[backdated to day 74, late in the day, somewhere on level 2]

[prettygirlsmakegraves]

She doesn't know anything about me.

[the words, uttered with a soft hiss into the dark, aren't meant for anyone's ears but their speaker's for all that she's clearly addressing someone; it's simply a matter of speaking them aloud. she wants to remember she said it. that way maybe some of the tension in her eyes will lessen, the backed-up, cornered feeling will die. she takes a breath. she breathes out. and she walks a little ways back into the dark, just out of sight, ears open. her head tilts to the side, so her good ear faces out.]

[down at her side, her left hand unfurls, a bright flower of imminent violence.]

[she knows she saw someone head in this direction; she didn't see where they went. something keeps knocking into some of these bookcases, moving them around, closing out paths and making new ones. there's no pattern to it; it makes it hard to keep a clear path in her head.]

[... it makes her wonder what could be doing it, too.]

[but she really doesn't want to think about that right now. she wants - she needs to be thinking about a little killing.]

[whoever it was looked like they were wearing Iris.]

Comments

[prettygirlsmakegraves]

[she is not so unalert (or as unafraid as she might pretend to be, later) that the shift in light surrounding them passes by her notice - her mouth is a gory splat of gruesomeness against the paleness of her skin, eyes like predator's pinpricks in the dark - but she can't immediately make out whose silhouette watches them.]

[only that it is a someone, not a something, and that's all that keeps her from immediate flight.]

Who's there?

[hadalittle]

[ the shadows recede as Mary steps out, not approaching but simply revealing herself ]

Hello again. Uhm . . . please don't let me interrupt.

[prettygirlsmakegraves]

[her hair enlivens itself, growing in length, feathery tendrils stretching down to cover Rena's corpse defensively, as Mary steps out of the shadows; once Mary fully reveals herself, though, their movement stops from recognition, but the tense hunch of her shoulders remains.]

Too late. You're already interrupting. Did you ... want something.

[hadalittle]

The leftovers.

[prettygirlsmakegraves]

[doing some thinking in her head. ... obviously she knows she can't actually stop a portrait from taking what it wants ... but she'll take as much as she can, first.]

How much are you going to need.

[hadalittle]

[ shakes her head ]

Uhm, it's. . . clean up work. If you finish. . . I won't need to.

[prettygirlsmakegraves]

You don't want any of it? I can have it all.

[testing, questioning, verbally circling the edges of her logic. her eyebrows narrow, in thought.]

[hadalittle]

The deed is done. . . if you do or don't, it's too late to do anything about the death. So. . . yes. You can.

[prettygirlsmakegraves]

And what ... you like to watch ...?

[hadalittle]

No. The corpses. . . can't be left out.

[prettygirlsmakegraves]

Because they'll attract something terrible?

[she's seen enough signs there's something else in the dark, besides the things everyone else has seen, to draw that much of a conclusion. it may in this case be the wrong conclusion, but with what she knows the connection isn't hard to make.]

[hadalittle]

Mm. . . not quite. But it's better to come back to a whole body than a half. . . or less.

[prettygirlsmakegraves]

So you're saying, you'd prefer if I didn't eat it all. But you're not going to stop me if I did.

[thinking is confusing.]

[hadalittle]

Yes. That's correct.

[prettygirlsmakegraves]

Why not stop me, if you know I could?

[hadalittle]

It doesn't make a difference now. You already made a victim.

[prettygirlsmakegraves]

"Victim". You make it sound so cruel.

[hadalittle]

Mm. . . I could say "corpse."

[prettygirlsmakegraves]

That's truer. She's hardly innocent. She laughed at me when the other Iris ate my stomach, once.

They all did, really.

[hadalittle]

Uhm.

If you aren't eating her, I would like to take her remains, now.

[prettygirlsmakegraves]

[... sighs.]

[reaching down and carefully ripping away an arm, then backing away from the corpse.]

I'd like to get at her heart and lungs before I finish but it's hard to work up an appetite with you staring. By all means. Go ahead.