im not done yet [wip o p e n]

There is a constant battle raging in Arcadia's heart. She's sitting with a smoking gun pressed to her lips and ashes in the air. She's staring down at a de trop sister with a red halo hungrily eating up the obsidian black surface of the jail cell, and her ruby-red mouth with an unformed word brushing the dead lips like a parting kiss of a lover. And her eyes they're aquamarine and glowing up at Cady with accusations she can't ignore. Pretty thoughts in Cady's head spice up that mouth, they tell her Lana was trying to say goodbye, but the eyes are telling truths. Ugly truth is glowing in the seas of Illiana's eyes telling Arcadia what she refuses to believe. All her protection was for naught.

The gun clatters and Cady feels a sting on her own lips where she had pressed the gun to keep from gasping at her dead sister. Breath whooshes out and rips her lips raw and bloody as the valentines-red halo around her sisters pale, smooth head of white hair and dead skin. The pain is fresh and real as the fact that her sister is dead and Cady is her murderer. With that gun and that hand (she stares at her left, her head hanging down slightly)

"Lana, no," she says and can't decide whether she's softly whispered the goodbye words or screamed them as a bansidhe's wail. But it doesn't matter because it wasn't Lana she should be telling no to, it was her own self.. she had killed her sister.

But it doesn't matter, screams a frantic Arcadia inside of her head, because much to her chagrin and relief Cady has woken up from a nightmare that has left her covered in sticky stuff unlike the red pool of blood her mind had conjured up for Illiana's death. Sweat drips from the curve of her back and paints a line of salt over her skin until it seems to disappear. She turns around a few times to find her bearings and calm her nerves in a way only her former Career-training could do. Not an echo of a ghost touches her eyes or ears. She smells the salty sweat on her skin and hears the distant kitten's-roar of the ocean but that is all. All is calm but she shakes with shivers and quivers with fear.

Physically unsteady as her mental state is, Cady wobbles up and onto her toes with a craned neck to add a few inches. If she could just reach a certain height she would be able to see the body of salt and water. But Arcadia is nearly en pointe and she can barely find a glance of the shining ocean waters, and it is not so far a walk that a fit young woman like her couldn't just walk down to the lands edge instead. Cady is more than a fit young woman though, she has only gotten stronger and more potent with age and freedom, like a fine wine breathing after years trapped in a glass bottle prison. Or is that a genie? This metaphorical debate is not for Cady who runs and feels and does not think. She can't actually imagine there being much of a cosmic difference whether her thoughts stray to genies or wine. Besides, since when has Cady ever tried to do or think or say things that will please the cosmic balance?

Im not done but Im kinda like really hot and I think Im writing this post because Id love to run to some pool or the ocean right now. HEAT WAVE, NOT FTW