Feral felt refreshed it has been so long since she had a body but at the same time angry. She gripped her blood-colored hair at stare at its soothing color. It only appeased her anger slightly. She was angry at the mass for it had not bled like all should she was angry at the man who kicked her spine out of her back for he robbed her chance to touch her own blood.
The manic grin Feral usually sported was not on her face instead an expression of anger. She closed a fist in anger while she tried to lift her broken arm. It fell back down after gaining an inch and with a slight crash the sword fell too. When her bloated fingers full of blood touched her palm she opened her hand again and used her thumbnail to burst her bloated finger. The nail dug in an inch and a half before she reached where her precious blood was hiding behind her stupid skin.
It popped like a balloon and blood fell out like a waterfall. When she moved her hand to her chest she saw her muscles and a tiny bit of pearl-white bone for a glimpse before the waterfall covered it up. As the blood ran down her empty chest and flat belly it pooled between her closed legs. She popped another one to increase the flow to outrun the slow drain of the blood going between the small gap between her legs. It wasn't enough the first one was running out of steam and healing closed from her unnatural constitution so another went pop.
The next pop happened unconsciously as she was too busy staring at her reflection on the growing/shrinking pool. In it she saw the manic grin trying to grace her face but she stopped herself and remained angry. Her anger turned to fury as she thought about the mass for the second time. It should have bled because as much as it was unnatural all living things bled when cut and it was undoubtedly living because dead things don't move and nor did non-living things. Even if it was dead dead things bled too. She didn't entertain the thought it was non-living and instead thought of ways to make it bleed.
She played the fight in her head over and over again not asking Rational to tell her about it like they used to have to do. Her thoughts drifted dangerously off track to why so much had changed before the urge to make the mass bleed put her back. Those were thoughts for someone who wanted to know more not of someone trying to drown in their obsession.
The mass could sink into shadows, gain weight, live through being cut almost in half, and dispersed in light. She went back before the fight to see if she could see something she missed. Nothing. She went through the whole fight again and again for almost an hour before she noticed how the shadows looked darker before the mass gained weight. She didn't know what that meant but she could hope that Rational could figure it out. There was another thing she noticed. Only the limp side dispersed once again she didn't dare think further and would leave it up to someone who actually liked to think.
She looked down to see the pool empty so another pop. Her thought turned to the strings hoping what she gathered from the mass would be enough for Rational tell her how to get it to bleed. She would keep in control of their body till she got it to bleed that's why she kept the legs it made it easier to gain more control of their body. She was glad her reasoning was enough to keep from Rational taking back their legs. She only gave back the throat because it was challenging to keep in the rhythm of the lungs. She had to consciously control her throat and that was way too difficult for her so she gave it back.
The frayed string near their heart bothered her. It felt wrong, weak, and was losing its glow. The thing she trust the most, her instinct, told her if it lost all glow she could never use it again. So for the second time today, she thought hard about something but unlike before this was necessary because she was sure Rational would figure everything she thought way faster and figure out how to use it to their advantage.
At first, she just tried to use two mental hands to hold the frayed ends down but when she let go ten minutes later nothing changed but gaining a headache that didn't feel like a headache. Similarly, she tried to wound the frayed ends one at a time but she had never done something like that and the frays were way too small for her mental hands to grab individuality. Though in the end, she got somewhere. It in no way looked proper and was slowly unraveling but the glow was losing less. When it finally unraveled she tried the next thing.
It took a while to notice but even with her limited experience of not thinking through things/thinking at all, she saw how all the strings revolved around their obsession Blood. She popped the last one, her thumb, with her sharp index nail the flesh had yet to knit back together only the capularies so a flap of cold skin hit her thumb. It didn't distract her in the slightest as she was focused on the feeling of blood on her body. It was still wet and warm and more was coming. She took a deep breath before the waterfall hit.
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She closed her eyes as she focused on how it followed the main path while branching into new and old paths. Tiny dry spots became wet again and the warm blood became hot. The heated embrace took her anger and gave a clarity she didn't think possible. A clarity she used to keep her focused on the way her blood just moved without the beat of her heart. Veins pulsed in response to her attention while her heart remained unmoved. At first she thought it was just the pulsing veins that moved her blood but soon realized it was the other way around. It still left the question of how her blood moved. A question she was determined to answer.
Keeping her eyes closed she imagined the artery that traveled to her wrist. She imagined the blood in it flowing without the beat of a heart. She imagined the branching paths the blood just took to reach other smaller branching paths. She imagined the way blood never reached an end it just took another path. Suddenly the image of it all enter her head but there was one subtle difference. A redish-white glow in a thin line was in her veins. There were others all the same distance away. Smaller pieces were on the branching veins all of them fitting the width of each vein. Some were darker then the others. Out of curiosity, she tried to use her mental hand to touch the glow but the image shattered like glass so she had to start over again.
It took her a minute but the image was back and this time she didn't touch it but felt it. Just like the strings it brought things to mind it gave her thoughts of what it meant it pointed out what things were. First, it told her blood was blood, obvious. Second, it told her veins were veins, obvious. Third, it told her meat was meat obvious. Finally, it told her the glow was BLOOD. It gave her pause as that thought was screamed in her head and it lingered there for over a minute.
She tried to figure out what the BLOOD did while the image slowly faded away. The veins were guiding the blood, the meat was holding the veins, the blood was held by the veins but the BLOOD she just couldn't reason out till she remembered her fight with the wolves. It was a subtle thing but when she woke up she felt the same word. It echoed in her head over and over for the entire fight. Then she remember something weird no matter the angle of the cut, where she was, or how far away she was blood always came towards her slightly. It didn't always reached only sometimes meaning it was limited it also meant BLOOD pulled not pushed like she first thought when she saw the image. That's when it clicked for her.
It was pure want, pure desire, pure obsession given form, her pure obsession given form. It wanted blood so much blood came to it. The strings must manipulate it somehow. Which meant they were different things. The fight with the wolves meant she could manipulate it without the strings. Even with the question of how her blood moved finally answered she wanted to know more but she gave up and gave in to her instincts because instincts are superior.
Unfamiliar aches racked her body as she gave up thoughts and turned to her instincts. The aches were different from muscle tears or bone fractures. They felt deeper but also all-encompassing. She felt it in her muscles but not her muscles. She felt it in her bones but not her bones. She felt it on her lungs but not her lungs.
She ignored it as her instincts told her how to fix the strings. She formed her mental hand as the aches intensified and reached out to the heart string. A single finger touched it. The wordless question wasn't asked. She thought of how she felt when her obsession crawled over her skin wanting to be covered in blood just like her. She focused on that feeling more and more while keeping the hand and tapping the string in mind. The aches intensified more she ignored it.
Slowly the reddish-white formed in the hand and with a mental tug moved towards the extended finger. It moved less than a quarter of the way down before returning back to the center of the hand. Her instinct gave no more guidance she was on her own and against a clock of ever-intensifying aches. Aches that might soon become agony.
Instead of a mental tug, she gave an urging that blood was to be found beyond the mental finger. Nothing not even hair's width. Next a mental push. Nothing. Next, she tried to tell it where to go to follow the finger and onto the string. There was no need before the thought was received it moved following the finger and onto the string at its own pace.
Aches interrupted the image she held in her head. She was left staring into the slowly draining pool her own face looking back at her. A wordless question enter her head but it was nothing like she received before. It asked what purpose did blood provide in the veins. The answer came to her before the question was fully asked. To give life to the rest of the body. She got no response and without her gaze, the string weaved itself back together but somehow she knew so she relaxed and stared at her bloody reflection.
That maddening grin that most would run from was back on her face. Her purple eyes most swear could steal a soul was entranced by themselves. Her porcelain-white face that was tinged blood-red in the reflection had flecks of blood on them. Her cascading red hair that reached her hips had taken the chance to knot themselves up.
As much as she wanted to sleep she could not give Rational the chance to take control. The aches that had stopped intensifying mostly kept her up with trying to find a way to untangle hair with one hand gave her something to do while she waited for her arm to heal.