Chapter Text
A concrete jungle, plants lining the buildings as though they’re reclaiming their home. Swaying ever so slightly in the breeze.
An avian-like figure swimming through the clouds like an angel. The city must look so small from up there, like some villain has shrunk it down to a fraction of its size. Trains, buses, cars and trams, strewn like litter on the streets, metal and machine ants taking things from place to place. The wind whips in the air, forming a cocoon around the figure flipping in the sky. He’s dipping and diving throughout the vast canvas of blue. Enormous wings gliding with every movement he takes. White feathers with a slight tinge of green and yellow on their tips, spraying into the air like sea foam on the sand. Leaving streaks and intricate patterns in the clouds. Sculpting mother nature like it was made just for him, a blob of clay made to take any shape that he wants.
The avian floats stationary in the air, so graceful that it is practically warping around him, white spirals of wind singing and dancing off of him. He beats his wings one, twice, and then again, clearing his path.
He turns his head, eyes finally becoming visible through the brush of sandy blonde hair that envelops his face. They’re beautiful. Colours swirling in the haze like a rainbow on a cloudy day. Muted from so far away, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, all of them. His eyes shine with every colour known to man, captivating my senses, drowning me. He does these movements once again, checking for a sense wafting through the air. Once the avian seems satisfied he puffs up all the feathers on his wings, his great big wings, and barrels down into the city. Wings wrapping around him and– oh god, it’s the most wondrous thing that I've ever laid my eyes on, a comet landing on earth to bless me.
I feel a deep sorrow once he’s gone, mourning the loss of the angel in the sky. The feeling of his eyes so near mine sending jolts up my spine like a stampede of wild buffalo. It’s not painful, like a broken arm or leg. No, it’s so much more different, in every way, in every possible form. I’m infatuated with the man that was only in my gaze for the slightest second.
A deep sigh ripples its way from the bottom of my toes to my mouth. He was perfect. Is perfect. My fingers tingle on my left hand as it rests at my side. The other hand slowly catching up with its partner, making it hard to hold it in the air. I lower it to the ground, dropping to the granite floor what it was holding. One, single, pair, of binoculars.
I will find him again. If it’s the last thing that I do.
— – - – — – - – —
The sounds of a car whipping around the corner drift to my ears, forcing my head to spin around like a globe. Eyes like an eagle, trained onto the door like it’s my personal prey. Hand gripped around the small dagger that has been sewn to the leather hilt on my belt, stepping onto the ground slowly, prowling, like every step I make will cause a million pieces of glass to break at once. In the entry way is a stool, a pot plant and the door. I shuffle slowly towards the plant, ducking behind it quickly. The door is currently shut tightly with a screen. It’s after closing time, I’ve locked up, and both my co-workers were going on their own missions today. My mind jumps to the worst possibilities. Brain reeling with a thousand words at a time, spiralling into a tornado of anxiety, hurricanes growing on the edges. A sharp clatter follows the cars stop, keys bouncing on the ground and into my view.
The snake inside my ribcage squeezes my stone heart, beating it manually. Sweat beads off of my forehead. Dropping onto the floor with astounding noise. Drip. Drip.
I look crazed, eyes wide and trained fiercely on the door, pupils contracting so small that my vision starts to double and split. The jingle and crash comes again. Closer to the door. A pitch black shadow approaches, my nightmares swirling into a physical form on my workplace doorstep. The door clicks, once, twice, and then swings open, the door handle smiling at me with a wicked grin. Eyes upturned and crinkled at the edges. I can hear the crazed giggles and cackling radiating off of it as it hits the door stop, ringing growing louder in my ears as the person takes the first step onto the floor inside.
The sweet ‘schling’ of my knife as it breaks free from the leather sleeve on my hip incites an expression on my face like no other. My eyes falter for a second, locking back onto the handle and it makes me laugh too. My face mirroring its own, reflecting back to me in the shine of the moon. The picture in front of me paints a woman who has escaped from an asylum, running for days in the thick, wild, brush. Hair thrown up in a bun that's now falling out.
Someone has taken a bite of the once perfectly put together muffin, and now it’s crumbling. My arm shoots upwards, grappling the person and pushing the knife to their face, pressure growing hard enough to force a reaction. Here it comes, the delicious scream of civilians that I have oh so missed. I grin wildly once again, closing my eyes to feel the blood trickling down my hand and joining my manic sweat on the ground.
It never comes.
The lights flick on and dance mesmerisingly in my eyes, spinning me around on my feet. The air feels constricting. The snake in my bones slithering away. My feet tap the ground, then my legs, my body, spindling around me like a ball of twine being spun on a wheel. The intruder, yet to make themselves known, clears their throat. Gruff noises echoing through the damp hallway that had become my jungle.
“Lizzie? Are you alright?” … I know that voice. The voice that feels like bubbles on soda, familiar and calming, but dulling the taste of the drink that I am looking forward to. The voice clears its throat again. The shadows circling around it are starting to dissipate, my eyes screaming out of control. It repeats again, “Lizzie, I'm back, what–” He sighs slightly “happened…” I look up, fluorescents leading me to piercing green eyes. Clearing the fog that has set into the room. My hands forming into noodles around me, rising up to the sky. Feet unstable and knees aching. The hands on the end of my arms shake forwards. Grabbing the person tightly on the shoulders.
The voice that comes out of me is strange. My night went so badly so quickly. The words that I try to speak sparkle and fizz on my tongue, dying out. I squeeze the person’s shoulders tightly, regaining consciousness once again. My words are crackled and forced. Tongue straining like a middle schooler going through puberty.
“Sc–.. ar..?”
I manage to choke out. The person nods slightly. My mind is already making up the metal image of him. My eyes blinking again, a small translucent film going over them. I blink again, it goes away.
Lately I have come to find out that when I get really stressed my more ‘animal’ instincts start to show.
I turn to look at Scar, couching slightly as I start to talk.
“I thought you weren’t coming back today” This is true, Scar said that he was going to go walking around the city today as we have not been outside a lot. For some reason though, he has come back.
“I’m very sorry Lizzie, I should’ve warned you first. I didn’t mean to give you a fright and, I-i know how easily you get spooked… But I think I found something that will help us.”
My eyes widen at this, the mention of something helpful like an antidote to the madness of my mind. My head swivels around, looking around till my eyes make contact again. “I’m listening..” I withdraw my hands from where they were resting on his shoulders. “You can’t just leave me hanging”
Scar cringes slightly before starting up again, “Sure, but first you have to tell me what has been going on around here”. His eyes scan the room like mine have been doing the whole afternoon, his being more attuned to the slight darkness that night has caused. His surveying reveals the stacks and piles of papers that I have, ridges and valleys of soft grass being less steep than it. I sort through the files of my mind, disorganised as its real-world counterpart, searching for the one that’s labelled ‘my evening’. My voice regains its own, starting up like a sparkler in my throat.
“Well, you see, once you and Jimmy decided to go off and do other things while I stayed to fret about the others…
— – - – — – - – —
The scene plays out like someone's child had done a crude watercolour painting of it, parts dropping out and others joining with others. The main picture starts with three people, a tall and lanky man with large yellow bird wings that sprout from his back and head who wears a large black name badge labelled ‘Jimmy’. An equally tall man, just more solid, stands next to him holding a solid wood cane. His dark brown hair slightly covers the large ears that shoot out of the sides of his head, mirroring the avian's in size. He’s holding a green cap with yellow stiches in his hand with the name ‘Scar’ embroidered on. The last is a short woman with pastel pink hair, she has no ears aside from two holes on either side of her head, a slight scale patterning peeking out from under the sleeves of her blue button-up sweater that has a patch with ‘Lizzie’ ironed onto it. Her long blue tongue flicks slightly any time she seems to have an idea.
They are all looking over a stack of documents, whispering in quick and succinct voices.
– - –
“So, what do you think about my plan? Will it work?” Lizzie says, picking up one paper specifically that has large messy cursive writing sprawled onto it. Scar picks up the paper before Jimmy can grab it, butting his hand sharply out of the way and giving him a slight smirk before reading the following.
Lizzie's 4-Step Very-Important Plan;
Mission: find all ‘scumbags’ and kill them, no one ‘evil’ deserves to live,
Step 1, ask others about this topic , they will say yes.
Step 2, somehow, someone, somewhere, will find the map of the parliament building,
Step 3, see if we can access any records about the Prime Minister,
Step 4, find really any other hybrid in the city that's left standing after (if) the bill goes through.
Talk to them, get them on our side. Do whatever it takes.
Scar chuckles softly to himself as he scans and reads through the pages, full on laughing when he gets to the parts where Lizzie's just started writing based on how she talks. He feels… pride? He doesn’t exactly know why but he’s certainly uncertain about a few of the things that are on the paper.
“Lizzie, this is great and all… But surely you didn’t think that we were going to round up all hybrids in the city? I mean, that’s absurd!” Scar emphasises a laugh on that last part, so that Lizzie knows that he’s somewhat joking. Next to him Jimmy starts to chew his bottom lip, eyebrows turning into knitting needles and they almost look like they could make a shawl.
“Liz– I'm sure you c-could uh, put this plan into action.” Lizzie grins smugly at Scar when she hears this, her smile dropping when Jimmy starts up again.
“One slight problem though, most if not all hybrids have been sent out of the city, you know what they’re saying on the news.” HIs voice gains confidence the more he talks, like a printer that won't stop running. “Plus, even if we do end up finding a hybrid just ‘walking along the street’, how do we know that they could even help us?!” This time, his voice goes so high that it starts to squeak on the last part. Lizzie scoffs and sits down in the chair in front of her, swivels around and crosses her arms gruffly. She then clears her throat like she’s swallowed a handful of sand.
“I don’t see anyone else offering any better ideas.” She huffs once again before turning completely around and burying her head in the sea of files and using them as a pillow, her blue tongue sticking out so slightly as she closes her eyes.
“Well, I think I do have an idea” Jimmy says, his voice returning back to its normal pitch and volume. This reaches Lizzie's ‘ears’, her head perking up from the desk and her eyes tracking Jimmy's, her third eyelid blinking ever so often. Scar also tunes into the conversation, pulling his head out of dream-land (the window) and looking at Jimmy intriguingly.
“So, how about, two of us go ‘Hybrid Hunting’ and the other looks and tries to find any birth records for Hybrids… while also looking after the shop.”
Lizzie nods at this slightly and raises her hand,
“I’m really quite tired and I can’t be bothered to get out of my pjs, I'll look for records and do the people skills.”
– - –
The faded water colour painting in Lizzie’s mind starts to fade away as the memory comes to a close, she stops talking, looking around at the pile of certificates, birth, death, and marriage records. The whole lot. Scar seems genuinely interested at this point, Lizzie has been talking on and on about her findings for maybe a half-hour. It all seems to add up, how recently, most of Vita Oppidum’s Hybrid population has moved to the suburbs after there has been a proposal of ‘culling’ and ‘capturing’ Hybrids. It’s cruel and inhumane, which seems odd as they’re the ones trying to claim us as incompetent and not human.
Lizzie and Scar sit on the wooden desk behind the counter for the good part of an hour. Time slipping by as quickly as the sands slip through an hour-glass. Scar fantasises and talks about the angel that he saw that day and they both seem to end in agreement. No matter what Jimmy found — wherever he is — they would both go out tomorrow and look for this elusive Hybrid that Scar saw.
He was so calm, as if he didn’t even care about the laws being put into place.
The conversation officially ended when Scar stopped gushing about his day, he then gave Lizzie a quick handshake and side-hug, strode back outside to his car and drove all the way back to his house on the other side of the city. Before that, he looked at the glowing neon sign of their shop, The Miscere Hotel, flickering like a firefly with puncture wounds. It was a small two floor brick building, not much, with rats running rampant throughout the basement, the front windows having tape on the corners because they wouldn’t seal properly, shutters on the front door being bent in a few places. None of it mattered. It was their base of operations, their home.
As Scar’s car delved into the silent night of the city, it felt like a bubble had been placed around his car. Leaving himself to his thoughts. His one thought. The angel; what Scar had been calling him, had been plaguing his thoughts as long as he’d seen him early in the morning. What to do, someone in his line of work couldn’t be… in love?!
The ignition in his car sputtered and came to a stop in front of his house. Scar’s hands reached his face as he dragged them across it. Stretching over and grabbing the green cap from his passenger seat before he got out. Scar didn’t like it, none of them liked their ‘specific pieces’ of clothing. None of them really wanted to wear them, only for the reason that they shielded their true identities from the world. Scar’s hid his ears, Jimmy’s had some kind of glamour spell on it that he’d gotten from a witch, and Lizzie's just hid her scaly skin.
As Scar opened the door and sat down on his couch, his eyes started to fall heavy. Shutting tight and immediate like your fingers in a car door. As he slowly drifted off, his mind was plagued with pictures and paintings of a sandy haired avian with the largest white wings and the most beautiful eyes that Scar had ever seen. Truly mesmerising.