moondust.
.
.
The first takeover is the worst.
It's fearsome, a deadly change happening from outside in. First she feels the scales make a trellis up her arms, her belly, then her legs still coltish from youth now a menacing sight with cracks as if the ground opened up by the fires of hell and a bold pink saturates her skin like disease. Her hair stands on a gravity-defying height, a silver crown for the mother of demons. Her lips coat in dark berry and when her tongue flicks out to taste, there is the flavor of poison in her mouth, nearly indiscernible from the rust of dried blood but with a chemical tang just like lipstick smeared with a heavy hand. It's a little sweet, too; cloying her senses in a not totally unpleasant way. She wonders if she'll ever get used to it and if she'll ever stop fearing if the next lips that touch hers will turn blue, black, dead.
Then the changes start corrupting her insides as well. Childish bones stretch to something suited to a demon conqueror so they feel like limbs that have been broken again and again: tender at first, then undeniably stronger and thicker with newly knit bone fibre and a surge of calcium. The pain makes her gasp and double over, bile rising to her throat where a scream dies and a sob begins. If she is any semblance of coherent, she will see how her siblings cower from the far end of the field, hiding behind the gloom of trees like spectators across the cage bars watching a circus freak snarl at its handler. In front of her, Makarov stands. He is small and she can smell the frightened sweat his body emanates (how delicious, the thick fear that's all for her, and how easy it will be to strike out and make ribbons of his flesh) but he tries not to show the disgust, the terror on his face. Mirajane would have appreciated it if her organs weren't rolling in her belly.
When she screams again, Lisanna screams with her. Maybe it's because she sees her big sister hurt, maybe it's because of the freakish wings that start to sprout out of Mira's shoulder blades followed by horns of the same pattern growing from her temples. It's nothing a child should see. Through the pain, Mirajane is glad that Elfman is there to hold their youngest sister. He's probably terrified, too, but he won't cry. He has decided men don't do that.
"Take care in molding your magic, Mirajane." Makarov's voice snaps her back to the present. To the horror mutating her body right now. "Do not let it consume you. The soul beholds its master. Push it back until it knows it serves you."
She wants to respond. That she is just a girl and she had no business wearing the skin of a demon and commanding its power through her veins. She manages just a harsh rasp.
"Think of who you will harm if you lose control." Master probably doesn't mean to put Lisanna and Elfman in her line of sight as if they are bait, but she spies them with twice as sharp eyes and they look ready to run away. From her. From the only person they can trust to protect them.
Mirajane moans through a mouth filled with the taste of death. "It feels like I'm being torn apart. I can't do this,"
"Try," Makarov urges. "You don't have a choice." Meaning: he will kill you where you stand if you can't tame the monster in your bones. He won't let you taste bloodshed. You should be thankful you won't see your siblings a smear of red across these grasslands.
Magic leaks from her chest, spreading through her neck, her limbs, her fingers. The violent out pour of it makes her dizzy but she pushes until she feels the fire cooling in her veins, until she's just Mira again and not the devil vessel with dark lips and poisoned talons. Until her back eats the wings that hang off her shoulders, until her bones shrink and her scales give way to skin. Until she falls onto the grass and the most she can do is force air back into her lungs.
Too soon she feels small hands on her. It takes a lot to not recoil from her siblings' touch. She doesn't want to frighten them anymore than they already are. She lets Lisanna pull her head onto her small lap and when Mirajane inhales, the clean smell of aloe and spring water chases the leftover acridity in her sinuses. Her fingers find Elfman's hair when the boy presses his face onto his big sister's belly, trying to hide tears and whines. He's still a boy, Mirajane thinks, and already he is plagued by the duty to keep his family safe. Perhaps from each other.
Mira doesn't know how long they spend on that clearing just holding each other in the aftermath of hellfire but when her breathing calms down and her eyes stop stinging, there are pretty stars overhead that she counts with the remnants of her world curled up against her aching body.