The Hourglass Kirika lay on her stomach; the tatami mats a comfy padding beneath her prostrate slender body. A yellow sundress was draped over that willowy frame, and what of her legs it left naked idly treaded the air above her bottom, bare feet swaying gently as though subject to the whims of a breeze. The dress was thin, light and airy, hanging from her slight figure by slim shoulder straps running over her bare back and upper chest; summer wear not for the cold weather outside. But Kirika was cosy. Inside the living room it was pleasantly toasty, the heating turned up to mimic the absent warm summer afternoon. Kirika's crossed arms were a cushion beneath her chin, as well as a prop to keep her head upright and her eyes comfortably in line with the television a distance away in the kitchen. A bread crust wagged to and fro and gradually shortened where it dangled from her working mouth, the sodden end between her lips absently nibbled on above a plate of crumbs that was all else that represented a ham and cheese sandwich lunch after the girl had sated her rumbling tummy. There was nothing particularly captivating on television, but it was interesting nonetheless to Kirika. She hadn't seen any Japanese programs in a very long time; not since she'd last been in Japan; but they were about the same as French shows in how peculiar they were. People were pictured doing all sorts of activities; a lot Kirika didn't understand; things and events were promoted and publicised; again many completely new and baffling; and pantomimes of lives were played out as though real; and the viewer with a spyglass into their intimacies. Television was oft times educational but mostly entertainment, Mireille had said. Kirika supposed it was intriguing seeing how other people lived even if they were lives conceived by someone's imagination, however that idea that they were fictitious was too near a match for what her life had once been. Before coming to her former home Kirika couldn't watch those peeping programs for too long before ill memories started to stir up that she'd rather leave still. It was all right now, though. She was reminded of how her past life shared similarities to the scripting of television dramas when she viewed them, but the reminder brought nothing else with it to create an upsetting union anymore. No harboured bad feelings, no gnawing longings. Kirika was at peace with that time, that life, and free from its haunting. Moreover, she was free to enjoy television further. Kirika didn't derive that much enjoyment from it really, but her favourite programs were the variety where people were depicted in romantic situations. She liked seeing what sorts of things they did to express their feelings for one another. However, there was frequently some obstacle to plague the couple's love, usually someone else who too had affection for one of the pair. Those kinds of developments scared Kirika and made her wonder if she and Mireille might maybe face comparable problems. There seemed to be so *many* potential hurdles for love. And Mireille was acquainted with a lot of people, and probably more that Kirika didn't even know about. What if she liked one of them? What if she liked one of them more than her? But then Kirika was sure she was the closest person to Mireille; the blonde did seem to spend nearly all of her moments with her. They were partners too, after all. Yet in those shows nothing appeared to totally rule out the chance of a third party entering the scene, vying for the attention of the woman or man with the hopes of stealing their heart away from their beloved. Kirika had learned to change the channel quickly when she disliked what she saw. Besides, she still hadn't discovered any programs concerning loving partnerships between women, and that was what she really had an interest in. Romance involving women and men were okay, but until Kirika found what she was really looking for they would never hold her curiosity for long. Sometimes Kirika saw the news broadcast. Mireille liked to watch it every now and then, so Kirika watched it with her, mimicking the woman's interest. The girl didn't actually have a care for what was happening around the rest of the world, but solely sought to share the time and activity with her adored partner. Kirika's whole world of interest took up only the modest space of the living room--the room where Mireille and herself resided. Wherever Mireille went Kirika's entire world traveled with her. Content humming shaped a peaceful song in Kirika's world, underscoring the laid-back ambiance of it in beautiful tones. The hummed melody was heard above anything the television quietly droned, and it was that which Kirika really listened to. Serenity played in Kirika's heart in harmony with the dulcet voice, a singer who could always sooth her soul with her ease. Hearing--knowing--that Mireille was happy inspired Kirika to feel the same, to be absorbed in her love's mood. She didn't know the song, but the blonde's humming was almost a lullaby for Kirika, charming her eyelids to droop lazily and her body to wilt, and hushing the thoughts in her head. Kirika dreamt of curling up beside Mireille while she hummed, slumbering under the blue gaze and silky voice of the one she loved. Kirika's eyes, struggling against drowsiness, turned to Mireille who seemed oblivious to the seducing her contentment weaved. She sat to the left of Kirika near another side of the kotetsu, bent forwards at the waist and her knees drawn up close to her chest, focused on her bare feet that were angled upwards for the benefit of her vision. With a little bottle in one hand and its lid equipped with a tiny brush underneath in the other, she was busy painstakingly painting each of her toenails a shade of lavender. White cotton balls were stuffed between her toes; Kirika had seen Mireille do the like before, but she still hadn't figured out why it was necessary. They forced the blonde's toes to separate and stay that way. Was it to make the nails easier to paint? Why didn't Mireille stick cotton balls between her fingers when she painted her fingernails? Kirika was reasonably sure colouring her nails was to make them prettier; another of Mireille's beautifying treatments. But that was all she was sure of. Mireille didn't need to paint her nails to become more beautiful. Kirika believed her beautiful just the way she came. Mireille wore a dress like Kirika did, and it was lavender like the colour the woman was painting her toenails. Kirika didn't know if there was any deliberate connection, but it made a good match. Mireille's dress was longer than Kirika's, coming midway down her shins, and covered her more completely with sleeves a little past her wrists and only a shallow scoop neck letting her collar bones show. It was rather form fitting however, conforming to the curves and swells of Mireille's figure like a satin glove did to a hand. Now that Kirika reflected on it, most of Mireille's clothing enjoyed having a close embrace over her body, smoothing over flaring hips and rising chest. Yet this dress, being in one piece from top to bottom, seemed to cling to and accentuate her physique more than usual. Kirika liked looking at her. At Mireille's edge of the kotetsu sat a few spare cotton balls the blonde hadn't found a use for yet, and an empty plate and juice glass that had once borne her sandwich and water respectively. Kirika's empty glass was on the floor nearby like her lunch plate, although an orange pool collected at its bottom told of her different choice of beverage to her partner. Mireille had seen to mealtime with some of the groceries she and Kirika had fetched three days ago. Three days of respite. Three days of mundane mornings, average afternoons, and everyday evenings. It hadn't been boring. Maybe some people would have been fed up with nothing to do for three whole days aside from for what could be pursued as entertainment in the house's confines, but Kirika was not one of those people. There was plenty for her to absorb her time with here. Moreover, they were pleasant pursuits. Lounging in bed, on the floor, by a window--anywhere she found herself, with dreams and musings drifting through her head to steal away all sense of time; watching curious television programs; cooking with her partner and together eating the products of their labours; the nights spent in utter delight reclining beside the blonde woman in bed; and most of all admiring Mireille with an unobtrusive joy. Simple pleasures belonging to a simple life. For someone whose life had never been simple, it was bliss. It was peace. Mireille wasn't one of those people who got anxious while caged by four walls either. She was perfectly at ease, using the time as though they were back home again after their return from the Manor; much like Kirika was, the girl herself realised. Mireille was always doing something; if she was not drinking tea while attentive to her laptop's bright glow, then she was teasing Kirika with playful puzzlements that were amusing to her but eccentric to her dark-haired junior. She sometimes joined Kirika in viewing Japanese TV too, and also shared in being a bit nonplussed with it going by the looks on her face. Mireille didn't devote much time to watching unless the news was on following that initial sampling, but even then she favoured the screen of her laptop noticeably more than she did the screen of the television. Kirika longed for the hours to never expire, for the minutes to stretch on and on forever and ever. For day to never fall into dusk. But naught save Kirika's love for Mireille lasted forever. Time took no reprieve and it gave none; trickling away second by second without end. Only one more dawn remained. One more day of quiet. Today was that day. Kirika tried to keep her thoughts apart from the looming reality, but too frequently they eluded her barricades in her more negligent moments. The black clouds amassing over her dawn. There were not many grains of sand left to run through the hourglass, and no means to shatter it. While Kirika continued to treat her eyes and chew the last of her bread crust, Mireille delicately applied one finishing stroke of the brush to her right pinky toenail, completing the lavender set of ten. The woman's content smile turned fuller with fulfillment as she reviewed her titivating toil for a second, before she then started plucking the half a dozen squeezed cotton balls out from the recesses separating her toes. She tossed the used cotton balls heedlessly on the kotetsu without a look, too rapt in admiring the painted procession she had fashioned. Kirika admired too, but from Mireille's toes all the way to the top of her flaxen head. Every part of the wonderful woman kept her enthralled. When the sixth cotton ball had been discarded, Mireille lifted and scrunched her toes in the fresh freedom. Her gaze then rose and met Kirika's over the kotetsu with aplomb as though she had been conscious of the scrutiny the entire time, the skies in her eyes open and inviting, drawing the younger girl in. "Would you like to help me?" Kirika wasn't sure how she could help exactly, and her head sagged to the side under the weight of trying to figure it out. Regardless, she did want to assist her partner in any way she could. The bewilderment must have showed, because Mireille grinned at Kirika with humour but also patience in her expression--indulgent of her less worldly companion as always. "Blow on them. It will help them dry faster." Mireille pushed her feet forward across the tatami mats a little, the motion attracting Kirika's attention and feeding her understanding. Kirika crawled over the floor by her elbows and on her stomach until Mireille's presented feet were framed in her vision. Still uncertain, and scared to blow too hard in case she ruined Mireille's work, Kirika simply looked at the blonde's feet for several moments. They were pretty, she thought. Dainty, but not so dainty they were too small for her. They looked so soft and supple despite the uncomfortably shaped shoes Mireille liked to cram them inside or strap on them even if she knew that she and Kirika would see a lot of running around because of skirmishes or being on assignment. Mireille did take care of every aspect of her body with her creams and lotions and things, and it apparently made the difference. Still with merely her baited breathing on Mireille's feet, Kirika gingerly lowered her head close and choose to blow softly on the wet toenails, her cheeks puffing out and her lips puckering. They were shy exhalations, but enough to speed the paint to dry without harming it, she hoped. The wet lacquer's aroma was strong and almost heady this near and Kirika wrinkled her nose, but she ignored it for the most part. "That tickles," Mireille remarked. Kirika immediately stopped blowing and lifted her head, emitting a peep of worry while finding her partner's eyes, apology in her own. "It's alright," Mireille reassured, beaming down a calming smile upon Kirika prone before her. A hand came up, somewhat tentatively, slow in its indecision, but gently the blonde combed her fingers through Kirika's shaggy hair, pushing the girl's bangs back from her forehead. Mireille's right hand lingered on top of Kirika's head, and her thumb softly stroked the skin she had bared. It was the tranquility of the last three days at its sweetest, and Kirika basked in the unexpected attention and intimate sensations. Kirika maintained the gaze she shared with her partner, but the look in Mireille's eyes, though directed that way, didn't seem to meet hers. It seemed to go through Kirika, like the woman was looking at something else in her place, or something only she could see. In a snap of eyelids it was over, and Mireille's eyes could see the real world once more. The blonde smiled a bit bigger and rubbed Kirika's head, tousling her hair some more, and then took her hand away to take the lid with brush from the paint bottle that she had put down on the floor. She tilted her left hand up at the wrist and fanned out her fingers, inspecting her nails for a second. In the next she was coating her fingernails with the lavender hue in vertical strokes away from her body, returning to dip the brush in the bottle every few thereafter. Kirika went back to blowing, a touch disappointed that the special moment had passed. There would be others, but she wanted every one to go on for eternity. There was always that little disappointment afterwards when they fell short. Time stopped for nothing, not even love. Kirika blew and blew until Mireille told her that was plenty, and then the girl laid her head on top of her folded hands once again and stared up at her beloved while each fingernail was painted. It didn't take too long with Mireille's experience at doing such aesthetic endeavours. Mireille screwed the lid on the bottle securely and placed it on the kotetsu, and then she leaned forward, balancing her arms on her raised knees and dangling her hands in front of Kirika's face. "Now blow," she instructed blithely, giving Kirika a wink. Kirika sat up on her elbows and did as she was asked in earnest, keen to please and unwilling to disappoint. Mireille grinned, amused at Kirika's diligence. "Maybe I can do your nails some time," she proposed impishly. Kirika didn't know how to take that. Blanching thoughts of the lots of times she had been taken clothes shopping and coaxed into dressing up in different outfits and directed to stand in as many different positions entered her mind. She supposed it would be interesting and Mireille would have fun... and it was only her nails... but then how many colours of polish did the woman have? Kirika could imagine Mireille trying them all out on her one after the other. In one session. Until all the shades were exhausted... at least until she bought more. Fashion was as serious for Mireille as being an assassin was. Mireille's limp hands suddenly came to life and the blonde tweaked Kirika's nose between the knuckles of her first two fingers of her right hand. "All done!" She winked again. "Thank you!" Kirika smiled, happy to have been useful. Useful for something unrelated to the grisly art she had been intended for. Yet most of all, to have been useful to Mireille. Mireille leaned back and admired her nails some more; at range straightening her arms out, and up close with her hands near to her face. Kirika watched, pleased that Mireille was pleased, and that she'd had a role in it, if minor. Mireille's left hand stayed at her eye level, its fingernails still being appreciated, but meanwhile her right stole under the kotetsu. When the latter reappeared, it bore something Kirika had not wanted to see in Mireille's grasp until tomorrow--if not ever again. Mireille tapped her index finger on the trigger guard of her Walther P99 as she held it aloft, barrel aimed at the ceiling. The pretense of admiring her nails was dropped, as was her left hand, and the assassin looked Kirika in the eye. A flash of uncertainty streaked across Mireille's visage and for a second her gaze fled Kirika's. But Mireille was never uncertain and never afraid; or seldom showed either frailty at any rate. The slippage was redressed almost instantly; the mask straightened back into seamless place. The tapping on the pistol stopped. "Let's get it done," Mireille said simply. She put on a supportive face, her smile straining to hold. Kirika bowed her head and lowered her gaze; the best nod of acknowledgement she could give. She glanced under the kotetsu where her own weapon still remained in hibernation, yet close by should it need to be abruptly awakened. Kirika had tried to ignore it and Mireille's weapon, but they had been constant companions to each young woman throughout the days and nights of peace. Constant companions, and constant reminders of the times of war on the horizon. Kirika slowly reached under the table and retrieved her dormant sidearm. As more of the final grains of sand filtered through the hourglass, the more substance the illusion shed. A flake of normality peeled away with each grain lost, the illusion's cohesion shaking loose in the final day, the final hours. Not once in three days was the reason that Kirika and Mireille were in Japan brought up. Not once since the first night were Jacque's documents touched. Not once since the first morning was there an indication of anything terrible ahead beyond the guns the pair always carried with them. The guns, the only sign, had ultimately been the downfall of the innocence. Even a single sign was too many. Kirika reluctantly sat up in front of the kotetsu and arranged her legs into a kneeling position. She laid her Beretta M1934 on the small table and then placed her hands on her lap. Her hands clenched her thighs while she stared at the weapon. "I'll get the cleaning equipment," Mireille said quietly before standing up, pistol still in hand, and disappeared into the kitchen and up the stairs. Kirika could feel her depart, but her eyes were affixed to the pistol that was left behind. Unthinkingly--instinctively--Kirika's hands left her thighs and went for the gun. Her gun. She hadn't owned it for long, but it was identical to its predecessor. A program ran in her head, a series of instructions she mechanically followed with an otherwise blank mind. Reflexes took over her limbs, intuition powering every movement. Kirika pushed the magazine catch of her gun to the rear and popped out the clip, placing it on the table. In a quick motion she pulled back the slider and then let it snap back into place, and a bullet was ejected out of the chamber and into the air. The assassin snatched it before it hit the table, and then sat it on its end beside the magazine. Kirika turned the safety backwards and drew the slider back once again, but this time locked it in position with the safety lever. The barrel exposed, Kirika pushed it from the front and unseated it from the frame, before effortlessly lifting the entire metal tubing out of the pistol. Precisely she laid the detached barrel horizontally on the kotetsu above the clip and solitary live round. Kirika turned the safety lever down, unlocking the slider, and then pushed the latter forward until it slid completely free. She added that part to the growing collection on the table. She tugged the recoil spring out from the front of what remained of the gun and removed it from the guide it coiled around, lying both below the slider and barrel. Finally she twisted the safety lever loose and set that down; followed after by what was only a shell of a gun now--the handle more or less--alongside the other dissembled parts. The Beretta had been dismantled in less than fifteen seconds, perhaps as few as ten. Kirika had never actually timed herself, but the gun was in pieces before her conscious mind caught up to the fact. She could have broken it down with her eyes closed. And put it back together again just as fast. Mireille wasn't long in returning. She sat herself down flanking Kirika, near, at the kotetsu on the girl's right. It was a small gesture, but it didn't go unnoticed by Kirika. Mireille could have elected to sit opposite her, the closest table edge coming from the kitchen and one that would have offered more room for her to take apart her firearm. Yet she hadn't. A small gesture... but it meant something to Kirika. Mireille placed her Walther P99 in front of her and a box containing an aerosol can of compressed air, another can of lubricant, cleaning solvent, a couple of cloths and piles of patches, two cleaning rods, and a pair of bore brushes corresponding to the calibre of each woman's pistol in the middle on the table. The compressed air was a more delicate yet still thorough method for cleaning the pistols' inner workings. It would clear out any dust and grime that had accumulated through service and in the aftermath of cleaning in strong, concentrated blasts of air. It even had a fairly lengthy tube-like nozzle for convenience. Cloths still had their place however, and were used for polishing the exteriors of the weapons' frames. The lubricant was for limiting the friction of the working parts and preventing the solidification of firing residue, the bore brush for cleaning the barrels, the small square patches--endowed with a woven side and a fibrous side--along with the solvent for cleaning everything else internal that the air had failed to dislodge, and the cleaning rod to squeeze the equipment into those internals. It was quite an involved undertaking, but repeated practice had seen it become a methodical and rapid ritual for Kirika and Mireille, much like the breaking down of their weapons beforehand. "We'll need to find a secluded location to squeeze off a few rounds," Mireille commented as she pulled the ammunition clip from her pistol and put it on the kotetsu. "I'm not confident that the back garden is a sufficient width for long range practice." She yanked back the slider and then let it slam forward into its rest position while angling the gun toward the table, ensuring the bullet that flew out made its landing there. The 9mm Parabellum round bounced several times and rolled along the table, but before it could drop off the edge and onto the floor Mireille cupped it with her hand. "And there's the chance one of the nosy neighbours might hear the shots, even with silencers." She sat the lone bullet with its peers in the magazine. "They might even be nosy enough to take a peek over the fence. I don't like having to go outside before it's time, but...." Kirika stretched forward over the table to grab the can of compressed air and then picked up the slider of her dismantled Beretta M1934. "I know a place," she said softly, spraying a burst of air along the length of the metal fixture's insides. ****** Kirika traipsed through the thick, lush carpet; deeply green and nourished though never tended to her knowledge. Dew still clung to the soft blades that rose tall enough in their neglect to tickle her ankles, wetting the girl's sandaled feet that had to lift a little higher than the grasses' peak to get by. The wind finished what the damp started, chilling each foot an extra degree throughout their time hovering over the grasses' shag. It was strong here, its howl drowning out any other sound, even those from the street where the Yuumura house stood left not far back. But civilisation felt miles vanished in the dense verdancy. Wild bamboo interweaved to form a virtually unbroken screen to hold suburbia at bay, and their mingling grew friendlier the further Kirika and Mireille went on. It was a veritable hidden meadow in an otherwise urban sprawl. Kirika supposed it could have been thought of as peaceful and quaint, but sadly more sinister connotations had been laid within her when she had first discovered it. The secret aspect of the meadow would always remain its most distinguishing tone, for secrets had been revealed inside its bamboo shelter. It was a dreamscape to Kirika, another memory drawn out from her mind and inserted into reality. She had killed here. She had killed here among the bamboo and grass for the first time; *she* had, the girl who had opened her eyes to over a decade spent and the memory of it gone--Kirika Yuumura. And she had killed with natural instinct and fatal precision, without thought given to extinguishing the lives before the deed was done. It was here that Kirika had recognised the myth that had been her normal life, and saw the blood and sin that stained her hands. The nostalgia had returned, but nothing darker clung to it. If sentiments of sorrow or longing converged, they lacked the potency to threaten Kirika's heart. As Mireille had said, the past had past, and nothing would change it. That was fine. The past had paved the path to the present, and Kirika didn't yearn for that past changed anymore. It wasn't perfect, but Kirika had her happiness and was grateful for it. If nothing else ever bettered, if she never reached the horizon she saw, she would at least have that. Kirika would at least have her. She was the centre of everything. She *was* everything. The girl glanced back at the radiant beauty that tailed her, she whom Kirika clutched on to in the black world's darkness, the light in the shadow personified; the angel in the sinners' midst. As long as Kirika had Mireille and her love everything would be all right. And there would still always be hope for that better tomorrow, always, every moment she gazed into the dreamy blue of Mireille's eyes. "How much further is it?" Mireille said as though sensing Kirika's look, her voice clearly fighting to keep the gripe out of it but tinged with complaint nonetheless. She was hunched slightly and her head was down, her hair falling past her cheeks, and she shot a sharp breathe cantankerously past her teeth while she looked where her feet were plodding through the thick and soggy grass. Those feet were clad only in sandals like Kirika's feet, and were just as ineffective at withstanding the wet and cold. Kirika hoped the painstaking adorning Mireille had given her toenails less than an hour ago weren't being spoilt in the dew. The blonde's left fist held the bunched bottom of her dress taut out to the side and raised up near knee level, allowing her legs to move with a little more freedom. Kirika could see that the ball of cloth in her hand and the slanted hem across her shins were dark from the soaking the caressing blades of grass had given them before the woman had decided to let just her feet and ankles suffer the dousing. Kirika began to worry and doubt herself in choosing to come to the seclusion here. She and Mireille wore coats over their thin dresses, but it was short-term warmth and wouldn't fend off the unpleasant conditions at length. Kirika didn't picture them remaining more than fifteen or so minutes anyway, and neither did Mireille she expected, or else the woman would have insisted her younger partner prepare herself better for the cold weather before taking one step out the door. Kirika and Mireille would stay just long enough behind the bamboo curtain to expend a clip or two to test their firearms and their own accuracy. Their accuracy was practically always rated one hundred percent, however. Kirika only remembered one occasion when Mireille's aim was off, horribly off; when they were to confront Intoccabile in Sicily, an old and feared childhood friend of the blonde's. Moreover, it was the only time Kirika had seen the normally cool, calm and collected Mireille scared of anybody--*really* scared. It had been interesting for Kirika to witness and frightening all at once. The experience had caused novel and potent emotions and desires in Kirika. Mireille, once so strong, had appeared so vulnerable--fallible after all. Kirika had wanted to shelter her. She had wanted to protect her; watch over her. From then on, Kirika always did. That incentive to protect had no limits, covering the more trivial hazards as well as the deadlier ones common to their line of work. Regardless of how little time they might spend here, Kirika wished Mireille would button her coat. Mireille had told her to zip up. If Kirika had to do it, why didn't Mireille? It was actually harder to defend Mireille from the minor threats than it was to guard her with a gun in hand. Usually Kirika was left to fret helplessly, assisting her love merely when it would be accepted and not deemed presumptuous, invading. Mireille had a liberty with her that Kirika didn't have with the older woman. It tied Kirika's already hesitant tongue and shied away her helping hands, and abandoned her heart to worry. The grassy carpet took a sudden dip, and Kirika dallied at its summit for a moment. "Not much further," she said quietly, her voice nearly whipped away by the wind. Kirika negotiated the fairly steep slope more slowly and carefully than the last time she had, back then skidding down its span with a Soldats execution squad at her heels, their bullets whistling about her fleeing body and spurring her haste. It had ended in the clearing below, where the wind through the bamboo funneled a million shrieks into a single roar--the pursuit and their lives... Kirika's life then included. When Kirika reached the bottom of the incline she turned back to see how Mireille was progressing. The woman navigated the slope even more slowly and carefully than Kirika had, her high-heeled sandals seeming to inhibit her step and unsteady her balance. She had pulled the hem of her dress higher up her legs now to compensate, her left knee almost showing, and her eyes were still weighing her footing. After Mireille had inched a bit closer to the base of the hill she took a quick glance up at where Kirika waited and then seeing how near the girl was, held out a hand toward her. Before Kirika could ponder that hand however, all of sudden Mireille's right foot skidded over the wet grass and she pitched dangerously forward, as if on the verge of stumbling ungainly down the slope. Kirika's raw instincts and groomed reflexes took over from her indolent musings and timid protocol relating to the blonde and she simply reacted to the perilous predicament her love was in. Kirika grabbed Mireille's reaching hand in a firm clasp and braced herself, her arm becoming an unyielding support of muscles for her partner to lean against and use to regain equilibrium. Once Mireille's footing had been found again, the woman looked up and rewarded Kirika a sheepish look but grateful smile with it before easing the rest of the way down the hill, holding her partner's hand as escort for every subsequent step. "Sorry...." Kirika said mournfully when Mireille was safely on level ground. She let her hand become flaccid and drop from Mireille's, although she grieved for its departure. That said, she had felt unfit of the privilege. Her head hanged to the ground, and she looked down at her toes and Mireille's more ostentatious ones close by. They looked shiny all wet. "You're not at fault for my questionable grace," Mireille shrugged off while missing some of that spoken grace in her feigned frivolity, her antagonism discernibly subjugated for Kirika's welfare. "Neither of us are dressed for it and you did just fine," she added after a moment of thought. Kirika knew she was just being kind, and the last especially backfired from being a fortifying comfort. It engendered a lament in Kirika that she hadn't better informed Mireille about the terrain ahead. Mireille could have hurt herself, and surely she would have had an easier time of it getting to the clearing if Kirika had had the prudence. Perhaps it wasn't only Kirika's apprehension that impeded her capacity to tend to Mireille's wellbeing. She had a lot to learn. However, Kirika was in the company of the most capable person to teach her. Kirika and Mireille were here now and nothing of their attire or condition could be improved this late. Putting it out of her mind as far as she could, which wasn't so far as to be completely forgotten since it pertained to Mireille, Kirika swung her doleful eyes from her and her love's waterlogged feet to the clearing's round expanse. There were more ghosts of her past here, maybe chiming in their wailing with the winds', but they weren't the same as those in the Yuumura house. The ghosts here belonged to people. They belonged to the dead. The wind had muffled the gunshots, but the grass hadn't been able to hide the bodies. Or what Kirika had done. She wondered what had happened to the three corpses, each with a single slug buried in their chest that had robbed them of breath evermore. Was the clearing an old Kawasaki crime scene, the case of three mysterious murders in suburbia unsolved? Or had Soldats come to collect their dead after the fact and erased all trace of their passing? Did bullet casings mingle amid the lush blades of grass, or had each been meticulously found and removed with the carcasses? Soldats were known to clean up after themselves, and only they were privy to the truth of the aftermath. It was strange to mourn for three Soldats lives--any three lives--when Kirika had taken so many and felt nothing before. However, Kirika felt remorse seed her heart. Yes, they had been the first for her. In self-defence, but killing was killing. Yet.... Kirika's dismal expression sank further into bleakness as her heart suddenly did. The nostalgia lingered still, but it wasn't that or the regret that had strengthened to drag her down. It was because she wasn't mourning the lives. She was mourning the loss of her own, the loss of her ignorance that had been her innocence. Not the lives she had ended in simple seconds, no. If her hands were not jet-black back then, they definitely were now. Along with her heart. <Sinner....> She was right. "Remote enough, or so it would seem for eyes outside," Mireille said, looking around the cordoned off clearing, her voice dashing aside the silken whisper in Kirika's mind like a flimsy cobweb and grounding the girl back in reality, turning her outside of her head as one would fold a jumper inside out. Mireille's hand went inside her flapping coat and out came her gun, then her other hand did the same at the opposite breast and the weapon's silencer was retrieved. She glanced sidelong at Kirika. If the woman sensed Kirika's gloomy mood, she pretended she didn't with that dispassion in her profile. Or maybe Mireille misguidedly alleged Kirika's mood was rooted wholly from her slip on the slope still and didn't want to bring it up again to fester her partner's disconcertion. In any case, Kirika's black heart wasn't something she would ever contemplate revealing to Mireille. Like her silent internal battle, there were some things the girl just couldn't let outside herself. For this one, she wondered if it was shame holding her back. "We're still in the neighbourhood, however," Mireille continued, her attention on her tools now as she screwed the silencer on the Walther P99's barrel's thread. She lifted the gun up near her head when she was ready, and looked at Kirika again. "No point in taking the risk," she said. "Mm..." Kirika droned distractedly. The silencers did affect a firearm's accuracy and range, which was why she and Mireille hardly ever carried out their target practice with the sound suppressers fitted. But for a sharpshooter like Mireille it mattered little unless she was exchanging fire at extreme distances beyond the specified scope of any pistol, and at those extents accuracy already would be grossly hindered by gravity's pull. A silencer had never bothered Kirika's aim either. In some respects she liked it better, the crack of her sin subdued to a soft sullying, death in a whisper. As though it lessened the act's severity somehow, in the quiet. It didn't really, but it was a sinner's fantasy. Kirika fastened her silencer to her Beretta. "There's not much in the way of targets," Mireille said, walking deeper into the clearing while peering about the bamboo some more. She stopped and her arm with her gun swung up smoothly, yet rigid by the end, and she snapped a practically noiseless shot off. An upright branch on the far side of the blonde rocked back violently, suddenly sporting an unnatural round divot where flawless bamboo had been. It swayed back and forth, faster than its mates did, the wind nothing to do with the vigour of its movement. Mireille turned back, smirking with confidence. "But we'll make do." The branch couldn't have been more than a couple of inches wide, if that. Kirika was happy that Mireille decided the spot suitable. Not as happy as she had been in the living room tending to her partner's lacquered nails, though. Kirika had been useful again, but it was now the sort of useful she disliked. Kirika walked to Mireille's flank, raising her pistol. She fired before she had reached the woman, hammering a second bullet nail into the bamboo and digging a deeper divot, sending the branch waving once more. The bamboo shaft above the hollow started to sag askew, splintering from the bottom. These targets couldn't withstand many rounds. Like flesh and blood people. Every bamboo branch became a target, an untold number of people encircling Kirika and Mireille. They shot at will, emptying magazines and maiming branches without mercy or mistake. A little more of the illusion, of normality, slipped away in the hail of muted fire, in the drizzle of ejected casings that silently tumbled to join whatever old 9mm and other calibre shells lay forgotten in the grass, if any. Kirika considered that normality, and its position in her life. She realised that for her, this was more normal than anything else. ****** Dominique walked through the halls of Ishinomori Tower, the chrome-panelled stretches still and quiet in this late evening hour; the night in essence, an hour to be in your bed. An hour for other people to be, not her. Her business attire of the day was still her garb, it now feeling constricting and wrinkled and unclean after the too many hours of wear. The micromanagement of an empire seemed to be an everlasting job. However, it was not paperwork that saw her awake this night. Beyond the broad plexiglass windows that swept by Dominique's left shoulder the lights of Yokohama glittered like gems on black velvet, a scattering of all kinds and shapes and sizes. Every jewel below down to the smallest twinkle belonged to Dominique's enclave and the Ishinomori clan. Paid for in blood and lives, but paid in full. Vengeance had been bought in Yokohama. Be that as it may, it was a single city with millions still owed. As peaceful as the corridors were, they were not empty. Still, yes, but Dominique never found herself alone in any of them for long. With the exactitude in which the appointed guards for tonight's shift stood, forever at attention in their black apparel, the halls may have well been deemed empty. Only those sisters with a background in combat and experience to ripen it pulled this duty; there were not so few true Soldats adherents that every sister, even the more academically inclined and those learned merely in the theories of war, were called in as a garrison, or to take part in the actual fighting for that matter. The chosen women took their task seriously, evident by their vigilant eyes and alert posture, and in the face of the sense of security afforded behind thick walls and sometimes at the lofty heights of dozens of storeys. The sentries' scanning eyes slowed on Dominique no more than a moment before moving on to windows and intersections and doorways. They knew her, of course. Some favoured her with nods or even smiles, which she returned in kind, if perhaps a lesser nod or smaller smile. Dominique belonged to their sisterhood, once an equal among them under Altena, but she had to be their leader now, and in that role slightly apart from them. Above them. People needed leaders and the order they instilled. Especially in times like these. Kaede's apartments were Dominique's destination. Two guards flanking the doors were there to see her arrival, the women's presence and faces familiar, as was hers to them, Dominique surmised. She visited Kaede often enough for every sister assigned to protect the child to be accustomed to her appearance. "She's awake," Violeta said in her sultry Romanian accent once Dominique was within a few paces of the doors, her head, covered in a cap of dark curls, inclining a little toward them. Nicola meanwhile had already dismissed Dominique and resumed her watch of the surrounds. Violeta didn't spend a second longer to do the same. Dominique had known neither before the collapse of Le Grand Retour, but every sister here was bonded all the stronger to one another now, and, she hoped, trusted each other unreservedly with their lives. It had been rumoured that Nicola had been at the Manor during the end, but Dominique wrote it off as a fable. Nicola looked hardy with her very short cropped bleached blonde hair, gaunt features, and wiry frame, but no one who had been on that sacred ground then had survived Noir's unleashing. The orphan and the noble... never before in centuries past had the Black Hands turned their blades on their keepers if the records were true. Why they had in this century, with the iron-willed Altena as their Kind Mother no less, was knowledge no sister possessed. Even the resident rumour mill couldn't fathom a reason for their rampage, or had lent enough weight to one for it to circulate. Dominique didn't knock, however she did slip inside Kaede's quarters with nary a murmur. Kaede had retired for the evening, yet Dominique wasn't expecting her to be asleep. But the night was a time for quiet, and Kaede was seldom without bedroom companionship. Those 'companions' weren't afflicted as she. Few were. The harsh fluorescent lighting of the halls reached inside the moonlit twilight despite Dominique's unobtrusive entry, but the woman quickly and silently shut it outside with the doors, leaving only the meagre yet bright seepage through the crack at the floor. It took a second of staring into the gloom for Dominique's eyes to become attuned to it over the vivid light from earlier and for the painfully recognisable room to take sharper shape. It stung every time Dominique crossed its threshold and dared to lift her head to the reality, the wound dulled with age but still there to hurt. And considering the great number of occasions she did step inside, it was almost masochistic of her. The apartments were another inheritance of Kaede's, lived in by her mother when she was still a part of this world. It was an intimate inheritance, more personal; perhaps the most personal apart from blood itself; and telling of the woman who it had belonged to. The same pastel lounge furniture, peaches and creams, the same abstract paintings and alien sculptures and statues. Kaede had not cared enough to change anything, or maybe it was the hurt in her heart of the same sort as Dominique's that had seen time frozen. She had to have memories of the time spent with her mother here, just as Dominique had of what had been her lover. Romantic days and passionate nights... Hikaru in the golden sunrise, in the pale moonlight.... if there was ever an angel belonging in Heaven, it had been her. Dominique wished she hadn't been called home so soon. Dominique shut her eyes, dismayed at losing her grip over her pain. Time had not dulled it; it was she who had smothered it thus. She didn't know what it was like for Kaede, but for her each memory of Hikaru was a barb to her heart. And each memory took every opportunity to resurface if not pushed down with cold deliberation. Indulge in one, and the rest would flood you. The happy times were gone, as dead as the woman who had made them so. There was just the pain, and that... and *that* Dominique let loose upon Soldats. Each barb to her heart was one to tear free and hurl at her hated foe. This night it was Kaede bathed in the light of the moon, every bit as beautiful as her mother. She stood in front of a bare window where most of the moonlight could fall on her, her white locks shimmering a ghostly hue and her ashen complexion luminescent. If not for the shorter hair she could have been her. For a moment Dominique almost pandered to the ache. How she dreamed she could. For Kaede a bed was seldom used for sleep. A troubled mind and a troubled spirit bred incurable insomnia, something Dominique suffered in mercifully a lesser degree. But Dominique had her share of restless nights wrought with fitful nightmares. She still did. Dominique had suggested sleeping tablets, a resort she herself sometimes yielded to, but Kaede refused to 'defile' her body with drugs, irrespective of how beneficial they were. Odd, maybe, when the child manufactured thousands of them and sold more of all types, the bulk not so beneficial. Although, a brewer of poisons rarely ingested their own concoctions now, didn't they? Bar the sleeping aids, it wasn't as though Dominique snorted cocaine with her coffee. A robe was arranged carelessly around Kaede's toned body, its silvery-grey silk adopting a shadowed sheen against her skin. It gaped open, its tie dangling heedlessly above the carpet, and baring entirely too much for the casual observer. Yes, these were her apartments, but really! The respect Kaede had for her body's insides didn't incorporate its outsides. Dominique had attempted to teach the child a sense of propriety, but Kaede was too much of a cavalier soul for it to stick... or for her to make any sort of decent effort to help it so. Or perhaps her mind was too focused on more important things to worry about proper decorum. Dominique supposed she should be grateful Kaede wasn't completely naked. Yet when merely your arms, back, and some of your legs were concealed, naked might already be an accurate description. Kaede's... pets... didn't have the same ambiguity. They had the cover of naught but their skin, not so much as a stocking on a leg. The hills and valleys of the dishevelled sheets they loafed among hid little, doing more to accentuate their state of undress with the insinuation the messy bed supplied. Evidence enough of what Kaede really used a bed for. Maybe she found salvation in Claire and Fumiko's arms, peace; an escape from her turmoil in the hazy pleasures their bodies could bestow. But like the sleeping pills Dominique prescribed, it was a short-lived oblivion. They both had their methods, neither of which the other approved of. Kaede's choice was not for Dominique. Only one distinct woman could ever share her bed. Only one. Across the room and through the open bedroom door Claire sprawled, awake and staring in the dark. On her stomach, her back arched and body sinuous, she was like a coiled serpent rearing its head, her ringlets a gorgon's wig. Stunning, sensuality in red, she oozed seduction all the way to Dominique. Dominique regarded her evenly. No heady lust raged; no desire was kindled. Claire was simply a woman in the nude; something Dominique saw every morning she dressed and every night she undressed. Fumiko, huddled into a semblance of a ball on the other side of the bed with her bare back to Claire and just as naked, was observed with equal apathy. Only one. Claire's impish face held no warmth or smiles for Dominique, and these days Kaede herself, whom the sister owed it to, didn't see either as often as she should. Like a snake indeed Claire was becoming, shedding her silken skin for an abrasive hide. Dominique should have anticipated it. Of course Claire would come to resent her, and Kaede too even, her duty personified. Being ordered to become a whore would embitter most. Dominique supposed it was for the good that Claire had her anger. As long as she didn't crumble like Fumiko. Anything but that. Besides, Dominique wasn't really whoring Claire out to Kaede. It was more in the vein of matchmaking. For her faults, Claire was a fine sister and woman with the strength of spirit to manage Kaede. And yet... yet, it had pained Dominique to give the order. Even now, irrational jealousy spiked that she tried very hard not to analyse. She was frustrated that Kaede seemed to view Claire as merely a concubine, but she was rather happy as well. Dominique was aware more must form between the two young women; she planned it, needed it... but she did not wish it. Claire turned up her cute nose at Dominique, the older woman imagining the sniff the younger gave, and then gradually settled her head on her forearms and closed her eyes, more a match with a hound in slumber now. Dominique preferred the hound to the serpent. Hounds still had a bite, but they were loyal, and lacked the venom. What Claire must become. "Children should be sleeping..." Dominique said quietly in the tone set by the late hour. Kaede's nakedness wandered into her gaze to taunt it with immodesty as she turned her head, but she didn't think of averting her eyes. It was too common an exhibition, such that she didn't so much as remember her decision to enter without a knock, nor would she rethink it even if she could. The indecency had matured to become as normal as decent was. "I'm far from a child," Kaede replied with unexpected clarity. She was more centred than usual tonight. And in her lucidness she was right. That athletic and well-rounded body was not of a child's. In baring all Kaede had nothing to be ashamed of. There was immodesty, yes, but never obscenity. She was more exquisite than any work of art in the room, nay, the building. Kaede had been sculpted with the same angel who had birthed her in mind. "Yes..." Dominique said, walking over to stand behind her precious charge. "In some respects," she conditionally conceded with a light-hearted smile for the child's faint reflection in the window. She placed a hand on Kaede's shoulder, sleek with the thin silk. The unconscious desire to stroke that hand over the smoothness and down Kaede's arm itched her palm. Dominique squeezed gently to rein the urge in, and then recalled why she was here... after some effort. Dominique had come to check on Kaede. Kaede's trial for drug related charges was tomorrow--today, if time wore on a little further--and the young woman would be leaving the tower to be present. It was meaningless to attend, really. The indictment shouldn't have proceeded beyond a hearing. The whistleblower had been silenced and the foundation of the prosecution's case had been demolished as a consequence. Kaede would be in and out of that courtroom in a matter of minutes, vindicated in the eyes of the law if not in the media's and public's. Suspicions would linger for a time, naturally, but Ishinomori Pharmaceutical's share price would recoup, Dominique predicted with certainty. It wasn't the open and shut case that had Dominique fretting. It would be the first occasion Kaede had been outside in... in longer than Dominique could recollect. There was safety in Ishinomori Tower, but in the streets.... Dominique gripped Kaede's shoulder harder and swallowed the slight lump swelling in her throat as though it were the awful memories gathering. It was probably more for her own benefit that she had sought out Kaede. Kaede's motorcade would have the best defences and an escort of the most capable sisters willing to lay down their lives for her. Moreover, Dominique would be there. She would *ensure* history didn't stray into the present. If the worst happened, it would be different this time. Dominique would do what she should have done those years ago. Dominique blinked in surprise when she felt Kaede's hand atop hers, and was surprised again when tears had to be blinked back. She cursed herself for the thaw in her icy shield and took a deep, and to her disgrace, shuddering breath to help rebuild it. No one could see how profoundly she hurt, but above all Kaede could not see. Dominique must not compound the girl's anguish with the showing of her own. Dominique had to be the ice to her fire. She had to be strong in her own way. "Do you think they are watching?" Dominique knew Kaede meant both her parents, a dishonour she didn't rectify. The day would come when the truth was told, but not before the child was ready to hear it. "I know she is," Dominique whispered, closing her eyes. Watching, and waiting. Dominique prayed her soul was still clean enough for Heaven. Knowing Hikaru, she would drag Dominique up there no matter how dirty it was. The thought helped to settle her. They'd be together again. "Blood and fire... we'll cleanse their sin in blood and fire," Kaede said, nearing a sneer at the end. What hold she had on her mind was slipping, it fracturing again. "Even on high, they will see the flames and hear their screams." Dominique didn't reply to the madness or voice her worries--she had never intended to--but she allowed herself to lean forwards, pressing against Kaede's strong back. She smelt the same... the light scent of the prettiest flowers. She wielded a sword and waged a war, but there was still one angel left on earth. ****** Kirika reclined on the bed; her arms dead at her sides while her eyes were glass reflecting the ceiling that was slowly becoming charted with each night's survey. She looked a vacant shell save for the rise and fall of her chest. But contained within was ample thought and feeling, life aplenty to greatly contradict the dearth outside. Mireille's plans were still fresh in Kirika's mind, the blonde's and those of Yokohama District Court that the woman had unfurled from somewhere. Information provided by that nervous Soldats man, probably. Kirika didn't mull over those background details too much. If Mireille had judged the blueprints worth their inspection and memorisation, then they were. Kirika had committed every room and hallway and stairwell to a pocket of her memory, ready to be pulled out and unfurled within her mind when they were needed. There were other plans of other buildings in that pocket, their lines blurred with age whilst others missed huge chunks of sections, and others still were just a shadowed outline of a perimeter. Nevertheless, they were still there. There could come a day when they were required again, and it would only take one reminder for the hazy rooms to become solid and the corridors to lead to all the right locations. It was not that Kirika actively strived to remember the places she had been. Truly, there were many she wished she could forget together with what bloody events had transpired at each. Despite that longing, she simply couldn't forget them. It could be that it was unconscious on her part, with every memory that was hers grasped onto and never let go, as though they could compensate for the gaps in the jigsaw puzzle that was her past life. Kirika's gun was wedged between the bed's frame and the mattress at head height, secreted and close... and clean and oiled and loaded, primed for the blood-red dawn. It was ready--it was always ready. And Kirika... she was always ready too. The sand had almost run out, the final sun fallen beneath the horizon, and she grieved... but she was prepared for the darkness. Sin was abhorrent... the thought of it, anyway. Once it was upon her, she reacted like a sinner should. Kirika didn't enjoy it, but it would happen. She thought of the dawn further ahead, the one that spelled the last of the dark day. Peace would come again. The whisper in her head rustled like browned leaves about to fall, but she thought harder of the sunrise until it went quiet. Home was through that light. Kirika would have to fight to it, kill for it. She would do what she had to. She would do what she was best at. And then she would abandon the courthouse to her memory, hoping to forget the lives she had traded for her own inner contentment... and how insignificant it had felt when she had taken them. She never would, of course. Guilt over not feeling guilty... did that make her still human some? Or was it the weeping of a demon, plaintive of what she was? The whisper had answers for Kirika, but she couldn't trust it. Would Mireille know? Would an angel understand her plights? The angel chose then to make her entrance into the bedroom; sans wings for her own sins she bore. Mireille was in her pyjamas like Kirika; her baggy nightshirt; set for bed. It was the weapon in her hand that said she was set for more. Mireille slid the clip from the Walther P99, checked it, and then reloaded it. Kirika's gaze sharpened. Mireille was still beautiful standing in the doorway, even armed so. Kirika didn't know if it was the prolonged staring or from emotion that her eyes began to tear. Maybe it was a melange of both, each feeding on the other in a loop of adoration. From head to foot the woman was transcendent, Kirika's better half, the light in her life. Sin had brought Kirika to Mireille; they were joined by it. Somehow, sin had wrought a love unbreakable. How something of that grandeur could grow from shadow and death was unimaginable. Kirika wondered if it had been the same for every Noir before them. However, it felt like nothing in history could ever compare to this union, this passion--this love. Or ever would. Mireille switched off the stand lamp, plunging the room into a twilight that the orangey-yellow glow of a streetlight strained valiantly to dispel. Valiantly, but it was a vain aspiration wrung through the fibres of the closed curtains. Nonetheless, Kirika was appreciative of its attempt. It wasn't the dark of the room she was cagey of; the generic gloom was nothing, harmless, to that which polluted the world, veiled her mind, and was a stain on her soul; but it couldn't hurt to repel it too. Mireille rounded the foot of the bed to her side of it, bringing her gun with her. She bent down to cram the pistol inside the makeshift holster of bed frame and mattress as Kirika had done on the opposite side, and then turned down the sheets and slipped beneath them. Kirika lifted her knees to her chest and rocked backwards, and with her hands she lowered her half of the covers out from under her bottom and then pulled them up over her legs as she straightened the sinewy limbs toward the end of the bed. Snug within the blanket cocoon, Kirika and Mireille lay side by side on their backs in silence, wide-awake and blinking at the morphing shadows on the ceiling inked by the filtered streetlamp illumination and sketched on the whimsy of the wind through tree leaves outside the window. "Let's have tea when we get back home," Mireille announced out of the blue into the darkness. Surprised, Kirika turned her head on her pillow to Mireille, and was greeted by the woman's bright smiling face already turned her way and waiting for her. "Orange Peko," Mireille said through her fond expression. Orange Peko was the first tea Kirika had learned to brew, and to her disappointment was pretty much still the only tea today she could make that was appetising to Mireille's fine standards. Fortunately the flavour seemed to be one of Mireille favourites. Kirika supposed it was her own favourite, too. Kirika returned the smile, although it was small and shy in comparison. She felt the nip of swelling teardrops perched on her eyelids again. It could be that Mireille was just trying to cheer her up with thoughts of the pleasantries that awaited them back in Paris, but Kirika believed she wasn't by herself in her desire for home. Mireille was more than a physical presence of splendour and support; she was with Kirika in every respect and for every step. Home was sanctuary for them *both*, and they were both in the struggle to earn safe passage back to it. Mireille often appeared a pinnacle of leadership, gallant and dependable, unflappable, on top of every problem and situation of life's making. She was a cold assassin and an astute woman, the strategist and the caretaker. Kirika didn't think Mireille ever possessed the same sort of worries that weighed on her heart and mind. Mireille was on another plane entirely, unfettered by such uncertainty and woe. Or so was Kirika's regular impression. She forgot sometimes that Mireille, although more angelic than human, yet had feelings. There were some sentiments that flowed between them despite the boundaries of wisdom and maturity. Love, being the most notable and brilliant of all. Mireille lifted her right arm across her body to Kirika while the other moved above the girl's head; a potential embrace open and inviting, cosy and idyllic and always sought after. Seeing Kirika bat her eyes a couple of times in perplexity, the blonde arched a wry eyebrow. "You'll wind up here anyway," Mireille explained dryly, though mitigated by a smirk that was anything but. "Why bother waiting." She looked away nonchalantly, as if it were nothing, however Kirika could tell her partner's focus was still glued firmly on her. Kirika's chin neared her chest as she dropped her head, feeling chagrin for her little habit. But not so much that it overshadowed the memory of the delight she got from it, snuggled against her beloved Mireille. And to have it completely sanctioned this time! Held against Mireille by the woman's own accepting arms.... Kirika swallowed, but she hesitated no longer in scooting across the bed and eliminating the space between herself and Mireille. Mireille's arms settled around her once she was pressed to the blonde's perfect form. It was Heaven's embrace. Mireille's hand covered Kirika's smaller own where it was just below the woman's gently rising and falling chest. Kirika could feel the body next to her own relax, and she knew Mireille had closed her eyes. Kirika released contentment in a breath, and then allowed her eyelids to droop and then close too. The final grains of peace passing through the hourglass. <'If you want peace, you must prepare for war'.> It rang like a tenet in Kirika's head even though it began as Altena's whispered voice, invoking a resonance of a faraway thought. A thought she couldn't grasp, only see the image of behind a pane of glass. It was shaped like a missing jigsaw piece. No matter whose memory it belonged to or who had said it, there was a grudging truth in it. Kirika slept satisfied and serene in Mireille's arms, but when the dawn of war arose next morning, she was awake to see it.
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