Contemplation, assessment, judgement. All of these things pass over the Ieshan daughter as she looks upon Terrastella's fallen girl. What she finds, Dalmatia doesn't care. The opinion of a wingless pup is of no consequence, not when she doesn't need it. All she needs is what she knows in that pretty little head of hers and nothing more. But she's so tactless in the ways of society. The opinion of others is lost on Dalmatia - their approval and disapproval unnecessary and uncared for. She does not ask so they need not answer. Gossip behind her back as they wish, it would make no difference. In the end, the result will still be the same.
The man who wears a bleeding heart would feel his heart bleed at last. This is one of the few thoughts that brings a sort of grim satisfaction into her life, as satisfied as one can be when they are now only the servant of death itself. Bloody her hands. Paint her skin red with it. Bare her teeth and snarl like a beast, like some wild thing. Dalmatia would become as awful as those kelpies, tearing apart the world for her own selfish vengeance.
When Ruth answers her at last, it is cleverly done.
Dalmatia rolls her eyes. Politics always were so silly. "I'm looking for a man with a bleeding heart," she replies still, careful to keep her voice low enough that any passing by would be hard to hear the words she says. If Cicero were here, he is sure to keep a weathered eye on the horizon, looking for threats just as she does.
The difference is, she's in it for his skin and he's only trying to save his own. Always the coward using others to hide. In prison, she'd seen criminals and murderers better than he, and they were the phlegm of the nation just above the kelpies that would slither from the swamps and from the sea.
Someday, she might wonder where the girl she once was went. If she looks on this moment now, she knows she would not see her. There is only a wraith and a brain staring at one another in a sea of faceless creatures. Something as naïve as innocence and hope has no chance of surviving, not now, not anymore.
Beware: I am fearless, and therefore, powerful.
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