Miria & Hilda: their past

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She's her best friend, in every way. Every possible way. When Miria battles alongside her comrade, there's nothing but synchronized concord; side by side, lean, taut arms rigid as they're holding their swords. Their flowing hair breezes and tangles in the sunlight, together as they feel their backs—warm, solid and once, they spring forward and the Yoma's limbs and guts are strewn all over the decrepit townhomes, crashing into the windows close by, splashing and spitting against the walls and decorating the cobbled streets.

Miria relaxes first, and she hasn't even bothered to use any of her skills—just sword play, teasing the purplish flesh into oblivion—a splatter of internal organs and acidic stench that burns the nostrils. When she fights with Hilda, it's like this suspension of time,--maddeningly slow—prodigious ascension into the infernal nature of their breed. Without cunning, without pretense, and without questions; a simple job that gets done, and there are no victims left to cry this day. She stands beneath the warm sun, and looks across to her friend. Hilda's short straight hair is filled with the glorious guck of the flesh that she stabbed through. She gives her friend a smile, and after a moment they share a kind of tenderness between comrades. Hilda spits, but her eyes sparkle with amusement beneath the glob of purple, pushing the offending pieces away with her pale hands. The remaining fleshy bits fall into the ground with a sploshy noise, and their shoes, which were once shiny, now need to be scrubbed off.

"I think we're done here," Miria tells her, placing her sword behind her back. The sway of the gentle breeze in this warm weather manages to push aside her hair, showing her symbol. It sparkles against the sun—like a warning—like a mirror against the heat.

"Why is it that you never get dirty?" Hilda accuses with a friendly smile, "Look at me, a complete mess! This stuff gets everywhere," she snorts with a flick of her hands on her claymore armour—her skirt looks like a red and purple bruise against the grey-white.

"Do you really want to know?" Miria teases, "Come on, let's report our success and get ourselves some fire in the forest, the sun's going down in a couple hours. We've got a long road ahead of us to the next village."

"More yoma?" Hilda asks, finishing off her task, then proceeds to place her sword away as well. The sound of the blade clinks safely in, and the two walk side by side, their fingers barely touching. Hilda looks almost shyly at Miria, a touch of a smile on her face.

"There's a river up ahead, just east out of this village." Miria offers, barely glancing at the villagers who finally summons their courage to look after the Yoma's defeat. They stare in awe at the two warriors who look barely threatening—delicate looking; yet, there's no doubt of the ferocity of their skills and powers.

Their scruffy partially dirty shoes clink against the cobble stones—the sun's rays are yellow and shining down on their pale heads, warming and promising of better days ahead. Miria is happy. She hopes never—ever to lose Hilda—the sound of her pulse, or what she thinks is a pulse, like a human's heart beating within her breast seems louder in her ears. She looks up at the arch above them as they pass the perimeters of the village. Could it be, she allows herself to breathe, could it be--something significant? And she isn't quite superstitious as she'd like to be. Her smile is lost in thought.

"I could use a bath." Hilda says confidently, reaching out to Miria's hand.

The captain doesn't pull away.

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Miria: The Present.

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She hears him in the other room, while she lies there in the glow of her destructive near awakening—a slow simmering of her blood tries to bubble up within her—a signal that she's healing close to completion. She swallows, staring up at the ceiling which reaches higher like the sky. She hears the steady thudding noise of the winter's snow against the arched roof. It's in the dead of winter, where humans fear to tread outside their protective homes and out into the dark of the forest. There's so much to fear from their world. It's a bad time to be human. Yet, they fear what's worse.

Miria isn't foolish. She too fears she's going to become one of them—an awakened being that completely abandons her humanity. She must not—must not become one—and her memories of Hilda bring her pain—a sharp vicious pain that stabs through her breast. She thought—she had no heart, nothing left when she's in Rigardo's arms. He is, surprisingly kind when he's done with her—but that is to be expected. All that uninhibited energy consuming him like a bonfire and extinguished before it's over.

She hears him, his calculated steps resonate like a low boom into the chamber as he opens and closes the door. He quietly sits by the bed. It's amazing how quiet and soothing his movements are. Deadly. Rigardo the Lion King who could stomp the ground, covering miles and miles of land; and, with just the simple roar of his voice manages to shake the tree tops of clinging snow.

Miria doesn't even bother to wipe away the tear that's been suspended down her cheek, glistening. He reaches over and wipes it away with his thumb, "Still in tears? I thought you'd be a little stronger than that. After all this time?"

She does not tell him it's because of Hilda. She doesn't want to alarm him or tell him such things, but instead grabs hold of his finger with a firm grip—her eyes scan his—and Miria does the most perverse thing she's ever done in his company. His finger is being drawn inside her hot mouth, her tongue plays along the roughened surface of his human skin, probing. He watches her warily –his eyes like pointed steely dark pin-points of inhuman profundity which takes on a kind of feral gleam. It's darkness and brutality he understands, despite his gentle look—despite the kindness in his face, or the civility he has honed to allow others to see him. She thinks, after all this time with Rigardo—she knows and perhaps, understands him better than anyone else. Maybe, much more than Isley does. It is why she slowly sucks his finger like a cruel caress.

He pulls his hand away quickly, as if burned. She manages to sit up, her energy coming back in full force. Her hair is tangled from the previous exercise.

"What's the matter, Rigardo? Afraid?"

"Of what?" He says; the low growl beneath his chest is unmistakable.

They stare at each other for a few more moments—a captain of female breed of claymore and the commander of the armies of the male awakened-- measuring one another. Whilst one is most definitely the stronger- more powerful, she knows that if she uses her intelligence that she's been gifted and cursed with, she could break his ferocious temperament. If indeed that is ever possible. Some beasts, she realizes can never ever be tamed. And she's afraid, this one, in particular would give no quarter in the matter. It's too bad--because once he lowers his guard with her, like Priscilla does with Isley, she would find his weak spot and take his head. But, he's too clever for that. Much much too clever. His downfall, would have to be his arrogance.

Finally, after what seems a perpetual time, he offers her an apple.

"You were hungry, were you not?" the green fruit tumbles onto the bed beside her until it bumps against her hip.

"Why, yes." Miria gives him a pointed look—she wants it to be filled with unambiguous disparagement. She brings the apple to her pale pink lips and bites into the offered apple. It fills her hunger soon as she finishes off the rest.

"You're not going to tie me up again are you?"

"I would rather not." Rigardo tells her as he leans back against the chair, "I think you would try to do something quite foolish, in all honesty. Because, you would rather die than be allied with us."

"Or maybe I do like it here." Miria's eyes takes in his new clothes, the other he was wearing earlier had been discarded. Now, he's wearing a similar pair of pants with the boots and a buttoned up thick long sleeved shirt. She wonders why he bothers. He should go completely naked. But, she wagers—the villagers would not like that one bit. Except, perhaps the females, and the appreciative male or two. Rigardo's human form, though on average tall and lean, is muscular and fit, and there's nothing lack of what he possesses in every way possible. She may be a claymore, but she hasn't forgotten what it's like to be human. She has no question to how his lack of humanity propels him to be who he is.

"I doubt it. The only thing you like is what I do to you." He says this in a low, seductive voice, sounding quite sure of himself. It is—she muses, quite interesting to listen to. He is not normally the seducing type, nor is he anything but the pure example of civility and politeness. Until, he releases his bestial side. Which, to many before her has never lived to tell—at least not within a safe distance. Rigardo was and is a formidable being of colossal yoki energy. She realizes even as she's within his company that he has been keeping his own awakening in check—Miria does not know why, but if he were to have fully unleash his powers into her—she would not, she silently acknowledges, quite long before she met him--survive it.

"Anyone could do the same to me and I would feel exactly how you make me feel." She challenges, her eyes now turning grey like stone.

"I doubt it."

"Your overblown pomposity knows no bounds, Rigardo."

"It appears," he says in a languid manner, looking over at the tattered rope beside her, "that you may need a new set of ropes."

He stands up, looks down at her, and how it must rankle his nature, she thinks. That he's attracted to her in some odd way, or maybe it is just as he had told her—that Isley has indicated that he needs an awakened whore.

The day she turns to a fully awakened being and never go back. That once she's there, there will be a point of no return. She's intelligent enough, to control it. Even as her memory of Hilda plagues her.

"Fine." She says in a whisper, "are you going to leave me here then?" her eyes flutter close. And she feels instead the sharp pain in her wrist as Rigardo pulls her up against him.

"No, you're coming with me." He voice, unexpectedly tempers and lowers, his lips close to her parted mouth.

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