"Alora~ Have you been listening~?" Esme attempted to sneak a poke onto her cheek through the side of the mask-
"...Please don't."
Alora grabbed the sneaky finger and gently moved it aside, "...And no, sorry. I was thinking."
"About what?"
Straightforwardly asking, Esme pnted her hands behind her back; the movement caused her fluttery golden dress to tuck into her waist, forcing Alora to reluctantly take her eyes off.
"Um... Stuff."
Tilting her head, "Hmmm... Stuff... If you have a circumstance you would rather not disclose, then you may tell me, and I shall oblige."
Alora rexed her stiff shoulders. "...Thank you."
She stuttered for a moment, then finished it off with:
"I don't want to talk about it."
Esme cheerfully said, "And that's fine!"
Pomf~
A hand slipped out from behind her back and onto Alora's head. She stroked it with an attractive smile lingering on her face. "As long as you are okay."
Alora nodded in response while tilting her flushed face to the side, she could not bear to stain this day with another set of lies. But now that she had finally met her again, and most importantly, in a presentable state, the things she had been attempting to ignore were beginning to spark with fmes.
Alora's mind started to pay attention to what had been ignored this whole time.
Her body.
Part of the reason why she wore a mask, part of the reason why she wore the gloves;
Why she hid as much as possible;
Beneath it all;
Pain.
Marks.
Boiling Curses.
Shattered, glued together bones; torn muscles, a shattered vocal cord that she had hastily put together and heaps of blood burnt off with vile Curses.
It was returning to her now that the adrenaline was wearing off.
Tightening her fists, "Esme..." She spoke slowly, so as to not fre up the issues in her throat.
"What is it, dear sister?"
With Esme's hand still on her head, filling the pair with the infinitely warm emotion of familiar and unfamiliar love, palpitating both hearts and inducing what should not be induced:
"I have to go."
Alora decisively cut off the temptations.
Esme overpped her lips, and with a kind smile:
"O, okay."
Her voice slipped for the first time since their meeting. Unusual to her norm, she hesitated to remove her hand. 'I don't want to.'
That selfish thought flickered across her mind.
Normally, she'd state it.
She'd matter-of-factly say that she'd rather not.
But she couldn't.
Not when her dear sister asked her to end the meeting.
'She must have her reasons.'
Thus, she removed it.
She allowed the cold to return to the tips of her fingers.
She stepped back, and with a glimmering smile accenting her wonderful golden eyes, "I shall see you soon, sister-"
Thud-!
But as quickly as the cold came, it left.
The hot press of Alora's body encapsuted her for a split second, a strong, reassuring hug;
"Sorry."
With that apology lingering in the air, Alora turned, and without giving Esme a second chance, she rushed to the terrace door and out of sight. Esme, stunned, and with fluttering warmth echoing in her chest, with every limb burning up with the unfamiliar emotion...
"Bye-bye."
She uttered words she'd never say otherwise, words not befitting her status;
Childish words.
But words she'd always wanted to say.
-----
"Sweetie..."
Iced eyes stared down at it.
"I allowed you to celebrate with her, to reveal it to her on your terms..."
The Mistress habitually tapped her face. "So why didn't you?"
She was waiting for a response, a concrete answer to her important question; for the advent of her perfection should not be hidden from those it benefits.
As.
It would not move its mouth.
Not flinch its body.
Nor correct its position.
It y there.
Still.
Only the occasional crackling noise of bones crunching and skin splitting erupted from the agonised thing.
"Sweetie, you are perfect. Cease the act."
But the thing would not respond—it could not respond.
Instead:
Flowers blossomed.
Thorny flowers covered from head to toe in bck, murky petals; even the stems of the flowers were bck...
And from the depths of these pitch-bck flowers:
Screams.
Curses.
Cries.
Horror.
They sprouted all around the creature, from thin air, from her limbs, from her head, chest, from the bed, the ground, the ceiling:
From light itself.
Encroaching upon all were the unassaible Curses.
The Perfect Cursed Doll.
A minute fraction of its effects was beginning to reveal itself.
Meanwhile, from the depths of the field of flowers:
Upon the face of the creature.
Burning bck liquid trickled down its face, melting the mask as sizzles of steam and acrid odours oozed.
...The creature within sputtered with nigh-unintelligible noise.
But.
Listen closely enough.
Tuck your ears onto her blubbering, burning mouth;
"...72,344,906..."
And the count continued.
-----
The terrace.
Opposing each other were a mother and daughter.
One waved snow-white hair across the canvas of haunting fmes flickering throughout her body; the other quaintly smiled back with mature, chestnut-coloured hair.
"Your wish has been fulfilled, sweetheart." She spoke whilst casually swatting the flying embers aside with her bare fingertips. Blistering fmes fshed from Esme's body while she held back the lightning from igniting the fires into one powerful explosion.
"I know."
Esme's voice crackled with an untamed emotion.
"Then what is the issue, sweetheart?" The Mistress, confused, clicked her fingers to douse the fmes threatening to burn the terrace into pieces.
"You know what the issue is, mother."
Esme's face was twisted.
"I do not. Expin to me, sweetheart."
Lifting her hands, Esme moved them closer to each other in the posture of holding an indivisible sphere between them. Faint crackling sounds of thunder smmed the air around Esme; shockwaves pulsed like raging waves, filling the atmosphere with her uninhibited emotions.
Anger; Rage.
"What did you do to her?"
Esme wasn't sure what had happened to her sister.
There's no way to know for sure unless the person in question told her—but!
The nothingness.
The scent.
The mask.
The gloves.
Her unwillingness to reveal herself.
The hesitance in her voice.
How she turned her eyes away, sweatily balled her fists as though worried:
Esme isn't blind.
She recognised all the warning signs from a mile away. Thus, she had to question the one who told her that Alora was doing fantastically well;
That Alora had no issues.
'Lies.'
CRACKLE!
Lightning and fmes, alongside a third, something:
Colliding, merging, and subsequently reacting into one ear-shattering explosion of destruction.
For meters around her, the burning hot fmes, blue lightning and third something mashed together as they bsted towards the Mistress with full intent to obliterate the being on the other end.
'How dare you.'
Yet.
Click.
With a click of her fingers...
Swoosh!
The breeze swept by the silent terrace, the undamaged terrace:
Gone—Esme's attack was instantly nullified.
"You said she's fine."
Lifting her right arm, Esme swept it across the table with overwhelming Blessings rushing through her veins;
BOOM!
Splinters of wood, dust, and gss shards mixed with food shot across the terrace and over the edge. The bst of wind sent both girls' hair fluttering in the wind, slicing and shredding their dresses alongside it.
"You said she was doing well."
Standing from her chair, the chair promptly fell apart, with singed pieces rattling onto the ground.
With fiery embers shooting from her golden irises, Esme stepped towards the Mistress.
All the while, the Mistress stared back at her in silence.
She remained seated.
Even as Esme stood a mere foot away from her face, she did not flinch.
"Mother."
Esme spat:
"You lied."
...Rage.
Unstoppable anger drowned her rationality; the pain of witnessing the one she had been subconsciously considering most dear to her so fragile, so frail-!
The unfamiliar, burning heat in her chest couldn't allow it; it hurt so much whenever she was reminded of the reality.
...She couldn't show it when she met her.
...That was a joyous moment.
...But now?
Now?
"Mother!"
"Answer me!"
Esme would not back down before the one who had fed her lies and falsities for years, before the one who had tricked her into freely improving, having fun, and making friends-!
'All the while, Alora...'
Pain.
Agonising pain tightened its grip around her chest and neck; it suffocated her.
Yet.
"What is there to say?"
'...What?'
"I lied?"
'But Alora-'
"She approved of it; after all, she accepted the decision. It was her choice."
The Mistress uttered with no fluctuations in her eyes, "Like I said."
Standing up, she walked around Esme's stunned body and towards the exit of the terrace. Stopping right before the boundary separating the two realms, she:
"I never lied."
And left.
Leaving Esme behind with nothing but her thoughts.
-----
In the darkness.
Drowning in bck.
Beneath a dome of condensed Curses.
Bathing in the agonising antithesis of Blessings; Esme's Curses:
"What did you say?"
Alora's ears perked up as she shot her gaze to the side, at the nothing beyond the dome of Curses.
"...What?"
Her twisted face churned with confusion. "That can't be-"
...
But as she heard.
...
As she listened.
...
"You're lying..."
Her confusion fizzled away into dazed acceptance.
"So you say I should go?"
Pausing for a moment, as though listening to a response, "See for myself...?"
Biting her lips, Alora smashed the dome of Curses enveloping her, revealing the faint light oozing in from the night outside her shattered bedroom.
"And why should I listen to you?"
...
"Why should I trust you?"
...
"Hah!"
...
"...Fuck you."
...
"But alright, let's see for ourselves."
"I'll go."
Alora tightened her resolve;
"It's about time I checked out this Domain of Light."
"...About time I saw this hellhole for myself."
"...This crucible of the one of madness itself."
Stretching her obliterated limbs in ill satisfaction, Alora grumbled one final line:
"Let's see what this Domain of yours truly is, personification of madness."
