Humans know everything, own the world entire, and are always right. They wrote the laws which say so.
Perhaps that accounts for some small portion of why the tsunami of rage arose, when the liminals were revealed. Many humans claim that their deity crafted them in its own image. But it's usually the reverse. Humanity likes to build a god as a reflection of the supposed worshiper: if the girl ever had a moment of doubt regarding that, then she just considered the scope of the coincidence required for all those people to find a deity who hated everything they did.
Stretch that process out along the curve of creation, and the species goes for omniscient overseers because humanity likes to believe it knows everything. (This is especially true of the least educated among them, who enjoy kicking in the concept that anything they don't understand is obviously a lie: that declaration is frequently followed by trying to kick in the face of whoever tried to tell it.) And the emergence of liminals created living evidence that the entire species had not only missed a rather significant detail, but had been doing so for a very long time.
Also, as a number of religions quickly pointed out, if their god (and theirs alone) had created humanity as a reflection, then exactly what had been responsible for putting together all of that?
Humanity had been told it didn't know everything, that portions of the world weren't theirs, and they'd gotten something wrong. There were a number of instinctive reactions, and the angriest ones were quickly rendered into pending legislation.
The majority of gaps were within human nations. (There were a few exceptions: isolated islands, unnoticed and previously unclaimed by human explorers.) Quite a few of them predated any iteration of the local human government. So how did you solve that? Well, for starters, you could create a law which allowed the open seizing of liminal lands. Because there might be more intelligent species in the world than anyone had ever dreamed of, but they weren't human.
That made things easy. Or rather, easier. Humanity was already accustomed to declaring portions of its own species didn't qualify: as a great writer once observed, just about every sin starts with treating a person as a thing. If someone who has a different skin color or eye shape isn't human, can be spat upon and dismissed, exploited and enslaved -- if multiple nations and religions have already decided that the ability to bear children makes someone inferior and you're a person who can quote 'all men are created equal' because it lets you slash away pronouns before starting on skin...
The liminals had revealed themselves to the species whose arguably greatest skill was in labeling portions of itself as mere animals, followed by treating those segments accordingly. The fact that the new arrivals possessed wings and hooves and horns was just making everything easier, especially when the horned ones are so easy for the preachers to accuse.
And now there were bills approaching multiple legislatures, designed to render liminals into something less than permanent second-class citizens because actual citizenship was never going to get involved. Some nations were discussing the possibility of internment camps in something less than whispers and when it came to public vocabulary, 'internment' was being used as a substitute. It's for the public health, of course. Who knew what kind of diseases the soulless animals might carry?
How do you write a bill to steal the land of those who were there long before the current government arrived? America offered multiple successful models. The theft of territory and loss of recognition as a sapient equal was a bargain written in blood and soil, where those who wrote the laws always seemed to have stakes in real estate holding companies. Those which, rather coincidentally, were interested in purchasing newly-available large parcels of virgin land.
For the United States, the rapidly-advancing legislation represented little more than Round Two. But in France, there was enough pressure boiling within the Sénat and Assemblée Nationale to create a looming vote, recognition and rights potentially evaporating in the rising steam of fear. And after that... well, since when has terror not used a chance to acid-etch a path into power?
That's what the loudest among the governments desire. But it's not every human. There are those who want to bring the liminals in -- somehow. The ones who read ancient tales as youths and never fully let go of the hopes that they might secretly be true, added to a few who can look at any kind of shape and decide to see the person within. Some of those hold power in France. But they're being overwhelmed by the rising voices of fear, the ones who chant about animals, abominations, and -- worse.
The ones who want to make it work feel that the first, best chance at having the fear fade is giving the world a chance to meet liminals -- under controlled conditions. The opportunity to see them as people.
And that's why this is happening.
Why the girl is in human territory, for what her mother believes to be the first time in the daughter's life.
There's a government building in Paris, with a huge courtyard just outside it. The courtyard is... 'occupied' would be an understatement. There are humans waiting outside, thousands of them, and they chant and they mostly breathe on unintentional rhythm because any truly large group has a chance to do that, and there are times when they scream. Those flinging verbal obscenity are supposed to be kept at the back.
The building itself is hosting centaurs within the walls: smuggled in during the night within well-draped military vehicles. They've been there for about seven hours: the announcement of the press conference was made about a third of the way into that. But there had been rumors before the meeting took place. People were waiting for it to happen somewhere, there are versions happening all over the world and for France -- that much warning, in a city so large, on a cool spring day (and why did it have to be a weekend?) was more than enough for everyone to direct their forces. It means the mob has layers, carefully segregated by the police. Thin lines of division which aren't going to be enough.
Those who comprise the mob have a number of reasons for being present. But they all share one. They're waiting for the centaurs to come out.
Just mares, of course: twelve altogether. There hasn't been much human presence within the gaps just yet, and even those who try are just at the beginning of learning about their formerly-invisible neighbors -- but some things were discovered quickly. Those who arranged this public debut know that bringing in stallions for the current stage is a bad idea.
Mares, and... fillies. Because youths might be somewhat less threatening. Besides, everyone knows a cat is a predator, but a kitten learning to hunt is just cute. And if you truly want to learn about the new, it... might be best to start with the children.
If only there were children outside in the crowd.
(It's a short-term wish. The girl gives up on it before the riot starts.)
Less adults inside might have also helped.
But politicians, no matter what side they're on, frequently want the world to know they were involved. And those who claim to speak for the common people generally wind up only speaking to those in the power structure -- preferably, someone close to their level. And with the centaurs... that meant the humans wanted to deal with the strongest.
The leader of the France herd is waiting within the building, just behind the last wall. The final doors.
(Interior walls of plaster, and the push-bar is at the wrong height for an adult mare.)
Flanked by the city's police, whose forces have been boosted through a few military loaners and government security. Those who, several thousand kilometers to the west, would have a much shorter title.
(It won't be enough.)
And because children were requested... she is accompanied by her only daughter.
In this phase of the great experiment, the girl still hasn't seen humans all that often. This is her first time in a city. There have been rapidly-accruing lessons: meetings take too long, the language of bureaucracy might actually be made worse by formality, and the building isn't airtight. Nothing is. The trip to Paris was a long one, and it only took eight kilometers of asphalt roads and fumes before the convoy had to pull over and find a place to purchase vomit buckets. The roads reek, the city is solidified chemicals emanating a haze which the humans somehow manage to ignore even while it's slowly killing them, and the crowd outside has too much of it breathing in rhythm while reeking in perpetuity because 'deodorant' is a joke. It's a stench which breaches the gaps between doors and frame and in that, it just about serves as a preview.
Her mother shows no signs of having noticed the sensory assault. She stands tall and proud and stoic, waiting for the doors to open. There's a hastily-built platform just beyond, shielded by clear plexiglass. Something bulletproof, because the French government isn't completely stupid. And there are microphones, the press are closest to the front of the great courtyard, there's going to be a mutual speech and a Q & A session and after that wraps up, everyone will head off to the meet-and-greet. The party.
The girl's mother is almost fully still, and it's 'almost' because hooves occasionally tap with impatience. They were supposed to go outside ten minutes ago.
Her mother is ready. (The elder was fitted with something very much like human clothing for the occasion: the first time any mare has ever donned some approximation of a business suit. The designer didn't quite manage to account for the scope of the bustline.) The daughter has swallowed back the rise of bile and vomit three times. It isn't a scent which can be concealed, and every flow of nausea finds her parent staring down at her in judgment. Something which is only going to be silent until they reach privacy again.
The stench gets in through the finest of gaps. So does the noise. Those who chant are supposed to be at the back of the crowd, are meant to stay there. But somehow, their words are the only ones the girl can hear.
...word. Singular.
One of the police officers swallows. The hat, rimmed in silver-white, takes an awkward dip as the man visibly fights to keep his hand away from the gun's grip.
Her mother is talking to one of the humans now. A male with a receding hairline and a title. The girl can tell that her mother is talking down to the president, and that's not just from height. How do you deal with a supposedly-intelligent male? How long can they maintain intelligence before hormones and muscles take over? He doesn't even have an aura...
It isn't the right time. (Not so much questioning as issuing an order.)
There is no right time.
They can clear the courtyard --
-- and then the public will just say that they're being kept away for a reason. The exact ones will be invented, quickly distort. The liminals already exist as something very much like a living conspiracy theory. People are already questioning just what it took to keep it all a secret, and how much the government was involved. We have protection. This has to be done eventually. Inevitably. Everything about this is -- inevitable.
And to that, her mother pauses. Nods.
Inevitable. Yes. In that case...
The herd leader moves towards the doors. Some of the humans have to scramble so they can follow in her wake, and the girl wonders how they can move into the miasma at all without forcing every step. Maybe it's easier when you only have to command two legs.
(The girl thinks she knows more about how humans move than anyone. A few extra minutes of experience.)
(She's wrong.)
The doors open. The scents surge, come close to freezing the girl in place, and she wants to retreat, gallop away and find a bucket because everyone else used one at least once during the trip.
(It's going to be a bucket because she has now seen a human public restroom, and... there are problems. Stall size was just the start of the issues.)
Everyone except the girl, because her mother was watching. But there are thousands of humans outside, added to the stink of Paris itself and human civilization is acrid and hot gusts of methane and anyone would need a moment to focus, to vomit, to get it over with --
-- her mother glances back.
The girl swallows again. Parental eyes narrow. Legs are forced into action.
...it's like trotting into sewage.
It's like living in sewage. (Once the program starts, the worst days will have her mentally editing that to 'living among'.)
But it's a cool spring day. And on the other side of the door is open sky.
...mostly.
There are multiple helicopters high overhead: government-sent, or operated by the police. The girl has to force herself not to look at them, because -- it was hard enough to create a no-fly zone above the gap, even with the help of those who can pass for human. It never prevented the possibility of a lost pilot. The sound of engines and blades in the air is something to be feared, and hearing so many... it's another reason to gallop.
Also, there's a lot of cameras. Some of them are broadcasting live. When a culture teaches its members to flee anything with an active lens, it becomes slightly hard to stay in one place.
But on the other side of the plexiglass and about three meters down...
...humans.
She knows that magnitudes more exist than are gathered here: she's just having trouble imagining it. There's more humans in this teeming mass than centaurs in the herd. Perhaps in every herd, all over the world. And there's so many varieties of skin color, of hair and height and what's starting to look like a near-universal case of underendowment, and they are pushing against each other in a way which makes it look as if bodies are trying to phase. Too many people, too many packed so tightly that any form might be best off inside another, and... the police are pushing, pushing, there's barriers of thin wood, some metal here and there, a little more plexiglass, the scents are overwhelming and if she focuses on her primary sense for one more second, she's going to break --
-- her mind, desperately struggling for a new source of input, anything she can focus on which will save her, discards most of the auditory. The lead human male, one president among a global many, is speaking. Introduces the adult mares, and then her mother says a few words. The girl was there for when it was all rehearsed, and too much repetition made history a little boring: she's not really listening. Vision --
-- there are so many humans --
-- and at the back of the mass, the part which is pushing the hardest, she finds the yellow vests.
Afterwards... long after they're finally evacuated, when the gap gets its first truly reliable Internet connection and the first discussions of who might enter the program are under way-- that's when she gets to do the research. The mouvement des gilets jaunes started as protest assemblies against economic inequality: the fluorescent yellow is simply a means of making sure that members can be seen. Demands for higher wages and, after a time, shouts for police reform because quite a few members were badly hurt during assembly dispersal.
It could be argued that they started as something with good intentions. The movement spanned multiple political strata, because who doesn't want to make more money? But when you bring in members from everything, you start to hear a few reasons about why salaries are so low. Such as, just for example, immigrants. What need is there to pay the citizens a decent wage when an immigrant will work for just about free? Which is amazing, really, because immigrants are also lazy. Except for when they work harder than you do and close you out of the promotion which should have been yours just for being a citizen, but promoting them was clearly just being done for demographics and social media and...
At first, it's only a few who speak that way. They're initially put up with because the movement needs the numbers. But some members drift away because they don't want to be around that, those who remain keep bringing in friends and after that happens a few times, the nationalists have become the numbers. And they protest against income inequality because foreigners have the money, the police because the globalists control those...
The yellow vests make them so easy to spot, especially when they start traveling together outside of the protests. You can't always cross the street in time. It reaches the point where they start to attack freely, in plain sight, with the reassurance of numbers.
Because they're French.
Because they can only be French if no one else is.
Because they know they're going to a heaven which was created by a god who hates all of the same people they do.
Heaven is for perfection. Those with souls.
And they will be the only ones there.
Those in the vests have a word for the centaurs. For the liminals. And it is that which is being chanted, louder than anything else, than microphones and speakers. Louder than the dreamers who were deliberately placed just behind the press.
Some of those seem to be trying to call out to the mares and fillies. Greetings, and a number of those are joyous. But their voices are being drowned.
There's a concentric expanding ring structure in the courtyard: that's something the girl can try to focus on, to keep the vomit down. To fight against the rising panic attack, something which has never happened in front of her mother. She's spent years keeping that from happening, burying urges and scents until she reached safety.
(Her mother smells like control. Rigid discipline. Not caring about anything except the next spoken word.)
(Not caring.)
Sensory overload still feels imminent, and looking at any of the other centaurs will just remind the girl that she's inferior because they're surely handling it better than she.
(The sounds from all of those fast-shifting hooves are obviously just mares trying to stay awake. It's been hours, after all.)
Look at the rings. Expanding lines of barricades. Some of them shift under the pressure of so many bodies. The police are caught in the living tide. Rocking back and forth.
Those who wear the vests are chanting.
It's one word. Over and over.
That word is becoming the only thing the girl can hear.
Monstre.
Monstre.
MONSTRE --
The chant is almost musical.
And yet, as human and mare speak upon the stage, alternating and staying on their own rhythm, the girl starts to feel hope.
Hope that the world can truly change.
And then the last ring surges forward.
Spring sunlight reflects from too-bright yellow, almost blinds her.
The backmost barrier collapses.
Officers, security, protection, and lives sink under the rising tide.
On the platform, the planned speech stops.
The president tries to plead for calm. But he only gets two breaths in which to do so, because that's how long it takes for his security to reach him. They start moving him back towards the building, frantically gesture for the centaurs to follow --
-- the others of the girl's herd scramble. But there's a moment when her mother isn't moving. When the harsh lines of the beautiful face are simply staring out at the crowd, the mass which is now teeming in on itself. Exerting pressure. See the mob as a single body, and outer cells are starting to crush inner organs. People are going to be trampled.
(Some of them will eventually try to sue the herd.)
And if her mother isn't moving, then the girl can't move. She'll have to take a stand here, and the watchers are being overwhelmed, the dreamers will be next, the press at the core of it all are trying to find safety and the first hands claw at the plexiglass. Trying to climb up.
That just lets the vests see that the plexiglass could potentially be climbed.
It's slick. But that's not a problem. You just bury enough bodies at the base to form a slope. And then you climb over that.
Her mother is just -- standing there. As if she's looking for something.
If they stay here, they're both going to die --
-- the parent turns. Walks towards the doors. Not trotting: walking. As if the mob is beneath her notice.
That's when the scent of human blood reaches the girl. Something which is moving closer. The police are fighting, so many people are fighting, and skin splits while bones crack. It... seems to take very little, to break a human bone. Perhaps that's why so many are shattering.
The microphones have been abandoned. And a knight whose art was words... they would take the chance, command the podium. Make the speech that brings it all to a stop.
The girl looks at the podium, just for a second. But skill with words was never hers. She can barely sketch. And... she isn't a knight.
-- if she stays out here much longer, she's going to be the last one in. The final target, because the rest of the herd has vanished into the building. Her mother is almost at the doors, and has just now glanced back to see what's holding up the latest failure.
There are fingernails clawing against the plexiglass, breaking. The vests are surging closer. And she could vault the barrier, get into the crowd, try to clear a path for those in danger, but there's no safe space to land. Anywhere she could come crashing down would only see her hurt more people.
A arm vanishes under the roiling tide of life. A second later, more blood saturates the miasma.
They would overwhelm her --
-- a knight dies for something --
-- one sharp note. Her mother has given an order. Get inside. They can't barricade the entrance until all of the centaurs are inside.
The girl has to turn.
Turns her back and tail on pain and rage and blood, because that was the order and she can do nothing else.
Starts to trot --
-- fighting to focus on limited sources of sensory input. To not lose herself in the potential overwhelm. But there are some things which will always get through. That which she's spent a lifetime training herself to hear.
The first screamed word from the human male... that's what makes her glance back. It's reflexive. And she manages to find him, some fifteen meters back from the podium. A thatch of honey-brown hair which has the minimal styling quickly coming apart. The face is middle-aged, but the features remain fine. Not just pleasant, but -- handsome, in their way. Long fingers claw at the air, desperately waving for attention.
He has called out a name. But the one he called to merely keeps walking to the doors. And the girl knows that it's just reaching safety, there are too many people out there for the centaurs to try saving any of them, but the girl turned upon hearing the familiar and the mare -- did not.
There was an introduction. All of the adult mares, and so the name was out there. But why would he call out to --
One more word.
Frantic.
Desperate.
The only chance.
And she hears him.
She turns, for that too is reflex. Sees the grey eyes, the panic and terror and something else, one thing more, she starts to move towards the barrier, she has to move, find some way to get into the crowd because --
-- the hooves come up behind her. A powerful grip becomes a vise on her left arm. Flesh bruises. The other hand twists an ear, and the base will be discolored under the fur for days.
Her mother drags her away, doing so in front of mob and cameras and helicopters and fast-flying blood. Gets the wayward daughter into the building, just before some of the helicopters start to drop tear gas onto the crowd. It doesn't help. The plexiglass barrier is breached by climbing forms, and too many of them reach the doors. The centaurs unite with the humans, try to hold the line.
Hold the doors closed.
But the vests keep trying to get through.
And they won't stop.
There are ways in which the yellow vests get what they want.
The Paris riot isn't the only one. But it's the largest, with the most people hurt, and that allows it to display the bloody visuals across three whole news cycles. To many, it makes the protestors look like the animals. Those who support the internments find just enough of their voters turning away (at least in public) to make them suffer a politician's greatest (or, for many, sole) concern: whether they're going to retain that position of power. But no one wants to offend their base by openly giving in, so -- the solution is to pretend that the decision was outright seized by greater authority, then pointlessly protest that.
The United Nations is granted (or passed) the power to write the liminal laws, and those statutes will have global domain. Part of that has them quickly decide on what comes to be called the Little Rock Solution: forced integration, starting with the schools. And so the student exchange program begins.
But it's all done too quickly.
The hastily written laws are among the worst-composed in human history. And it's not just loopholes. The statutes themselves pretend to be absolute, and what's been created is an absolute disaster.
It isn't a total failure, and... perhaps that's the worst part. The laws were, like the constitutions of so many nations, composed in a single huge effort, passed and ratified as a desperate unit. A total failure could be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. A partial one requires amendments, and those... aren't coming along all that quickly, especially when those who initially stood aside and hoped for failure are now resisting. You can measure the delay in police reports and emergency room visits. For the latter, the doctors usually don't know how to treat the patients. Some of them refuse to do so: because their faith says not to (and there's that human religious fortune again), or out of fear that they'll get it wrong.
The laws are more than merely imperfect. Portions wind up as their very own travesty. But tearing down and starting from scratch would potentially mean losing the best of it, and there is a huge success within the new body of law: the protection of the gaps. That's where the United States winds up effectively leading the way -- by accident and anti-example, because so many of the bills which had been speeding towards legislative bodies around the world had been based on the tricks used to seize territory from the natives. Now those old laws are both a demonstration of what not to do and a demonstration of what others might try to get away with.
The liminals effectively wind up with a seat at the table, or at least in Assembly Hall. Several seats: if Monaco and the Holy See can each claim a place, then eight million newly-revealed residents of the planet can be divided in ways which allow them multiple representatives. The gaps themselves gain the status of micro-nations: able to retain their own laws and government -- at least, for those who don't want to outright merge with their host country, and a very few will make that choice.
But for the vast majority, citizenship effectively becomes dual: with the exception of the mergers and those who lived on uncharted islands, just about every liminal will hold papers for their gap and the country which surrounds it. So to that degree, the girl can consider herself to be a citizen of France, and... she wants to honor her nation's culture. To represent it and her herd in near-equal measure. She just has a lot of trouble thinking of herself that way, because... she knows how many humans disagree with her.
There are successes within the laws. Many of them. Each gap retains full control over its resources. Borders become sovereign, and any human crossing into liminal lands had better be prepared to follow local statutes. For those who can't manage the feat, or who mistakenly believe that human law crossed over with them and they don't have to do anything which the animals demand -- well, skilled lawyers who specialize in liminal regions are understandably hard to come by. The ones who lie about it tend to invest in tourist agencies on the side.
Other triumphs are partial. In just about all cases, a liminal's personal abilities aren't subject to regulations. It's like passing a law against someone being left-handed --
-- actually, across the course of their history, some of the humans came close to trying that. The prospect of potentially finding out what happens when an ogre gets slapped with a ruler may have served as a barrier.
Still, the harpies don't have to file a flight plan every time they take off, which means a lot for a species which generally can't remember where the paperwork is supposed to go and usually winds up using the ink for skin decoration. But at the same time, there are some tricks out there which are genuinely dangerous, and the only way of stopping most of them is if their use comes into conflict with the other laws.
Territory. Sovereign nations. Protection of resources. The right to soar freely, to gallop -- if you mostly stay in the bicycle lanes while obeying all traffic laws and yes, one early draft would have had the girl making her morning runs with blinkers attached to her buttocks.
And then you have the statutes which govern interaction.
Written in broad strokes, where the sweeping ink stains obscure any chance at justice.
They come down to this.
If a liminal is within the territory of a human government, then no human can attack them.
But at the same time... a liminal cannot strike against a human.
For any reason.
Any at all.
Including self-defense.
And for every iteration of their hateful existence, all over the world, no matter how they label themselves or the deity-sanctioned excuses they offer for their rage, one truth is consistent among those who would don the yellow vests.
They travel in packs.
And the smartest ones take the vests off.
It's so easy to lie, when it's planned in advance and the group supports you. To claim that the liminal did something first. Well, liminals have all sorts of strange abilities: who knows what would have happened if that one kept looking at them? And some of them stay on the outskirts of the pack, carry cameras and if the liminal tries to fight back, that's the moment when the video starts recording.
Such tactics are hardly universal. There are humans who are just too stupid to make it work, and they're usually the ones who decide they can take on the strongest liminals with no help at all. (They already have an advantage in simply knowing everything.)
And... it isn't every human.
Perhaps that's the harshest part. That there are those whom the liminals can truly trust. Care about and for. Host families open their doors. Entire communities offer a place. Friendships bloom. Bonds of mutual devotion stretch across a fast-closing gap of species. It can even feel very much like love.
But other humans will fake it for a time, getting into position for the strike. And they look just like everyone else.
Then it gets worse.
Because humans have their faults, enough to fill a thousand books (while detailing the methods of denying them all would run the shelves out to a million) -- but liminals are hardly perfect. There are those who come out of the gaps because they interpreted the laws in their own way. They are allowed to be loud, arrogant, rude, perhaps even indulge in something very close to criminal acts or even cross the line entirely -- and what can humans do? Because striking out against such a liminal would be against the law.
Those are the ones who quickly force the creation of agencies like M.O.N. Liminals are recruited to police their own, and the household eventually meets Zombina, Doppel, Manako, and Tionishia. (As the household constitutes a semi-mobile disaster area, they usually wind up meeting them about once a week. More often if the squad collectively decides to freeload dinner. Again.) But it gives those politicians who hated the liminals something to point at. An example for why the gaps need to be closed again. And those who were convinced they could never be touched in the first place are incapable of caring about what might happen to everyone, because that still doesn't mean it'll ever happen to them.
Liminals in human lands often wind up pushed together. They travel in numbers for mutual protection -- but there's always more humans. Always. Trying to live in small neighborhoods just creates mini-gaps. Ghettos. And no matter what happens, if it can be proven that the liminal stuck first -- for that value of 'proven' which relies on the rehearsed human lie -- then the liminal is in the wrong. As excuses go, the best 'self-defense' can do is to potentially get you sent back across the border with custody of a rather rare apology.
And yet... the world is out there. All of it. Liminals start to leave the gaps. A few of those are adults. Others continue to huddle within, hoping for safety in numbers in a place where the law gives them control. But some of those who venture into human nations manage to succeed. They become singers and small business owners and team mascots. Anything where they can be perceived as safe. Where, like so many immigrants before them, they can start to build a new identity and a life.
And sometimes, they go back to the gaps. Limping.
The exchange students eventually find themselves at constant risk of deportation: everyone else risks prison. Human bodyguards find themselves in great demand, just so there will be someone who can fight. The hire rates quickly become exorbitant.
Many of those students wind up returning home.
Limping.
If they're lucky.
And that's with physical assault.
There's worse.
Every student fears the moment when 'worse' tries to make a move.
There are so many reasons for blouses to be torn.
The girl never sees the thatch-haired human male again.
She doesn't know if anyone saw him again.
There had been two words.
One had recently been offered to the crowd.
The other, the more frantic, the desperate... hadn't.
"CENTOREA!"
There should have been no means of knowing her name...