tell me why life's worth living // Eva Day 3

With a yawn and a stretch, Circe rose from the clean snow. She drew her long fingers along the edges of her tattered sandals, up her bare legs, around the golden shroud. It was moth eaten and threadbare after so many years, but it was not dirty. Orion had seen to that. She found only the appropriate pieces of her body missing, those that had been taken from her prior to her ascendance. No creatures had dared to gnaw on her lifeless body.

She felt along the sinew at her throat, along the edges of her ears, and finally to her hair. Instead of drawing the golden strands, she felt only a few inches of... tuft. She tugged at it to be sure, hissed in frustration. Who would dare to cut the locks of a Lyon?

Turning to interrogate Gunner, she spun into a cold, foreign world. Circe sucked in a breath, bringing the winter into her empty chest cavity. "Elya?" She thought she said, but it came out in a terrible moan. Surely that could not be her voice, gasping, mangling the only name she'd ever placed above her own.

She tried again, came to spitting and hissing.

Again, a strangled cry, and finally, a blistering wail that the snow absorbed, none the worse for wear.

Separated, again. She held no hope that she would find Nat or Orion either. As there was only blank white above, she turned her attention downhill, and set off on creaking knees and crumbling shoes. The shroud barely covered her torso, but she merely used it as a windbreak; her dignity resided in her soul, not in what was left of her beautiful, accomplished body. She leveraged the ski poles against trees, almost skipping down the mountain.

She was not surprised to catch the scent of Eva Tidestone on the wind; what other hell could she possibly have ended up in, besides an arena? At the very least the gods could have had the decency to drop her into the same one as her wives.

She finally came to rest against a tree, letting her third eye fall against the bark. It ached, her forehead, where Gunner shot her. No, that wasn't right. Was it? She groaned, gave herself away, and snapped.

She lunged at Eva Tidestone the same moment the girl brought up her spear. Circe walked right into it, the metal spearing the shroud and bits of flesh, nicking bone. There wasn't much else. She wheezed, stale breath wafting over the tribute. Weak, she was so weak after so long in the ground. She could not muscle her way through Eva, but then, maybe she didn't have to.

Slowly, tenderly, she lifted her good hand. Cupping Eva's cheek, long fingers reaching for the back of her neck, cold flesh to warm -

While she grasped her pole with her other hand, and slid it quietly into Eva.

"Circe Lyon."

A name, just a name. Once it was a prize, a medal, a crown. She could still taste it, around the edges, tangy like gold. But it was no longer shiny and coveted. Time had stole that from her as well. Circe Lyon. She sounded like a villain in a children's bedtime story - an archetype,
nothing more.

"This is my time. Yours has passed. Return now to where you belong. This is not your life any longer."

Eva surgically separates them. The moment she draws her weapon back and raises it, the Zombie Queen flinches. She only has time to cover one eye as Eva strikes. A grisly green line parts her forehead, dropping ichor into her two eyes.

Elya, she tries again to say, but it comes out as a bitter sigh.