WC: 567

“You could have saved me.”

Cybele sat on the half-buried ring of an ancient fire pit, her eyes cold as she stared at the great tree. It never answered, but sometimes, she got the feeling that it was listening, which only made its current silence worse.

There were small leaves on the tips of its branches that hadn’t been there before, but Cybele was ignoring those, just as she was ignoring the small butterflies that she’d seen perched on the wildflowers on her hike over to the camp. It was pretty. It was sweet. She wasn’t here to look at pretty, sweet things.

She was angry. She was here to be angry.

“Again! You could have saved me again! This was your second chance, and still, nothing!”

Cybele’s breath was short. Her knuckles were white against the rocks she was sitting on. She squeezed them so hard that her fingernails dug into the old, crumbling sandstone. The great tree was still. The wind rustled gently through its new leaves.

“If I didn’t give you enough attention before I got corrupted, fine,” she said, this time in more of a harsh whisper, even though it wasn’t fine. “But this time I asked. I asked and you chose not to help.”

She shook her head, and since the tree was still being unhelpful, she turned away from it to look back towards the rest of the forest.

“I thought I might be too tainted by Chaos for you to be able to help me, but that’s not true, is it? Albireo Transcended just fine.”

A butterfly fluttered past her nose, close enough that Cybele could see that its body was a bit like a deer. She wrinkled her nose, her gaze snapping back to the tree.

“Albireo Transcended even though she chose to go to Chaos, and all she had to do was make friends with a ******** firefly.”

She shouldn’t be jealous. She should have been happy that Albireo was safe.

It wasn’t quite that she wasn’t happy. Most of her was, but the tiny part of her that wasn’t was stronger than she’d thought, and she couldn’t let it out anywhere but here. Cybele’s breath caught in her throat, and that was the only warning. A second later, the tears were running down her face all at once. She was gasping for breath. She was wiping and wiping at her face with her bracers, but more tears kept coming as fast as she wiped them away.

She reached down with two fingers to tug at the knot that kept her shoe ribbons in place.

“This is your fault,” she gasped between sobs. “This.”

She pulled the silver heel free and pointed her foot over towards the tree. The skin on the bottom was all bumpy and corded scars, despite Lysithea’s best efforts. Her smallest two toes were gone, and the skin there was smooth, too smooth.

The shoe was still in her hand, and her fingers closed around it. Her eyes flashed. With all her strength, she threw it at the great tree, and as it flew, she screamed.

Cybele was the Senshi of the Hunt. Her aim was true.

As she watched it thwack against the bark, all of the energy flooded out of her at once, so that only the sorrow and the disappointment were left. She fell backwards, into the pit, and then, she sobbed some more.