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"In college I had a physics professor who wrote the date and time in red marker on a sheet of white paper and then lit the paper on fire and placed it on a metallic mesh basket on the lab table where it burned to ashes. He asked us whether or not the information on the paper was destroyed and not recoverable, and of course we were wrong, because physics tells us that information is never lost, not even in a black hole, and that what is seemingly destroyed is, in fact, retrievable. In that burning paper the markings of ink on the page are preserved in the way the flame flickers and the smoke curls. Wildly distorted to the point of chaos, the information is nonetheless not dead. Nothing, really, dies. Nothing dies. Nothing dies."
—Nicholas Rombes, The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing
"Grief is a circular staircase. I have lost you."
—Linda Pastan, The Five Stages of Grief
"The women of mythology regularly lose their form in monstrosity. Io turns into a heifer, Kallisto becomes a bear, Medusa sprouts snakes from her head and Skylla yelping dogs from her waist. The Sirens and the Sphinx acquire unmatching bestial parts, while Daphne passes into leaf and Pasiphae into a mechanical cow. The Graiai make themselves repellent by sharing one human form amongst them, passing an eye and a tooth back and forth as needed. Salmakis merges her form with that of Hermaphroditos to produce a bisexual monster. The Hydra generates heads as fast as they can be lopped off. And of course the Amazons, as their name (a negative prefix attached to the word for "breast") implies, owe their fearsomeness to the zeal with which they adapt personal form — their own."
—Anne Carson, "Putting Her in Her Place: Woman, Dirt, and Desire"
✷
A long time ago, metahuman sisters Gwendolyn and Guinevere—the former a manipulator of shadows, the latter of light—were inseparable. From the water of the womb to the Gotham Metropolitan Ballet; from the darkness of their childhood bedroom to the sparkling spotlight on the theatre's stage. Twin conduits of prodigal power reared to keep the balance in Gotham. Twin vigilantes, sworn protectors of their defenseless neighbourhood in Gotham. The Black Swan and the White Swan, two sides of the same coin, each donning a mask that'd become a symbol of hope for their tight-knit Asian community.
Until one of them fell from grace, never to be seen by the other again.
Gwendolyn Ma was never one for whom things aligned perfectly. Luck, in the language of people like her, was something she had learnt not to count on. Rage, on the other hand—well, there was the blood to prove what she knew, her own beating heart a vicious animal never satisfied with just one hunt. In fact, it was her sister, Guinevere, to whom Gwen must attribute all good things to. Guinevere, the light shining in the dark, the beacon guiding her back to the beaten road time and time again. Guinevere, doe eyes and a hopeful grin. Guinevere, her better half.
