She is so full of emptiness it’s a wonder she exists at all. For she is more emptiness than not, a creature built on missing – on missing her, on missing the lightning, on missing a life that never quite came into being she way she’d distantly thought it might.
These absences are like holes inside her – black holes, opening and swallowing everything up until she is dark and soundless and impossible.
(oh, that word, that word)

There was fear, at first, when the earth shook beneath their feet and all the powers were taken, reabsorbed/ Fear that He would find her defenseless, would choose to return her to His lair. But those fears never saw fruition, and before long they were replaced with something else, with a grief too huge and terrible to comprehend, a grief that muted all else had come home to roost within her.
A love story turned shipwreck.

She sees the girl afire, the flames tapering into wings. It’s a strange sight, and one that stirs a kind of homesickness in her. She had not liked fire, herself (fire was one of His favorite tools, she’d been burned alive more times than she cared to count), but she had liked lightning, had encircled herself in it like barbed wire, a visual warning: do not come close.
She does not like closeness, and the exception – her exception – is dead and gone.

The girl is close enough that Cordis imagines she can feel heat on her cheeks and her stomach roils at the sensation. She considers leaving, turning away, giving the girl a wide berth but something stops her, holds her like an anchor to this spot.
“Are you all right?” she asks, dumbly, unsure of what else to say – unsure if the girl controls the fire or it her.
(She’d felt the same way about the lightning, once.)

I’ll touch you all and make damn sure

Cordis

that no one touches me

The girl is a contrast to her, a blithe smile, a voice like bells. Her eyes are bright, with a sort of righteousness and delight Cordis has never known. Once, she might have felt odd to stand near her, felt heavy and tarnished. But she was never much once to compare herself to others (she feels apart from all others, really, a chasm opened and yawning, and the one who had crossed has since crossed back, into places far more unfathomable), and she certainly doesn’t do so now, not when she walks tangled in her grief.

I can never be harmed, again, says the girl and that is enough to cause a kernel of jealousy in her. Cordis can’t imagine such a world – even before this (she doesn’t name it – naming things gives them power, they always said; so she does not articulate her grief) she knew much more pain than she did pleasure.
She doesn’t reply, makes a low ‘ah’ of acknowledgement and is ready to turn away again, to leave the girl with her fire and her bright eyes, but then she says something interesting.
Someone saved me.
Ah, how Cordis needs to be saved, and how far-away the idea of salvation seems.
“You don’t say,” she says, and skepticism colors her tone, but still – the truth speaks itself somewhat in the girl’s wings, restored in a world that was stripped of its magic. Perhaps there’s something to her story.
“Where was this…being?”
She could find her. She could beg, throw herself prostate before the being and ask for the magic back, for the small and cold comfort of lightning once more wrapped around her silver skin, that one modicum of protection.
She is owed that much, surely.

I’ll touch you all and make damn sure

Cordis

that no one touches me

Gone.
It shouldn’t surprise her, because so much is gone – gone is a word Cordis is intimately familiar with, a ghost haunting the peripheries of her vision. The lightning is gone, her magic is gone – and worst, worst, worst, she is gone, Spyndle is gone and there is nothing left of her but a heart.
So of course this being is gone, lit off for the territories. Another wave of despair crests and threatens to descend. But she fights it, because her breakdowns are meant to be private things. She does not share her tears with their gluttonous eyes.
She may not have the lightning, she may not be a warning sign writ large, but she does her best to still portray these things.

But the girl speaks on, and claims she can do what the being had – restore, make things whole. Cordis does not dare to hope (does she?) but those words keep her here, like shackles around her ankles.
Hope is a pathetic and determined thing.
“I had magic,” she says, pauses, “before.”
Magic is a strange word on the tongue – she is a nascent magician, compared to most, and she does comparatively little – she wears lightning. She aligns herself with no kingdoms, protects no one (the one she wanted most to protect, the one she would have given everything to protect – well, she failed her, didn’t she?).
“I want dearly to have it back,” she says, “and would find myself indebted to you, if you can do what you say.”
For what does she have to lose? She has nothing left, her children are gone, her lover is gone. She is a boring, silver mare with a brand on her hip and two hearts beating in her chest, and she is desperate to feel the lightning surrounding her once more.

I’ll touch you all and make damn sure

Cordis

that no one touches me

She doesn’t mind begging, what pride she once have fled with her magic, because like this – powerless, alone – there is no room for pride. She is willing to do whatever the mare bades, because it doesn’t matter to her, she is a creature of loss and grief with so little else, all she wants is her lightning, her power.
The girl names her terms – you have to give him to me - and Cordis nods. She doesn’t care who is it, she will fling his body at this girl’s feet, if need be; or leave him chained for her consumption.
(It should be unnerving, to realize she would kill so thoughtlessly, all for magic, for a cage of lighting, but she finds this doesn’t bother her the way she once thought it would.)

“Yes,” she says, in case her nod was not enough, “however you want him, I will give him to you.”

And then the girl’s head dips, and something flashes, brief as a lightning strike, and then Cordis is knocked backward as her magic returns.
She cries out, feeling alive for the first time in days, weeks.
Her skin prickles as the lightning returns, like chainmail on her silver skin, she is protected again, she is a weapon again and she breathes.

“Tell me when,” she says, voice rough, “and he’s yours.”
However you want him.

I’ll touch you all and make damn sure

Cordis

that no one touches me