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chapter ten. first bite
Fallon looked down at her hands, splayed beneath the moonlight. It cast a luminous, almost ghostly pallor to her skin and the lines that interspersed it, running thin like plotted rivers against map parchment. Calluses topped each palm, as they did for her finger tips, skin layered upon skin where the natural defences of the body had taken lessons learned, only to whisper 'never again'. Her right thumb and upper index bore the toughest flesh, where years of fiddling with locks had taken their toll.
That was what her hands were for. Entering places guarded, taking things that weren't hers. Not for whatever macabre magic had spilled forth upon Dalaia's contact.
The ground beneath her was rough and craggy, a tough patch of rock where time had worn the border of a cliff into a steep staircase. Below the valley stretched out, impossibly dark save for the glint of a river and the bushy silhouettes of treetops. A celestial eye shone against a cloudless sky, lending an unwanted kiss of light. Fallon didn't want to see herself, she wanted to disappear, her stomach rumbling from the fires of her shame.
She reached blindly to her side, her hand enclosing on a heavy rock. With what little strength she could muster, Fallon tossed it over the edge of the rocky cliff. It fell away, plunged somewhere unseen. Distantly she heard it break water as she buried her face in her hands. Would she never know a gentle touch as long as this parasite remained? A parasite she had so willingly allowed past the fold of her lids, where now it wriggled in delight, taking revel in her self-abasing thoughts. To not feel the touch of Marth's hand upon her shoulder, nor Dalaia's all encompassing embrace, to fear the proximity of her sole kin was a damned fate.
Fallon hunched her shoulders, her frustration built to boiling point.
"Curse it all!" She yelled to the void. Her voice carried an echo way deep down, bouncing through the valley, circling her throat.
"I hope you don't include me in that. A curse against this face? You'd be signing yourself away to Avernus for lifetimes untold."
Fallon's head jerked upwards. Astarion stood on the rippled rock above, his arms against the slender give of his hips. If she hadn't felt as defeated as she did in that moment, perhaps she would have considered speaking against him. With the look upon his face, stoked in smug satisfaction, she did indeed wish to curse him, as pitiful a thought as it was. Still and sullen, Fallon could only turn away, squeezing her eyes closed as she willed him away.
