The Other Side of the City--Chapter 122
Deviation Actions
Literature Text
The snake girl had no intelligence in her eyes. The beautiful jeweled slits that she saw through held nothing but anger and fear, as she swayed back and forth. Phoenix almost felt as if she were trying to make the room sway with her, as it had a moment before when everything had come into horrible focus.
“Oh Karai!” she breathed, remembering the girl’s name. The snake stopped swaying, and looked at her, turning her head sideways. Still, there was no intelligence in her eyes, it was as if she were just curious at the sound of the Phoenix’s voice.Phoenix was afraid if she took her eyes off of the girl that she would disappear, that she would truly be a mirage or a figment of her own fevered brain. The pull in her spine, the same one that she got when she saw all of the golden threads in her meditation, was stronger and harder than she’d ever felt it before, and she felt a desperate grabbing in her solar plexus that the girl not leave her.
Home, the unbidden thought whispered in her mind.This isn’t my home, she wanted to yell. Maybe it’s her home, she thought hopefully, but as soon as the thought occured her head, she knew it wasn’t true. In the corner of her vision, she could see the items that she and the kids had gathered in preparation for them living here.
Home, said the unbidden thought again.“I don’t know what to do,” Phoneix heard herself whine, not sure if it was directed at Karai or at the unbidden thought in her head. She kept her eyes on the snake, and resisted the urge to open her arms to her, as she had done to Medusa so many times before, to make the pull on her spine lessen. “I used to know what to do,” she said. Her voice echoed through the emptiness. “Now all I do is run from place to place and hope I don’t get caught by…” she was going to say the bad guys, but that sounded so silly. “...God only knows who.”
She sank down to her knees, like her body and bag were too heavy to carry any longer. Still, the snake just waved back at forth. “You knew once, too, didn’t you Karai?” she said. She knew she was babbling, but it was all that her mind could think to do. “And now you don’t know what to do either.”The snake looked at her, and swayed gently again, her face still tilted to the side.
Phoenix saw, from her new position on the floor, that a large scrape went down the side of her body, to disappear underneath on the underside of her tail section. “You’re hurt,” she pointed to the scrape, though it could have only looked like she was pointing to her body anywhere. “I can help you.”Karai gave no indication that she understood what she was saying.
She scooted forward, to try to ease her way toward Karai, but the snake reared at her movement and hissed. She stopped, and sank onto her bottom, her knees drawn up to her chest. “I can help you,” she said again, and then dropped her head to her knees. “Who am I kidding?” she moaned. She looked back up at Karai, who again had tilted her head and was regarding her curiously.“Do you live down here?” Phoenix asked, hoping that her talking would bring some of the intelligence back to mutant. “I lived down here for while. Well,” she gestured around her, “not here, but down here in the sewer. We were going to live here,” she continued, “my daughter, you met her, remember, and my two sons. But…” she looked around, her heart wrenching as she did. There was nothing wrong with this place. It was dark, but Aries could fix that. It smelled, but a good cleaning would fix that, just as it did in The Burrow. The Not-Haunted Warehouse was no better than this. The garden, which held the remains of her children, no longer held the same pull, it was as wrong as the Not-Haunted Warehouse, a tilted, circus mirror image of what it once was. The increased sunlight made things grow at the wrong rate, was going to burn other things up as the summer inclined. “But we didn’t,” she said. “We don’t live on our other place either,” she went on. “Everything is gone, Karai,” she said, shaking her head.
“Goooonnnnnnneeee,” said Karai.Phoenix’s eyes lit up, and she nodded vigorously. “Yes,” she said, her voice much more gentle than she felt. “All of your everything is gone, too, isn’t it?”\
“Tooooooo daannnnngeroussssss,” Karai said.“It is dangerous up there,” Phoenix said. She chuckled derisively, “and, down here.”
Karai said nothing, just swayed, looking at her.The Phoenix didn’t want to lose her again. “When I was down here,” she said, raking her mind for anything to keep herself talking, to keep the girl listening, “I met a friend that I never thought I would meet. He was quiet, and methodical, and purposeful.” She laughed, derisive again, “He was very different from me. He had a beautiful voice. He read to me,” she said, “he could read very well out loud.” She examined the snake mutant, her eyes going soft. The bright glow that was not a glow of living things surrounded her, and the not so bright glow that was not a glow surrounded everything else in the open space. Even down here, in the sewer, a place of dead and decay, living force emanated from everything. “But I did something to him,” she explained to Karai. “And his mind left, like what’s happening to you.”
The beautiful snake swayed back and forth, almost hypnotically, and the Phoenix could see how the species obtained a reputation for being able to do so. “I miss him,” she admitted, fighting back bittersweet tears. She smiled at the memory of Splinter. The thought of him didn’t hurt anymore, it hadn’t for a while, it only gave her a swell pleasure, with longing-tinged edges. She moved to the side and dug in her pocket, “All I have left of him is a little piece of cloth,” she took out the silky bit of his yukata, “and this picture of his turtles.”She took out the photo and unfolded it gently, holding it up for Karai as if she could understand.
“Turrrrrtlllllesssss?” Karai drawled, her swaying coming to a halt.The Phoenix blinked, her mind racing to make sure her ears had heard the right thing. “Yes,” she said, scooting a little closer. This time the girl did not rear up or hiss, but stayed where she was. “Turtles.” She held the photo out at arms length.
The girl leaned forward, in a way so like Medusa that Phoenix had to work hard not to hitch her breath. A vivid flash of her daughter as a tiny child, wrapped around her arm for years came to her mind. How easily it could not have been Medusa there, but a little white snake with purple markings and mouths for hands. The memory was gone in a moment, bringing her back to The Back-Up Burrow.Karai studied the photo, and then said, ever so slowly, “Lllllllleeeeeeeoooooooo.”
All the other sounds in the room stopped as the last of the ‘oh’ entered the Phoenix’s ears. Had she heard that right? “Leo?” she repeated. Surely she’d heard it wrong.“Llllllleeeeeeooooooo,” Karai hissed again.
Phoenix beamed, and had to use all of her willpower to not jump up from the floor and scramble to the girl. “That’s right,” she brought the picture closer to her, and pointed to a turtle, “That’s Leonardo. Leo,” she scooted a little more forward as she held the photo out again.“Ffffffrrrrriiiiiiieeennnnnnddddssss,” she hissed, her voice had a sad tenor to it.
“They’re your friends?” Phoenix asked, again scooting closer. “Leo is your friend?” She held out both of her hands, one with the photo and one with the scrap of cloth as she tried to edge the way toward the snake mutant.Karai looked from the picture to the scrap of cloth, and Phoenix froze, afraid her movement would make the girl bolt. She slithered closer, and the Phoenix tried to keep her breathing steady. “Ffffrriieennddss,” she hissed again, her nose touching the photo. Then her head swung to the bit of cloth, and she nudged it, as if it would do something. “Ffffaaaattthhhheerrr,” she said.
“Yes,” Phoenix kept her voice quiet, a sweet tenderness swelling up in her chest. “He’s their father.”“Fffatthher,” she said again, her voice sounding more human that she’d ever heard it, sad and mournful, but not as drawn out. Then, the intelligence was gone, and the animal was all that was there. It was as if a light had gone out in the girl’s eyes, a candle snuffed by the wind. She hissed, the sound was fully frightening, and with lightning speed, she brought her mouth down on Phoenix’s hand that held the little shred of cloth.
Phoenix jerked her hand toward her in pain, and let out a scream as a stinging burn began to spread from where the stab of the girl’s fang in her palm rested. The girl lifted her head, Phoenix’s hand raising slightly with it, still impaled by the girl’s tooth. Phoenix jerked down hard, her hand coming free. The girl had pierced the piece of red cloth as well as her hand, and it stuck to her palm where blood began to pool up.
The girl hissed again, and spit at her, a blob of green landing on her shirt. Then, the pretty white snake darted backwards, and was all but flew down one of the many exits to the large, open space.
Phoenix sat, staring at her hand for a moment, before she felt the same burn as in her palm on her side. She looked down and saw that the thick, green liquid had soaked through the fabric, and was now burning her skin.Venom, she thought errantly, as she began to work the shirt off with her unhurt hand.
Home, said the unbidden thought.She ignored it, going over to the water filters that Aries had already set up in anticipation for them living here. She put her hand under the facet, the blood washing away as it slowly flowed up, a dark red, tinged with green. She splashed off her side, the skin was red where the venom had stung it, but both it, and her hand, would heal fine. She tore a strip of cloth from her shirt that didn’t have venom on it, and wrapped her hand. She held her palm in front of her face. She wouldn’t be using the hand for a while, despite its eventual fine-ness.
The girl was gone. She’d lost her senses again, become a mindless thing, and fled. She knew the turtles, though, and she knew Splinter. Or at least, she knew of them. She couldn’t be allied with them, surely. There was no way that a snake could be working for the Rat King. Even when Splinter was unconscious, they had had to play with how close Medusa could come to his body before it began to panic at the presence of an innate predator. She knew the Rat King loved his rats too much to ally himself with a snake.So how did the girl know them?
She folded the picture back up and put it in back in her pocket, and rinsed off the little piece of red cloth, which now had a hole in the middle of it, like her hand. She squeezed out as much water as she could with her left hand, and then put it in another of her pants pockets.Home, the unbidden thought told her.
Irritation swelled in her. I am going home, she thought to it harshly, walking in the same direction that the pretty, white snake had fled, the direction she knew lead to the Not-Haunted Warehouse, and was the closest place to a path to the surface.Home, it said again.
My home, she was going to make sure she got the last word in, isn’t here.With her retort, the unbidden thought left her, like a poem that slipped through her fingers because she had waited too long to write it down.
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