Arrow Lake when all the things under the sky go free of time

indra stiffened under stigmata's icy examination. her jaw was set in a steely grimace of disapproval as he pulled apart her logic, as he questioned her faith, her family, her decisions --  why was it, any time they came in contact with one another, the subject was always her flaws?

what remained of her tail raised stiffly. her back hunched -- and there, with no missing appendage to impede its directive, her hackles flared into long quill-like plumes. it did not matter she had detected hurt in his voice -- for he was trying to cut her down in the process. perhaps he was trying to drag her down to his level, to share with him his grief so that she might look from his perspective with newly sorrowed eyes..

but that was not how true lovers should quarrel. they should not strive to hurt the ones they loved -- even if they had somehow been hurt in the process.

she was no more right for him than he for her, and as she stonily met his damascene gaze, she felt something new bury deep into her impressions of him. it was not love. it was not tenderness. whatever emotion it was, it might have driven her to find his throat if she was not already so weakened from traveling.

so badly did she want to fire some cruelly laced riposte in return. "you do not understand it, do you?" she rose to her full height, finding no patience left in her gnawed bones to suffer his company. "you cannot control other people. what they do to you, how they behave... but you can control yourself.

and those choices you make, in response to being hurt or abandoned -- those choices define you. i can choose to stay by my family, even if they leave or desert me; but at the end of the day, i will still be there. and we all have to live with our choices. i will happily live with mine."

the tip of her wispy tail -- or really, the nub of it -- flicked with dismissal. "goodbye, stigmata." and i hope to god, i never see you again.