Bim
The drive into the city passed far quicker than her previous journey, primarily due to the lack of crowds. It was also a considerable degree more comfortable despite the current vehicle's inferior design, largely due to the absence of Celio pressing his revolting flesh against hers.
"You have a lovely necklace Lady Bim." Ambar-Lucia said, leaning into the forward cab over the rear-facing bench.
"I would sooner behead myself than wear it a second longer than I must." Bim offered factually.
"…Okaaayyyyy." Ambar-Lucia said sliding back into her seat.
None of the other human's felt inclined to attempt conversation with her afterwards, preferring to engage in what she understood as 'girl talk' in the back of the car. The topics were as varied as they were nonsensical to Bim but she committed the exchange to memory in its entirety for future review.
Between the countryside and the city, Bim had a considerable preference for the former; the latter being far too busy for her liking. At a glance, Hiiro seemed to share her opinion. It was written in the tension of his shoulders, the tautness of his jaw, and the nervous drumming of his fingers on the steering wheel. He’d been ill at ease the entire journey and his humors only worsened as their vehicle drew nearer to the lively streets at the heart of Crucibab. She’d been watching him out the corner of her eye for a time now, but his vigilance won out over her canniness and their eyes locked for a fleeting instant.
Gone was the mirrored soul she’d witnessed inside of him. Now he looked much the same as all humans did in her eyes recently. He looked so impossibly fragile, like the minds her true self had once touched and taught and broken in their hundreds. He looked like he was starving, and the next meal he saw would prove fatally rich for his weakened state. Above all else, he looked like a man in pain. Bim broke from their shared gaze, wishing she hadn’t seen what she had.
“So…” Hiiro started. “Shopping.”
“Indeed, shopping.” Bim answered, her face turned to regard the city sprawling below the overpass. It was her understanding that these priority roadways were reserved for municipal and commercial vehicles, yet Celio’s fleet was somehow neither and both simultaneously.
“You just had to go shopping today.” Hiiro said, his voice uncharacteristically level.
“False. Though it seemed an opportune time.” Bim corrected idly.
Hiiro turned off the overpass, headed for the ground level streets of a heavily commercialized city subsector. The roadways were bustling with vehicles of all sizes and models going about their daily functions while the walkways were positively bustling with pedestrians. The sight evoked memories of insect colonies Bim had studied, the working castes thronging to and from in their mindless droves; the fact that most of these humans were so detached from the reality of their futile existences left an altogether too depressing emotion connoted with her comparison. These humans lived, expended energy and would inevitably die from any one of the multitudinous ways she could imagine.
"Here seems as good a place as any." Hiiro idly stated, parking their vehicle alongside scores of smaller vehicles. "Can everyone remember where we parked?"
Bim disembarked, coolly ignoring the implication that her memory was so deeply flawed and that her mental faculties were inadequate for the task of locating their vehicle. She slammed the door shut behind her, properly securing its latches. The maids who'd accompanied them used a far gentler touch, then formed into an orderly square.
"Of course, Sir." They all answered in unison.
Bim found the display harmonious. Hiiro, did not.
"Stop that!" He snapped, before collecting himself with a breath and running a scarred hand through the black stubble of his remaining hair. "Look, you all have the day to yourselves. No 'Sir this' or 'Ma'am that' today. Alright?"
There was a stiffening of the maids' ranks, their bodies emulating the mental flexibility none seemed to possess. Zoe-Esther de Terra was the first to recover, possibly the least indoctrinated or the most tempered by Hirro's eccentricities, lifting her head to challenge her orders.
"But who will carry your things?"
"Zoe, I'm not your boss today. We're not at the palace, you don't have to slave away for me or anyone else. Just go be a kid, hang out with your friends, enjoy your day off. I'll meet you back here in a few hours."
"But-" She started.
"Zoe! I will literally pay you to go have fun and leave me alone."
"How much?" Leonor-Sammara de Terra asked, earning her a trio of incredulous glares.
In a single deft motion, Hiiro tossed the sturdy maid a golden currency token. Leonor's eyes went wide as she inspected the finger-sized bar and a smile both radiant yet savage spread across her entire being.
"Come on ladies! Mama needs a new pair of boots!"
Currency in hand, Leonor all but dragged her fellows into the packed walkways. Even with their uniform dress, the maids were lost to masses within seconds.
"That was unwise." Bim stated quietly. "Reducing our forces is dangerous."
"Well, you're more than welcome to join them." Hiiro countered, again with that unnaturally level tone.
Bim made no move to leave. This city was dangerous. How could he be so callously reckless?
"So… Shopping." He said vacantly.
"Indeed, shopping." She answered tersely.
Hiiro lingered there, standing in front of the car watching her as she watched him. Their eyes met, the pained mortal creature that he was plain to her again. Her kind were not prone to compassion or sympathy, but… Again Bim broke from their shared gaze. Aversion could not spare her from the memory of what she'd seen.
Hiiro puffed out a grunt, wordless and insensate. It was a human thing, meaning without meaning, a question without words. He wasn't blind to her prying, yet there was some intangible barrier between them, something that filled these scant cubic meters with an undeniable tension. It was maddening. It defied all logic. It was too alien for her to comprehend— too human.
Hiiro seemed to pick a direction at random and started walking. Bim followed; the more of the city she saw, the lower her opinion of it became. Shops were piled high with unmoved inventory, the pedestrians they walked among were heavyset and reeking of chemical scents, and absolutely everywhere she looked there was garbage. It clogged the sloping streets, waiting for the rains to flush it into the sea; it barricaded alleyways, creating mazes of rotting excess; it was piled high on rooftops and in one instance the weight of it had been too great, transforming an entire building into a stinking sandstone trash can. She knew the word that encapsulated what she was witnessing— consumerism. What puzzled her immensely more was how city officials could allow for the creation of so much waste without any form of management plan in place to deal with it. Bim pulled her eyes from the decaying mounds seemingly everywhere and looked to Hiiro with the question on her lips… but she couldn't bring herself to ask. The tension betwixt them would not be denied. What was a human life if not decay and rot and unplanned expiration?
"If you're just going to glare at me all day, you shouldn't have bothered coming all this way." Hiiro said without turning to address her.
She hadn't been glaring, had she? Was her understanding of human emotives so flawed that she'd misidentified such a commonplace expression? Bim wiped her face clean of whatever thoughts might have crept there.
"Why'd you even come if you're not going to talk to me?" Hiiro demanded, his neutral tone failing him in the slightest degree.
"I require clothing." Bim answered factually, being careful to avoid resonating his deteriorating civility.
"Botscat, you wear the same dress every day."
"Exactly…"
Hiiro suddenly halted at an intersection and Bim nearly walking into him. Pedestrians trudged on all around them going about their business and barely avoiding the unmoving individuals in their midst. Something about that struck her. Here the two of them were, firmly cemented within the heart of the crowd yet still entirely apart from it, like a pair of islands in the middle of the ocean. Hiiro wouldn't turn to face her, he simply stood there, a mountain of a man half a head shorter than everyone around him.
"It sounds like we should go our separate ways then."
Civility had failed him. His words carried more gravity and hurt than she'd known possible. With words alone he'd exposed himself. Bim didn't know what to say, if she should say anything at all. Was this natural amongst humans? For creatures of constant beginning and endings existence may have seemed inherently cyclical, but such an idea seemed wrong in this context. Her kind only had one end and even that was no true death. Comings and goings were rare enough events that they always had divine significance. Even transactions that had been concluded held considerable consequence. How could a relationship just end? It was obvious from his voice if not his words. She had wounded him.
Her mind fell in on itself, cascading through their time together. She drew countless comparisons, measured moments for meaning, and reached the inevitable human condition. Everything was finite. Dragging things out might be a soothing balm in the tangible now but now would not last forever. Time was not some novel concept to humanity, it was a resource like any other and resources ran dry.
The tide of humanity shifted around her, another island sinking into the sea. Hiiro was going to leave. He'd waited long enough, too long even. It was hopeless, she couldn't formulate an argument. Undoubtedly she knew she could given enough time but there was no more time. Hiiro was leaving and there was nothing she could say in the next two seconds that would stop him. Nothing she could say would balance the scales, his pain was too potent for her to push it aside with words.
She didn't want him to leave, but her second was up and he was moving. In another second he'd be lost to the crowd, the sea populated by one less island. She needed to think but there was NO time. Her window of opportunity was narrowing every nanosecond she spent internally debating herself. Rampancy threatened. Her thoughts were spiraling. Hiiro was leaving her. She didn't want him to leave. Now he was just a burn-scarred arm trailing his exit. Now, always Now. No time but Now!
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Bim threw herself at his arm, clutching it close to her. She didn't want him to leave, she wanted him to live a long life. She wanted to spent as much of this damned ephemeral Now with him as possible because there was only so much of it he was going to get. Everything was finite, yet she clutched at Hiiro's arm as if she could pull him beyond the grasp of time through sheer force of will— and Bim was nothing if not willful.
"For fucks sake." Hiiro growled, trying to wrestle his arm free of her grasp.
The touch of his skin on hers was reassuring in the extreme. There was none of the abrasive revulsion she felt when touching anything else in this dimension. Even her ultrafine dress could have been made of coarse stone compared to Hiiro's flesh.
"What the hell's wrong with you? You're worse than a cat! You want nothing to do with me and now this?"
Bim couldn't say. Maybe there was something wrong with her, but how could she ever put it into words? Could something so primitive as sound or human language encompass the swirling menagerie of conflict inside her mind? No, not in a thousand years and that was too long. So instead she held Hiiro, pouring her soul into his arm just as he had with his words. It was a pale imitation of communion, their bodies were too crude, their minds too closed from each other.
Bim raised her head from his shoulder and bared her soul to him through the only window left to her. Their eyes met. The air between them shook free of its tension, the distance between them narrowing into nothing. She failed to find that other Bim behind his eyes. There was only Hiiro and Her, wrapped together in the all-consuming now. He drank in the essence of her like a grateful desert did the soothing rains. In a breath he was flooded with her, by the second the air was electric. By the third, he realized what was about to happen.
"Scat, I'm burning up. LET GO!" He growled in a whisper.
"You won't hurt me." Bim said, voice heady with the resonance of their souls.
"Yeah!? Well in case you didn't notice, there's a few hundred people around us that aren't fireproof."
His attempts to extricate himself took on a manic, desperate intensity. Even with his elbow bucking and fist lashing about in her grasp, the sensation of his body against hers was contentment made manifest.
"It's alright. I'm here-"
"Exactly!" He snapped, spittle flying. "You're here! That's the issue. I'm dangerous and you bring out the worst-"
Bim's fingers slid down his arm, clasping his fist in her hand. It was burning hot, even contrasted against the rest of his body. His hands held so much potential, creation and destruction all stored as thermal energy contained inside a pair of quivering fists. That power was looking for an outlet and for all his strength, Hiiro was still only a human. It would burn through his will, and then, it would burn through him.
"Surrender to me." Bim said.
"No!" He roared in a whisper. Even his voice was straining under the building load. "You don't understand. I have to fight this or it will-
"I do understand."
Somehow, those words carried all the meanings she'd been struggling to find. His battle was just like her own. The enemy was insurmountable, inevitable even. It was a losing fight and they both knew it. His eyes were pleading, for help, for mercy, for release. She saw it all and beyond that she knew. Just as Hiiro fought his own power, she would war against time, and in the end they would both be consumed. But that was then and this was now.
Hiiro uncurled his fist and blinked away tears that turned to steam as soon as they left his eyes. With nothing but Bim's left hand between the world and his volcanic right hand and all the destruction it contained, Hiiro battled the seconds.
"I don't want to hurt you." He said.
She was struck then by just how young he was— in mind and soul if not in body. That he would condemn himself rather than endanger her was all the validation she needed.
"Hiiro," Bim said, evoking a fraction of his name. "Hear my words and know my will. Nothing you could do would ever hurt me."
The lie blackened her soul and twisted in her guts like a wrenched knife. Because he would die as all humans did and it would hurt her when he did. But that was then and this was now, and right now Hiiro was nearly as terrified of hurting her as she was of losing him and his intangible, potential futures. Bim knew her lie was wrong, yet it was wrong in all the right ways.
There were so many 'what ifs' surrounding Hiiro. He could master his burgeoning power or it could consume him. He could die in ignominy or transcend mortality itself. Under her guidance he would grow into a damned fine devil, one beyond the clawing reach of time. There was so much potential inside of him that its gravity must have been why they were drawn together despite all odds and the sheer vastness of this physical, time-slaved existence. With his sweltering hand clasped inside her own, Bim detected something more that went beyond the admiration an inexperienced teacher feels for a promising yet troubled student. She pressed this new feeling aside.
"Breathe." Bim commanded. "Allow the energy to flow down your arm into my hand."
His white-knuckled hand seized on her's, a somatic sign for the spiritual symptoms he was struggling to contain. He'd managed to draw a breath in yet now he held on, as if to release it would be the same as relinquishing his life.
"Hiiro," She said, again evoking his name. "You need to breathe."
Yet still he held out, fighting that losing battle out of blind panic or misplaced pride or possibly something else entirely. He was fighting fate despite his own human nature compelling him against it. It was a valiant display— if an altogether pointless one. Inevitably, he exhaled.
There was no explosion, though from the doubtful expression he adopted while staring at their interlocked fingers he'd been expecting one. Instead, Bim felt a sputtering flood of potential energy coursing up her arm from Hiiro's rapidly cooling hand. Essence surged into her, flavored by his life and saturated with his hopes and fears. She imagined the sensation was similar to how a human might feel after burning through a sugar high with a particularly vigorous and satisfying workout. For her part, the entire experience was one of contentment; from the taste of his soul on her dry palette, to the dawning realization in his eyes, to the simple joy she felt from holding his hand in her own. Bim was no expert on reading humans, but it seemed for his part, Hiiro found this release to be downright blissful.
For a time they both stood there, breathing hard until he'd poured all that volatile energy into her. Hiiro was leaning into her now, teetering on his feet as she drained him dry, sucking down the last vestiges of his power. Bim hadn't wanted the feast to end but that was the paradigm of her present existence. She licked her lips, as she'd witnessed many humans do, savoring the memory as the present marched ever onwards.
"Why'd you wait so long to do that to me?" Hiiro asked breathlessly.
"I did nothing." Bim panted. "That was all you."
"If you say so." Hiiro said dubiously, before straitening to his full height and staggering from his own depletion. "Hot damn! You really took it out of me."
"Your vessel is trying to rebalance your energy levels. Your recuperation is only a matter of time."
"Is that why I'm so hungry I could eat a giga-toad and sleep for a month afterwards?" Hiiro asked, but Bim could only shrug in speculation.
"I can't say as I neither eat nor sleep. Though it seems a likely probability."
Hiiro didn't seem entirely contented by her answer. His scrutiny lasted for a long moment before he yawned and took in his surroundings as if he'd forgotten they were idly standing in a crowded walkway filled with pedestrians bustling about the markets. Some few passersby were casting wary glances at them, mostly for the traffic obstructions that they were instead of the estranged couple they appeared to be.
"Let's take an early lunch then let's have a talk somewhere a bit less conspicuous."
Both conditionals were satisfied some minutes later when she and he sat down in shaded nook offered by a fast food vendor. Tepid water was offered and Hiiro gulped down both tin mugs in seconds before ordering enough food to feed a party triple their size. The fast food lived up to its name, served in the same time it took Hiiro to drain another five mugs of water. Bim had never studied anyone eating in particular detail, yet the sight of Hiiro gorging himself was educational to say the least. The sight was reminiscent of one shortly after her arrival into this dimension; she tried to dance around her eidetic recollection of what had happened promptly afterwards. Three kilos of fully loaded burritos were consumed in twice as many minutes. With his appetite sated, Hiiro turned his hungry eyes on her.
"What happened back there?"
"I suspect you lack the foundational knowledge to comprehend a proper explanation…" Bim started.
"Try me."
"Very well. Think of the human soul as a mass of light that occupies a superluminal space in relative alignment to your physical body. This mass, what you theorize as a 'soul,' operates in a unique capacity of influence among the dimensional forces humans term as light, gravity, heat, magnetism, and consciousness. From what I've gathered in my time here, as the soul develops, manifestations along these forces can occur proportionally to the imbalance of energy within the soul— or that's my working theory at present. It fits with my observations of your present condition if nothing else."
"So what, I'm spiritually constipated?" Hiiro asked, eying the empty burrito trays.
"When I was… where I'm from originally, I would have been able to answer that in an instant. Crippled as I am now…"
The memories she'd been so carefully avoiding assaulted her in full. Cursed knowledge, every horrible thing she wished she could unknow battering against her present mind in an orderly sequence. Her mutilation and betrayal at the hands of her Tormentor, her constant shortfalls of human understanding, when she'd lost control and been a prisoner in her own rebelling body.
"Its that thing in your back, isn't it?" Hiiro asked, stirring her back to the present.
She tried to answer, but words failed her. Something must have snuck into her features though because Hiiro's gaze softened.
"I saw it— just for a few seconds. When you were… you weren't yourself. It was like that thing was oil and you were water or something." He shook his head, eyes haunted by a past he couldn't unsee.
"…I wish you hadn't seen me like that." Bim said, her right hand idly reaching up to stroke the torc around her throat.
"I wish I hadn't either." Hiiro said distantly, and Bim felt his words cut her to the core. "He did it to you, didn't he?"
There was no question to whom he was referring. The monster among monsters who wore the skin of a man. Her Tormentor, Treu. Again, words failed her. She couldn't speak out against him without due cause, yet falsehood grated at her very being.
"An agreement was reached." Bim eventually said tersely. "One neither of us is particularly pleased with. My power had to be contained, for everyones' benefit. Hence my seal and this dampening torc."
"You don't sound very happy about it. If it's that bad, why not just take that collar off?"
"I've been forbidden to remove it under pain of… Death, would be the closest analogue you'd understand."
"Does your 'agreement' mention anything about having someone else remove it for you?"
"… No, it does not. But-"
Hiiro didn't wait for her to finish. His hand reached across the table in a flash to take the torc before she could react. The instant he touched the metal his arm went slack, all motive essence robbed at the slightest contact with the psycho-insulative alloy.
"-given your recent exertions, perhaps now isn't the best time to experiment." Bim concluded, watching Hiiro shake some life back into the limp limb.
"Like hitting the funny bone but a million times worse." He stated, working his jaw and flexing numb fingers. "I'm jealous. It must be nice having a collar that keeps you from blowing your top every damned day."
"If you can get the cursed thing off my throat you're welcome to keep it. Though the experience may not be as enviable as you envision it to be."
"I'll hold you to that." Hiiro stated with a wink. "So… where do we go from here?"
Bim's puzzlement must have snuck onto her face again because he quickly elaborated.
"It's just that we've both got our cards on the table now."
"What cards?" Bim asked, scanning the table for anything other than the scant remains of his burritos. Hiiro stifled a chuckle at her expense.
"You're really going to make me spell it out?"
Evidently the question was rhetorical because he continued before she could answer.
"What are we?"
"We are those who seek answers." Bim answered instantly. "Those who would cut back the secrets of time, materia and all this reality has to offer so as to further our knowledge, thus becoming as gods. Beyond that, I am uncertain of what we are, though I gather that we are kindred amongst those who are without."
"Two lonely people in it together against the world." Hiiro idly stated, in the way humans liked to make statements sound like questions.
"I have nothing against this world. Reality would be a more apt target for your turn of phrase." Bim corrected, pondering at his meaning.
"To making reality our bitch." Hiiro said, raising a mug in toast. Bim mirrored the gesture with an empty tin, downing her notional drink in jovial camaraderie.
"So…" Bim began, feeling curiously contented by nothing more than Hiiro's own contentment. "Shopping?"
"Indeed, shopping." He answered, and the estranged distance between them was nowhere to be found.