Chapter 5
Steamed Ice
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It was slow and inconspicuous when first they came. So very like the faint trickle of water that precedes a flash-flood, the torrential tides gave fair warning months before their assailment started in full and earnest. Indeed, the first of them all were hardly more than mere whispers in the back of her head. With long and flowing tresses atop, the solid stark-white of fresh snow, they meandered and tumbled around inside the head that, until very recently, had housed little more than schemes and vast oceans of knowledge.
The first came as what felt like an arrow of ice, piercing deep into her once-frozen heart, that suddenly and unexpectedly turned into a seething infernal claw, setting that formerly iced organ ablaze. It reminded her that her heart was, in fact, there and did, also in fact, have a purpose aside from merely pumping the icy mixture that was her life's blood. It reminded her that the organ was, once upon a time, a thriving hub for the feelings and thoughts that made her human.
The second, and more recent, came like a typhoon. It blew in clear out of nowhere, tearing up long-held ideals and misconceptions as a storm might uproot trees, leaving her head spinning and her heart pounding like some sick war drum. It tossed her thoughts and thought processes over on their heads, showing her once more that believing yourself knowledgeable and in control was likely one of the biggest mistakes one could make.
The final, and most recent of them all, having only occurred in the last week, came like the barely noticeable whisper of a bomb falling from the sky, its impact indistinguishable from the telltale destruction that would shortly follow that whistle. It came from a simple place, a place that was little more than words shared between scholarly partners. Yet, with the hint of trust and interdependence in the exchange of these words, the effect was made so much more.
A story, of whys and wherefores, that led shortly into an unspoken exchange of pleading and entrusting. A tale of fate's own weave, giving reason and shedding light upon deeper reasons, that gave her cause to open herself, for once in a very long time, to the simplest of things. Those pleading silver eyes, failing in their attempt to hold tears back, along with the trembling voice that relayed the tale, gave her all the reason she needed.
All the reason to open her heart to possibility.
Ђ
And thusly she found herself, sitting across the table from the smiling face of the woman with whom she'd spent her last six days rapt in hard study. Sitting there perusing the local paper as a cup of dark tea sat beneath, its aromatic steam wafting up ever so lazily to tickle her nose, while that grinning face watched her with what looked like unbreakable interest. The silver eyes above the grin, which shone like the surface of a finely polished silverware platter, glimmered with no less than a little hint of satisfaction and amusement. They danced all along her face, almost to the point it could be felt, as the woman to whom they belonged continued to wait.
"Admit it, Weiss…" Ruby said in an impish hue, her grin widening until her eyes began to squint, "You don't know the answer!"
She ignored her, of course, as she continued to play at reading the paper held uninterestedly with her right hand. While she scanned her eyes over the font, for the seventh time upon the same line, her left hand reached carefully for the steaming beverage beneath. One finger reached out and snaked around the delicate handle of the teacup, raising it slowly to her lips with the pinky held out. After a delicate, incredibly garish sip, the cup and hand withdrew to just about the middle of the table, hovering there while her icy eyes continued to scan the same line on the paper.
She nearly dropped the cup when she felt the delicate pinky of her partner reach out and curl about her own, sending fire and lightning through her body.
Weiss slammed the paper down at once, eliciting both a jump and surprised yelp from the woman across from her. The pinky, however, did not let go as the silver-eyed woman nearly leapt from her seat.
"Of course I know it!" Weiss shouted insistently, trying her best to sound sure, "I just need the time to figure it out…"
She turned her gaze down to the paper, now laying in somewhat of a crumpled mess on the table, and attempted to take another sip of her tea. Ruby's pinky, still interlocked with her own, prevented the attempt from accomplishing much more than spilling a few drops on the paper.
"Let go, I say!" Weiss shouted, grabbing the delicate cup with her other hand and yanking her pinky free.
Ruby only giggled in response, seemingly proud of herself for getting the heiress' attention back to the present. The same goofy grin, looking more and more like the Cheshire face of her wristwatch, still decorated Ruby's face as Weiss leaned back in her seat.
"Fine, fine…" she muttered, closing her icy-blues and placing her right hand to her forehead, "Tell it to me once more… And slowly, mind you, so I can make it all out…"
Ruby grinned even wider, as though her face might split, and obliged, "What is always invisible, but never out of sight?" she asked, slowly as bid.
Weiss groaned in exasperation as she began to rub her forehead, stroking the points where a headache had begun to setup shop. She loved riddles as though it were all her heart knew how to love. She had spent many an afternoon, after the day's lessons had been finished to satisfaction, playing them with little old Mister Axter. She had been pleased oh so many times when she would get one right and the little old man's cheeks would puff up with a smile, turning the deep rosy hue of just-ripened apples.
She loved them, and knew more than her own lion's share of them, but, for some gods-only-know reason, this one refused to yield to the immutable light of the heiress' logic. And, judging by the Cheshire grin on her face, Ruby was loving every bit of the fact that she had stumped her partner, and with one of her own strong suits at that.
"Do you give up, yet?" Ruby asked.
Weiss opened one eye, the left that held her signature scar like a proud badge of some titanic battle, and leveled the cold glare she'd spent years perfecting at the woman. Ruby's grin, surely at the apex of its possible width, didn't falter in the slightest. It was truly a scene to behold.
"No…" Weiss replied after a moment's consideration, flatly and cold as her one-eyed stare.
She shut the eye again, leaning her head back further and stroking her temples more vigorously, as she ran the single line through her head over and over.
Eyes were always invisible, to their owner at least, but were never out of sight, lest one was blind. It fit, yes, but only to the degree of half-hearted satisfaction. Air, also, was always invisible to the naked and untrained eye, yet its effects were easily seen and felt. Emotion, yes, that was also invisible but had effects that could be plainly seen when in full force, leaving them never out of sight entirely. Plenty of good answers for the choosing rolled around in her mind like such.
Yet, as the silver-eyed stare suggested, the heiress was bereft of the surety to choose one of her many good answers.
"It must be thoughts." Weiss said at last, gritting her teeth as the words left her lips. She knew immediately, as the last flash of her own thoughts checked it over, that she had answered wrong.
"Nope." Ruby chirped happily, shutting her eyes as her grin grew wider still, eventually giving way to a heartwarming laugh that could melt stone.
The heiress clucked her tongue angrily, losing a tad more of her composure than she might've liked, as she contemplated what this might mean. She had gambled, as was not uncommon for her when she felt she had the advantage, and it was beginning to seem she might lose.
"The answer, then?" she asked querulously, leaning her head forward to look at the silver-eyed vixen.
Ruby's face took on a tad more of a serious look, her grin thinning before receding altogether. Her eyes opened wide at first, then thinned to slits as she locked her gaze to Weiss'. The bubbly woman took on an air as if she were facing her partner at a noonday showdown, readying herself to sling steel and dust in the throes of a heated tete-a-tete duel.
The nearly lunatic grin waiting to be released, held just beneath her serious surface, was only barely hidden as she gave the true answer.
"The answer is…" she began, trailing off as she tried to stifle the giggle that wanted free.
The heiress was now leaning over the table, unconsciously of course, as she held her bated breath with anticipation. Ruby felt as if she might explode with laughter at the sight of it.
"The answer… is the letters I and S!" she finished, quickly as she could, before the laughter won out.
She clutched her stomach and leaned forward with the force of the guffaws issuing from her throat. They were loud and many, yet still they retained the same almost squeaky tone of the woman's voice. This gave them a certain charm that would not allow the heiress' now thoroughly infuriated mind to win out with anger.
The sound struck a chord in her that kept her from doing more than leveling another cold stare at the woman.
"You cheeky…" she muttered, and let it go at that, "Fine, then. You win that one."
Weiss took hold of her tea once more, still steaming as she lifted to her lips, and took a much less cultured sip. It burned her tongue a bit, but this was fine. She welcomed the distraction from her loss.
"I have one more for you, then, Ruby." She said flatly, with just a hint of conniving, as she sat the cup back down.
"I stumped you, though!" Ruby whined in protest, though her gleaming eyes said she was faking, "Doesn't that mean I win?!"
"Not just yet, Missy." The heiress replied coolly, "If you get this one, then you win. If you don't, though, then it's a draw."
"That sounds like a sore-loser adding a rule to me." Ruby moaned, folding her arms, but her stare only begged for the continuation of their little game.
"Think what you will, but that's my deal. If I'm going to agree to your terms, then I expect you to earn my agreement."
Weiss folded her arms across her bosom as well, squishing the bit of bulge beneath her short white jacket, and sat up straight in her seat. Her eyes took on that odd mixture of presaged knowing and murderous conviction that Ruby had begun to admire, and perhaps even fear a tad, over the last week of their studies.
Her voice was as calm as the sea after a terrible storm and as powerful as the presence of thunder above one's very head.
"'Twas in Heaven pronounced, 'twas muttered in hell, and echo caught faintly the sound as it fell." She began, seeming to take on an otherworldly aura as she went, "On the confines of Earth it was permitted to rest, and in the depths of its presence there was confessed.
"What is it?" Weiss offered, her voice almost cruel in its confidence.
Ruby stared blankly at the heiress for a moment, as if she had just said something awfully uncouth or upsetting. Her face lost all semblance of expression as her eyes grew wider than saucers, giving Weiss the sense that she had pulled a victory from her seeming defeat. Underhanded though the victory might have been, insisting on a last-minute rule change, it was still a win all the same.
"The letter H" Ruby said tonelessly, shattering both Weiss' thoughts and hopes of victory.
The heiress' upper lip twitched noticeably at the top-left corner as she considered the fact that her partner had just given the answer, and in only a few moments no less, to one of her favorite and, she assumed, hardest riddles. 'How' was only one of perhaps thousands of questions now running through her head.
"That's… correct…" Weiss muttered weakly as a single strand of her snowy hair drifted across her face.
"Wanna know how I got it so fast?" Ruby offered sweetly, her face once more shining with a grin of satisfaction, now colored further with the obvious want to share her little tale.
Weiss' blank stare, her jaw somewhat slack to boot, gave her all the answer she needed.
"My sister used to read me lots of different books when we were little…" The silver-eyed woman began, drifting into her memories as she went, "One of my favorites was this ratty old book she'd been given by our mother. It was called 'Riddle-de-Dum' and had so many fantastic riddles in it."
Weiss slowly snapped out of her stupefaction, pulling herself together as she pawed the thin trail of drool from the corner of her mouth. She'd heard everything Ruby had said, but the book's name had been the tidbit that brought her to. She then slouched forward, leaning her cheek onto the balled fist of her left hand, and engaged herself in the little yarn being woven before her.
"We read through that book no telling how many times." Ruby went on, now looking dreamy and lost in her thoughts, "Most of the answers were torn out of the back, so we could only guess at a good portion of them, but the one you just asked was one of my favorites. When she first read it to me, neither of us could get the answer. We tried and tried, thinking and thinking some more. Just these two little girls trying to figure out a riddle with a bunch of words they didn't even understand…"
She broke off, her silver eyes coming to rest on the heiress' intently focused form, and giggled. The sound brought an odd wave of gooseflesh to the heiress' arms, which she promptly ignored as best she could.
"We finally started asking all the adults we knew." Ruby continued, "First our uncle, who only took a deep swig from this little metal thing he kept in his coat-pocket before telling us that riddles were 'smart folk's entertainment' and he had better things to think about. Then we tried some of the people in town, like the grocer and the other store owners. They all said about the same thing, just more nicely.
"Finally, convinced we'd never know the answer, we gave up and decided to leave well enough alone. After a few days, our dad came and asked us about it. He said he'd been told, by a friendly old crow, that two little girls were trying figure out a really hard riddle. We told it to him and he told us the answer almost immediately, explaining that it was a wordplay and showing us how it worked."
Ruby ended her little tale with that same wide grin that had decorated her face most of the day. Weiss couldn't help but avert her gaze, not wanting to invite any more of the strange feelings into her that the grin seemed to bring.
"That's quite a tale." She mused, looking out the window beside them into the dreary, rainy mess the day had become.
"I didn't mean to ramble again." Ruby replied abashedly, rubbing the back of her head, "Guess I'm just full of tales and ramblings, huh?"
If she hadn't been looking at the heiress, and so closely to boot, the woman would've sworn her silver eyes were playing tricks on her. It was there and then gone the very next instant, like the blur of a shooting star on the edge of the horizon.
"It's not a bad thing..." Weiss said, or perhaps mused, as she turned her gaze back to the woman with a faint, wan smile coming to life upon her alabaster visage. It was gone in only a moment, something that would have been missed if one merely blinked, but still left an oddly burning sensation in Ruby's chest.
The fourth of the oddities that had thoroughly disturbed and haunted Weiss in these last months, almost solely on the merit of how foreign and unknown they were, was the consuming heat that passed through her own breast at this very moment. As Ruby's face first brightened with a rosy hue, after seeing the unknowable smile that had passed so quickly over the heiress' features, then darkened to a deep scarlet, Weiss found herself almost robbed of breath all at once.
She drank the last of her tea in one gulp, no longer steaming but still hot enough to be uncomfortable, trying to quench the peculiar feeling.
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Another week passed, uneventful and bland as Weiss much preferred, while Ruby took her make-ups during the day and danced during her evenings. They both saw neither hide nor hair of the other during this time, as the heiress had been given the two-week-long reprieve that was gifted to all the other students that passed the initial Winter Battery. Weiss spent her time in self-imposed exile within her room, passing her time with studies and making lesson plans.
Their class had now been shaved to almost half, with a surprisingly large portion of their fellow students having failed the battery and been sent away. Now, at the urging of her sister and, more importantly, Mister Axter, Weiss was pouring herself into putting together ways to help her partner study and maintain her place at the university. She had planned to do so before, of course, for her own self-interests, but only if the woman had managed to pass the first battery on her own.
So the week went. Weiss spent her days either locked up in her room, huddled over her desk as she penned various notes for her own studies or for the lesson plans, or occasionally in the café none too far from their muster-class. She would pop in, grab one of her favorite coffees they proffered, and head straight back to her room. The long walk was worth it for the handcrafted goodness.
When the week had finally come to a close, the wheel of time turning around to the weekend once again, Weiss was once more to be found in her room. She was, as she had been for the last handful of days, huddled over her desk as her pen scratched noisily on a sheet of paper. The white of it was all but gone, now thoroughly covered in ink by her nearly lunatic scribblings, as the heiress poured over her Business Economics book. It was Ruby's weak spot, this she knew well, and had thus consumed most of her attention as it did this day.
All across the desk lay sheets of paper that were likewise covered in scribblings, of various formulae and methods to reteach them. To her left, steaming under the veritable pile of paper that nearly buried it, was a cup of the café's finest dark roast. Its tantalizing scent rose with the steam and filled the air, causing the heiress' mouth to water just a tad every time her delicate nose caught a whiff of it. Just beside the warm polystyrene cup, completely buried in the pile of paper that surrounded it, was a little device that occasionally flashed the current time across its closed face.
It read o-fifteen-hundred hours and was just about to tick over to the next minute when it suddenly came to life, humming and vibrating with startling volume on the hardwood desk. Its tone, ringing shrilly to let its master know a call was coming in, was entirely overpowered by the combination of its vibrating and Weiss' sudden shriek of surprise.
She nearly fell from her seat as she tensed her back, straightening up and tossing her hands up beside her head. The gust of wind caused by her sudden movement, along with the fact that a few pieces had stuck to her arms, sent most of the papers on her desk flying everywhere.
She huffed angrily as she rummaged through the pile that remained, trying to find the offending object. It took only a few moments, giving it time to ring thrice, before Weiss found the scroll. She slid it open and answered quickly, not wanting to let go of yet another of her old habits, without taking even a moment to check the caller's name.
"Almost late to answer, you were, hm?" a familiar voice droned into her ear.
Weiss was all but dumfounded by the voice that greeted her, sending her heart into another fit of racing. Had she all of her faculties about her, the heiress might have mused on how much the organ was being taxed this year. She had once thought it all but sealed up and frozen over, but it now seemed that springtide had made its way to the young Schnee.
Perhaps even flowers might soon bloom.
"Axter…" she muttered faintly in reply, feeling a tad hexed, "Is that you?"
"Indeed, it is." The old man said with a hint of a chuckle in his voice, "And treat you well has the school-year, so far?"
"It has." She found herself agreeing quickly, though, to her mind, the answer felt like a lie. Had she not already suffered one of her worst bouts of humiliation and embarrassment? Had she not ridden the razor's edge of being outed for her secret hobby? Had she not been accosted by this giggly, bubbly woman that seemed as though she would pop the heiress' heart with her very presence alone?
It felt much and more like a lie, but, as Weiss knew all too well, she was nearly incapable of lying to this ever-trusted mentor of hers.
"Hear you met my savior's sister, I have." Axter tittered on, "Tell me, as interesting and friendly, as her sister Sol, is she?"
Weiss thought about it for a moment, having to dissect the old man's backward sentences just to understand him, before giving another answer that felt oddly like the lie she knew it wasn't.
"I have, and she is." She replied almost wearily, finding herself more than a little happy to be talking to the old man, "She's a bit of an irritating pest, but…"
She paused, gripping for the words in her head. Her brains felt like mush, for some reason she couldn't quite understand, and the words seemed unwilling to be found.
"She grows on you, I guess." Weiss offered at last.
"Much like her sister, then, is she." Axter agreed warmly, "Full glad to hear you are getting along, am I, Weiss. That she can make the most of this opportunity, make sure of, please."
"Of course." she answered at once. Then, almost as if an afterthought, "Could I ask something, though?"
"Have it no other way, would I, Weiss. Your question, ask freely."
The heiress stopped, wondering briefly why she even wanted an answer to this particular question. It seemed obvious, after all, what the answer was, even without asking. Still, ask she would and ask she did.
"Why didn't Sol ask for a reward for herself?" Weiss inquired, as though she still believed the little old man knew everything about anything.
He chuckled lightly, reminding her of a squeaky door hinge.
"If break me you do, stop working I will not. If touch me you can, done my work is. If lose me you do, then with a ring on my finger must you soon after find me."
Weiss giggled at this and almost immediately hated herself a tad for the girlish gesture. She was beyond happy that no one was in the room with her to see the scarlet color her face turned.
"Her heart, then?" she said, trying to ignore the little incident.
"So it is." Axter agreed, "Have much caring and love for her sister, Sol does. For herself a better reward there could not be found, I think."
Weiss pondered the statement, wondering if it could actually be true. It seemed foreign to her to believe that people could actually act with such selflessness; Mister Axter notwithstanding…
"Glad you are well, am I, Weiss." He chimed in suddenly, pulling her from the musings, "The best of this, please make. For both of you, hm?"
"What do you mean?" Weiss asked, though she thought she might already know.
"Better for the soul than food for the body, friendship is." Axter said as though he believed Weiss did indeed know, "Do you well I think this will. Be well and hearty until again we talk, hm?"
She smiled at the last comment, musing over how concerned the old man had always been about her.
"Take care of yourself too, Axter." She responded softly.
Goodbyes were not needed between the two, so close was the bond that had formed years earlier. It had indeed been buried under feet of ice in recent times, yet the occurrence of even more recent events seemed to have melted this ice and made way for these things to resurface.
Thus, with a few parting pleasantries, the line disconnected and the heiress shut the scroll. She placed it on her desk once more and returned to her task, first setting about to pick up her scattered papers. They lay strewn all across the floor, and some had even managed to find their way behind the desk, but she made short work of collecting and organizing them.
It was when she sat down at the desk once more, placing the now-neater pile on a clear spot, that Weiss uttered another girlish shriek.
Her eyes just happened to glance at the clock on her nightstand, flashing its display brightly despite the intense lights overhead. O-sixteen-hundred was flashing bright and bold, reminding the heiress that conversations with the wise old tutor had a habit of seeming to speed up time.
"Shit!" she hissed, ignoring the fact that cursing was so very unlike her.
Weiss leapt from her desk at once and bolted to her wardrobe, throwing it open and haphazardly grabbing the first outfit her eyes put together. She then flung the doors shut with a dull whoosh and bolted for her palatial bathroom, which was far larger than necessary for only one person, and nearly ran into the door on her way in. It barely had time to ascend on its automated track as Weiss crossed the threshold, ducking under the last few inches that hadn't cleared and setting immediately to stripping down.
The heiress took the quickest shower of her life thus far, still managing to be uncannily thorough in her cleaning, as she wondered exactly why she felt so pushed to be ready.
Ђ
Once more she found herself walking down the long corridor that led through the dormitory for the more well-to-do students. Her silver eyes leapt all around as they were entranced yet again by the majesty of the appointments of the place, not the least of which being that mesmerizing wallpaper that seemed to dance with mathematical life. The twisting floral pattern, now seen for the umpteenth time, still caught and held her awed stare.
The thinly carpeted floor gave off that same muffled click, resonating from the expert step of the woman's favorite boots as she walked along. Its own pattern of vaguely floral design, finally noticed by the woman that walked along with her eyes lolling to and fro, twirled and twisted under her moving gaze.
She mused, if only for a moment, at how the residents managed to get about without finding themselves miserably nauseated by the designs. They were beautiful, of this there was no doubt, but they were also quite disorienting. These thoughts had little time to process, however, as the woman's wandering mind returned to what was clutched in her hands.
This time it was not the giant stack of books and papers she had brought when first she crossed this mesmerizing hallway. What she now carried, barely over an inch thick, shuffled lightly with each step but gave no threat of tilting or spilling over. There would be no girly shriek this time, she assured herself, brought by a massive stack of learning material scattering across the hall.
What she now held was something she simply could not wait to show off, consuming her attention with the thought of displaying her success so much so that she did not notice when she came upon the door she sought.
"Eep!" Ruby yelped in surprise, tossing her hands to her face and gripping her nose.
The pile of papers she'd held, made up of individual piles stapled together, flew across the hallway in the exact manner she'd been sure they absolutely would not. Her nose, now bleeding between the hands clasped to her face, had told her that she'd reached her destination in a most painful way.
Without looking, so consumed with the wallpaper and carpet-patterns, and furthermore with her anticipation, she had run face-first into the door she was after. Her skull had served valiantly as a doorknocker, leaving a loud, and somewhat hollow, thud in the wake of her impact.
"Just a moment!" came a voice from behind the door, which Ruby did not hear as she collapsed to her knees.
She held her nose, feeling the warm trickle of blood between her fingers, as tears began to well up in her eyes. The only thing running through her head now was the fear and worry that she might have broken it. It would be just her luck, of course, that she would come all this way to show off the fruits of her hard work, only to run her face into something while distracted with those exact thoughts.
Much unlike herself, Ruby muttered a few curses under her breath, marking only the seventh or so time she'd done so in her entire life. The sound of it was, thankfully, entirely drowned out by the faint whoosh of the door rising open.
"Yes…" Weiss answered, peering around dumbly for a moment before her eyes trailed down to see Ruby. It took her a moment more to recognize what she was seeing, which was duly horrifying at first glance.
"Gah! What happened?!" the heiress almost screamed, dropping to sit on her heels for a better look.
Ruby willed her eyes to open a little wider, so she could see through the tears, and tried to give the heiress a grin. It was hidden under the hands wrapped around her nose, which was well and good when one considered that it would have looked more like a pained grimace than a healthy grin, but still managed to puff up her rosy cheeks somewhat.
"I'm fine, Weiss, really." She entreated, trying not to sound as close to crying as she was, "I just got distracted and ran into the door, that's all."
"That's all?!" Weiss yelled in reply, "For the love of… Look how bad you're bleeding!"
Weiss parted Ruby's hands forcefully, pulling them away from the bloody mess beneath with more strength than Ruby had expected, and gasped as soon as they cleared the way.
Her nose was bent sideways, pouring a thin but constant trickle of crimson down her pale upper lip. The contrast of colors might have been poetic were the situation not quite so real and immediate. The heiress spared not a moment of thought for the artistry of the colors, or of the self-inflicted wound for that matter, and leapt to her feet at once.
She disappeared back into her room as Ruby returned her hands to her injured nose, wincing as the pain flared up quite fantastically. She knew if she looked down, which she had absolutely no intention of doing, that she'd see a trail of blood on her dress that led to what was surely becoming a small pool on the floor in front of her.
She groaned with both the nausea of the thought, light though it was, and the pain now throbbing incessantly in the center of her face. It was already beginning to crawl up into her forehead when the heiress returned only a few minutes later, clutching a white box in her hands.
She sat cross legged in front of the injured woman, the black jeans she now wore stretching enticingly against her toned thighs, and opened the box at once to rummage for whatever she thought to use.
"You complete dunce…" she hissed quietly, though her tone held no hint of real ire or condescension.
Ruby forced her silver eyes to open, a thin stream of tears now running from them, and looked at the woman not more than a foot in front of her. Bleary and clouded though her vision was, she could make out, with no small effort, that her partner was dressed quite unusually considering what seemed her normal tastes. The woman now rummaging through what was surely a med-kit was clad in the epitome of casual garb; a far cry from her usually professional appearance even more so than her guise donned for the purpose of attending the Siren's Call.
She wore a low-cut blouse that looked like layered ruffles laid atop each other in a descending pattern of color; first red, then a sort of ochre like dark earthenware, and finally an odd band of dark orange around the top of her stomach. There, just about the navel, the shirt ended abruptly and left a space of perhaps four inches of bare flesh before her pants took up their place.
These were a solid black sort, tight to the skin, made of what looked like denim on first glance. It was clear that they weren't, with the way they stretched to her movement, but the illusion was quite convincing. At the beltline there lay a chain, formed of smaller links hooked into large golden loops at every third. The pants ran the full length of the heiress' shapely legs, ending somewhere inside the tall boots that she wore upon her feet.
These boots were unlike her usual attire in a number of ways, most importantly being that they were also solid black. They reached to the middle of her shin and were laced the entire way, ending on the feet in what looked like the sort of boot a soldier might wear.
Ruby yelped again, louder and more shrilly than before, when she was rudely pulled from her observation by Weiss' unexpectedly strong grasp.
"Hold still." Weiss said commandingly as she peeled the woman's hands from her injured nose once more.
She looked for a moment before turning back to the box and digging around again. This time it was only a moment before she turned back to Ruby, holding two little wooden implements in her hands. She held the one that looked like a square, thick and nicely sanded, out to her injured partner.
"Take this and bite it hard." She said with the same commanding tone, which somehow managed to sound soft at the same time, "This is about to really suck, but you did a number on your nose…"
Ruby gingerly took hold of the offered bit of wood, opening her mouth carefully so as not to disturb her injured nose further. She placed it on her front teeth and closed her mouth just as carefully.
"All the way, Ruby." Weiss said, pointing to the bit in the woman's mouth, "You need to bite on it with your molars, not the front teeth. I don't want you biting your tongue or breaking your teeth."
At those words, the raven-headed woman thought she might just pass out entirely. Willing herself not to, she loosened her teeth's grip and pushed the small block of wood to the back of her mouth as bid. She then clamped down with her molars, harder than she'd meant to, and noticed the faintly delectable flavor of the wood.
As she considered the taste, which was something like chicory mixed with licorice, the heiress moved her other hand into view. It held the other wooden implement, which looked like a little dowel no more than six inches long and thin as a pencil. She started to move toward the woman's injured nose with the instrument extended, stopping when a look of animalistic fear washed into Ruby's silver eyes and the woman instinctively pulled away.
"I'm not going to hurt you any more than I have to, Ruby." Weiss said calmly, letting go of the commanding tone entirely, "This will suck, very badly I'm sure, but your nose has to be set."
Ruby's silvers glossed over with tears again, renewing the flow of the thin streamlets running down her cheeks, but she pulled back no further. Weiss could see, and was unsettlingly moved by the sight, a look of fettered trust on her partner's face. The bit of fear mixed into it sent a shiver of sorrow through her heart.
The heiress leaned forward again, pushing the little dowel into place as gently as she could. Ruby winced and squeaked quietly with the pain, but held firm as Weiss followed her lessons of first aid to the dot. She stopped once the implement was seated in place and locked her icy-blues with her partner's silvers.
"I'm going to count to three then do it, ok?" she said serenely, reminding Ruby of someone that wouldn't quite come fully to mind, "Bite hard when I get to one and take a deep breath."
Weiss took a deep breath herself, then, as a final thought, decided she had one last thing to say.
"I'm sorry..." she whispered, then began, "Three…"
Ruby clenched her hands and cursed her inattentiveness in her mind.
"Two…"
She shivered then, on that single word, and remembered a time when her sister had helped her set a broken finger. It was a silly accident that surely countless other children had had as well, falling the wrong way whilst playing on a playground. She had been brave then…
"One…"
And she would be brave now, or so she thought. She clenched her teeth hard and sucked air into her lungs, readying herself for it.
Without a word, Weiss pinched the woman's nose and pulled hard to the left, pushing slightly against her face as well, with a deathly tight grip on the dowel. There was a dry pop, as the nose settled back into place, along with a sharp bolt of pain clear into the woman's skull.
Her eyes rolled up in their sockets and Ruby fell quite deeply asleep in the very next instant.
α
There were no true dreams, only the deep and comforting sleep of total exhaustion. It wrapped her in its cold and soothing embrace, pulling the raven-headed woman deeper into its grasp. It brought with it colors and sensations, not unlike one might see if ravaged with intoxicants or psychoactives. They crawled across her sleeping view, the semiconscious eye of her unconscious mind, as though a river of base perception and thought.
Purples and crimsons flowered and bloomed, peeling off into indistinguishable shapes as they bled along the river of her dreamscape. These were joined in short fashion by greens and blues and yellows that twirled into whirlpools of the rainbow, bringing with them another sensation. The colors each seemed to have their own olfactory stimulant, calling to mind the aroma of sandalwood and walnut and even hints of alpine.
She stirred, feeling a soft sensation under her body as she moved about. It sent with it the fleeting image of grass stretching verdant and cozy across a massive savannah. The image left quickly but, as she lay in the throes of her slumber, the woman imagined herself to be taking a nap in the sunny vastness of such a place.
She could feel the cool breeze that licked away the bits of sweat brought by the hot sun overhead. She could feel the ticklish teasing of the blades of grass all around, pulled hither and thither by the soft ministrations of that same cool breeze. She could faintly hear the call of cicadas, with their ceaseless humming drone, and the occasional chirp of a songbird here or there. Best of all, she could smell the mixture of heat and verdant, lively grass mixed with the faint aroma of fertile soil beneath the green.
Then, as the deepest chorus of her not-dream swelled to its acme, she could feel something else. It was faint at first, like the tickling of a strong gust of warm wind across the hairy nape of the neck. It grew gradually, pulling more and more of her sleeping mind to it as the sensation began to take an actual form and presence. It took on a sharpness as well, coalescing at a point somewhere on her face.
As it further formed itself, turning from that faint teasing to a pronounced presence, further sensation came along with it. First a heat, like a fever thriving just underneath the skin, then a throbbing, much like one's heartbeat that can be felt everywhere when horribly frightened. These things grew stronger and stronger still, snaking up her face and into it as well, as it became more of a piercing feeling. Just as the sensation fully took form, becoming a stabbing and throbbing pain, one last addition took the woman over the edge and spilled her violently from her not-dream.
The smell of strong coffee and hickory hit her like a ton of bricks, sending a jolt clear through her skull and pulling her from the unseen savannah of her dreamscape.
Ђ
Weiss heard the soft shuffle and the nearly whispered moans coming from the sofa behind her long before the woman occupying it had the chance to wake. She had made many of the same sort of noises and whimpers for the last hour as she lay there, semi-sleeping and most likely dreaming something the heiress thought was not entirely pleasant. Occasionally a light 'choo' would issue from the woman's slumbering lips, sounding like some sort of tiny woodland creature, teasing one of those unnoticed and little-understood grins onto the heiress' face.
She had set about to picking up the woman's dropped papers, which she had resisted looking at for a time, in order to pass the mostly silent time. After this, the heiress had proceeded to set a pot of her favorite coffee to brew, utilizing the machine that had seen much and more use since her time at the university had begun. It still whirred and bubbled away in the background as she sat hunched over her desk.
When Ruby first stirred in a manner that made the heiress believe she might shortly wake, Weiss was busy peering through the papers that had been scattered all across the hallway. A few of them had flecks of blood here and there, from when the silver-eyed woman had tried to speak through her bloodied and broken nose. The heiress barely noticed, however, as she peered through the rather amazing and slightly unsettling contents.
She had come to find out the papers were her partner's test results, from the make-up battery, and her wide-eyed stare only continued to grow as she read through them. It was amazing to quite a large degree, to say the least, as she discovered that her tutoring had not only taken root but had perhaps even begun to flower.
Page after page she flipped past, scanning her icy-blues across each and every little pencil mark. Here and there could still be found the occasional red mark, indicating a wrong answer, but the stark and stunning lack of their previously overwhelming presence was nearly humbling. It was as if someone had flipped a smart-switch beneath the woman's raven tresses.
"Hnn…"
The sound tickled Weiss' ear as she continued to run her disbelieving eyes over what was perhaps the most surprising paper of them all.
As Ruby's silver eyes fluttered slowly open, her broken and reset nose taking in the aroma of her partner's favorite coffee, the heiress had lost her situational awareness entirely. She held in her pallid hands the results of Ruby's Business Economics retest, reading and rereading and reading it some more. She simply could not comprehend how such an amazing amount of progress could have come from only a week's worth of private lessons, most of which were no more than three hours long at the most.
Ruby opened her bleary silvers and looked across the room as though she were quite drunk. The eyes were crossed and seeing double, giving the place the sort of illusory look of a funhouse or some like attraction.
Two coffee tables danced impishly on her left, coming in and out of focus as they swung around each other. The carpet beneath pitched and yawed like the waters of a stormy sea, mulling its ivory hues as though a blender were at work under the surface. She turned her sleep-groggy gaze to her right and saw a figure in a chair, long white something or other hanging across the back of the furnishing. It too twirled and swam in her woozy stare, looking at one moment to be two, then four, then one.
Weiss noticed none of this as she continued to read, now scanning over the comments jotted down by their muster-teacher. They were nothing short of unbelievable.
"Why's ev'rysing sho wavy?" Ruby said, loud and drunkenly, startling Weiss quite harshly.
The snowy-haired woman jolted in her seat but did not toss the contents of her desk as she had earlier. Instead she whirled around to look at her cross-eyed and clearly confused partner, who sat up only halfway on the sofa where the heiress had laid her just over an hour past. The two met gazes for only a moment before Ruby's eyes began to come back into focus, her face washing over with a deep scarlet hue.
"You feeling alright, now?" Weiss asked with no attempt to hide her concern. Unnoticed by her partner, there was also a hint of something very similar to budding respect deep in her tone.
Ruby's eyes straightened up gradually, and fairly quickly now that she realized where she was, as she pulled herself fully to a sitting position. A sudden shoot of pain through her head had the woman throw her right hand against her forehead, gripping it as the pain slowly subsided to a bearable throb.
Weiss stood from her chair and crossed the room, heading past the couch toward her little kitchen nook. Ruby only sat on the couch, her face burning red and her head aching miserably, until the heiress returned shortly after.
"Here." She said, offering a mug of steaming inkiness and something else in her other hand that the woman couldn't quite make out.
Ruby took the offered mug with one shaky hand. Her silver eyes looked as though they might begin to spill tears yet again.
"These too. You look like you need them."
Once more Weiss pushed the hand toward her partner that held something the woman couldn't quite identify. Her vision had mostly come back into focus, but still the two tiny objects wouldn't reveal themselves fully to her sight.
Ruby turned to the table and sat her mug on it. She then turned back and put her hands together, cupping them as she held them under the heiress' offered hand. With a satisfied smile, small and thin, Weiss tilted her hand and dropped two little white ovals into Ruby's cupped palms.
"My father's company has been working on those for a while." She mused, turning to head back for the kitchen nook as she continued, "Not quite sure what side-effects they have yet, but they work amazingly on a migraine."
The heiress returned quickly, now holding her own mug of steaming libation, and took a seat beside her partner on the unoccupied part of the sofa. She took a sip from her mug before placing it on the table, looking as though she might lean back and relax when a sudden look of something forgotten washed over her face.
Weiss quickly leapt up, nearly hopped over to her desk, and grabbed the disheveled stack of papers she had been poring through. She walked back and took her seat once more, turning and offering the stack to her partner.
"Did you come here so early to show me these?" Weiss asked, almost shyly, as Ruby gingerly took the offered stack.
"Uh huh…" she replied as a few locks of her crimson-tipped hair fell across her left eye, hiding the silver jewel from view.
The heiress giggled warmly, immediately wondering why such a sound had left her lips, as she took hold of her mug again and leaned back into the sofa. She took on an entirely uncharacteristic air of relaxation as her partner first set the papers down, exchanging them for her own mug, and then proceeded to take the two little pills.
She washed them down with a mouthful of the steaming libation, ignoring the slight burn it gave her mouth. When the taste of the coffee first registered, a tangy bitterness mulled deliciously with the smoky hickory, it took all she had not to squeal with delight. The burn was entirely forgotten as she savored the delectable flavor, closing her eyes and letting it seep into her very consciousness.
"That's quite an amazing improvement you made, Ruby." The heiress said admiringly.
Ruby's eyes popped open as the words hit her ear. She turned and leveled a dumbstruck stare at the heiress, looking like a doe caught in the headlights of some charging vehicle. Weiss saw this and, once more unlike herself, couldn't stifle the giggle that slipped free.
"I'm sorry…" she said between titters, "I peeked while you were out cold. I couldn't help myself."
"It's alright…" Ruby muttered, averting her shocked stare, "I came early to show you, anyway…"
"I can see why." Weiss stated matter-of-factly, tilting her head to rest against the back of the sofa, "So, did you still want to cash in your winnings tonight?"
Ruby looked at her partner once again, confused for only a moment before it dawned on her. She suddenly remembered why she'd come to see the heiress in the first place this eve, distracted as she was with the ridiculously early arrival of her test results. It also occurred to her, as she recalled such details, why the heiress would be dressed in such an unusually casual manner.
"Think any guys will be interested with my face all bandaged up?" the woman asked shyly, running the first two fingers of her left hand along the slightly rough surface of the bandage now decorating her nose.
"You're plenty cute as it is, Ruby." Weiss replied, wondering what had possibly possessed her to say such, "The bandages are only going to give you a look of clumsiness, making the cute all the more pronounced if anything."
"What about my dress?" she persisted, feeling unusually embarrassed and self-conscious.
"Borrow one of my outfits." The heiress answered quickly, "We're nearly the same size and, in a case like this, I don't suppose I mind lending you one. Besides, you won our little contest fair and square and I don't like to be in debt."
Weiss turned her head, still leaning against the back of the sofa, and locked her gaze with the raven-headed woman's.
"Let's go have some fun before I think better of it." She said with a tone that sounded haughty and elitist, sporting a sly grin that said she liked the idea regardless.
Ю
Ruby shuffled nervously in her seat, feeling entirely uncomfortable in the unimaginably expensive clothes she now wore. The scenery passing her by in a blur, from her vantage point in the train that practically flew through the top of the city, went entirely unnoticed as she continued to stare at her reflection in the window across from her. There were buildings flying by behind the reflection, a blur of countless lights and shining glass edifices, but she didn't see them. She saw only the garb that she knew, absolutely knew, she would never be able to afford for herself.
It was much like her own dress in make and style, composed of material outrageously more expensive and colored inversely to her own. It felt like silk against her skin, soft and supple and lacy as well. It breathed like the finely woven garments of Vacuo, where protection from the desert sun required airy garb.
She sported a coat of alabaster-white that buttoned up, though she had left it open, reaching only down to the top of her stomach. The tail flowed long behind her, giving it a look almost like a cape in back. Under this she wore an underdress of equally stark-white coloration with a petticoat reaching down to her mid-shin, this striped with five thin bands of black. Above this, and mostly covering the underdress, was a rigid bodice of mostly jet-black with deep scarlet floral patterns, which laced up in the back beneath the long-tailed coat.
"Stop being so nervous." Weiss said serenely, "It's not like you."
Ruby came out of her thoughts at that, turning her gaze from the reflection in the window. She looked to her partner, who sat staring tranquilly through the same window, and felt herself calm down noticeably. She had suggested the idea in the first place, even used her winning of their little competition as a leverage to make it happen, and therefore wondered why she felt so odd and nervous over it.
She looked back to the window, noting her reflection once more as she ignored the passing scenery. The swelling on her face was all but gone, likely thanks to whatever the medicine was that the heiress had given her. Still, the bandages over her nose, looking like half of a dust-mask wrapped in white tape, gave her some small pause and nervous consideration.
She was sure, however, that this was not the only source; likely not even most of the source.
"Want to play some more while we wait?" Ruby offered with a shaky voice.
Weiss looked from the window to the door at the end of the train car, focusing on the square display at the top of it. It displayed the train's route-map as a thin green line that snaked from destination to destination, these indicated as blinking blue dots. Along the line ran a red dot, this one solid rather than blinking, that had a timer displayed directly above it.
According to the display, they were still fifteen minutes out.
"Sure… Why not?" she replied, accepting, "Want to go first?"
"Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, cannot be seen, cannot be felt." Ruby began in answer, "It lies behind the stars and beneath the hills, ending life and killing laughter."
The heiress turned her gaze back out the window, watching the passing scenery. The train was now descending back into the midst of the many tall buildings all around them, weaving through like a needle on its track of steel thread. She watched the shadows dance around between the dark spots where neither the light of the buildings nor that of the many streetlamps reached, finding her answer with little effort.
"Darkness." She said absently, her lips curling slyly.
"Thankee, sai Weiss, you speak true." Ruby responded with a giggle. The heiress shot her a quizzical look in response, a tad shocked by the phrase she'd never before heard in her life.
"Another book." The raven-headed woman answered without having to be asked, "I read these myself about five years ago, at my sister's advisement."
"Oh?" Weiss hummed, more than a tad interested.
"Yeah, they were really good. All seven of them. So, got one for me?"
"A riddle, a riddle, as I suppose." The heiress began, "A hundred eyes but never a nose."
Ruby's face lost all of its nervous appearance, replaced quickly with a very typical grin as she engrossed herself in their little game. Weiss watched and was more than a little pleased, finding that same heat coursing through her heart warmly and kindly. She noticed it but paid it as little heed as she could.
"A sieve!" she chirped, smiling a wide and toothy smile.
Weiss couldn't help but smile in return.
"Correct." She said, "Your turn."
The face beneath those raven tresses, now returned to its usual brightness and jovial nature, scrunched up in a rather comical display of deep thought. After a few minutes of this, the woman pointed straight in the air in a cliché display of having an idea.
"Brothers and sisters have I none, but that man's father is my father's son. Who is that man?" she said with a foxlike grin.
"Well, supposing the riddler is a man…" Weiss began, now thoroughly enjoying herself as well, "The answer would be: 'If that man's father is my father's son, then I am that man's father and he is my son.'"
As she gave her answer, the heiress saw something that caught her entirely off guard. Ruby gave what was likely her brightest smile yet, looking like a small child that has just witnessed their older sibling in some titanic triumph, and proceeded to clap vigorously as she proclaimed the heiress to be correct.
Weiss couldn't hold it in. She leaned forward, hands clapped around her stomach, and let loose a raucous bout of belly-laughter. Tears welled in her eyes as she laughter hearty and truly for the first time in gods-knew how long. Her face grew redder and redder as she went, joined none too long after by her partner as the two filled the train car with the sound of friendly laughter.
"Wow, Ruby…" Weiss spoke between hitched chuckles, "Just wow…"
As their laughter subsided, leaving a warm ache in both women's stomachs, the train began to slow down as it pulled into its destination. The dust-powered engines hummed loud from the bulkhead, spinning faster as they fed power to the magnetic brakes beneath the cars. The train pitched just enough to be felt, lightly pushing its passengers forward as it slowed enough to dock.
The soft hum subsided and the massive machine pulled into its hub inside of yet another massive building. This one stretched an easy thirty stories above the hub, which itself sat almost twenty stories up. There was a soft hiss, audible from within the car, as the pressurized compartment released and readied for disembarking.
"Sounds like we're here." Weiss said, wiping the last tears of laughter from her eyes.
Her face positively glowed, as Ruby noticed when the heiress spoke, even though the smile had mostly faded from her lips.
The women stood and stepped to the automated ticket-reader, holding their little golden slips out as they passed through the doors. They stepped onto the concrete platform of their destination, the Oracle's Presage nightclub, as the train's automated conductor bid them a fond, if heavily accented, farewell.
"Y'all have a fun time now, y'hear?!" it called out in a thick drawl, "Y'come back real soon too, aye!"
The two walked across the platform, their footwear clacking nearly in sync, as they made their way toward the lobby. It was much like the Olympus Heights, the heiress noted, as they approached the intentionally-aged ironwood doors of the nightclub.
They were nearly as tall as the hotel's, stretching some eighteen meters in height at least. Their form was notably imposing in the dimly lit atmosphere of the club's entryway. Heavy bands of some incredibly tough metal crossed the wooden surface, bolted with massive rivets. All along the exposed surface there were myriad posters of various shapes and sizes, detailing a number of events and occurrences to be found within.
"I really hope it's more inviting inside than it looks…" Ruby muttered nervously, still sporting a rather excited, if slightly weaker, grin.
They passed the turnstiles and were nearly to the massive ironwood doors when it happened. Neither woman would forget the night for the rest of their lives for the very reason of what occurred just outside those imposing doors.
Ruby's scroll came to life in one of the funny-shaped coat's pockets, vibrating as it declared that a call was coming in. She stopped, the heiress halting at almost the same moment, and began to dig through the five pockets on her right side, trying to find which one she'd stuffed the device in. When she finally found it, she thumbed it open and placed the device to her ear, not bothering for a moment to check who was calling.
Weiss noted, somewhat admiringly, just how carefree her partner could be. She thought on this for only a moment, however, as she was dragged from the musing by the gradually darkening expression of the woman's face.
"Hello?" Ruby had answered cheerily.
The heiress couldn't make out what was said over the din of the small crowd passing by them, leaving her to only guess at the rest of the conversation.
"Yes, this is Ruby Rose." The woman went on, "Uh huh… Yeah, that Ruby Rose. What about my sister?"
There was silence from the woman for a few moments, perhaps as much as a minute, as whoever was on the other line continued to speak. Weiss' concern began to mount as the expression on her partner's face changed; first from happy and carefree to a look of studious concentration, then further devolving into a look of stunned disbelief before melting into a sheer gawk of something like terror.
"No…" Ruby muttered as the voice on the other line went on, unheard to the now deeply concerned heiress.
Ruby fell silent again, for another few moments, as the din shuffling past the two continued to drown her caller out from the heiress' ear.
"That's not possible…" she muttered again, weaker and now sounding as though she were straining against a terribly sore throat.
"You're lying!" she shouted suddenly, giving Weiss a terrible start with the astonishing volume and high pitch, "You're full of shit!"
This time, Weiss could actually make out the tiniest bit of what the other party was saying. The silence that had descended over the lobby, after the woman's outburst, was enough to allow her to make out the last bit before Ruby lost it entirely.
"I wish it were a lie, Miss Rose…" the caller said morosely.
Ruby collapsed to her knees, her eyes wide and animal-like with the flurry of emotions now running through her. She dropped the scroll from her limp and listless hand as she fell. The device landed on its end and slid shut, ending the call as its owner hunched over. Her eyes welled up quickly with tears that wasted no time in breaking through, spilling in thick streams of heat down her reddening cheeks.
As Weiss closed in, not knowing what she intended to do, Ruby jerked her head back violently and screamed louder than she ever had in her life at the ceiling above. It sounded as though she were dying.