bolderfell | Prismatica Inbox

Not exactly. But if I had anyone that felt that way about me when I was small, I don't remember them.

Anyway. You were caught, then, the way a little girl's trust caught me. That moment, the shards of glass that struck her and not you, those aren't anything you'll ever be able to forget, I think. No matter how long the fox's memory.

So what did happen, then? You were ready to use the mirror -- it was your whole heart's desire, saving the woman that did that for you, unconditionally -- but something stopped you. Right? Or it wouldn't be a story.

I told you it was a love story, didn't I? Just perhaps not quite the sort of love you'd imagined.

But yes. It was my wish to save her — my life for hers, a trade a demon would never make, but one that perhaps a son would. I wanted her to live. I thought...

I don't know what I thought. Perhaps it was a sort of penance, for all those years her love went unappreciated. Even now, I'm not altogether convinced that I didn't cause her illness somehow, parasite that I am. But I had the mirror, and she took ill once night, and I set out to use it.

But of course, a theft of something so precious couldn't go unnoticed, and a detective had been sent after me to retrieve the Forlorn Hope and bring me to justice. He wasn't like the hunters, despite being an agent of the same greater entity. He...listened.

I told you before that I was testing you, to see if you'd challenge me when I was hiding something, or misdirecting from the truth. He didn't know the price the Forlorn Hope would ask of me, until I'd already begun to use it. But when he heard it, he —

He threw himself at it, and demanded that it take his life instead of mine. He snapped at me. Threw my folly in my face, made me realize the one thing that in all my great plans, I'd never considered — the human element.

What good would the life I was purchasing do for my mother, if my actions would force her to spend it mourning the death of her son?

[Quiet, for a moment.]

Hope that's a rhetorical question. I don't have an answer.

[The human element. As if there's any one human element, singular, to consider in a conundrum like that. A life you fought for tooth and nail for a life you love, the only life you've ever loved--who's ever loved you?

Therion would still spend whatever meager coin his life's worth for Cordelia, if that's what it took, but Cordelia isn't his mother. Would Cordelia mourn him? Maybe, if she knew. But she'd move on, move past it, and continue to grow into a woman who could shoulder all responsibility, even one as bloody and burdensome as House Ravus's.

What life would Kurama's human mother have had without him? Would it really be so lonely and empty, forever? Is that what that kind of love does--makes of a person a vessel from which care pours endlessly, then shatters them like so much glass when the object of their love is gone?

Would he once have used the Forlorn Hope to save Darius?

Would he have weighed the worth of the life he was buying him, if he did?]

What happened to him? The detective.

What happened to your mother?

They lived. Both of them.

That reckless fool of a detective has a devil's luck. He was ready to throw his life away for me, forgetting all the while that he had a mother who would mourn him, too.

But we all kept our lives. Perhaps the Forlorn Hope settled for a single life between the two of us — half of his and half of mine. Perhaps it waived the fee altogether.

Sometimes I think I must love him, a little. I don't know what else to call the emotion I feel, the one that binds me to him because of what he did for me.

Maybe you do. Love's one of those things humans just can't seem to define properly. Must make for a frustrating subject of study.

Maybe the Forlorn Hope had a sentimental streak of its own. Maybe it was lonely up there, locked up so long in the gates of heaven. Maybe the three of you, doing what you did, gave it something it valued more than a single measly life. How many of those must it have taken in its time?

Maybe, after all that time with only evil inside it, you told it its first good love story. I've known barkeeps to waive prices for less.

You may just be the first person in history to empathize with a cursed artifact forged of darkness, you realize.

...

You sounded like him, just then. Just for a moment.

You've got such high praise for me today. Stop, I'll blush.

You can suffer it, as your sentence for the high crime of not being here to tug on my hair.

Thought pulling was the punishable thing. Real traditional, removing the hands and fingers of a thief. You changing the rules on me while I'm not there to take advantage?

Sometimes the real crime is a rule gone unbroken.

I'd still bite your fingers off. I just also don't think the risk is deterrent enough to outweigh the reward. Not for a master thief.

Flatterer. Damned if I don't, then.

Guess you ought to look out for me once the rains stop. I'll be by.

Even more reason to dislike the rain for its duration.

Loath as I am to share my secrets...I think I'm still glad that you know, now. Glad that someone does. Glad that the someone is you.

Yeah.

Never feel like you have to, okay? Either to be fair or to keep my attention. Just because I'm okay sharing the names of some who aren't here, or talking about stuff that went poorly for me...

As ill-suited I am to it, I get wanting to protect things. Myself among them. So don't worry too much about what I do or don't see. It all stays here, with me, and goes no further.

I wonder sometimes if the moons and their gods designated me an Iris not as some mere cosmic joke, but as a punishment of sorts for my own pride. My own personal Thief's Bangle.

Iris is all about the loss of control. Being rendered a prisoner to one's insatiable desire.

I can't help my partner. I can't outthink this rain. I can't reach my mother.

Irises are helpless things, and right now, so am I.

You reached me. For whatever that's worth.

We bide our time, helpless things, until we're not helpless anymore. Rain doesn't last forever. You'll do what you can until it lets up, and in my experience, that's never nothing.

Sorry you can't get in touch with your mother, though. Sounds like that might be the hardest thing.

It's a hard lot in life, isn't it, to be human.

Do you suppose it's worth it, in the end?

Haven't exactly explored other options. So yeah. Since being human means being ALIVE for me, I have to consider it worth the trouble.

Then perhaps I'll treat you to a little death the next time I see you, just so that you can be thorough about your appraisal.

You are insatiable. Here I am, penned in with a woman I respect and walls that could stand to be thicker, and you have to go and threaten me with a good time. Now how am I supposed to wait inside like a good boy?

I wouldn't be much of a fox or much of a thief if I were easily satisfied.

And you wouldn't be much of one, either, if you didn't know how to keep yourself quiet, thin walls or not.

It is easier to do when you're not right there working against me.

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