Under the Leaves
Kirie Corsell's mind was unraveling. She had unpicked something awful, something appalling, from the tangled ball of string that made up her memory. In her hurry to scrub her mind clean, in the manner that had become habit of late, the whole mess had come undone. Maybe, she had pushed that particular memory-washing technique a bit far. Maybe, she had just been heavy-handed this time. She didn't know, but what was obvious now was that a fog had descended upon her mind, her thoughts had become disjointed, and the world around her had become dreamlike and unreal.
In her fast-closing window of clarity, Kirie had only a single remaining goal:
Revenge.
The landing legs of the shuttle dug into the soft ground of the lawn. Kirie unstrapped the harness and rose silently from her seat. She closed her eyes, senses expanding outward to the rhythm of her breathing, searching for the hulking, aberrant signature hiding in the stillness of the evening. Though she could not yet feel her, she knew that she had to be close.
Kirie had left Belazura with nary an explanation.
She left the hate, though. Anet would have told her to leave the hate.
The block where she had landed had been carefully chosen. It was a place significant to the two of them only. The place where her long ascent to freedom and happiness had been arrested, and she had begun the long and slow slide to destruction. Well, she was not destroyed yet.
Unsure exactly why she was doing it, Kirie's fingers dug out her communicator, opening a channel she had deliberately left closed for more than a year. Her fingers hovered over the input in a moment of indecision, but after a few moments, she sent the message with a resigned and fatalistic sigh. It was unpleasant, really, what she had done. Probably necessary only for herself, and yet it still felt like a knife to the gut. She read over the message:
To <3782626384826279472>
From <761628283836269263>
"It was Lirka Ka. Just thought you would want to know."
It was unforgivable to tell her like that, but maybe what she was about to do would be apology enough.
With a swipe, Kirie closed the channel and secreted the device back into a deep pocket. She left the shuttle. It rose into the night air, leaving her alone on the street, shivering a little in the sudden chill.
Kirie stowed her hands in her robes, fingers curling around an ornate hilt, a gift given to her not far from where she stood now. Fitting that she should use it tonight. Correct, in some cosmic way.
With her hands pressed to the saber like a talisman, Kirie waited for Lirka to answer the call.