☽ Hᴏᴩᴇ﹠Hᴇᴀʀᴛ ☾ · @seabiirds
9th Jan 2022 from TweetCaster
violence, gore//
She looks serene as she admits what she is. What she doesn't expect is how they react.
Rey freezes as she sees these people's expressions shift. Something genuinely dark and menacing, and hopeless. Untouchable. Anger and fear, among a bundle of other emotions flitter across their face as they step closer, closer. She's small - the size of a ten year old, barely, but she was meant to be a peaceful being, having taken a child's form to seem far less threatening than her true form - so she's backed into the bathroom quickly, out of the kitchen. The woman's hand holds a knife, and Rey's eyes dart to it every few moments. She doesn't like the way she's holding it. Her hands are up at chest level, palms open, facing outward, toward you. "N-now I… I-I know this is a lot of news, all at once, but! Really, be not afraid - haha, that old saying, right? I'm! Here to help, h-humanity, find, h-hope—!" She stumbles, legs tripping over the edge of the bathtub, where she falls in an ungraceful and EXTREMELY vulnerable heap, she's so aware of it so quickly. She shrinks, not wanting to do anything to cause harm, even now, as these two seem to tower over her. Fear, genuine terror, seems to flitter in her own eyes as her wings try to shield her chest.
But that was the biggest mistake possible.
The woman's hand was the first to snap out, followed a half second later by the man's. He had forced Rey's back to them, finding her rigid and fighting but not very strong as he's shoved her against the wall. One hand of his is occupied with holding both of her wrists and pinning them at her mid back, ewually trapping her where she is, while the other has a harsh, nauseating grip around the base of her left wing. The woman, on the other hand, has one hand with knife poised to cut and the other pulling back the other wing.
Rey knows. she knows what's coming. nails dig into feathers and flesh, and she screams herself raw in pain as she saws her way through muscle and tendon and feather and skin. One wing is left dangling by a few flaming nerves and tendons when she switches to the other, and Rey blacks out twice from the agony. More than that, her connection to her angelic realm, her family, her home, her magic. It's severed from her mind and heart, and she knows her blood boils and burns, she can hear and Smell their hands becoming practically mutilated by her blood. But they persist. When those final threads are severed, they let go of her, and for a third time, her world dips briefly into black. Everything is painful to focus on, tears are streaming down her face, though they do lift her up roughly and drag her into the back yard. There's a fire — things are hazy, but there's more humans here, too — and someone takes a fistful of her hair to snap her head up, to force her to watch as they toss her once revered, respected, elegant wings, into the flame.
She still felt their pain. As the flames licked at their feathers, she would scream again, weakly straining an attempt to go AFTER them but she wasn't allowed to budge, the hand in her short, wily hair keeping her in place. Tears fell rapid and heavy as she was forced to watch. These humans wanted to watch Hope burn. Why? Why?
In those flames, she swears she saw seven faces. Seven sins, so to speak, those that were her family's opposites. Despair falls over her like a blanket, and as she begins to lose focus as the smell of burned feathers wreath her. The voices of her family in her mind slip through her fingers, though Luna's voice latches on. She won't stand for this, no, she won't let Rey go so easily.
It feels like a lance pierced her back for a moment, gasping as a sharp burst of energy and magic travelled up her spine. Blue eyes would flicker a blazing red, a silhouette of seven wings wreathing her frame, and Rey lost consciousness once again.
Luna was in control. Helping her big sister as much as she could, bringing these horrid humans to a bloody justice before the connection was severed, before her wings were unsaveable.
When Rey comes to, her head aches. All of her, aches. The fire is out, the humans are gone, though the smell of both burned feathers and blood linger in the air like a horrible miasma. Shakily, she does pull herself to where she had seen her wings tossed. She could feel where their ashes were, pushing back a few still-intact twigs and logs clumsily. A hand slips, gashing her palm, but she doesn't care. She swipes the back of her arm at her face, leaving a sooty smear, but she can't be bothered. Because when her eyes fall upon the soot and bones of what were once hers, both hands rest delicately on the ash. She grits her teeth, angry. Hurting. Mourning, painfully, as her head bows and hideous, violent sobs tear from her chest while her fingers curl into fists.
She so delicately moved the blackened bones aside, and, albeit grotesquely, gathered them in her arms, holding them close to her chest, and laying herself on her side in a Heap among the ash, where she can sob her heart out.
And in the next moment, she snaps awake, fingers curled into tight fists on her sheets, breathing rapid, cheeks stained with tears, and heart pounding in her chest. Her back felt aflame again, and all she could do was turn to lay on her stomach, face buried in her pillow as she weakly choked on her own tears. It still felt so recent, so Fresh. What was thirty years to her Billions?