>> ghosts.

[bite sized kuiper]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━


  ♢ ━ masked runaways
nekoma's lion | 1589 | amara
  pern | 1590 | aneskaia
      ↺
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[pern]

━━━─────━━━━━━━━━━━───────━ ━     ━━━━━━     ━ ━━━───────━━━━━━━━━━━─────━

red wine spills into the crevices of a cobblestone ground, and in the morning that’s the only evidence anyone had ever been there.
white robed investigators point their noses up, say it must have been the work of the verdier family. they don’t know if it’s true;
there’s no proof. there doesn’t have to be, because regardless they’ll get away with passing it as a certainty. they’ll get away with
skewing the public’s eye that one bit more. it’s the mafia, after all, that family, and everyone knows the white robes- the church-
are the good guys. they keep peace with the people and with the gods, and if their methods aren’t always clean- well, not that
anyone will ever know.

in their ranks joins a spry recruit, recently adult and the child of a respected leader. they know the job well, were born into it.
they’re a little too queasy, but they’re talented and eager to please. aneskaia, they’re named, but the urge people to just call
them skaia.

it’s too big a job for someone new to the game, but it’s assigned to skaia nonetheless, and they accept in a heartbeat. proving
their worth so early and to not have to rely on their father’s status was a dream. so when they were given a person, a place, and
a time, they remembered it well.

━━━─────━━━━━━━━━━━───────━ ━     ━━━━━━     ━ ━━━───────━━━━━━━━━━━─────━

[bite sized kuiper]

━━━─────━━━━━━━━━━━───────━ ━     ━━━━━━     ━ ━━━───────━━━━━━━━━━━─────━

it’s the day of a great party, held every year by the verdier family. the crowd is a mixture of mafia and royalty, because the
verdier’s belong to both classes. it’s chaotic, and made more so by the fact everyone wears masks- can’t make out who’s mafia,
who’s royalty, who’s a verdier. either way, everyone’s rich, easily told by the lace gowns and jewels and shined shoes.

the masks, of course, are really the centerpiece of every outfit, and they’re most what skaia looks over the crowd for. they don’t
know the face, but they know they mask, and it makes for a vicious game of hide and seek. they pack a blade against their thigh,
and steady their hand on it when after thirty minutes of sense dulling festivities, they think they see their target:

the daughter of the mafia’s head, amara. said to be cool headed, efficient in her kills, a prodigy in the magic her family practiced-
the list only goes on. what it fails to ever mention, is that she’s also a total babe.

skaia hadn’t followed her, but been lured, and the ensuing battle is evenly matched and passionate. what ultimately comes from it
is not tragedy, but something else, and skaia fails their mission. fails it four times, not because they can’t but because they won’t,
and finally they ask to escape with amara. escape these lives, these families, this kingdom.

so they do. they run.

━━━─────━━━━━━━━━━━───────━ ━     ━━━━━━     ━ ━━━───────━━━━━━━━━━━─────━

[pern]

━━━─────━━━━━━━━━━━───────━ ━     ━━━━━━     ━ ━━━───────━━━━━━━━━━━─────━

it’s funny in the way it isn’t the mafia that chases its fallen member, but the church. amara is cold in demeanor, she’s short with
her words and doesn’t waste energy in her actions. being with skaia though, her guard is lowered, and some days she’ll so much as
gently learn on her partner, not even for support but because she’s showing affection.

“be gentle, alright?” coos skaia into amara’s ear. “we don’t want to kill the man.”

amara dismisses this behavior, and assures that she’s just as good at getting information as she is anything else. it proves very
much true, with no doubt from skaia, and the two bond even in the midst of a grueling scene. they share a drink after the matter,
celebrating good work and a good relationship. amara speaks more words than skaia thinks they’ve ever heard from her. skaia tries
to be flirtatious, but they keep blushing and amara keeps laughing. they end up in a drunken dance, amara still flawless in her
waltz, and skaia as bad as ever. they end the night in each other’s arms.

they wake up each alone. they celebrated so soon, so fatally, and amara hasn’t ever felt this emotion. she was trained not to be
upset, not to cry, but in this moment a lifetime of bottled feelings comes out. she’s made a mistake, and for it it’s her companion
that lies breathless.

the moment is fast. amara’s magic is practiced, even when she’s never spoken this spell. she uses what’s on hand: momentos from
the day they met. the masks that took them three encounters to even take off. she binds her soul to one, skaia’s to the other.

half a life is returned to the world.

━━━─────━━━━━━━━━━━───────━ ━     ━━━━━━     ━ ━━━───────━━━━━━━━━━━─────━

[bite sized kuiper]

━━━─────━━━━━━━━━━━───────━ ━     ━━━━━━     ━ ━━━───────━━━━━━━━━━━─────━

the church thinks skaia is dead, and they’re right to, because they are. technically. black magic is a process, so if it gives them an
incorporeal form instead of returning them to their body, well, that’s to be expected. similarly, because magic works in exchanges,
amara’s blood doesn’t pulse. her body functions but it isn’t science keeping it standing.

both of them live in their masks, and without the items neither of them exist. so they become a masked duo, once shackled by
men and now shackled by gods. they turn to each other for comfort, only for their hands to slip through each other.

they think there’s a solution to their problem, there must be. somewhere there’s a god willing to make a deal, a star to wish upon,
a magical item with just enough power to return their bodies. somewhere, there’s a way, and they spend their days searching for
it. they travel all lands and they become something of an urban legend: two lost wanderers, ghosts, lovers looking for a way to
hold each other just one more time. hopeless, and yet they haunt the valleys still.

it’s somehow a quieter life, now that neither of them are really alive, but they aren’t on the run, and they aren’t slaves to two
sides of a war between equally awful organizations. skaia comments that they miss eating, and amara prepares a meal just so that
they can smell it- she can’t eat it either. it’s not any better, skaia says.

they blow a soft kiss anyway.

━━━─────━━━━━━━━━━━───────━ ━     ━━━━━━     ━ ━━━───────━━━━━━━━━━━─────━

[pern]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━


fern and i did the work in our respective posts!
the idea was co-developed and planned

rose | feather | ↺
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

used 20 words of extra for the main prompt ♢