”Ooh, look how green everything is!“
”Looks just as bad as the palace grounds to me. Can we go back in the ocean?”
You’re Adagio, and you’ve… encountered some obstacles in taking over the human world. Again. You were honestly very close this time, if only they hadn’t abolished the divine right of kings at the last minute…
But hey, that’s what puppet rulers are for! You’re not bitter or anything. It’s just that everyone needs a break sometimes, especially from politics. So you’ve taken the girls on vacation, starting with a soothing two-month swim. Now, the three of you are finally back at your personal haven.
A very long time ago, this is where you were banished. Well, much closer to the western shore, but still here.
Everything here was immaculately secret, as far away as possible from the rest of society. There were humans in some of it, though; sometimes they had darlingly intricate names and deliciously cursed artifacts for you, although you could avoid them if you wanted. In fact, you all thought the world was deserted for the first decade.
Ah, youth.
"You can go swimming again if you like, Aria. Sonata and I are going to go find dinner."
She strolls wordlessly back toward the tide, and you head for the forest, thick green trees without measure. As you walk Sonata’s staring at you, and she’s trying to look cute.
”If I catch something, I don’t have to cook it, do I?”
You laugh gently and muss her hair. "Of course not. We’re here to be ourselves, aren’t we?"
Her expression stops being cute. The grin’s toothy and unpracticed, nothing like the polite, wan, elegant thing she would share in banquet halls with your former courts, and you can’t help but return it.
The things you eat will be remembered someday as hidebehinds, splintercats, teakettlers. Today they don’t have names, and that’s the beauty of them.
A little later, you’re all sitting on the beach, looking where you came.
Aria points straight to the horizon. ”Don’t you have a husband back there?”
You startle. You hadn’t remembered that, and you’d arranged the marriage yourself. You were getting old.
"I guess so," you say, reclining on the sand.
”What was his name again…?” Sonata cocks her head, trying to think of it.
Aria settles in, watching the waves, trying to decide whether or not to go to sleep. She’s calmer out here. For the longest time you thought her hostility was just a defense against a nasty world, but it isn’t. She acts that way because there’s no one here to reason with.
For the three of you, not taking control is the same thing as accepting failure. Every time you’ve gotten bored and tried to take over the world fairly, it’s ended horribly. Without someone to argue with and seethe about, she looks more… neutral. Placid, maybe. You know because you feel it too; you want to come at your problems from another angle, so you’re walking across the continent and swimming to the other end of civilization. This is nice, but...
Well, you need to pick up your feet sooner or later. You should tell them to head out tomorrow.
"...Should we head out tomorrow?" It becomes a lazy, floating question.
”Not unless you really want to.” Sonata says, forgetting your husband entirely.
”Nah.” Aria says, and decides to go back into the ocean for a while.
You watch her dive in, then let your eyes close.
In the years to come, you would avoid this place, wondering if you led the humans to it somehow, or if one of the others made one too many hints. You didn’t.
No, they found it all on their own, just like the warrior-tribes who picked you up and took you to the rest of civilization centuries ago. There was a war over who got to build their awful infrastructure on it, and you had to stop politicking for a while.
Sonata was curious about what was going on there, and sometimes she’d ask to swim over.
Aria, on the other hand, was like you: she didn’t want to see what people had done with her beaches.
You got over it eventually, and contented yourselves with the islands they still hadn’t discovered. But many years before then, you’re dreaming on a continent that belongs just to you.
The ocean air billows over you as the stars of home wheel across the night sky. And, for a little while, that’s adoration enough.
You’re Aria Blaze, climbing up the side of a goddamned mountain.
You know what Sonata’s problem is? Thin skin.
Adagio's already scanning the horizon from the peak. You have no idea how she got there so fast, she climbs like she’s being reviewed by a panel.
And you’re still sore about her not letting you crash the last World’s Fair. Normally you’d have done it anyway, but Sonata thought it was too interesting to destroy, which meant that if you’d gone they’d have exiled you from the group for another century. That was your own, natural version of the humans’ complicated ‘democracy’: if two thirds of the group wants the last third to not find them, they’d have twice the magic to do it with.
Thankfully you’re in the majority right now, or else this would take ten times as long. Sonata was too good with magic for you to track on your own, only because she practiced it. Not a drop of it in the world that you don’t personally help convert, but she practiced it.
You’ve fallen off this thing twice already, and it’s only the second day. You’re sure this would’ve killed a human a dozen times by now. Those pussies have to use ropes and special equipment.
When you rule your share of the world, you’re going to start a democracy, but only the people who can climb a mountain without help get to vote.
”She’s down there.” Adagio points to another, lower peak when you finally get to the top. You don’t see her.
Wait.
"In the caves?"
She nods. ”Seems she’s taken a lesson in hiding from you.” You groan and don’t dignify her with a response.
Each of you had different hiding places when you ran off on your own - and, yeah, even you had left the group for personal reasons before. Nothing as stupid as theirs were, though.
It was always over boys one way or another. That’s why Adagio hid in plain sight and Sonata usually ran off into nature, they wanted to be found. When you laid low, you went deep into a cave system and stayed there - trained monsters, traps, a few good books, the works.
Sonata’s not smart enough for that. Thankfully. This shouldn't be that hard after all. And even better, Adagio’s climbing back down the other side, so you can beat her there.
You dust yourself off and take a running start. Push off with both legs at the edge of the cliff…
And then you’re soaring.
You land a little below the peak and dig in with your fingers. A chunk of rock comes loose and you toss it away. You can feel her down there.
You can feel how sorry she is for herself. Whoever this statesman she was so smitten over is, you’re going to break his legs.
...Not to make her feel better, of course! Just to set an example to not make you run around the world looking for your sister, that’s all.
Adagio gets up to you by the time you’ve ripped your way inside. Not one hair out of place, and all her clothes are still in one piece. You bet she doesn’t even like it, she’s just become good at it because there’s nothing else to do.
She drops down first and you follow. You forgot how nice cave air could be. Ah, and there she is.
Haggard, hair splitting and tangled, covered in dirt. She’s only a few chambers away from the entrance, sitting there feeling gloomy. A human might mistake it for meditation, but her posture marks her loss and her desire for solitude.
The both of you land and make your way over to her, and she pretends not to notice you.
"Sonata."
”Sonata, honey…”
”Go away.” Her voice is a murmur.
”You can’t do this to yourself, Sonata, we’re a team. We need you. Come back with us, we can go somewhere else.” Adagio steps closer.
Sonata finally stops staring into space and looks at the pair of you. Then her face twists in anger. ”NO! I’m not going anywhere! If Georges want me to be dead, then I’ll be dead for him! If he hates me that much then I’ll stay here until every member of his family dies so they’ll never have to look at me, and all his children’s children too!”
Adagio stays where she is. ”You’re being silly, Sonata. I’ve made sure he won’t rise above being a War Minister already, we can go somewhere else in the world and start over. Just come out of this dratted-”
”I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE! He wanted to poison me, I could taste it in the wine he gave me! All of it was just a lie, I wanted to give him everything and all he wanted was a world without me in it, so FINE, HERE, TAKE IT!” Her voice echoes as she raises her head and shouts at the ceiling, and then throws something to the ground.
Then, startled and realizing what she’s done, she falls onto her knees and scrabbles through the dirt for it. She’s crying as she dusts it off and holds it to her chest.
You and Adagio look at each other, and back at her. She’s sobbing freely now, as if there were no one for miles, head between her knees.
Adagio comes a little closer. ”Sonata, please, you know you’re going to come with us eventually anyway, why not now? We’ll go wherever you like, I promise.”
Sonata stands up to full height and snarls, and Adagio, made aware of their height difference, steps back again.
You’ve had just about enough of this. You start walking, shouldering Adagio out of the way before she can talk again.
Sonata growls at you, then backs away, but your footsteps are even and constant. You’re not taking any more of her shit.
Finally she backs herself up into a wall, and displays her teeth to scare you off. It might’ve worked if she still had more than one row, and if she weren’t shaking and tear-streaked. But, things being as they are, you take a deep breath and brace your arms, and then you hug her.
She thrashes in your arms for a moment, but she can’t break your hold. This isn’t some cuddly loser bedtime hug; she doesn’t get to leave until you say so.
"Shhhh." She squirms in all directions, eyes fiercely shut.
...And, slowly, she goes limp. You’re surprised Adagio hasn’t come to stop you yet.
Sonata’s breathing is ragged.
"Shh, it’s okay. It’s alright." Hush already, you bitch.
”I knew he only wanted me ‘cus we were pretending to be important. I knew he did. I knew he just wanted to use me.”
"Shh, you’re alright, Nata, you’re here with me and Adagio."
”B-but I would’ve let him, is the thing. I don’t care about that stuff. I would’ve given him anything he wanted if he’d just, just asked for it.” She tries to chuckle and just starts crying again. ”Why couldn’t he have just asked me to help him?”
"He was an asshole. That’s why. You shouldn’t spend time with people like him."
”N-no, I, I couldn’t help it. ...What did I do wrong, Aria? I just wanted to help him, I never asked him for anything else. How did I make him hate me?“ Her voice is small, and her hands, still clenched into a single fist at her chest, are trembling.
"You didn’t. Look at me." You tighten your hold and she turns her eyes to you unwillingly. They’re red, in the way they’re not supposed to be. "You didn’t. He doesn’t want you to be dead or alive or anything else, because he didn’t care about you in the first place. He’s a leech, just like the rest of them."
”B-but I…” She turns away from you again, and her hands shake harder. “...I loved him.”
Alright, you can’t ignore the hands thing any longer. You take a breath and prepare yourself for more thrashing.
"Nata, you have to let go of that, whatever it is."
She shakes her head.
"Sonata..." You squeeze her as best as you can, ignoring her knuckles digging into you. "Please let go of it."
...She does. It clatters to the cave floor with a small tinkling sound, and you can see it now. It’s a Stanhope ring, a local part of the photography fad. There’s a lens on one end, and an incredibly tiny image inside.
”I-it was for our anniversary. He wanted me to see us, together, whenever I wanted. He let me choose what we wore for the picture, too.” She’s smiling, and her eyes are wet, but she’s out of tears for now. Her arms are at her sides, and after a moment of breathing they slap themselves around your shoulders.
Good. After a moment you feel another arm around your back, and Adagio swoops in around both of you. You reassemble into a proper group hug, sandwiching Sonata in the middle.
She giggles a little. It's not her real laugh, but it's an okay try.
Adagio’s the first to break the silence. ”I think it’s time we went somewhere else, girls. I can hear the ocean calling.”
"Yeah, let’s get the fuck out of here."
Sonata nods.
It takes a minute to create another opening, and they talk about where they want to go. You don’t listen, because it doesn’t matter as much as rending the rock, and you’re the last to leave.
”I’m going to beat you two to the bottom if you don’t hurry up, Aria!” Adagio calls over her shoulder as she starts back down.
"Yeah, one second."
You go back inside and scoop up the ring. Its heft weighs vaguely within your palm, and you close your fingers over it, wondering if you feel some echo of what she felt as she clutched it. And then, with an effort, you crush it flat and hurl it into the deepest patch of darkness you can find.
When you go back outside, Sonata’s standing there waiting for you.
”Dagi’s halfway there already.”
"Don’t worry, we’ll kick her ass. Come on."
She takes your hand while you check the distance. ”...Aria?”
"Yeah?"
”Thanks.”
You smirk a little. "Yeah, whatever."
Then the two of you make your running start, push off at the last second…
And you’re flying, wild with the wind in your hair, to the earth.
