So why follow them? The question haunted her like a bad dream, ever sticking to her and ever waiting for resolution. As she stood atop a tarpapered roof in rings and bells and henna, maybe thirty feet diagonal from her students that were walking home, the question still sat unanswered. A bad feeling wasn't good enough. They could be hit by a car, or shot, or have a massive cardiac event simultaneously and there was nothing this form could prevent. She looked out over the low concrete parapet with such a thought in mind and watched their shrinking backs. A water main could burst and one could fall into the resulting hole. Spontaneous human combustion could make itself another case.
Pavo could do nothing. Pavo could make fanciful mirages that did nothing to improve livelihoods. She couldn't put her senshi form on an application and expect to be paid more for her community services, she couldn't write them off on her taxes, she couldn't use them as social leverage. She couldn't profit off them without a guilty conscience. Why, then, should she continue following?
One more block. With the library at her back, now two blocks distant, and one of the old, dome-shaped mosques now three blocks before her, Pavo moved again. She heard her own bells jingle, her slippered feet clopping against the ground like a horse. Every motion was an announcement of her presence, like she was some kind of royalty expecting a grand ovation. She leapt from the roof of a clothier, the kind she never recognized but knew had hung around the city for a few generations, onto a newfangled coffee shop that was doomed to be eaten by Starbucks. She was running out of self-made room.
And nothing happened yet. No heart attacks, no traffic accidents, no strange woman peeling out of the air to threaten her students.
sirene naiads
lmk if this works!
