more writing, but no title for this one ! same vibe as winnower/gardener, sometime after the events of tarot's plotline
Acme's steps leave flowers in her wake, they burst through the hard earth in the underbelly of the Garden. She intrudes upon Stigma's grounds (although this too would count as hers.) She treads on ice and memory, her breath freezes in the air, the flora growing on her shivers and shrinks back.
"Stigma," the Gardener greets her sister, "What has kept you down here for so long? (Are you at least having fun?)"
Stigma does not answer, she is studying Kismet’s Secret. Picking apart their will the countless times she already has to make it into something she can wield. A spear of judgment, glorious and shining and raising a temple for itself. It is far more than the fragments Acme had glimpsed them as at first.
"Will you [please] take a break with me? (You need one. We all do.)" Stigma can hear the many smiles in her voice, trapped behind her words.
"...I will. Give me some time."
"As always."
Acme rolls a flower stem between two fingers. They are sheltered under the shade of trees and sat in the grass. It's begun to overrun her when she sits still for too long.
"Do you think you'll ever be friends? (I hope so...)" She asks.
Stigma knows who she's talking about. She stares at the flower, it's a red spider lilly.
"No. We're too different." Stigma's hands crawl with scales of ice and stolen memories and forbidden knowledge. It spreads down her arms under her sleeves, a pattern of self destruction. Acme has seen it too, and sees it again as Stigma takes the flower from her hands. The flowers wilts in her grasp.
They are watching a dead god swallow her whole.
"Why?" Acme tilts her head, a flower blooms on her cheek and she wipes away the blood. The green streaking through her hair is full of life.
Stigma frowns. "I don't know. Just a feeling I have."
"And you think it's right?"
"I've been right about a lot of things "
"As if that means you're right about everything,/It can be wrong, you know," Acme picks out the forget me nots from her palms. "Why don't you try? Talk to her more. (It never hurts to try.)"
Stigma pins her down in her gaze. The air grows cold. Acme stares back, the flowers are never-ending, blooming and growing and reaching out from each other like fractals.
"You really just don't like her, do you? (I can tell.)"
"Do you think we'd ever be friends?" Achmalier sits on one of the many walls in the Garden. She is untouched, not a single mark of the throne world on her. The scar on her neck is old and faint now.
"I don't know," Acme sits next to her and shrugs, the cloak of life clinging to her shoulders sheds an uncountable amount of flowers, "like us? We were never friends. (Never will be.)"
"Aren't you?" Achmalier questions.
"No, never were. …More like sisters (I think.)" Acme absent-mindedly answers her.
"I feel always a little distant."
She laughs. "That's because you hid from us/me for an eternity. Just spend time with her/us and wait. If you want to be friends, you'll have to go and find her first. (Because she won't. She's too busy.)"
Achmalier notes how ivy has begun to inch her way over to her, eager and reaching. She doesn't want to be part of this place, Acme already knows it.
"Is this what's left of Kismet?"
Achmalier stares up at Stigma's work, it's an alien thing down here, glowing and bright and full of the same cold that pushes away all else. It lights up the entire underground space in the Garden.
"It's all that I could find." Stigma's voice sounds distant despite standing next to her, like as if it was reaching Lier from across a hall (and that hall is across time, stretched and then pressed together.)
"And it's... safe?" She watches as Stigma strides across the threshold before following her.
"Safe as any artifact from a dead god can be. Now let me show you..."
Stigma stands before a decorated spear impaled into a pillar of ice, the final weapon of the god of fate. It is like both an anchor and beacon for unmoored time, and she spreads her arms wide. She opens the floodgates and reaches to a different time to tear it into theirs. A wound in reality is created before her eyes.
Achmalier is witnessing time bleed, and she does not like it.
Stigma turns on a heel and sees her fear.
She clasps her hands together. "This leads to one of Kismet’s dead timelines. Nothing will change with no one to hold their will. It's... something for us to study."
"For you to study," Achmalier rubs the sheath of her knife with a thumb, "don't you think we should leave a god dead? Leave their work lost to time, because their turn is up? We killed Kismet for a reason. I don't want any of them coming back."
"Apocryphal/heretic work in my garden... (Why don't you lay that thing to rest already?)"
Acme is a growing forest personified.
"We are not gods, Acme."
Stigma is like an ax.
"Then what are we, if we aren't born in a lord or mortal shape? Are we caught between like the Lord of Secrets from a roll of the dice? (Are we a chimera? Our own new shape?)"
Her sister grins. She grows faster, more prosperous, more resistant each time.
"What of Achmalier? (She's more human than either of us.)"
Stigma can't keep up, she never will. She feels roots dig into her. Around the verglas inscribed on her skin.
"I don't know."