sirenspull_logs | Let me fly once again

Who: Aoko/White Dove (

motioned), and "Joe" (

madeinoblivion)
When: Late
Where: Approximately sector 9
Summary: Aoko meant to practice her flying . . . which does not go well. Joe and Ahiru go witch hunting.
Warnings: Nothing I know of?

She should not have gone out in the dark.

But determined to keep working on her flying, currently without a teacher, White Dove had wandered beyond her usual path, taking a wide loop around the island's edge that should have been easy, managed several times before without incident.

The Icarus Winged diving down on her, however, had thrown everything off balance. Quickly Dove had found herself careening between rooftops with an assailant that simply wouldn't give her up, forced to push her speed in order to stay ahead of it. Within a matter of a couple of minutes she'd become disoriented, merely focusing on survival as the wind tore past her ears, trying just to cling to her broom and not slam into any of the buildings around her.

The flight was uncomfortably familiar . . . The whispers of trees sounded in her ears; the memory of pain was fresh, battering against the bark . . .

She twisted to glance back. She couldn't see it now, but imagined she could catch the outline of it -- that melted body, derelict and unyielding . . .

Pain. It exploded in her head as her shoulder caught an unforeseen pole; it yanked her sideways, sending her spinning through the air. She shrieked, clinging to the wand beneath her, clinging to the last bit of hope she had left to avoid the ground below.

No good. Stars again exploded behind her vision as she slammed into the edge of a brick building, and she was falling -- a dim spot of white in the blackness as the creature dove in.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Dove's eyes fly open again at the sound -- both the groan from Joe and the words from Ahiru. Water, collected in her lashes, darts downward from beneath the mask; her heart feels like a rock, contracted. She doesn't pay it any attention; immediately she's moving forward, bending forward down next to Joe.

"J--" She bites the syllable back; she isn't supposed to know it. "It wasn't . . . It shouldn't have . . ."

It's a whole night of errors . . . and Ahiru really thought she shouldn't apologize?

Briefly she presses the back of her wrist to her forehead as though warding off a sharp headache. "I'm sorry . . ." she repeats, sending a second glance up to Ahiru as though to ward off anyone telling her it was all right.

As soon as Joe bends down, she moves forwards as well, trying to be soothing as she plants a hand on his arm. If he doesn't shrink away, she'll try to support him enough for him to stand up. There's still a pain in her chest, not to mention her eyes. However, when Dove speaks again, she addresses the girl kneeling at Joe's other side.

"I was the one who told you to do something."

"What was that?" He grumbles, glowing faintly with an ultraviolet aura of darkness, stirred up from within to compensate for the energy lost from being blasted with light.

Though he can feel both girls at his sides, Joe feels dizzy and a bit out of sorts, trying to make sense of the vision that just flashed in front of him so brightly, leaving him with flashing colors blinking before his closed eyes.

"Hey. Hey, It's okay, I'm okay. But... ugh. Don't apologize. That was a close one." His voice sounds a little ragged, as if someone's had stolen all the air from his lungs, although he hadn't been running.

His heart is pounding wildly in his ears.

"Are you both okay?"

"I would have done it anyway." Dove's voice is flat in response to Ahiru. In spite of her uncompromising tone, her shoulders quiver, as do the tips of her fingers as they balance on Joe's shoulder.

Kaito tried to do that too -- steal the responsibility from her, tell her it was all nothing, that it wasn't her fault for the things she did.

Sometimes she felt it was something he did to make himself feel better more than her.

A quick shudder, as though trying to cast it off. "I was stupid. They probably even knew . . ."

Quickly pushing on to Joe, "Just a few cuts and things?" Slightly pointedly, ". . . I'm not the one who got hit."

She looks away from Dove, supporting Joe as the other girl speaks. She takes the tone of her voice as a sign to not argue another time. And yet...

"I can heal him if the damage is really too much. So please, don't blame yourself."

"I told you I'm okay." He grumbles sourly, pressing the backs of his hands to tightly pressed shut eyes. Joe moves to wipe down the expected monster guts off his front, and finds that the light has seared his clothes (mostly) clean.

"It looks like you took quite a big fall."

. . . One would almost get the impression Joe didn't like to be fussed over.

But he's getting it anyway. Dove looks him over too as best she can.

A flicked glance to Ahiru. Likely were she in Ahiru's position, she would be saying the same thing. And yet forgiving oneself is so much different than forgiving someone else.

"'M bad at this," she mutters, sitting back on her heels. Technically her answer can be a response to them both. "It came up on me out of nowhere, and I always screw up the flying bit."

Silence for a moment, and briefly her eyelids press closed again behind her mask. When she speaks again, her voice is a bare murmur, "Are they . . . all human?"

She pauses for a moment before, in a gentle tone:

"Maybe you should try to practice more during the daytime if you feel like you aren't skilled enough yet. It could be dangerous." After all, if they hadn't come at the right moment, who knows what could have happened?

She gazes to the ground at Dove's next question, wondering if she should let Joe answer. It'd certainly be easier, but...

"Yes. But it'll come back tomorrow night no matter what."

"The monsters?" He hears Ahiru give a softer answer, but Joe can't believe so many people just wander out into the dark without the right kind of preparation, knowing what they're up against.

(Okay, so there had been closer calls than this one, and trial and error near disasters in his first few months here.)

But the boy prided himself in following his resources like his idol Darkness Savant and Explorer- and telling about him gave just enough courage to stave off the lingering pain of light, and shake off the nerves of having nearly been strangled by a pile of waxy intestines.

"Yeah. They used to be. This guy Darwin, who wrote the guide to the darkness? He's been out in the Darkness studying them for years. His theory is that people who died when the Core first got messed up- when the Darkness started, they became the first monsters, and every other person or animal to get swallowed up after siren adds to them."

"Last year, when this herd of horses got let out accidentally after siren to run their field- they all got killed. The next night there was a herd of half-scorpions, half horses running around Sector 7. Darwin calls them the Night-Mares. There's darkness-messed up cats too, birds, dogs..."

"You knew?" Dark eyes flash between them both, darting, almost stabbing. She pulls away, no longer quite touching. "You knew, and you just . . ."

Let me fly once again

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