The sickle. Of course it was the sickle. White science, as she had only observed secondhand, burst through a person (or object, sometimes), something-and-something, all at once. A sickle on the other hand found its inevitably animate target and made the moment of extraction equal if not greater in pain when compared to the original entrance.
She was so sensible. She wasn't sadistic, like other members of her species - and Kanaya's own, the reminder of that hung heavily around her neck, rested directly in front of and with identical stillness to her heart, something she had similarly exposed to the other person in the room with her. She knew how casually her kind took insincerity, and she stopped before such an insult actually occurred. This wasn't even kindness to her, and once again her nerves pulled her towards the thought of what kindness would look like, assuming that wasn't just the incorrigible image of puncture marks on skin.
Kanaya owed her the acknowledgement of acquiescence to her honesty, if nothing else. "I think I understand as much as you intended, at least." How strange that the words did not ring out with her usual purposeful bell-like clarity. Her chitinous windhole felt slightly damp even though she hadn't done any drinking in some diabolical, despicable double-digit number of days. Perhaps the disease had finally spread to her as well. That might explain something even distraction with her current occupation couldn't: The stray pixels around her eyes weren't purely black at this moment, but only a slightly darker shade of jade.
Troll Stephenie Meyer had made a great deal of fuss about how rainbow drinkers were analogous to diamond; it was only pretending that this was actually true that drove Kanaya's determination to continue functioning in such a high lexical register. "I must admit I don't understand how - you're inclined towards etching names into stone instead of scrawling them into sand like virtually all other members of your species. Perhaps lightning strikes on a beach somewhere - and I am willing to accept that as an accident of nature instead of a spell somebody cast, I'm not aboat to start the argument about science versus magic again--" Haruka had been so very deliberate about her description of her gift to not use a single word that could be construed as supernatural in any way. If she was actually some kind of psionic, and this was the sort of treatment they received... all would be explained. The mystery had a doubled quality, when viewed this close up, where the difficult rising and falling of the lungs' work could be observed.
"Anyway, you're scientifically-minded, you know what happens when so much silicon is exposed to great heat, it turns into glass - and maybe for metaphorical purposes a perfect mirror with no earthly peer, and when an unsuspecting innocent is taken with her own reflection and brings a tool into contact with the seemingly smooth surface, it shatters into pieces with sharp edges that can cut the skin and draw blood..."
The metaphor had gotten away from her. In the moment she lost the ability to control the path her ocular globes took in their natural motion, and they meandered across the tantalizing gap, her pale neck, that heart, so weak, had she been told about that trait out loud or read it on the bright screen she had eschewed in her last resort method to bring her closer?
Haruka and her demands weren't all that hard to understand on a surface level. Rational people rarely were. The only questions revolved around why they were so rare, and perhaps the other little flaws with the surface - take the illogical fear of being adopted, which was unlike every other new Transport Ms. Takahashi's first concern... she'd certainly had friends in Tokyo before New York, hadn't she? And in her morbid curiosity Kanaya did have a fairly firm chronological guess - that the last time she'd been on the same soil as those peers she set eyes in the plural on them. Someone who saw her as nothing but (magnetic, maddening) monocular might be welcome in their own way as refreshingly accurate and someone with the formerly fond fully viewed wigglerhood memories would have to be evaded with text messages, while only the presumably rare human being who had actually seen her transformation from one to the other would be worth giving the time of day. And Kanaya could not possibly be one of those people, no matter how hard she tried.
no subject
She was so sensible. She wasn't sadistic, like other members of her species - and Kanaya's own, the reminder of that hung heavily around her neck, rested directly in front of and with identical stillness to her heart, something she had similarly exposed to the other person in the room with her. She knew how casually her kind took insincerity, and she stopped before such an insult actually occurred. This wasn't even kindness to her, and once again her nerves pulled her towards the thought of what kindness would look like, assuming that wasn't just the incorrigible image of puncture marks on skin.
Kanaya owed her the acknowledgement of acquiescence to her honesty, if nothing else. "I think I understand as much as you intended, at least." How strange that the words did not ring out with her usual purposeful bell-like clarity. Her chitinous windhole felt slightly damp even though she hadn't done any drinking in some diabolical, despicable double-digit number of days. Perhaps the disease had finally spread to her as well. That might explain something even distraction with her current occupation couldn't: The stray pixels around her eyes weren't purely black at this moment, but only a slightly darker shade of jade.
Troll Stephenie Meyer had made a great deal of fuss about how rainbow drinkers were analogous to diamond; it was only pretending that this was actually true that drove Kanaya's determination to continue functioning in such a high lexical register. "I must admit I don't understand how - you're inclined towards etching names into stone instead of scrawling them into sand like virtually all other members of your species. Perhaps lightning strikes on a beach somewhere - and I am willing to accept that as an accident of nature instead of a spell somebody cast, I'm not aboat to start the argument about science versus magic again--" Haruka had been so very deliberate about her description of her gift to not use a single word that could be construed as supernatural in any way. If she was actually some kind of psionic, and this was the sort of treatment they received... all would be explained. The mystery had a doubled quality, when viewed this close up, where the difficult rising and falling of the lungs' work could be observed.
"Anyway, you're scientifically-minded, you know what happens when so much silicon is exposed to great heat, it turns into glass - and maybe for metaphorical purposes a perfect mirror with no earthly peer, and when an unsuspecting innocent is taken with her own reflection and brings a tool into contact with the seemingly smooth surface, it shatters into pieces with sharp edges that can cut the skin and draw blood..."
The metaphor had gotten away from her. In the moment she lost the ability to control the path her ocular globes took in their natural motion, and they meandered across the tantalizing gap, her pale neck, that heart, so weak, had she been told about that trait out loud or read it on the bright screen she had eschewed in her last resort method to bring her closer?
Haruka and her demands weren't all that hard to understand on a surface level. Rational people rarely were. The only questions revolved around why they were so rare, and perhaps the other little flaws with the surface - take the illogical fear of being adopted, which was unlike every other new Transport Ms. Takahashi's first concern... she'd certainly had friends in Tokyo before New York, hadn't she? And in her morbid curiosity Kanaya did have a fairly firm chronological guess - that the last time she'd been on the same soil as those peers she set eyes in the plural on them. Someone who saw her as nothing but (magnetic, maddening) monocular might be welcome in their own way as refreshingly accurate and someone with the formerly fond fully viewed wigglerhood memories would have to be evaded with text messages, while only the presumably rare human being who had actually seen her transformation from one to the other would be worth giving the time of day. And Kanaya could not possibly be one of those people, no matter how hard she tried.
"I do think I know what you've told me."