Smoke and Mirrors-17/05/23-Beets Sunwater
May 22, 2023 7:47:22 GMT
Riah, Velania Kalugina, and 1 more like this
Post by Beets The Beetle (Feenix) on May 22, 2023 7:47:22 GMT
Content warning: Gore
The Before:
The door to the Rooftop Beetle base bangs open as Diana the half-elf comes rushing in, panting heavily as she calls up to the open attic room, ignoring the surprised looks of the other beetles as they rouse themselves with bracing mugs of Barry’s overly bitter coffee.
A bleary eyed Beets appears on the balcony, a fist rubbing away the last remnants of the Port Ffirst salt as she asks-what’s the matter?
Dianne-gasping-reports, holding up one of the crowd-drawing notices she had torn down and returned hastily from her abandoned pastry run. Wolves heading for New Hillburrow.
In a second Beets is in front of her, the notice grasped tightly in her own hands.
__________________________________________________________________
Dawnlanders,
A chill wind blows across our lands, carrying the sound of madness and chaos.
Wolves are coming.
Shadows seek that which is buried.
We must stop them, whatever the cost.
Meet my temporary aid in New Hillborrow. He will guide you.
Miandra Gleaming
Queen of Ken and Cunning
Twilight Court
__________________________________________________________________
She looks at the notice for a full ten seconds before then looking back up at her friends, her face a pale mask of worry melding into one of set determination.
“I gotta go.” She says simply, releasing the notice still hanging from Diana’s fingers, her rapidly beating wings elevating her upwards towards the hatch in the roof. Before she stops, her head twitching as raises a hand to her forehead, patting as if feeling for something not there.
The unexpected pause is followed by another sudden diversion from her ascending flightpath as she dives back down, and out of sight over the balcony.
A series of bangs and crashes follow, along with the short-lived flight of a half stale doughnut over the bannisters, before she’s then back. A large dusty black bone-like horn ending with two spokes jutting from either side being fastened securely to her head.
She looks down and gives the group a final confirming nod, before surging upwards again, up through the hatch, her wings buzzing as she races out over the rooftops. Her gaze not even stalling to glance as she hurtles past Paradise Frost, sending its sign swinging madly in her wake, before she's then out. Up over the turrets of Castle Gate, her trajectory arching widely out around the town before straightening to head South-Eastward, in the direction of New Hillborrow.
The After:
It was late as Beets arrived back in Daring Heights. After..that Jasper..had departed. Swirling away into a funnel of darkness back to..The Feywild.
She’d not even waited a beat to say goodbye to the others before taking off, flitting up to circle up over the quiet village framed by the twilight.
There was nothing…
No damage….No wolves…No sign of..mourning..inhabitants..No sign of…Anything…
The memory of her own village ravaged after the beetle attack suddenly flickered over her vision again, before within another blink, it was gone again in an instant.
Had it been a lie? Just a dirty fey-trick to gather together a group of yet more gullible fools that could be convinced to help spite yet another Archfey-just for the sheer heck of it? Could that devious fox even begin to realise how worried she’d been?!-Perhaps, he did and yet didn’t care…
Her wings and limbs were aching so badly, that she didn’t trust herself to land on the roof of the base and lower herself through her usual roof hatch entrance. So instead she set down upon the top most step before the emerald green door, the barest sliver of a moon just highlighting the sheen of the wooden carved beetle insignia as she quietly lifted the latch, pulled open the door and hobbled inside.
It was dark. Only the smallest embers of a fire smouldered in the hearth. The gang must all be a sleep.
Good.
She didn’t want them to see her in this state.
Letting her one good eye lead her, Beets hobbled her way over to the water barrel, her mouth desperately dry from the bitter tang of blood. Slowly as she stretched to fill and then lift a heavy metal tankard from the barrel and up to her lips. Before a surge of pain flitted across her arm from the deep gash where the sneering mirror double had viciously struck-with ‘her' boomerang- causing the tankard to fall from her grasp to the wood floor with splash and a loud clatter.
“Bugger!” She cursed before there was a sudden loud squeak of wood and a cry of “Beets?!” by the voice Diana from the dining area to the side of her. Followed by the sudden ‘Fffph!’ of a match being struck, it’s light illuminating the tired strained faces of her Rooftop Beetle friends. All suddenly roused from their apparent late night vigil sat around the kitchen table, their sudden looks of worry and elation becoming ones of shock and horror followed-with an unnatural high pitched shriek from Diana as they all took in her torn and bloody appearance.
She had wanted to see Marto before she left. To make sure he was alright. To make sure he knew that ‘something dangerous’, some deeply worrying force called 'The Wild Hunt’ was now making its way to unleash havoc upon the Dawnlands… And all..because…‘Yet again’, she’d not stopped to think about the true repercussions of her actions. That-yet again-she’d allowed herself to continue blindly plough on, and make more foolish-reckless choices…
Those reasons, and that, as she took account of the her injuries from her reflection in pond, grimacing and wincing as she washed away the worst of the blood from her face and mouth-What in buggin’dawnlands would he say if she turned up looking like this? Her once long braided hair was now slashed messily short, and thickly matted with blood. Deep gouges dug across her face, chest and arms in lines. One eye, bloodshot, puffy and swollen. Lolli’s lovingly stitched leotard, now reduced to mere bloody tatters of cloth.
Even if she had accepted that Marto would never feel…‘That way’, about her, showing up in this sorry state would just do nothing but prove that-despite her best efforts to be a better person. To be the better Beets that he-and even she just recently-had started to believe she could be…
She had still failed…She had made ‘another’ stupid mistake.
“Beets..O-oh Beets!” Diana exclaimed, moving up from the table and rushing over to kneel in front of her, her shaking hands reaching out to hover fretfully over the numerous gashes that marked Beets’ body.
“What’s happened to you? Y-you’ve been gone for days! When we didn’t hear any news from the attack on New Hillborrow Jeremy volunteered travel over to to see what had happened-“
“And to kick some wolf butt too of course. But damn Beets! You look roug-!” The muscle-bound human starts to chip in before Diana continues regardless.
“-He said there was no sign of you or any attack, so then he started around, and found you had been to the The Hearth and Road and that Pervinca said you and some others had gone off somewhere with some handsome fey fella called Jasper-”
“What were you up to Beets?” Gary asks, hobbling closer on his crutch, his white tunic front stained from falling asleep in a puddle of wine.
“-Were ya using fey magics to help sneak behind enemy lines?-Take out the wolves one by one-before they even had chance to pounce?!” Jeremy interrupts again, as he too moves closer. Only the stoic figure of Axel stays sat, golden lamp eyes silently looking Beets over carefully from his station at the table.
“-Did ya use your fairy might to single handedly take’em all down? Bet they never stood a chance with you leading the charge!
“Ya got that right Jer Nothing is tough to beat our Beets!”
“Beets?”
“Beets?!-”
“Beets?!”
Beets are you okay-?!!”
The group’s voices rang like a cacophony as their questions seemed to bombard her. Beets' head was splitting,
her heart pounding rapidly as she clutched at her scalp and caught a glimmer from candlelight in a puddle of spilt water from her dropped tankard at her feet. The water now clouded with crimson as fresh droplets of scarlet blood dripped down from her numerous wounds, some tearing open again as her muscles tensed.
A feeling of dread had begun to infest her mere minutes into their fragmented journey across planes of Feywild. Towards the ‘so called’ vault of the Queen of Air and Darkness-the apparent literal ‘mother’ of all nightmares.
‘Someone..was going to die.’
She’d kept glancing nervously about as she flew, at one point moving herself forward towards the head of the travelling group. Increasing the drone of her wings in an attempt of creating a threatening ambiance, challenging whatever ‘creatures’ may be lurking amongst the light, dark of the Summercourt..the Fey Dark..The Fey Weave just waiting for a chance to strike.
But. Once they had reached that..’vault.’
Things had begun to spiral.
First Pipper, nearly losing her arm-and almost her life-to the vault door when attempting to pick it open…
Next Jasper, revealing that, perhaps, he didn’t exactly know what-oh so important-‘thing’ the we were to ‘acquire’ and keep out reach of that-‘arm ripper’-Druseilla’s clutches-I knew we should’ve left right then and buggin’there.
And finally, when they had picked over the various mountainous piles of ‘apparent' valuables arranged around the ‘room’-Our party likely resembling a flock of foolhardy magpies, searching for ‘pretty baubles’ from amongst a sleeping dragon’s horde…They..had appeared.
Copies of ourselves, reflections..but-wrong.
Distorted. Unsettling. As if someone had taken our reflections in a mirror, smashed them up, then reassembled the pieces into rough approximations of ourselves.
With an all too recognisable buzz of wings, I was set upon by ‘my own’ copy.
A jagged, vicious smirking manifestation that pretty flittin’much tore me to shreds. But not just with her own razor sharp monstrous claws, but with her words too. Cutting deep as she savoured each and every one as she’d spoken them aloud, “..Who am I? Why do you know? I’m you…Isn’t it nice to see yourself. To get see what you look like-on the inside?”
Then later.
“You really have no sense of preservation do you? No self-love…That’s what makes this so-much-fun!”
As Beets had dropped back and then surged forward to ram ‘her’ with her beetle horn in the gut, making an opening in the ruthless clawing of her mirror-double, she’d manifested her monstrous black mandibles, locking them pincer tight around ‘her-own’ throat. She’d heard echos in her mind-backed with the ringing laughter of her warped countenance-words..-no-..statements from two Archfey. Queen Nichevin..and Ulorian. Juxtaposed in both their giving and receiving.
“I expect to hear great things of you, Beets the Beetle…”
“One day you will find yourself..and you will be severely disappointed..”
Her ‘self-confrontation’ had mercifully drawn to a close as she’d sent her mirror countenance shattering into a shower of scattering shards from her ‘crushing’ bite. A final statement, one her own voice and making, ringing out through her mind, just as it had done in that forest clearing on the edge of New Hillborrow all those months before, “I’m a monster Marto…I’M A FUCKING MONSTER…”
It seems someone had died after all.
“ENOUGH!” Beets yelled, her cry transforming at its peak into a nightmarish-insectoid roar. Shattering the kitchen window and silencing her friends' calls of concern as they recoiled back from her in fright.
Briefly lost to her ‘rage’, Beets relived the final moments of the..‘day's’..venture. As Jasper brought them back to a crest above New Hillborrow, the injured fey had turned to speak to all of them, “Change is coming, The Wild Hunt is coming…There’s history..and when..he..comes they’ll…”
He stopped, just as he had when he’d first made his case and ‘recruited them’ back in the tavern, his face betraying words he either could not..or would not share with them. She’d had enough.
“You know…” She’d snarled, flitting over till she was hovering right in front him, her claw ravaged face inches from his. “…I think you know more than what you’re letting on…Why don’t you just tell what you ‘really' know?”
He’d stared back at her, his unnaturally flawless visage still shining through the pallor of blood, cuts and grime. A strained tired expression upon his face as he responded to her, as if talking to a particularly vexing child.
“Because. Telling you won’t change a green-dime thing-” A series of coughs ending his stern words, blood spattering across my face as he hunched over hacking and heaving,
“-Great then!” I’d snapped in retort. ” If it won’t matter then, then why don’t you just do us all a favour and tell us now-Give us the full story-for once!.”
“Beets.” He’d begun. “Beets the Beetl-”
“That's not my name.” I interrupted
“I-I don’t underst-?”
“I said. That’s-not-my-name!”
Jasper smiled, one of those infuriatingly ‘roughish’ ones, as if he found my words… ‘Amusing.’
“What ‘do’ you call yourself then?” He enquired.
“Beets Sunwater.” I replied.
“Beets..Sunwater..Heh.” He considered for a moment, before responding.
“I will simply tell you this then, ‘Beets Sunwater'. It is not my place to say.”
I snarled, before snapping back, “You Fey are all the same.”
“You’re Fey too remember.” Jasper reminded, with a tilt of his head.
“Well maybe I wish I wasn’t.” I retorted, before spitting a mouthful of blood to the ground at his feet.
Jasper watched with a raised eyebrow, a final glance around the group before he turned and made his exit into a portal.
Hands shaking, fingers twitching erratically as they morphed inconsistently between finger and claw. Beets fought to contain the beast that longed to overwhelm her, to unleash itself upon the quivering prey gathered in the kitchen before her.
Needing something, anything to channel her fury into, Beets reached up with one shaking hand and pulled free the tied beetle horn from her head, both hands gripping tightly around each end.
Her grasp so tight that, with loud ‘CREAKS’, fractures began to form within its surface, all her anger being focused on it-a relic of that hollow-victory against the beetles that attacked her village. That had murdered her Pa.
The pressure built, till, with a final resonating ‘CRACK!’ The horn splintered. Its fragments tumbling from her hands to the ground, rippling the surface of the puddle at her feet. Reflecting her face as she took deep shuddering breaths as her rage slowly abated. Before finally her own demeanour shattered completely, as grief overcame her.
The Before:
The door to the Rooftop Beetle base bangs open as Diana the half-elf comes rushing in, panting heavily as she calls up to the open attic room, ignoring the surprised looks of the other beetles as they rouse themselves with bracing mugs of Barry’s overly bitter coffee.
A bleary eyed Beets appears on the balcony, a fist rubbing away the last remnants of the Port Ffirst salt as she asks-what’s the matter?
Dianne-gasping-reports, holding up one of the crowd-drawing notices she had torn down and returned hastily from her abandoned pastry run. Wolves heading for New Hillburrow.
In a second Beets is in front of her, the notice grasped tightly in her own hands.
__________________________________________________________________
Dawnlanders,
A chill wind blows across our lands, carrying the sound of madness and chaos.
Wolves are coming.
Shadows seek that which is buried.
We must stop them, whatever the cost.
Meet my temporary aid in New Hillborrow. He will guide you.
Miandra Gleaming
Queen of Ken and Cunning
Twilight Court
__________________________________________________________________
She looks at the notice for a full ten seconds before then looking back up at her friends, her face a pale mask of worry melding into one of set determination.
“I gotta go.” She says simply, releasing the notice still hanging from Diana’s fingers, her rapidly beating wings elevating her upwards towards the hatch in the roof. Before she stops, her head twitching as raises a hand to her forehead, patting as if feeling for something not there.
The unexpected pause is followed by another sudden diversion from her ascending flightpath as she dives back down, and out of sight over the balcony.
A series of bangs and crashes follow, along with the short-lived flight of a half stale doughnut over the bannisters, before she’s then back. A large dusty black bone-like horn ending with two spokes jutting from either side being fastened securely to her head.
She looks down and gives the group a final confirming nod, before surging upwards again, up through the hatch, her wings buzzing as she races out over the rooftops. Her gaze not even stalling to glance as she hurtles past Paradise Frost, sending its sign swinging madly in her wake, before she's then out. Up over the turrets of Castle Gate, her trajectory arching widely out around the town before straightening to head South-Eastward, in the direction of New Hillborrow.
The After:
It was late as Beets arrived back in Daring Heights. After..that Jasper..had departed. Swirling away into a funnel of darkness back to..The Feywild.
She’d not even waited a beat to say goodbye to the others before taking off, flitting up to circle up over the quiet village framed by the twilight.
There was nothing…
No damage….No wolves…No sign of..mourning..inhabitants..No sign of…Anything…
The memory of her own village ravaged after the beetle attack suddenly flickered over her vision again, before within another blink, it was gone again in an instant.
Had it been a lie? Just a dirty fey-trick to gather together a group of yet more gullible fools that could be convinced to help spite yet another Archfey-just for the sheer heck of it? Could that devious fox even begin to realise how worried she’d been?!-Perhaps, he did and yet didn’t care…
Her wings and limbs were aching so badly, that she didn’t trust herself to land on the roof of the base and lower herself through her usual roof hatch entrance. So instead she set down upon the top most step before the emerald green door, the barest sliver of a moon just highlighting the sheen of the wooden carved beetle insignia as she quietly lifted the latch, pulled open the door and hobbled inside.
It was dark. Only the smallest embers of a fire smouldered in the hearth. The gang must all be a sleep.
Good.
She didn’t want them to see her in this state.
Letting her one good eye lead her, Beets hobbled her way over to the water barrel, her mouth desperately dry from the bitter tang of blood. Slowly as she stretched to fill and then lift a heavy metal tankard from the barrel and up to her lips. Before a surge of pain flitted across her arm from the deep gash where the sneering mirror double had viciously struck-with ‘her' boomerang- causing the tankard to fall from her grasp to the wood floor with splash and a loud clatter.
“Bugger!” She cursed before there was a sudden loud squeak of wood and a cry of “Beets?!” by the voice Diana from the dining area to the side of her. Followed by the sudden ‘Fffph!’ of a match being struck, it’s light illuminating the tired strained faces of her Rooftop Beetle friends. All suddenly roused from their apparent late night vigil sat around the kitchen table, their sudden looks of worry and elation becoming ones of shock and horror followed-with an unnatural high pitched shriek from Diana as they all took in her torn and bloody appearance.
She had wanted to see Marto before she left. To make sure he was alright. To make sure he knew that ‘something dangerous’, some deeply worrying force called 'The Wild Hunt’ was now making its way to unleash havoc upon the Dawnlands… And all..because…‘Yet again’, she’d not stopped to think about the true repercussions of her actions. That-yet again-she’d allowed herself to continue blindly plough on, and make more foolish-reckless choices…
Those reasons, and that, as she took account of the her injuries from her reflection in pond, grimacing and wincing as she washed away the worst of the blood from her face and mouth-What in buggin’dawnlands would he say if she turned up looking like this? Her once long braided hair was now slashed messily short, and thickly matted with blood. Deep gouges dug across her face, chest and arms in lines. One eye, bloodshot, puffy and swollen. Lolli’s lovingly stitched leotard, now reduced to mere bloody tatters of cloth.
Even if she had accepted that Marto would never feel…‘That way’, about her, showing up in this sorry state would just do nothing but prove that-despite her best efforts to be a better person. To be the better Beets that he-and even she just recently-had started to believe she could be…
She had still failed…She had made ‘another’ stupid mistake.
“Beets..O-oh Beets!” Diana exclaimed, moving up from the table and rushing over to kneel in front of her, her shaking hands reaching out to hover fretfully over the numerous gashes that marked Beets’ body.
“What’s happened to you? Y-you’ve been gone for days! When we didn’t hear any news from the attack on New Hillborrow Jeremy volunteered travel over to to see what had happened-“
“And to kick some wolf butt too of course. But damn Beets! You look roug-!” The muscle-bound human starts to chip in before Diana continues regardless.
“-He said there was no sign of you or any attack, so then he started around, and found you had been to the The Hearth and Road and that Pervinca said you and some others had gone off somewhere with some handsome fey fella called Jasper-”
“What were you up to Beets?” Gary asks, hobbling closer on his crutch, his white tunic front stained from falling asleep in a puddle of wine.
“-Were ya using fey magics to help sneak behind enemy lines?-Take out the wolves one by one-before they even had chance to pounce?!” Jeremy interrupts again, as he too moves closer. Only the stoic figure of Axel stays sat, golden lamp eyes silently looking Beets over carefully from his station at the table.
“-Did ya use your fairy might to single handedly take’em all down? Bet they never stood a chance with you leading the charge!
“Ya got that right Jer Nothing is tough to beat our Beets!”
“Beets?”
“Beets?!-”
“Beets?!”
Beets are you okay-?!!”
The group’s voices rang like a cacophony as their questions seemed to bombard her. Beets' head was splitting,
her heart pounding rapidly as she clutched at her scalp and caught a glimmer from candlelight in a puddle of spilt water from her dropped tankard at her feet. The water now clouded with crimson as fresh droplets of scarlet blood dripped down from her numerous wounds, some tearing open again as her muscles tensed.
A feeling of dread had begun to infest her mere minutes into their fragmented journey across planes of Feywild. Towards the ‘so called’ vault of the Queen of Air and Darkness-the apparent literal ‘mother’ of all nightmares.
‘Someone..was going to die.’
She’d kept glancing nervously about as she flew, at one point moving herself forward towards the head of the travelling group. Increasing the drone of her wings in an attempt of creating a threatening ambiance, challenging whatever ‘creatures’ may be lurking amongst the light, dark of the Summercourt..the Fey Dark..The Fey Weave just waiting for a chance to strike.
But. Once they had reached that..’vault.’
Things had begun to spiral.
First Pipper, nearly losing her arm-and almost her life-to the vault door when attempting to pick it open…
Next Jasper, revealing that, perhaps, he didn’t exactly know what-oh so important-‘thing’ the we were to ‘acquire’ and keep out reach of that-‘arm ripper’-Druseilla’s clutches-I knew we should’ve left right then and buggin’there.
And finally, when they had picked over the various mountainous piles of ‘apparent' valuables arranged around the ‘room’-Our party likely resembling a flock of foolhardy magpies, searching for ‘pretty baubles’ from amongst a sleeping dragon’s horde…They..had appeared.
Copies of ourselves, reflections..but-wrong.
Distorted. Unsettling. As if someone had taken our reflections in a mirror, smashed them up, then reassembled the pieces into rough approximations of ourselves.
With an all too recognisable buzz of wings, I was set upon by ‘my own’ copy.
A jagged, vicious smirking manifestation that pretty flittin’much tore me to shreds. But not just with her own razor sharp monstrous claws, but with her words too. Cutting deep as she savoured each and every one as she’d spoken them aloud, “..Who am I? Why do you know? I’m you…Isn’t it nice to see yourself. To get see what you look like-on the inside?”
Then later.
“You really have no sense of preservation do you? No self-love…That’s what makes this so-much-fun!”
As Beets had dropped back and then surged forward to ram ‘her’ with her beetle horn in the gut, making an opening in the ruthless clawing of her mirror-double, she’d manifested her monstrous black mandibles, locking them pincer tight around ‘her-own’ throat. She’d heard echos in her mind-backed with the ringing laughter of her warped countenance-words..-no-..statements from two Archfey. Queen Nichevin..and Ulorian. Juxtaposed in both their giving and receiving.
“I expect to hear great things of you, Beets the Beetle…”
“One day you will find yourself..and you will be severely disappointed..”
Her ‘self-confrontation’ had mercifully drawn to a close as she’d sent her mirror countenance shattering into a shower of scattering shards from her ‘crushing’ bite. A final statement, one her own voice and making, ringing out through her mind, just as it had done in that forest clearing on the edge of New Hillborrow all those months before, “I’m a monster Marto…I’M A FUCKING MONSTER…”
It seems someone had died after all.
“ENOUGH!” Beets yelled, her cry transforming at its peak into a nightmarish-insectoid roar. Shattering the kitchen window and silencing her friends' calls of concern as they recoiled back from her in fright.
Briefly lost to her ‘rage’, Beets relived the final moments of the..‘day's’..venture. As Jasper brought them back to a crest above New Hillborrow, the injured fey had turned to speak to all of them, “Change is coming, The Wild Hunt is coming…There’s history..and when..he..comes they’ll…”
He stopped, just as he had when he’d first made his case and ‘recruited them’ back in the tavern, his face betraying words he either could not..or would not share with them. She’d had enough.
“You know…” She’d snarled, flitting over till she was hovering right in front him, her claw ravaged face inches from his. “…I think you know more than what you’re letting on…Why don’t you just tell what you ‘really' know?”
He’d stared back at her, his unnaturally flawless visage still shining through the pallor of blood, cuts and grime. A strained tired expression upon his face as he responded to her, as if talking to a particularly vexing child.
“Because. Telling you won’t change a green-dime thing-” A series of coughs ending his stern words, blood spattering across my face as he hunched over hacking and heaving,
“-Great then!” I’d snapped in retort. ” If it won’t matter then, then why don’t you just do us all a favour and tell us now-Give us the full story-for once!.”
“Beets.” He’d begun. “Beets the Beetl-”
“That's not my name.” I interrupted
“I-I don’t underst-?”
“I said. That’s-not-my-name!”
Jasper smiled, one of those infuriatingly ‘roughish’ ones, as if he found my words… ‘Amusing.’
“What ‘do’ you call yourself then?” He enquired.
“Beets Sunwater.” I replied.
“Beets..Sunwater..Heh.” He considered for a moment, before responding.
“I will simply tell you this then, ‘Beets Sunwater'. It is not my place to say.”
I snarled, before snapping back, “You Fey are all the same.”
“You’re Fey too remember.” Jasper reminded, with a tilt of his head.
“Well maybe I wish I wasn’t.” I retorted, before spitting a mouthful of blood to the ground at his feet.
Jasper watched with a raised eyebrow, a final glance around the group before he turned and made his exit into a portal.
Hands shaking, fingers twitching erratically as they morphed inconsistently between finger and claw. Beets fought to contain the beast that longed to overwhelm her, to unleash itself upon the quivering prey gathered in the kitchen before her.
Needing something, anything to channel her fury into, Beets reached up with one shaking hand and pulled free the tied beetle horn from her head, both hands gripping tightly around each end.
Her grasp so tight that, with loud ‘CREAKS’, fractures began to form within its surface, all her anger being focused on it-a relic of that hollow-victory against the beetles that attacked her village. That had murdered her Pa.
The pressure built, till, with a final resonating ‘CRACK!’ The horn splintered. Its fragments tumbling from her hands to the ground, rippling the surface of the puddle at her feet. Reflecting her face as she took deep shuddering breaths as her rage slowly abated. Before finally her own demeanour shattered completely, as grief overcame her.
