October: Cracking the Bone

[mnemosyne]

Erich urges; all bright hard angles, all stolid strength-of-purpose. Charlotte is just mute, stares at him open-eyed and stiff. The girl swallows hard and -

surrenders the bone. To the Fool, shuffles out of the center of the gathering with her arms crossed tightly over her stomach and her brow stormy, tense.

She does not and cannot look at Erich. Hardly listens to the fool's questions or Javed's responses. Does not have a human mind for such human questions and the bulk and depth of these ideas just floats above her, unmoored and insubstantial. Mid-way through Javed's response, though, her attention snaps back to the metis. Hard-eyed, glinting -

disgusted.

--

Swallows it swallows it swallows it swallows it.

--

And then, once again, Charlotte grabs the bone.

"How did - " she takes in a deep breath, her brow furrowed, her features intense, though the tension of that expression is turned mostly inward. Bands of tendon stand out tautly in her neck, her shoulders are firmly back, the scapulae these sharp, vestigal little wings planed against the cotton tee she wears.

"I know what happened." Charlotte restarts a moment later. She is standing straighter, now, the weight of the bone in her left hand, not her right. She is turning in a circle and does not look much higher than the level of anyone's knees. Certainly not the elders. And yet - " - what happened. Why they stand here for judgment.

"I don't know how.

"How it happened. How they failed to detect what the enemy did.

"Or even, how - how The Beloved Horror did what they did. Took over the Guardians. Cor - corrupted them, or their totem, or -

"I mean, does any one? I think that matters.

"I think that matters, too."