hivebody : jane the hive.
AN ECHO comes from him, traces of another him that could have been but didn’t have enough fertile ground to grow and thrive. It’s buried under that piercing ozone smell and the storms rumbling in the distance whenever she looks at him, but she feels it. A curios little detail that she’ll keep tucked away. It’s far from being unusual - carrying the marks of fangs different than the ones that sank inside your very soul - it’s simply… unexpected? Maybe a reason to sit down a bit longer, unless he throws her out, whether out of the window or the door.
“Unpredictable.” She smiles, not too differently from a child about to crack a joke they think to be hilarious. “Un-forecasted.” The words tumble in a painful wheeze out of her mouth. Jane doesn’t talk much these days (the Hive has no need for it, and her lungs and throat are slowly being ripped apart and turned into houses and nourishment), and some times it’s harder. A sharp intake of breath follows, and it seems enough for her voice - or whatever is left of it beneath the Hive’s - to regain volume, even if only for a little bit. “I didn’t expect you to have a cozy little place for yourself.” Not trying to mock him; there’s nothing but genuine curiosity coming from her. “I thought your kind didn’t like it.”
he can, in some instinctual, unwanted way, hear them : the shriveled masses of tissue and meat one should call lungs, the way they heave, scrape, and strain trough the holes and ants and wriggling things that live between her bones. he knows how oxygen should travel through veins and how little her capillaries see of it, riddled with holes, occupied, in every sense. he knows, in the way one simply knows, should she fall, what would pour from her remains upon hitting the ground could only barely be called blood.
as his finger continues its methodical ring around the porcelain walls of the cup, he debates seeing how right that is. much as she no doubt debates how he tastes. in the dealings of monsters, it is not personal. her pithy attempt at what could have been humor does not see change in his expression.
“ oh, um, that’s ... that’s fair, i suppose. ” mike’s head cants slightly with the acknowledgement. he consciously reminds himself not to drink, for there is some certainty that just by proximity whatever is in his cup now is no longer the tea it started as, and he is in no mood to find out. “ serving the falling titan, involving futility and grand impermanence and all that. it’s ... well, a bit antithetical, if you think about it, isn’t it? i suppose it’s a little of to each their own, i do think i’m more ‘settled in’ than most, so to say. ” he hums faintly to himself. “ at the end of the day, i think it’s ... not so much about where you fall from, the horror of the drop itself ... it’s universal. wasps and ants bore different holes but the same way. you understand. ”
