Tandavi

I'll light a fire in your new shoes.

Maybe you are.

She winces, pain an ugly smear on her moon-slashed face. Her heart lays between them, vulnerable and exposed- and Caneo's cloven hooves hover at its apex, a casual threat of violence quivering in his quiet voice. When did you grow so cruel? she wonders, disbelief blooming red, a twisting knife lodged in her gut. Did she do this, create a monster from a friend, run so far and so fast that he was left to wither, to shrink, to become something less than she knows him to be? Has she left another shadow, another demon in her wake? She wants to shout, to shake him, to cry; she wants to slap him for the ache in her belly; she wants to embrace him, to thaw away the collection of jagged crystals that have frozen around Caneo's core.

She stares at him, incensed and inflamed, the fire in her aching to arch out to him, to consume them both in its merciless path. She stares at him and she is staring at Lace, at Hototo, at her mother and Mirage, at everyone she has ever loved and lost. She sees them all in his distant eyes, each one a fragmented mirror of the girl's sins; is this her karma, her curse? Will Caneo, too, become nothing but a shard of glass in another disappointed gaze?

Fire Dancer's fury grows still; her flames turn to ash upon her tongue. He sees her see the snake; she knows this because he turns away as she draws back, his actions a mocking mirror of her own. It hurts, almost as much as his words- almost as much as her own cruel mind. Is this what they are destined to be: mirrors of each other, infinitely distant and infinitely sad? Travelers on their own set, planar paths, only able to intersect once before physics and fate draw them away, never again to meet? Perhaps they do not orbit, as she thought - perhaps, instead, they cannot orbit. Perhaps she is destined to be naught but a sun, surrounded by beings she can see but not touch.

Perhaps she is doomed to burn all who come too close.

He draws the snake away from her, and the girl swallows her hurt, her curiosity, but holds her mirthless smile. So this is his decision, to hide away his heart- and though she understands this, anticipated it even, that does not lessen the stabbing in her chest. The pain is sharp, like glass in her throat; she wants to accuse him of betrayal, but her tongue is lead behind inky lips. Was I nothing to you? her eyes demand, but it is a weak accusation; her gaze is directed at the ground. There is no weight behind her blame, only doubt, despair, the exhaustion of a child who has failed too many times, and no longer knows how to succeed.

She came here to find the pieces of herself, but all she has are tears.

Her body tenses, preparing to leave (though her hooves remain reluctant and her brother screams stay). Her eyes remain upon the ground, head low, searching for words she will not find; she steels herself against his inevitable dismissal, ready to be sliced again by the crystals on his lips. Her ears flick back as he speaks, reflexively, and then dart forward in abject surprise. Instead of dismissal he offers a name, and though it is little, it is enough. Copper child's heart beats again, a tentative flutter in the hollow of her chest.

"Ophiria?" the Fire Dancer repeats. A pause; a breath; an honest remark: "That's beautiful." She steals a sidelong glance at the boy, carefully shielded by the curtain of her forelock, the shade of her lashes. She is afraid to look too directly, afraid to even move, lest he prove to be nothing but a mirage, vanishing in the light.

He is not as afraid, though, and the weight of her stare bores into her, cruel and uncompromising. She inhales sharply against his words, closing her own onyx eyes. She tries to remember the way they were, the way he looked on a Frostfall night; she wishes she could turn back time, to recoil and regress back to that point and a million before it, but the dream is fruitless; she is here.

She turns herself upon him, her narrow features weary, dim in the murky light. Even now, she cannot meet his eyes; instead her gaze traces the snake, following its movements, the rigid fluidity of its form, as though she expects to decipher some secret from the pattern of its scales. "Why?" she asks him hollowly, her voice a breath between silken lips. Why do they come back, if only to tell her of her faults? Why look, if he was so determined to reject what he found? Is it only to be here, to do this, to watch what he could bring her to and bask in the power of it, the sight of her crumbling esteem, her cracking soul? To parade before her what she has created with her failure, her cowardice, her neglect? To remind her of the failings she already knows, already reflects on every day?

"I'm sorry, Caneo," she whispers to the boy, to herself, to the fox who curls at her golden hocks, wishing he could absorb and abscond with even half of her guilt.