behind her. she hooks a foot over the edge and steps through the window as though it is a threshold. she stands, heels resting on the very edge as the priestess looks down the cliffs and giggles at the sight of the rocks just below. it would hurt no more than it does to remain a hapless witness.

her skirts whip through the air. one misstep, one push—that woman did not have the capacity for such cruelty. the sea creatures would not catch her. verona takes a step forward, hovering somewhere halfway between.

her voice gets lost in the chorus.

“don’t be silly. there are no songbirds in sootopolis.”

sariel duong

the false foxglove was one of the few flowers she would come close to saying ugly; small and insignificant, with its bulbous proportions and parasitic nature. her lips curl at the thought of putting them in the garden, and alongside the pristess's cryptic words, likening it to sariel's person.

the words linger in the air, heady and thick in the silence. the priestess leans out the window, and when she knocks over some of my-hoa's belongings, sariel is quick to catch them, her maternal instincts kicking in. one by one, they fall into her open hands: a figurine, a book, bottle of lotion that was far past its due date. she growls as she pulls the objects together and cradles them to her chest. these were common objects, bought from the market. their worth was worth sariel's life hundreds of times over; how sentimental she felt towards these ordinary objects surprised her.

because my-hoa would be upset if they broke.

"priestess–" she calls, but her words fall on deaf ears.

the other baubles are set safely back where they came from, but the last one is still yet to be safe, and she's not quick enough to catch it. it is a glass bauble in the shape of a terastallized eevee; pink for its type. she gasps as it falls to the ground, shattering into a million pieces. sariel's hand quickly follows, crashing into the broken glass. searing pain burns through her palm as the shards dig into her hand, blood weeping from her open wounds.

it hurt. broken glass always did, but nothing hurt more than witnessing another death. a death of a memory, as if a part of my-hoa had been shorn away.

she cries out, her face twisted into an ugly snarl as she takes her hand and shoves it against the priestess's back.

but then in the same motion she clenches her hands, glass and blood and fury in its motions, wrenching the gathered the fabric back. she lets the priestess fall back against her body, now suddenly full of regret. so much had happened in an instant that she had been shocked into silence, her body acting on impulse rather intention. sariel has never killed before; the thought made her heart beat loud and quick in her ears, rushing adrenaline that makes her hands shake.

she was afraid.

"what..." she holds the priestess, her hand still gripped tightly onto her dress, now stained red with sariel's blood. she breaths, shaky and deep and tries to think; to calm the storm inside. her voice comes out calm, yet barely restrained.

"what do you want from me, priestess?"

verona santillian

she is pushed, and falls:

she is hollow-boned, but wingless. she sees the ocean and its infinity that stretches out beneath her. verona has drowned before, and she thinks of the quiet way that her life will end beneath a tempestuous current: it would be by the holy whale's divine grace that it does. but, she does not sleep. she falls backwards. the same hand that pushes her pulls her back and asks her to live.

her knees pin together, legs spread out on the floor across what remains of the glass figurine.

the back of a bloodied lace gown never fully relaxes against her thin shoulders as the woman resists the urge to relax her grip. the vertebrae outline her spine against pale skin instead. if the shards cut, she does not bleed. sharp edges press into soft palms as priestess leans forward. her eyes, behind the lace, remain trained on the sky and open window before her. she picks up the glass.

defeat, in a different way. defeat, in not so many words: verona has not yet decided.

in a fairytale, it would've been best if she had.

verona does not shake. does not weep like a child, as inky black falls soft against her hollow cheeks and the skeleton-woman patiently casts colored glass into wet palms and her would-be murderer asks calmly what it is that she wants. sariel is angry and she does not know what she is angrier about: pushing her, or that she'd saved her. this is not the first time.

she smiles.

laughs. doesn't turn to look at her as thin fabric strains against a birdcage. she's asking the wrong questions again. she's always asking the wrong questions.

to the gods, to herself, to:

"what do you want from her?" the priestess is a means to an end. a thing. verona is more.

sariel duong

the priestess, in her temporary flight, had been pulled back down to earth. sariel rips into her pearlescent wings, staining the white feathers with blood. now unable to reach the heavens, it was as much a blessing as it was curse, forced to walk the earth with her savior. no longer allowed to leave.

sariel had stumbled back when the priestess had fallen back to her, bracing her own body so that she would not land too roughly. and so they sit on the floor amongst the colored glass, her palm distantly aching as she slowly lets go of the dress, her wings. a reminder of mortality and its brief limits—what was and could have just been, if she had let her rage control her.

sariel's eyebrows knit together, her thoughts fragmented, only loosely tied together by the will to understand. in the heady silence and her own heavy breathing, the priestess's laughter is starkly different, reminiscent of glass chimes and summer haze. did she not consider how close she had been to death?

no, sariel thinks. the priestess was most certainly aware. only, she did not see the boundaries that separated life and death. to her it was one and the same. the gods had already set their fate, and she, out of anyone in the world, would have the most utmost faith.

and yet, here the priestess asks her, what do you want from her?

it was a question not often asked to the likes of sariel duong. she was a mother, a refugee. she was a small blip in the fabric of time and space.

she was nothing.

but the priestess was asking.

she cannot bring herself to say her name; she has not said it out loud in three years. everything about that time still haunted her; the priestess's name was a relic of the past, as was my-hoa. but only, the priestess was a ghost who still had a vessel. "you cannot give me what i want, priestess." sariel says.

she suddenly feels angry again. but not the shallow kind, passionate and almost-life-ending. this was a simmering type of anger, resentment from a woman who had given everything to the gods, only for her them to abandon her. what she wants is sacrilegious and unattainable. unthinkable. and yet, sariel clenches her palms into bloody fists, imagining the heart of a god in its grasp.

"my only want is for the gods to suffer as i have. revenge, so that i may finally die in peace. and if you cannot give me that, then i want nothing of you."

verona santillian

she is prophet. she is priestess, but sariel sees none of this. what she sees: a symbol of all what had betrayed her, and what remains to be lost.

but, verona is not the holy thing that sariel makes her out to be. she lacks the divine nature through which things can be foreseen. that she had known that anything would transpire in sootopolis that day had been chance, that she had survived it where many had not—carnelian fixates on an azure sky. there'd been a time when she could not look up for fear of seeing what would destruction would rain down from the heavens.

she sees it for what it is now.

a glimpse of the seat of the celestial gods, as empty as she'd found it in her tepid prayers.

you cannot give me what i want, priestess, and she smiles thoughtfully. sariel is already wrong.

my only want is for the gods to suffer as i have. revenge, so that i may finally die in peace, and she laughs again as shoulders sink and she watches the sun for another turn. would it be that simple? sariel is their most fervent servant. has always been.

that devotion of hers is unyielding even now.

( who has said that the gods could only be pokemon? )

and if you cannot give me that, then i want nothing of you, and verona tips her head backwards, her hair pooling in the other woman's lap. skirts slide, and hard white flesh revealed in contrast to pale thighs: the marks of kyogre. her eyes meet hers. clarity, as she reaches out. presses her long nails into the hollow of her cheek. thumbs hard against the space beneath her chin. waits, for her to jerk her head away and hold her there still.

"satisfaction comes as such a cheap cost for you, sariel. you would ask her nothing more?"

sariel duong

again that blasted laughter. the priestess takes her for a fool, as if her all-seeing eyes knew something that sariel did not. sariel was only a watcher after all; what she bore witness to was transcribed into her memories, so that when she approached the gates of heaven, that her memories may be recorded in its illustrious halls. perhaps the divine had a reason as to why she had seen these things, but she did not know how to interpret what she had experienced; only that she could not bear its consequences.

her words had been filled with venom, disdain even, to drive the priestess away. but it seemed to have the opposite effect, for the priestess falls back onto her lap. she could not help the look of shock, barely holding back a gasp at the scarring on the priestess's thighs; marks of the ancient sea. blasphemous it were, to engrave the markings of a god onto your own body.

and yet, sariel found beauty in such devotion.

a hand reaches up, gripping her face. her gaze linger on the scars, but the resistance is only brief as the priestess turns her head, and her own dark hair falls around the priestess, blocking out the rest of the world. she could only stare into the eyes that which were usually closed; in those deep depths was the call of the void, beckoning her to jump.

"if this is so cheap to you, then i cannot imagine what you would consider lavish." she mutters. no matter the fate of the gods, sariel was still a pious woman. she did not greed for material objects. but admittedly, she was still curious as to what the priestess wanted. her hand touches the priestess' as it pressed into her cheek, gentle as if to repent.

"what does SHE offer for the likes of me?"

verona santillian

"peace."

sariel asks the wrong questions. she seeks the wrong answers. she limits herself when she thinks only of destroying their gods, destroying those emboldened to use them to reshape their world. she wishes for violence that she herself cannot find the conviction for. in the name of her petty revenge, she hastens to break that which she has not yet fully understood.

neck bared, her head against limestone—the sacrifice of a prophet. the curtains flutter in the sea breeze. windowpane creaks.

sariel is weak.

she will not even kill the priestess that invites it.

"she thought it was beautiful."

sariel will not abandon what remains. not for the prophetess that she believes curses her home. she will not abandon the world that she knows her daughter marveled at. she holds on to that pitiful hope that the girl might still yet live. why else, verona thinks as she relaxes her grip and allows the backs of her hands to fall soft against sariel's palm, would she return to an open grave?

because she hopes, when she should co-sign herself to the same truth that verona had come to:

that there was nothing in this world worth saving.

she gently traces her jaw. her breath trembles, but she does not waver. guides her hand to the base of her throat, rests her hand on top of hers and squeezes—half-certain that she would call this love.

"she would promise this for my-hoa's return."

sariel duong