//------------------------------// // Eldritch // Story: Daily Equestria Life With Monster Girl // by Estee //------------------------------// There are scents associated with death. Several are based in decay and for the olfactory world, that's an entirely predictable symphony of foulness: you already know how every last sour note is going to go, but the environment might affect the speed at which they're played. Others are rooted in absence, because breath itself has a scent and when lungs cease to function, first and Second forever stilled... then it doesn't take long before that scent begins to go stale. Then it vanishes. It's something which can make the air feel a little heavier than usual, when the most basic rhythm of life no longer contributes its scant breeze. Urine and feces. Those are common, and serve as a lack-of-grace note. Numerous species will have all of their sphincters relax at the moment of death: in particular, humans are subject to this, and just about every piece of media tries to ignore it because a spectacular demise inflicted upon one's opponent probably doesn't need to go into detail on every resulting stain. The spontaneous fouling and resulting stink could be argued as a warning signal to other humans: don't approach this place, because death was here. Or it's just one last piece of petty revenge, offered up by a species which knows how to inflict so many. Go ahead and eat me, monster -- but at the very least, you're going to have to clean the corpse first. And then there's the molecular signature of centaur blood, writ strange as the flow slows and dries. When it's cold enough, you might even get a sort of gel. The girl only smelled that once, because there was a stallion who... ...it... happens sometimes. There was a mistake, and the mares bred for strength. Over and over, until strength was all which remained. The only thing which the stallions could understand as being important. And centaur lifespan -- -- the girl hasn't quite reconciled that, and it's partially because she hadn't had any real reason to think about it. She was at a given stage in her life, the human male she longed for roughly matched that place in the cycle -- wasn't that the important part? But to compare her potential years to his -- no. She would win him, because she had to win. And after that, they would just -- be together... ...not every liminal lifespan matches that of a human. Some have shorter seasons, others can treat their first century as reaching late middle age, and a few are technically dead to begin with. Different developmental rates, separate points at which the internal clock shifts into the gradually slowing beat of long-term failure. And no matter what is done, eventually, reflexes slow. It takes more effort to gain the same results. Natural aging, clearing the way for the next generation. A centaur can remain strong for a very long time. But it isn't forever. And when the stallions begin to weaken -- there are different reactions. Some spend nearly all of their time in exercise and combat, trying to fight against the inexorable tide. Others drop into denial and never come out. And for a few, when there are those who feel that the only important thing about them is strength and they start to lose it... There was a stallion who didn't want to become weak. And there was no way of telling what his final thoughts had been, but... the girl suspected he'd decided it was a choice which came from strength. It had been winter: cooling scents carried by a chill wind, easy to track. They'd found him outdoors, and... the herd had cleaned up. There were scents connected to death, and the girl knew about them because centaurs died. And when that happened, the herd took care of its own. Moved the shell to where so many others were kept, and waited for the land to run out of room. Scents for the dead. Scents for the dying. So many diseases came with signature odors, things which the bodies of the ill would emanate without respite. Some of them can even be detected by humans. The girl can spot diabetes on the breeze: it's decomposing apples, fruit as rot just barely contained within failing skin. Diphtheria has a horrible sweetness about it, and typhoid -- somehow, typhoid is baked bread. The girl knows about the scents of the dying, because her mother is the strongest mare and -- at least for the mares, there are ways in which centaur culture can vaguely echo that of the griffons. What good is strength if it can't be used to raise up the weak? Those at the top of the chain take responsibility for the ones on lower links. Those in the herd who need help. There are healers in the girl's herd. Physicians, and when the time of integration comes, medical knowledge will be frantically exchanged in all directions. It takes a special set of skills to heal. But just about anyone can take care of the sick. The youngest can press the dampness of a cool cloth against searing skin. And when your mother is the strongest... The girl trotted with her on a few of those rounds, always within her mother's shadow. (Mostly in the early parts of her youth. She seldom came along after puberty had begun, because Trinette claimed the hours of an apprentice, and -- the girl suspects she had simply become too much of an embarrassment.) Checking in on the ill. Taking care of the dying. And there were scents of unnatural sweetness and decay and rot and, somehow most horribly of all, baked bread: something which kept the girl from eating the real thing for a month. She knows about the scents which come from the dying because there is a gap, every aspect of existence is confined within it, and death has nowhere to go. No more than a filly trying to offer small comforts to a sick mare can leave the final bedroom until her mother does. After the girl dies, after her body collapses across what should have been tiny hooks of sharpened stone... after that happens, there will be questions as to just how much of it was real. The answer is immediate and obvious: all of it. Every detail from every last moment, including all those which might have felt impossible. And for a centaur, especially one who has been moon-touched, the primary sense can be scent. How much was real? All of it. It could be said, with full accuracy, that she received personalized attention. Perhaps some of the scents were created for her alone -- but that doesn't make them any less real. The gate fully closes behind her, cuts off the flow of outside air. What remains is enough to keep her alive, because you can only be killed here. But there are scents. Sweetness and rot and rust. Something she tries to keep at the back of her awareness, because to reflect on it too long is to feel her stomach heave again and again. Never unnatural odors. Always something she knows, and never anything which can be escaped. But none of them are associated with death itself. Not until the very end. The deep place smells like a thousand things are simultaneously dying. Dying and can't finish. The passage closed, and the last echoes of pony sounds vanished. The final scents from the mares and dragon, carried on a twisting current of temporary pressure differential -- none of that faded. They were suffocated, buried under layers of encroaching stench until there was nothing left but what Tartarus wished to pass off as natural air. And the stink -- -- that, too, was buried -- or at least, the attempt was made. She had learned how to live in the human world, and figuring out odor discrimination had been no small part of that. For a centaur to live within a haze of petrochemicals and ozone and what human females thought was perfume required the ability to relegate a degree of sensory input towards the back of the brain. She buried the complexities of that layered background scent as best she could, while trying not to think about why it all seemed so familiar. But that simply gave it a few neurons to occupy, and it used its perch as the smallest of thrones. Trying to send out orders to shiver and tremble -- -- her head felt odd. Her brain didn't feel right, and she'd never been so aware of the kilogram-plus of living electricity sitting within her skull. A biological computer which felt as if it still had that chill mist traveling across its surface, probing and poking and searching, almost like a spider with legs of ice was trying to weave a web from her thoughts -- Rachnera she would have laughed at this place she would have laughed at me -- Cerea briefly forced her attention away from that horrible sensation, made every sense take the fastest possible survey of the environment. Checking for immediate threats. And finding none other than the fact that she was in a deep place whose existence centered around torment, risked sheathing the sword so she could get the helmet off. The soft bag was clenched in her left hand, and she was trying not to exert too much force upon it. Breaking the hairpins would be so easy... ...a soft bag, but... she could see the points of the pins pushing against the fabric from the inside. As if they were trying to work their way out, like feathers escaping from a down pillow. Or a jacket. No one had ever found a way of turning feather down into a weapon, and that seemed like something of a pity because the pointed fragments of former flight seemed to be capable of working their way through anything. Their host had possessed a down jacket, but it had been an old one and the integrity of the shell had been failing. If he sat down too quickly while wearing it, he could raise a cloud of feathers faster than Papi in full molt... It felt as if the chill was working deeper. Pushing towards the cerebellum, shoving the corpus callosum aside in order to get at the good stuff -- -- she balanced the helmet against the juncture of her backs, letting it rest in the hollow where horizontal switched into vertical. Began to quickly place the hairpins, one by one, getting the strands under control, and every little piece of plastic seemed to jar the frozen fingers, force them closer to the surface. Making them rise up and out, but the chill was still spreading on the upper layers of her mind because she wasn't clear yet, not yet and her fingers worked faster, she was trying not to fumble, ears straining to pick up on the grinding of moving rock -- -- the strange cold evaporated from her thoughts, leaving her with nothing more than the weight of air, metal, and duty -- -- there was a surge in the air. Not a gust of wind, or the sudden twisting of a dust devil. A wave of foul overpressure rippled over her from head to tail, pushing at every seam in the armor, searching for a way in, roiling as if in sudden confusion or desperate frustration -- -- it stopped. There was a moment when she did nothing more than hold very still. Refusing to shift so much as a tail hair. Waiting to see if it happened again. (It would, at what could be called a predictably irregular interval. Always at some point after enough time had passed that she might start to believe there would be no others.) The process had taken more pins than she'd hoped. There were only seven left in the soft bag -- -- maybe it needs more pins than that. Maybe Tartarus is... waiting... She held her breath, first and Second. (Holding the Second let her know it was still possible, but doing so with the deep place's air was -- unpleasant.) But that particular chill didn't return. Seven pins and after some thought, there were none. She was able to whip her tail forward enough to lace five of them within the flow, secured the remaining pair so that she could reach them quickly. One for each hand, if they were needed. And then, with a little more time in which to do so, she looked around -- -- she tried to look around. There had been some question of how to manage the glowsticks. Several solutions had been offered, and the alicorns had decided to go with all of them. The glassy sealed tubes ended in small metal loops: enough to secure fabric or thin cords. By varying how much she was using, Cerea could tie the smallest glowsticks to her wrists or forearms, shedding light wherever she pointed. Or they could be attached to her forelegs, trying to illuminate the lowest portions of the path ahead. During part of the journey towards Tartarus, she'd tried hanging one around her neck, used too much cord, and wound up with light mostly reflecting within a chasm of metal cleavage. (Rarity had offered her a drapecloth, allowing her to banish lumens at need. It was some kind of dark velvet, and the improvised drape was oddly precise.) She'd chosen a forearm arrangement for going into the tunnel, with the option to fasten another at the front of her helmet or forehead: a miner's light. And the glowsticks were working, the degree of radiance seemed to be roughly what had been present in the forest -- but there was something strange about the color. About the light. The chemical radiance had started as a mix of yellows and greens, similar to a few of the specimens she'd seen at festivals, and that was still the same. The intensity had changed. The hues were saturating the air, discoloring atmosphere as light tilted towards matter. Not beams, but wafts of light, swirling and churning within the caves. It was like trying to see through chlorine... She'd carried her Moon-touched state through the gate, didn't know when it would wear off (or worse, if) -- but it didn't seem to be doing much for squinting. There was darkening paste on her armor. It had removed all of the shine, and now seemed to be turning liquid under the pressure of the light. They said this was resistant, made its way through a slow-to-warm mind. What does it look like when there's no resistance at all? Cerea checked on the ceiling, nearly glared at it in a futile attempt to make it stay in place for a few seconds. Wondered whether it was worth donning the helmet. She needed the protection, but -- it would cut off a portion of her senses. Even Moon-touched, it would be harder to hear. The range of her vision would be restricted, and odor discrimination would still leave her constantly factoring out the confining scent of steel. It could be donned in a hurry. For the moment, she needed to take in her environment. Another survey of the area. Looking. Listening. (There was something about the scent...) It could be called a living cave system, if she wanted to assign it anything approaching that much dignity. In speleology, that status was mostly granted based on whether there was water present. The girl could hear dripping, somewhere up ahead. The beats were irregular, to the point where no tiny splash ever occurred when she was anticipating one. But there was fluid condensing, falling, raining down onto stone. It simply didn't smell like water. (She didn't want to think about what it smelled like...) The ceiling had found a way of being both too high and too low. Much of the peak for the unnatural arch was out of range for what the gusts of light could reach, putting much of the roof into uncertain shadow: suggestions of presence. But this mouth had teeth all the way down its throat. Stalactites hung lower than she would have wished: some of the jagged points came within centimeters of her head. Stalagmites rose in patterns, ridges and hooks spreading out from the wide bases in ways which left just barely enough room to get past without injury -- if she was careful. If there were no mistakes, and if the rock didn't notice that you were there, didn't shift a few vital millimeters to the side. (She would soon notice that the degree of stalactite descent was a flexing variable. If she put her helmet on, there was always a chance to scrape the metal, send a screech of steel's agony through the caves. Remove it, and do everything possible to keep a bloody trench from being scraped into the skin.) Try to look past the distortions of chlorine, and there were hues trapped within the rock. Most of them had collapsed in on themselves. The results were mostly deep browns and greys, with more than a few hints of puce. Some of that shimmered in that light. Small portions writhed. Some colors ran across the sharpest places in thin rivulets, with portions of the torn-away paintbrush at the top. She could describe fragments of long-dried dead skin as a paintbrush, especially when they came with so many fine hairs. The passage was wide, but the trails were narrow. There were little pits in the floor: the majority were smaller than the diameter of her hooves, with just enough leg-catching exceptions to keep any traveler on constant guard. As with the approach path, the air felt oddly heavy. Menajeria's atmospheric pressure seemed to be consistent with that of her own world: about six and two-thirds kilograms at sea level. (She was presuming she'd been close to sea level upon arrival.) The corridor seemed to have compressed that by about one additional kilo. Enough that she could feel the metal testing the padding. Constantly. Searching for weak spots... A vulnerability was located, and cold soaked through the fur of her legs, ignored skin and took up residence deep in bone. What could she hear? One sound suggested dense keratin being dragged across stone. Over and over. There was a little yipping sound at each end, and then it started again. And there were little swirls in the air, eddies of vibration left behind by partial syllables in search of a language. If she listened... 'gi... ld... yr...' It was as if tiny fragments of whisper had been trapped, were wandering the caves trying to find a way out, and the only means of escape would be to unite within listening ears. One letter at a time, until the words were assembled. And if she listened long enough, she would understand: wasn't that the enchantment? She could understand anything said within the caves. Just... ...take a hoofstep forward, the sound is a little stronger ahead... She strained her ears, to the point where she could feel the fur along their fringes starting to vibrate -- -- her body tilted forward, left, down as her forehoof began to slide into the little pit -- -- she jerked back. Instinct screamed, and her head tilted forward just in time to avoid the stalactite. The air continued to whisper. Rumors swirled through the caves, then briefly paused so the first of the screams could come through. Something oddly liquid, which came up through the cave floor and coated the lowest portion of her armor in rock dust and agony. The temperature seemed to be on the rise. Was on the rise. There was a moment when she was comfortable: just long enough to recognize, to wish that it would maintain, that one thing could be right. And then sweat started to bead on her skin, soaked into the padding. Thin trails of salt began to work their way through her fur. After about a minute, the trend reversed itself. It contained another pause, a single instant of thermal normalcy. And that was followed by the sensation of water beginning to chill. The promise of ice, padding crackling every time she moved. Splitting, perhaps. Frostbite... The test. It would mean removing a gauntlet. Becoming that much more exposed. Having the helmet off was a constant risk, but it was also a tradeoff. Right now, she needed don't want the input from her senses. To add the risk of injury to a hand, when she didn't know how quickly Tartarus might respond... I don't need it any more. I know Tartarus is -- reacting. That the sword can fight back, at least a little. But there were other reasons to perform the original test, even after the entrance passage had tried to make her crawl. Carefully, trying to make sure the metal joints were all flexing properly, she removed the left gauntlet. Trotted towards the nearest wall -- no: forced herself forward, making every leg work in turn. Trying to keep the helmet balanced in the hollow. Four legs. It was really far too many to think about. "Did you ever realize that you have four legs?" Yes. There were times when it was almost constant. But it only started after I saw someone who had two. Take out the distortions of the chlorine light, and this part of the wall was almost normal. Gypsum, perhaps: one of the more frequent types of cave stone. You had to be careful around gypsum, especially if it was powdered. It was a skin irritant, did harsh things to lungs and throat. Cerea wasn't sure where she'd read that: one of Sir Folliot's observations, perhaps. France had more than a few caves: in fact, when it came to the earliest known parts of human history, the nation contained some of the most important in the world. But centaurs weren't exactly known for spelunking. Her herd had placed its gap on the surface of the world, because confinement within the earth would have quickly destroyed them. Centaurs needed nature. It was other liminals who had taken shelter underground, forever listening for the sound of approaching bulldozers and picks... She slowly advanced her bare palm towards the wall, even as the armored hand went back toward a supply bag. Centimeter by centimeter, until she was almost making contact -- -- jerked it back, and did so at the same moment when her other hand darted forward, pressed flimsy weight against the fresh protrusions and yanked down. And then there was a strip of torn black fabric hooked onto the sharp hooks of the cave wall. She didn't know where she was, and she was trying to figure out who to blame for it. When it came to what had happened to the road, the changing surface and being chased down by what might have just been an illusion of void -- there had to be a liminal responsible for it. One of those few whose abilities truly reached into the realms of the supernatural. Her first suspect was a satyr. Not that she knew very much about them, at least outside of the legends which had followed the girl's herd into the gap. But they were closer to what humans thought of as fae than most of the liminals. They were certainly capricious enough. And when it came to their historical dealings with centaurs -- well, both species had arisen in Greece. The centaurs had left, while the satyrs had taken a hiding place within the homeland. There was a certain assumption that at least one involved party had been making a major effort to get away from the other. She'd been warned about satyrs, before she'd left the gap. (There had been rather more warnings about humans, and some of the more insular mares had still been trying to find some way of getting her to reconsider departure without offending her mother.) That they would steal everything away from you, everything, followed by laughing and saying it was all in good fun -- then dashing away before you could get any of it back. Those on the farm had at least made some degree of attempt towards stealing their host. The girl hated that farm. The satyrs were a natural target for her hate, but -- there was also a minotaur. The one who made her feel inferior just through taking an overalls-straining breath, and that was when the girl knew she wasn't done growing and the minotaur was -- -- every liminal species had needed to find ways of defending their gaps. Satyrs, as with some of the others who came close to fae, were said to rely on disorientation. The sylvan glade: a human stepped into one location, and emerged from another -- if they were lucky. Otherwise, there might be a stop in between. So it could be a satyr. Or something more rare, exotic. One of Japan's native liminals, perhaps. The girl didn't know. What counted was that the horrible laws still allowed her to defend herself against anything which wasn't human. Even with a plastic sword, she could do some damage just by putting her strength behind the flat of the blade. Not a real sword. Not a real knight -- -- the important thing to do was finding the party responsible. Quickly, before she was missed. Anyone capable of bringing her here (wherever this was) would also be able to send her home. And as human detective stories suggested, she could start by -- sniffing around. Try to pick up on liminal scent, and hope she would be capable of tracking it to the culprit. But she didn't know where she was. (The temperature was wrong.) (She'd already checked her phone. There were no transmission bars. Rearing up to get the rectangle somewhat aloft hadn't found a smidgen of signal strength. Neither had the desperate vertical leap, and one of the surest signs of insanity for a centaur was making any attempt to climb a tree.) (No litter decorated the forest floor.) (The air was strange. Too crisp, too clean.) (How far had she gone?) She would be wandering through the unknown. Without any frame of reference... ...her skirt had become torn. There was no one around. And besides, even if a human did show up (which would just let her ask where she was, presuming they didn't run), that exposed portion of her body would never be seen as vulgar. As abomination, sickness, something which had to be contained or exterminated -- but in the strictly sexual sense, not vulgar. She bent, twisted at the joints in ways which the humans would have found unnatural. Tore a strip of fabric from her damaged clothing, and tied it to a low branch on a nearby tree. There. Mark her path every so often, and she would at least know where she'd been. She could put tiny extra rips into subsequent strips as a means of numbering them. Not that she might need any further markers, not if she picked up the scent quickly and managed to be -- persuasive. If she was especially lucky, she might even be home in time for breakfast. Selenite gypsum: for petrologists, it was known for transparent and bladed crystals. Tartarus had made that literal. She'd marked her arrival point at the beginning. She was marking it at the end -- -- don't think that way. It's what Rarity said. Believe I'll come out. A knight would come out. ...or die in glory. Their body trapped forever in the caves, by choice. Because there was something they had done which was more important than escape -- But she wasn't a knight. It had been months since she'd been stolen away from the household. Moons, if she wanted to think about it that way. And today was a holiday. The day on which ponies went to their families. Went home. And she was here. In a place which imprisoned monsters. Those whose existence threatened to destroy the world. Out of bounds for reality. Cerea put the gauntlet back on. Decided to leave the helmet off for a little longer, and so got to hear the next reverberating cry of agony without having any note distorted by metal. Her tail twisted. The dock felt as if it was trying to retreat backwards into the armor's shell. Check the watch. She flipped up the twin domes: an act made clumsier by a metal-clad finger. (There had been very little point to wearing it on the inside of the vambrace and in any case, the minotaur-made timepiece was so large that it would have given her some spacing trouble.) Clockwork ticked off one second, and then another. The pace was consistent with her internal count. After a moment of thought, she attached the flexible metal cord and secured the other end near her elbow. Check the map. Three monsters. She was supposed to pass three, and she had been briefed on all of them. She wouldn't see anything she hadn't been warned about. Not unless she became lost -- and that was why she'd been given a map in the first place. It took a little work to extract it. The palace had wanted her to have something more durable than paper, especially when no reinforcement spells could be used to protect her guide. The hasty solution had been to redraw the whole thing on fabric. It meant working the roll past a few of her other supplies, and she nearly snagged it on something within the messenger bag, was briefly afraid of having the whole thing rip -- -- the air was moving again. She didn't know how. There was no natural, open exit to the outside world to create a current. No pegasus magic to arrange circulation. It had almost sounded like someone clearing their throat. An observer offering a near-subsonic verdict, and it was 'near' because ultimately, the goal was for everyone to hear it. The evaluation of failure. Disapproval. (It had almost sounded familiar...) Perhaps Tartarus was breathing. (The temperature went up. Came down. There was always that pause in the comfort zone. The perfect thermal range for an armored centaur. And it never lasted for longer than it took her to recognize its presence. To hope.) She was... supposed to trot forward -- well, of course she was: the entrance had closed and 'forward' was the only option available -- until she found a side passage: something which would branch off the main corridor at a forty-degree angle. Cerea would have the option to remain in the central cave, and that would quickly lead her to Tirek -- but it also put her into the deep place's core. Trotting down the center of the Struga, where so many of the incarcerated would be able to see her. Possibly scent her. Try to reach. The branch point would be easy to spot. Numerous magic-reinforced explorers had reported a slight glow in the air at its mouth. Something which made it easier to see the horror ahead. It wasn't supposed to be a particularly long trot. A couple of minutes before she reached the first turn. Maybe a little longer if she was especially cautious about the cave floor. The girl trotted forward, and metal-shod hoofsteps echoed on the stone. She had to be careful about that. Darkening her armor, covering her light sources -- there were ways in which those measures felt pointless, because she was the one using them. Centaurs weren't built for stealth. No matter what anyone did, you always wound up having to conceal a lot of centaur. Her hooves had to be armored: Tartarus was known to stab at vulnerable frogs. But metal on stone made noise. Sliding her hooves would transition the noise from impacts to long scrapes. She wasn't sure which would carry further. Maybe if I just step very lightly... ...her body mass, which she refused to have measured by scale in front of witnesses, was in the vicinity of three hundred kilograms. After rounding down. Way down. And that was without including the weight of her armor. Given that, 'Stepping lightly' was a rather subjective thing. She moved. It was hard to scout the cave floor. The twisting chlorine light didn't always want to move in that direction and by the time anything she'd planned for fell into the shadow of her breasts, things could change. She kept waiting for a hoof to drop into a hole which was just the right size and depth to fracture a pastern. And no matter what she did, her hoofsteps echoed -- -- are those my hoofsteps? She stopped moving. The echoes eventually died. Perhaps the first thing in Tartarus which had ever died. The girl tried a few more steps -- -- it's just echoes. Even a normal cave would distort sound. Two more. ...distort them in ways which make it feel like someone is behind me. She looked back. A stalagmite gleamed oddly under the glowstick's light. It was a strangely bright color, one she didn't expect from stone. Almost the yellow of sulfur, except -- brighter. Almost fluorescent. Something meant to stand out, be seen. Especially in bulk. Close the doors, we have to close the And there was something else within that yellow. A tiny glint of something bright, like there was a bit of metal embedded close to the center. There was something almost familiar about the reflection -- -- she tried to focus on it, and the glint was gone. She... didn't want to look at the yellow. Not in that shade. The girl turned forward. Five more steps. ...like they're behind me and moving like a centaur -- -- they're just echoes, I'm a centaur -- (There was a moment of doubt.) -- so that's what it's going to sound like, a centaur moving, only -- Larger. Heavier. No armor. No shoes. The girl stopped. The echoes died. Moved again. A sonic phantom followed. There was a glow at the place where the side passage diverged. It seemed to come from the air itself, went to war with her glowsticks and left the corpses of colors strewn across the battlefield. That was what she had been told to expect. She'd also been told to expect a forty-degree angle. This was closer to sixty. Tartarus warps. That's why they have to keep sending in survey teams. To make sure the maps are up to date. ...is it supposed to warp this quickly? She was almost sure she had the right corridor: her trot had been of roughly the specified distance. But there had been warnings. The map was, at best, a rough guide. She couldn't fully trust it. And if the deep place had sealed off her passage, opened a new one which led past more than three monsters... (She kept shivering. Sweating. She told herself it was the changing temperature, and some of that was true.) Well, that was why she'd brought the sketchbook. Even if the correct passage had simply been tilted somewhat at the mouth, it rendered her map partially invalid -- and that meant she needed to make her own. She took out the sketchbook, tried to balance the spine on one hand: using her armored breasts as a shelf would just have it sliding forward, and bracing it against the wall was an invitation to destruction. Opened the cover, automatically glanced down at the first page, the page with the sketch which she'd started and stopped and erased and resumed time and time again, desperately trying to get it right when it wouldn't fully come together, when even her poor skills should have been able to render the most important detail in a minute and it had been months -- -- she had meant to flip past it. Move beyond the sketches of house and household. Of the other girls, and everything she was convinced she would never see again. Find the first blank page, and draw out the road into torment. It was the movement which stopped her. At first. It is the face of a human male. Japanese. The black hair is a little too long to be fashionable, unruly, leaves near-bangs hanging well down the forehead and that's mostly because its owner can seldom be bothered to brush it in the morning. Styling is a lost cause. It's a good season when they can get him in for a trim, and a more standard one when some of the hair gets burnt off. The features aren't classically handsome. The nose tilts up near the end, while cheekbones are unusually sharp and the chin comes to something of a point. Add that to the way the ears stick out somewhat (just enough to serve as handles for a grab-and-drag: the centaur is hardly the only one to take advantage there, but she gets the best leverage), and... well, the girl wasn't the only one in the household to eventually wonder if their host has some liminal blood. If it wasn't for a height of a hundred and seventy-five centimeters and surprising physical strength (along with inexplicable durability), the word 'elfin' could be used as a descriptor with cutting intent. And there's usually a little wryness somewhere in the expression, along with a considerable amount of exhaustion. Even so, it's the sort of face you look twice at, mostly to make sure there's enough memorized to pick it out of a crowd on the third attempt. The pencil lines thoughtfully raise their chin. Carefully-placed highlights indicate a shift of those cheekbones, and the profile turns. Rotates on paper, in dimension. It is not staring at her. It cannot. She has been trying to complete the sketch for months. To capture the most vital detail, the essence of him. But she failed, because she always fails. The living face has turned towards her. But it cannot stare, look, or gaze. Kimihito Kurusu has no eyes.