Lion Head Mesa it's hardly sink or swim when all is well if the ticket sells

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 19 °F Clear Skies
Waning Crescent - Illumination: 9%
8 PM

if there was one thing qiao knew about life, it was that revenge took time.

she stood at the precipice of the great halls and studied their flooding. artifacts of all-consuming water scoured their once-smooth walls. mud everywhere. twigs lodged in places they should not be. 

though it had been cold these last few months, the scent of the dead smeared the canyon's every surface.

many times she'd walked the halls below as akashingo's once hemet. her paws traced the frozen garden established eons ago by herself and arsenio; now gone to wilt and rot.

a black garden for a black place.

she continued through the desolation, marking where khaba had driven her skull to the redstone. a bitter laugh suppressed in her throat to recall such memory. another came to her then: makono accusing her of treachery as she barred her egress through the red corridor. another memory: herself and senmut preparing ramesses' corpse, his face shriveled in one of permanent agony.

all these years, and qiao wondered: who?

but now the who was as inconsequential as the why, for all that remained in these halls were ghosts -- and ghosts rarely talked at all.

in the rubble of disturbed stones and silt, qiao picked up an object encased in frozen mud. brushing the flecks of snow and dirt from its surface, she saw it was a braided crown, the baubles once glittering in its settings dulled by damage. 

a smile all to herself as she stared at the ruination of akashingo and knew that this was the cost ramesses paid when he denied qiao her simple price.

she had been patient. reasonable even. she had explained the debt to makono, and then toula. it should come as no surprise both defected, same as their predecessor. qiao had never placed much faith in the promises of royalty.

and now both had nothing. qiao's most powerful haka had at last reached the overworld -- and the overworld delivered in the mighty tongue of cataclysmic flooding.

she threw the useless thing aside, sweeping up on stiff limbs as she continued combing through the murk. somewhere here among the ruins lay the soulbond to her greenbrier torc, and qiao was nothing if not experienced in the scavenging of recently razed kingdoms.

She lay in the filth and the mud. All gone. Everyone. Everything. Her head sounded. She should get up. She should try right. But all she wanted to do was lay in ruin. She had failed. She had failed. What a Mazoi. A failure. She wiggled slightly. But her body was compressed and she felt nothing, but a red haze. Perhaps she just hadn't  died yet. Perhaps.

the thing about survivors is that they do what the dead can't: they press on in spite of death.

she trawled the mud in deep thought. so far, nothing -- but somewhere here was the skull of a man that had, all those eons ago, turned qiao's life trajectory from wife to survivor.

flinging a rock aside in frustration, the crone nearly started as she saw what she had first assumed was a body was very much alive.

she scuttled back to the rock and secured it between her teeth. she reminded herself these were her enemies, and the rock the dark messenger -- and poised, sat ready to bash it over the body's head --

only to see it was a young girl, half-drowned and caked in mud. qiao had no love for children, despite being a mother many moons ago -- yet even then, the sorry state of this girl reminded her of another girl once.

how many girls, through how many lifetimes? this world was cruel to them; they were born into it with a yokel to their necks and they died under it; child, girl, wife, crone -- their only use to men the thing held warm between their legs.

qiao was slow to lower the stone. let that be her only kindness to this stranger whose sole crime was being born in the wrong pack, at the wrong time.

Safiya had learned painfully and intimately what it was to be a survivor. Ten fold at this point. She had survived more in her young life than most could boast. And it was both disheartening and also wakening. She knew that she could do it. And thus she did. 

Safiya narrowed her one eye. The seeing one at the wolf. And she felt helpless for amoment. But before she could call forth the growl and snarl. The other lowered her rock. She knew this wolf. This one was one of the ones that no longer welcome here. But what could Fiya do about it. There was no one left to protect. 

Thanks for not bashing my brains in.

putting aside the stone, qiao sat. why had the haka passed this one by?

her green gaze roved over this girl. she was maimed as much in body as spirit; the missing eye's current of emotions reflected two-fold in the slow burn of her remaining one.

a fighter. you are alone now, girl. qiao stood up and began raking another set of long gouges in the mud. a subset of voices buzzed in her ears, droning into the high whine of a cricket's summer chorus the further she dug.

it was here, somewhere.

another strong heave. no other survivors. what is your name?

Safiya did not know why she had been spared. Didn't really care anymore either. The apathy that she currently felt was absolutely horrifying and she railed against it. But she could not force herself to feel anything else. 

That is fine. Life makes fools of us. She was in a way always alone. She had put in motion things that she had not even realized and perhaps this was her punishment. 

I know. I can smell the dead. Safiya. Yours?

a thousand-eyed stare in this one.

qiao had seen it before. mostly in battle-gaunt men, but sometimes in women too.

she continued rifling through the muck. it was here, somewhere -- the hissing of the overworld's voices grew strong and then waned.

by a rock half-submerged in river silt, the voices grew to a deafening current.  qiao dug earnestly, as if she had forgotten safiya was there at all.

at last her claws raked something solid beneath the giving clay; she dug furiously now, extracting from the reluctant earth an object round and almost entirely featureless.

scraping the river-silt from its surface and revealing the age-worn bone below, qiao patted the skull's forehead and set it down besides her.

turning back to safiya as if there had not been a long stretch of time between them, qiao's gaze fell to the conspicuously absent eye.

so young to be a soldier. but she supposed that was why akashingo was dead; they were quick to throw their future into danger.

well, that and the haka she'd cast months before. an indulgent smile creased her lips. yes, that had been a powerful one. perhaps her strongest yet.

qiao. she placed a mud-ridden paw upon the skull. and this is my husband, kalgir.