Sylphe
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The old hand of hers grasped the glass of a Reflection Flask on instinct. It had always been a valid strategy, to blind and evade, to let ingenuity take hold where her fighting prowess could not.
But something occurred to her then, as Taria tossed her pristine mask aside, as the witch saw the colourless eyes not grasp anything in front of them.
How do you blind a blind person?
They weren’t lifeless, that she knew. A tear streamed down the Fox’s cheek, so small and yet glittering under the harsh sunlight of the arena. She, of all people, would notice that.
She wondered if the light reflected by that tear would contain something of that emotion, something of Taria.
Basking there in the light she could not even see.
Mia let her hardened and mischievous expression falter for just a breath. A smile, a memory, soft and warm, and without a place in this arena. It wasn’t the first time she had seen Taria without a mask like this.
Often, she wondered if cinematic lookouts above important places existed just because of coincidence, or if something higher had willed them there, out of the desire for stories and a flair for dramatic.
This cliffside she found had been one of those, jagged rocks peeking out of a green hill and peering over Bren. The air here was sweet without even having a real taste, and chilly.
Perhaps, she also wondered, she’d lived by the sea for so long anything that didn’t have the taste of salt was sweet.
“Taria, dear, over here!”
The witch waved from her spot. Not that her new companion could see any of it, as she shamefully remembered about a half second later. It was a force of habit, she thought. She tended to wave when excited.
Guess that also just happens to anyone living by the waves for long enough.
She had prepared a nice dinner for them both, from the supplies the nearby woods had provided. Now of course, being this beloved by travellers, there weren't all that many berries around the woods, much less anything else. But you don’t get to be a witch just by waving a wand and incantations.
A certain oneness with nature is required, and even though her lands were the dunes and the seas, she found she understood the forest much more than the barren desert they had travelled before.
Mia grinned as her friend sat on the soft stone weighted blanket. The sun was close to setting, dripping orange and yellow on the roofs of Bren. Mia could not help but look, the heart full of the last goodbyes the sun was giving.
She missed how awkward her new friend must have felt, her fingers brushing on the fabric, shuffling around.
“Yeah, it’s… a lovely view,”
The Fox had said there, and Mia would have cursed herself for her inconsideration if she wasn’t mesmerized by the sight.
She got an idea.
“Maybe not a view,” She commented, reaching out towards her bag, not breaking eye contact with the sunbaked rooftops. She then started rummaging in her bag, and couldn’t help but nudge a little bowl closer towards Taria. “Don’t be shy, take all you want, you’ve got a big day in front of you, we both do.”
“Well, as I was saying, maybe not a view, but something you could enjoy regardless,” Mia continued as she victoriously held an ornate flask up. Decorated with little shards of glass and metal on the bottom, almost as if the bottom of the flask was its own sun. “Not being able to see does not exempt you from my light, miss.”
There was a certain smugness in Mia’s voice and then her face as she placed the flask on their soft footing, and stood up.
“Would you mind holding this for me, Taria? I have a nice surprise for you.”
"Oh, of course! You don't need to do anything for me, though."
It took Taria a second to grab the bottle and move over to Mia, who watched on with a smile.
“I know I don’t,” There was a slight undertone in Mia’s voice. One that, even if very much a joking one, hid just a tinge of seriousness. A witch’s favor was rare. “But that only makes it all the more nicer, doesn’t it?”
She then turned towards the sun and held out her hand.
She closed her eyes, feeling the light’s warmth. Asking without sound, inviting without a voice.
And a smile played on her lips when her hands filled with the same heat she felt from the houses, from the air around them, from the evening. She didn’t even need to look to see, to know it was wild and yet calm and gentle, like the sun’s last regards.
Thank you, she mouthed at the sky, and with a fluid motion, directed the flowing light into the flask Taria was holding.
“Don’t let go, now! It won’t burn, I promise!”
Mia finally opened her eyes when the light was off her hands. She shook her hands to dry them, and the droplets of light flew off her like tiny firefly lights. Mia knelt, and put a lid on the bottle.
“May I?” She asked the Fox after a while, seeing her react to the warmth she must have felt from under her hands.
The words that left her mouth were not a language she spoke in before, but there was a certain joy audible. Especially when Mia mixed the contents of the flask with elderberries and a drink she had prepared before, which was most likely also made out of berries. berries of the red and orange, fiery kind.
She gave the flask a good shake, and saw how the orange, red and yellow blended into one another, before leaving colourful layers of light. The red dancing on the edges of the clouds, the fiery orange reflected off the silver roofs and the yellow and gold of the setting sun.
She gave it one good once over before offering the potion for Taria to drink.
“It’ll be a little spicy, but it won’t sear. Sunsets never do.” The witch finally sat down.
That was when she saw the fox child remove her mask to drink. It should have been obvious to her, after all, how would she drink with her mask still on? But even then, Mia could not help but find something special about her companion trusting her that much.
Even in those gray eyes, Mia could see the feelings her potion had brought. The pride she felt from a work well done was not all that she did, but it was all she expected.
There was something else there. A certain heavy weight of sadness that was not her own.
How long has it been since the fox had seen a sunset?
The Fox moved fast, and Helia could only parry the strike against her waist, the clash a sound not too different from glass hitting an icy surface. Helia’s blade drifted somewhere between the state of ice and water, solid and yet not, but sharp all the same.
And then Mia cried in pain as the Fox’s fang struck her, cutting clean through her coat and its fabric almost like a predator through a thick hide.
A thin streak of blood fell on the sands.
The chime of glass on ice, and the dull, pulsing freeze of R’Thazz’s strike ignited in white hot pain as the end of Taria’s strike had landed on the stray shard of ice stuck in the elder’s chest.
Mia recoiled, panting. There was something wild in the hoarse sound. It was not the ragged breaths of a deer with nowhere to go. It was the vicious breaths of an old fox that looked for openings to turn this fight, one that had come too far to back down.
How do you blind a blind person?
This one, with memories.
And Mia never said her dancing was not dirty.
"Not being able to see does not exempt you from my light, miss."
Mia threw her Reflection flask on the ground before her. The sand rang with a sharp sound of shattering glass followed by a sear of heat and salt.
The other parts, the heat and the salty tang were known to her, but would they be to the fox?
Distraction was what she hoped for.
Mia squinted to shield her eyes, the brightness too strong for her even through her thick glasses, and lunged for Taria, running through the cloud of reflecting lights that had just started to disperse. A strike with a dark blade to cut through the brightness, aimed at the Fox’s collarbone. And with the other hand, a glass ball flung from point blank, filled with blackness, stars and another strong smell of licorice.
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