“Sitting alone, having some fun, I spent my time in the barrel of a gun. Twisted metal, a reliant heap, I shoot my load, depressed triggers don’t keep.” Muttering to herself, dark green eyes flickered across the glass window. How curiously it remained there in the thick yellow brick wall, it caused a deep seeded amusement to arise as a dark chuckle. Of course her hands were still bound by the metals of handcuffs, they’d gotten her ankles as well so now the inadvertently caged Pooka found herself snapping at nothing, ignorant of the pecking order these humans followed.

Cops, cops, cops.

They were fun to play with, fun to toy with, never fun to have in control.

She lapsed into a sudden fit of irritation as the remembrance of her capture replayed in her mind.

Could she say she had anywhere else to run?


A teaming sense of tradition steeped in a pool of blood. She stood over the growing wetness with a hard and impenetrable force clutched in little hands. The wavering ideals did little to spread the knowledge beyond a now rapt expression. She focused, or tried to at least, upon the face of the dead and dying. Upon their breath as it was exhaled with damp choking sounds, a guttural combination which sounded like a quiet chorus of musical voices to her.

Here lay the mindless, the unawake. He would not wake now, she knew. Laughter licked at the sides of her mouth, parting it to allow passage and the sound of it echoed within the barren, cavernous walls.

Had the ideals been put to rest?

Could she test this?

A nudge with a foot, a heeled shove. She smiled then and was momentarily caught by a flash of light upon the victims shirt. A silvery thing gleamed, it shone bright enough to catch her in thrall..

Hours.

Hours..

Hours…

Hours went by and still to hear the cry of delight echoing? To know that it had called her and swayed her into it’s heady dance, the ballet of shimmering things. Her gun forgotten, she rested the barrel against the dead man’s chest and reached for the button which had enraptured her so effectively. With a none too gentle tug the Pooka lifted it up to her eye and chuckled then. She noted that the man’s hair wasn’t long enough to support the typical way of attachment so she would have to find something else to sew it on with, wouldn’t she?

Lost again.

A haze.

A shimmering.

Obsessions take their toll.

She woke again with a cheek to a cold heavy chest. An arm in a congealed pool of blood. It bothered her little, the smell, the touch, the coolness of the thickened liquid as it slid down her arm and hit the floor with a tentative splat.

The loss of life was beyond the gain of knowledge for her regent.

But who would know what the weapon knew?


She’d taken his buttons. All of them.

A means of payment for having no hair, the girl told herself, she’d affixed the gifts after taking his eye and eating it. A ritual which had always satisfied her, even though it may not be to the end that her affectionate bird brained ‘cousins’ may. It didn’t yield what she’d wanted it too, but then again, things hardly ever did. A dispatched sense of accomplishment followed when she arrived to the predominated meeting spot. As it did again, the figure belonging to her regent was clouded, his face a mess of blurred features and shining eyes. They swirled for her, slipping and sliding over the contours of skin.. Melding, melting, like a lake of flesh with features floating upon it’s surface. That image, upon a window pain would not be reflected to the prying eyes watching from behind it.

“You did well.” It said. “Very well.”

Aluin would have known that her vision was strong enough, he’d seen it all already. It was part of the equation, a simple design really. Something intended to implicate the houses around them and divert attentions away. Who would suspect such a thing from an unrepresented House? Their kith, perhaps, would be subject to rumors, however the Baron knew that he could persuade members of it to be waylaid, misdirected, foiled. It was the directive, to be completely and utterly hidden from the girl who served their objective. To even allow her the proper sound of his voice, to allow her magic to enfold him?

He would hardly give the glass a scratch big enough to pressure.

So from behind it, he remained.

It had always been this way, since the day he’d named her of his house. A sad and frightened little medicated spirit. So much in the midst of growing into her own very special nature. He had anticipated her growth and aided in her escape from the Facility she’d been residing in for the past few years. Of course he had fingers in those pies, he had fingers in all of them.

Yes a heart should always go one step too far
Come the morning and the day winding like dreams
Come the morning every blue shade of green
Come with me, go places

“Have they been alerted to your trickery?” He asked, more importantly; Aluin waited for the answer.

She’d learned long ago not to use words such as ‘think’ and ‘possible’ in his presence. Her eyes downcast, Raya’s foot rose and she appeared as though she would topple over from the weight of his request. “Couldn’t have. I was quick.” She said, a little fib, how to convey the test of the buttons, the call of them? He wouldn‘t like it.. “They weren’t even awake yet, couldn’t have been watching.” Those tall fiendish perfects. Their eyes were glorious but their minds were a let down. Why the hell would they want to be so damned involved in everything? So much for their squishy ideals. Their warriors would be cut down before they even had the chance to fight.

She remembered Aluin’s hands upon her. She remembered the presence even without the eyes staring down upon her.

“Raya ap Balor, I am pacified by your alacrity.” She had carried out his tasks to the letter, to the perfection of direction. Just as he’d wanted. Just as he’d planned. Watching her from that darkness she existed within, it was a surprise at all that this bird had learned how to fly at all. “You may go now, my feathered friend.”

The Pooka smiled as the glass he’d been occupying shattered and the people behind it were left in a sorry state of deafened confusion. Her chance to escape, she struggled with the cuffs and the chair but managed to find herself a useful pose which allowed her to dig the keys she’d stolen from the officer earlier from her underwear.

They’d been irritating her for over an hour now.

Freed from the cold metal, she left, soaring through the air - knowing that the next best thing was close yet. She would get to destroy this carefully constructed perception with an advancement in favour.

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