The Girl Who Loved Fairies, Part 2

"This has no point, Rera."

"The great discoveries, Erikodi, are granted to those who look beyond the obvious at the right time." Rera said. She was in one of her 'bad light' days: to intimidate, she smeared her black skin with white makeup around her eyes and mouth. In the correct lighting, it looked terrifying, like a skull. In the wrong light, it made her look like a raccoon that had gotten into the wrong compost pile. Today was one of the latter days.

"She still breathes, but there's nothing in her eyes. She was in the water too long. You may as well try and re-animate a corpse. Her only real worth is parts."

"You have spent too long in the reaping, Erikodi. All of you do. Indulging in death like it's a new plant to smoke instead of a sacred art." Rera said, walking around the alter where the fallen body of Royse lay, wrapped in dark red and green clothes, her head shorn of hair. If it wasn't for how pale she was, she'd seem just like another girl sleeping. "We craft the Therians to shake off wounds. The same matter can be applied here!"

"The beasts are crafted by us more or less from birth. You cannot pluck a corpse-"

"It is not a corpse!"

"...A near corpse from the river and do the same thing."

"So you say. Had you come to me two hundred years ago, I would have told you there was no way I would be alive now." Rera said, as she began lighting foul smelling candles.

"I will assist as you asked, but do not expect me to linger once this has the expected results and you beat yourself on a stone wall in denial."

"Yes yes...use the mixture, close the circle around me."

She didn't want to admit it, but Erikodi, once known as Aldreda before her mother had succumbed to madness and the town she (and Erikodi) had been in had thrown her out (after said madness had claimed her mother's life as well) in their fear it was in the blood, before she'd been taken in, and trained, and given a new name, was somewhat impressed by the work Rera had done. Her kind did not work together, or even meet much, save to welcome each other into the fold and direct them to the sheep, and hence Erikodi would likely sooner walk on hot coals then admit it. But Rera did have some interesting ideas, even if Erikodi thought they were futile.

At least, that was how Erikodi thought when the ritual began.

By the time the air caught on fire, she had re-assessed it to madness. Rera was decaying, like some Haruspex did, and she had dragged Erikodi into it.

When the holes in the air had opened, Erokodi, refusing to leave her circle lest worse happen, had crossed to terror.

When it was all over, and the girl opened her eyes...it had become something else entirely.

Awe.

The flatness of the girl's gaze, a lack of confusion or fear, the calmness in her voice, should have been warning signs, but none of them registered to Erikodi. This hadn't been dragging a corpse back from the brink. This had been something MORE...she could feel it in her bones...

---
Ten years later.

Said feelings never changed.

Erikodi would watch as the girl, brought back through strange things that flowed through her, was invited into the order of blood and death. She watched as she took her name: Canaught. She watched as the sacrifice was brought out.

It only wavered when the woman began to weep, and Canaught did not bring the knife down. Instead, she stood and listened. Listened even as the whispers began to spread. As the sacrifice sobbed and begged and pleaded. Until the sacrifice had no more words.

She did not bring the knife down until twenty seconds after the sacrifice had no more words. Her sisters would later laud it as exquisite, drawing it out, feigning mercy. But Erikodi knew better.

Many years later, her writings would be read by other beings of power. But despite her efforts, that understanding had been lost.

---

She could feel it. Inside her. Burning away. Wasting away. It had cut through all her defenses like a knife through curds.

What struck Rera as she collapsed, looking at her student, the girl she had pulled back, the girl she had NAMED (Canaught, as the girl never cared for a name, even when she was supposed to pick one, she had never cared about anything, she learned and she listened but she never cared), was that there was no indication it had been coming. Rera had been ready for possible hidden ambition, or hatred, but the idea that her student would reach out and kill her so passively and so...pointlessly had never occurred to her. Done this way, it accomplished nothing.

It was the only reason she spoke.

"...Why?"

Canaught's lone answer was her ever-steady, ever flat, ever empty gaze. The last thought Rera had before she burned up from within was the artistry of the power. Like nothing any Haruspex had ever shown before. The gift she had accidentally given the girl who once loved fairies.

Canught took nothing as she left. She didn't destroy anything either. A younger Haruspex named Harit would later discover what Rera and Canught had left behind and work her own great evils with it, but that is another tale.

The first thing Canaught did as a free woman was walk to the nearest field and sit there for three days.

When she was done, she left the same way she'd come.