![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
birthrightgreenThe hot springs were clean, steam curling off of the surface into crisp air. The landscape was stark. Barren, really. Rocks and a memory of a tree here or there. The churning of the water made sure that we were clean as well, as we rested our head back on the rocks and stared up at the stars. It surprised me that there were stars there, but she just laughed, lighter than the Harpy Queen should laugh. No sun. But moon and stars. Endless night.
We laughed. Talked. Splashed each other a bit and played in the water. She told me about her childhood, things I'd never known. I told her stories about mine, after she died. The good ones. About Sadi and Tersa and playing games around the table after dinner.
It was peaceful. Calm in a way I'd never felt calm before.
I ducked under the water, running my fingers through my hair to get the worst of the gore out of it. Little bits of blood and skin. We'd tried to be careful.
Slid the knife under the upper layer of fat so delicately. Far more delicately than he thrust his cock into her when he broke her. Seeded her.
We slipped it down, peeling the skin back, no cut too deep. Not like the one he left when he slashed her neck and watched her life blood splatter on the walls.
We folded his skin next to him as he hung there upside down. A neat, brown pile of clothes. Far neater than he left the girls at Briarwood when the other uncles decided to serve a little girl's leg for dinner because she didn't want to keep licking the uncle's lollipops.
But even so, it stuck to us. Splattered our faces and our fingers. Matted our hair. Mother could have drank well, but she said she wanted nothing more of him in her. That I was the only good thing ever to come out of him.
But the springs were hot and churning and they washed away the blood as we stared up at the stars of Hell's sky and contemplated the success of vengeance after nearly 400 years. They washed us clean the way a midwife washes clean the blood of birth from a newborn babe. We smiled and we talked and spoke of our lives and our hopes and dreams. She told me everything she'd always wanted for me and how proud she was of what I'd become as we listened to the music of his screams as the hell hounds finished him off.
They weren't nearly as neat as we were.
But the debts were all paid.
We laughed. Talked. Splashed each other a bit and played in the water. She told me about her childhood, things I'd never known. I told her stories about mine, after she died. The good ones. About Sadi and Tersa and playing games around the table after dinner.
It was peaceful. Calm in a way I'd never felt calm before.
I ducked under the water, running my fingers through my hair to get the worst of the gore out of it. Little bits of blood and skin. We'd tried to be careful.
Slid the knife under the upper layer of fat so delicately. Far more delicately than he thrust his cock into her when he broke her. Seeded her.
We slipped it down, peeling the skin back, no cut too deep. Not like the one he left when he slashed her neck and watched her life blood splatter on the walls.
We folded his skin next to him as he hung there upside down. A neat, brown pile of clothes. Far neater than he left the girls at Briarwood when the other uncles decided to serve a little girl's leg for dinner because she didn't want to keep licking the uncle's lollipops.
But even so, it stuck to us. Splattered our faces and our fingers. Matted our hair. Mother could have drank well, but she said she wanted nothing more of him in her. That I was the only good thing ever to come out of him.
But the springs were hot and churning and they washed away the blood as we stared up at the stars of Hell's sky and contemplated the success of vengeance after nearly 400 years. They washed us clean the way a midwife washes clean the blood of birth from a newborn babe. We smiled and we talked and spoke of our lives and our hopes and dreams. She told me everything she'd always wanted for me and how proud she was of what I'd become as we listened to the music of his screams as the hell hounds finished him off.
They weren't nearly as neat as we were.
But the debts were all paid.
