Fear
She was tempted to re-visit Ala Mhigo - was she restricting her business options by living in fear of her homeland? By refusing to acknowledge the past, was she limiting the future? What was there to be afraid of anymore, really?
“Hey...I know you.”
Could she look at those pale sands, and ever see anything but the red stains? Could she walk those sands, and not hear the echoes of gunshots? Would it finally dispel her nightmares?
...Or would it re-ignite them with a fury?
“Hey bitch, I’m talking to you.”
Ah, the future - always getting hung up on the past.
Like now.
“I’ll have what I’m owed out of your hide, if I have to -”
It was putting his hands on her that made him impossible to further ignore, however. With a flurry of movement, the little woman had a hold of the hand grabbing at her shoulder with one little hand, twisting to bare the other’s palm that it might catch the blade in her other hand that slammed down...into the meat of that bared palm.
She kept non-lethal doses on her knives - one for paralysis, one for sleep, one that...bore a potent hallucinogen, and one clean blade. These knives weren’t, typically, for death-dealing, so much as playing with her food. Sometimes you need answers - or screams. Sometimes you need silence, and time.
Sometimes, you just want to revel.
And sometimes, you want to strike a primal, soul-quaking fear into the soul of whoever stands against you - that’s what the hallucinogen was for, and why she used it now; her magic could make people afraid with but a touch...but why not amplify it? Why not prime them for the fear - crushing the mind didn’t take brute force...there was something elegant about it, in her mind.
It was poetic. Perhaps, even, their minds would never recover. She was still testing dosages, after all - for so long, the sharp edges were for defense only - and really, wasn’t this just self-defense?
The Hyur frothed on the sidewalked, quivering - body contorting. There was a catharsis in it, and a tightness in her chest that loosened. Straightening her jacket, the diminutive calico continued on her way - leaving the man alternately sobbing and cackling to himself. She probably had ripped him off, in the past - she and Vynnie had run a lot of cons, and ripped off a lot of Ul’dahns. Not her fault he was prey.
Perhaps I shouldn’t fear my ghosts so much.