She recognised Zed's lounge room, even without the furniture, the alphabetically organised bookshelf, the needy, proud cat of calico browns and the deck of cards that was always left splayed across the coffee table.
Even with the walls bare, the floors clear, and the silence that emphasized the room's emptiness, she recognised it.
Though she knew it wasn't Zed's lounge room, she could pretend it was. Until, of course, symbols began writing themselves on the bare walls, began staining the clear floor, and filled the silence without making any sound. The symbols resonated with familiarity, though she couldn't have named them if someone asked her to. Curling lines; smooth, fluid strokes and whorls that whispered endlessness and eternity – but an eternity of something you'd never want, an endlessness that you'd wish would end.
'It's a dismal setting, isn't it?'
Taryn turned, finding Fury standing just a few paces away. They wore the same face, but they wore it differently. It struck Taryn as odd that she could look at her own face but consider it a different person altogether. They were different, despite the same hair, the same chin, the same frown, the complexion, the same height, the same slightly off-balance posture. Even though the colour varied, their eyes were still the same shape.
But she was Taryn, and the one standing before her was the demoness Fury.
Fury cast a lingering glance about the room, which was missing the front door and the archway to the kitchen too. 'It isn't dark, it isn't small, but it is dismal because of what it represents.'
'Your cage?' Taryn asked.
She nodded slowly, almost like a tired tilt of the head from someone too weary to voice a response. Taryn could feel her exhaustion like it was her own, but perhaps it was.
'Why this room?' she asked as well. 'It can't have been this room all along.'
'Of course not, but it is familiar to you.'
Taryn was about to say that her apartment would have been more familiar, but she realised that would be wrong. Her apartment, where she had lived for the last five years, was nothing to her. Zed's place was much more of a home to her now.
The people living in it much more of a family, too.
Since Fury, for once, didn't seem like she had much more to say, Taryn continued. 'Why are we here? I thought Kael—'
'Resealed me?' said Fury, finding her voice. 'No, but in a way he diminished me. I'll admit he got the better of me, which no one has ever done before.'
'So why am I here?' Taryn asked instead. 'I want my body back. I don't want to be locked up in some sort of—'
'Cage?' said Fury, her brow lifting.
Taryn frowned and said, again, 'Why am I here?'
Fury looked around once more. 'I think we've come to an impasse. We're on even grounds and since both of us want freedom, one will have to surrender it.'
'You mean I can't take control unless you give it up?'
'And vice versa, little wings.'
Taryn crossed her arms, her expression setting stubbornly. 'Then we'll have to work out some sort of deal.'
*****
Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
TO BE CONTINUED
Stay tuned for the third instalment of "The Blood Bracelets".