"You're a pansy."
She spat (quite literally) the word out as though it were the most repulsive thing in existence, that her assessment was one to be horrendously insulted by. Really, the effort which she was putting behind it was valiant, Aeleus reflected, watching her glare up at him with snide, crooked sneer that suited her smooth, pulchritudinous face about as well as a thunder strike suited a flawless summer day. He peered down at her, a look of slight confusion crossing his stoic features. Her drive seemed to falter under his questioning gaze.
"Useless! Idiot! Moron!" She shouted, her voice clanging, crashing against the far off canyon walls, matted by the verdant green of the open fields around them, but Aeleus swore if there were anyone who happened to be around them, they would most likely think he was assaulting her in some way, when it was really quite the opposite. He crossed his massive arms as his brow knit. He huffed as a disappointed teacher might at a belligerent student.
"Ugh, I give up! It's fucking hopeless." Arlene groaned, sinking to the earth with a petulant whimper of dissent. No, the woman was not one to ever shed tears, but it certainly did not stop her from wailing and whining, Aeleus had learned as his time with her progressed. She was far too strong for her own good, yet emotionally she was nearly stunted by all of these blocks she so skillfully used.
Playing the bitch made it all the easier to be respected in a man's world, he realized slowly. He knelt down beside her, still quite a bit too confused to even dare a response before she launched into her point.
"There's nothing around here. No one to hurt, no buildings to squash, no unsuspecting, puny villagers to crush in your mighty wake." She gestured grandly to the empty fields for miles around them. A cricket chirped unhelpfully in the distance when Aeleus maintained his blank stare. He still wasn't quite following and the young woman before him seemed just on the verge of boiling over. With a groan that came from the tips of her toes all the way to the tips of her antenna styled hair, she finally decided to elaborate.
"You put up with SO MUCH SHIT."
Her voice echoed the phrase back as though to emphasize it between the two of them. There was something of a personal anger in her crystalline eyes that had nothing to do with the bottle of whiskey she had rather hastily consumed just a few hours prior. "You just put up with it, you never say a Goddamn word. Even is always nagging you for your 'beliefs'," She counted off on her finger, recalling how the scientist had been so quick to cut down anything involving an iota of religion, God forbid someone mention 'faith' to the twitchy man, "Ienzo never even considers your opinion if it doesn't align with his own, Lumaria doesn't even listen to you half the time, and trust me, I know that can make a person feel like a load of donkey crap. I just don't get it. I would have blown my fucking brains out by now if I had to put up with this." She muttered a bit sullenly, as though openly admitting to being a coward. "So go ahead, attack me! I'm not scared of you, big guy! I can defend myself!" She finished in a halfhearted taunt.
Aeleus gave her a small, knowing smile and shook his head slowly. She scowled in response and deemed fit to reaffirm. "I'm not." The sheer forcefulness of the statement scared off most of the creatures around them, but that was not the guardian's concern.
"You should be." He replied gently.
"That's bull." She shot back, her voice as sharp as a dagger. It made him doubt he had ever seen her drink Irish booze on that very night. "It's not for my own good, it's for yours! You're being a coward because you're afraid of hurting people, when you know that you're too much in control for that to happen!"
"Am I?" Aeleus had not meant to respond at all. He had meant to bite his tongue, to stay silent until he had an educated answer, one which would not cause himself shame, or cause the woman before him any fear. No, he had not meant for that anger, that frustration to creep into his own deep voice, like the subtle jitter of a prelude to an earthquake.
"Maybe you aren't. Congratulations, you're human!" Arlene agreed. Then she punched him in the face.
It took Aeleus a moment to process that last bit. She punched him in the face. He rubbed his cheek, hardly feeling the blow at all, and glared down at the woman before him as she cringed and sucked on her bruised knuckles, muttering something about, 'punching a brick wall'. She grinned impishly back up at him, face absolutely devoid of fear as she sniggered at his dismay, his confusion. "What was-"
"React already! LET GO! You're not stoic, you're fucking NUMB!" She interrupted, widely gesturing again to her surroundings as though challenging him.
"You don't understand the damage I could inflict." Why was his voice so tight with tension?
"You keep it bottled up and I promise you, you're gonna blow." She admitted with a shrug. The young woman eased herself on to her feet, and with a wide, indulgent swing of her well proportioned hips, she turned herself around. With a small cackle, she raised her slender fingers to the sky and glanced upwards, as though she were welcoming a lover into her arms. With a shrill cry, she clenched her fingers, clawing the air, and in a split second, a tree trunk sized bolt of lightning connected with the earth before her, leaving the air thick with the smell of ozone and the peals of her shrieking laughter. "Oh, yes." She sighed, spinning on her heels, dancing in the smoke of the burning grass below her.
Aeleus' followed her lithe form with his royal blue eyes, watching her wild dance as he reflected how very well her name suited her: the Savage Nymph. He found himself rising to his feet as well and slowly moving to approach her before her impromptu pyre. Her laughter had settled into a series of mad giggles, which slowly died into the shadow of a mad grin on her satiated face.
He thought of Even look of sheer disgust as he had admitted his faith in the Gods of old, of light and dark. He reflected on the sneer of contempt which Ienzo had developed after years of being right, of being coddled and defended. He remembered being a pawn, recalled his pain and how little it had accounted for.
He had not meant to let go. It happened anyway.
Aeleus raised his own hands into the air and massive shafts of rock shot up from the earth, towering over the duo in a hurried and crass interpretation of the mountain ranges before them. The stayed poised above them, waiting in forced suspension and bated breath as their master gathered his own energy. With a strangled groan that broke the silence encapsulating the duo, he brought his hands together, and the earth itself seemed to fold, to knead, shift, shudder, break and when the dust of his work had finally settled, the crater which was left in his wake was staggering.
Arlene pointed at it, as though they weren't already staring pointedly. "...That was awesome."
Aeleus nodded, breathless at the effort, tinglingly alive at the prospect of having done it. Physically exhausted, mentally buzzing.
She punched him (rather playfully this time) in the arm. "I knew you had it in you, big guy. You feeling better?"
A beat of a pause. Somewhere in the crater, gravity had caused a few stray boulders to roll to the bottom like huge marbles. In that small moment, nothing else existed. It was just him, the earth beneath his feet and this feeling of euphoric bliss as his mind was completely and entirely blank. He closed his eyes and felt the world turn.
"Fuck yeah."