It takes you three days to find it, three days spent pressing hard looking men against crumbling brick walls and hissing questions at them, needles at their throat. Three days spent sleeping during the day and traveling at night, hood up, knowing that not even the nastiest of sewer-gnomes will fight you with your iridescent scars and sure steps.
You finally find her court in what used to be a park, and still looks like one if you squint. Buildings have fallen sideways into it, crushed stone slowly being smothered by green vines, and there's more fountains than there ought to be. You notice that the fountains are made out of soda cans, after a minute.
There's heaps of rubbish and shrubs everywhere and you slip your boots off (a necessity in the glass ground gravel streets) to wiggle grateful toes in thick moss.
The entrance to the court is a joke. The guard's a dog, a huge white beast that could probably tear your throat out before you could draw your needles, but not nearly as impressive as the gutter rats and soothsayers near twenty-third street had made it seem.
You straighten your shoulders, adjust the rucksack slung across your back, and nod to the guard dog.
He nods back. This surprises you not in the least. When you make a move to the iron wrought gate, all hung with weeds and thistles and strange pink green flowers, he doesn't kill you.
The court's scattered with a dozen dozen strange creatures - tall willowy girls with branches for hands, stocky men who sometimes shift into different shapes in the corner of your eye, a thousand chittering icy beautiful ladies who all smile at you like they'd cut your heart out and eat it, like you'd enjoyed it while they did.
You ignore them.
You ignore everything.
You walk in a straight line to the center of the throng and you do not look behind and you do not let yourself become distracted, by the jangling bangles of witchy women or the sweet smell of something from your childhood that you can't quite place.
The Queen's sitting on a throne of milk crates and street signs, and she looks every bit the girl you knew so long ago. She's wearing a dress as green as the grass, and her head's thrown back, laughing at something a skeletal man to her right said.
There's a hush, when you approach her.
You sweep your skirts, torn and tattered as they are, into something approximating a bow, and the Queen sits there and she laughs and doffs her aluminum and tin crown to you.
"My lady," you say.
"Oh, come on!" she says, and bounces to her feet. "You know my name. Use it."
"Jade," you say, averting your eyes from her bucktoothed shine, the lush green of her dress. "I've come to pledge to serve you. My wands and I. If you'll allow it."
She cocks her head, steps down from the throne, off the dais. "Why are you acting like this, Rose?" Jade asks.
You push up your sleeves a little, so she can see the black and silver burns, the scars of your service to uglier things.
Jade wraps her arms around you and pulls you in close, you can smell the honey-and-clover smell of her hair and you wilt, a little.
"I missed you," she says.
"I'm sorry. I had things to do."
"People to kill," she says, and bumps her nose against yours. "I know. Are you back now?"
"I don't know."
There's nothing left of New York, or your mother's home, the places you spent your childhood days glomping around all unsure and stiff. There's nothing left for you out there, not really.
Jade kisses you, and her mouth is a bear trap. A lock. Locked lips, long nibbling thoughts of old days and her hands curled in your lavender sheets, before everything went to shit.
FILL: TEAM DAVE<3ROSE<3TEREZI
It takes you three days to find it, three days spent pressing hard looking men against crumbling brick walls and hissing questions at them, needles at their throat. Three days spent sleeping during the day and traveling at night, hood up, knowing that not even the nastiest of sewer-gnomes will fight you with your iridescent scars and sure steps.
You finally find her court in what used to be a park, and still looks like one if you squint. Buildings have fallen sideways into it, crushed stone slowly being smothered by green vines, and there's more fountains than there ought to be. You notice that the fountains are made out of soda cans, after a minute.
There's heaps of rubbish and shrubs everywhere and you slip your boots off (a necessity in the glass ground gravel streets) to wiggle grateful toes in thick moss.
The entrance to the court is a joke. The guard's a dog, a huge white beast that could probably tear your throat out before you could draw your needles, but not nearly as impressive as the gutter rats and soothsayers near twenty-third street had made it seem.
You straighten your shoulders, adjust the rucksack slung across your back, and nod to the guard dog.
He nods back. This surprises you not in the least. When you make a move to the iron wrought gate, all hung with weeds and thistles and strange pink green flowers, he doesn't kill you.
The court's scattered with a dozen dozen strange creatures - tall willowy girls with branches for hands, stocky men who sometimes shift into different shapes in the corner of your eye, a thousand chittering icy beautiful ladies who all smile at you like they'd cut your heart out and eat it, like you'd enjoyed it while they did.
You ignore them.
You ignore everything.
You walk in a straight line to the center of the throng and you do not look behind and you do not let yourself become distracted, by the jangling bangles of witchy women or the sweet smell of something from your childhood that you can't quite place.
The Queen's sitting on a throne of milk crates and street signs, and she looks every bit the girl you knew so long ago. She's wearing a dress as green as the grass, and her head's thrown back, laughing at something a skeletal man to her right said.
There's a hush, when you approach her.
You sweep your skirts, torn and tattered as they are, into something approximating a bow, and the Queen sits there and she laughs and doffs her aluminum and tin crown to you.
"My lady," you say.
"Oh, come on!" she says, and bounces to her feet. "You know my name. Use it."
"Jade," you say, averting your eyes from her bucktoothed shine, the lush green of her dress. "I've come to pledge to serve you. My wands and I. If you'll allow it."
She cocks her head, steps down from the throne, off the dais. "Why are you acting like this, Rose?" Jade asks.
You push up your sleeves a little, so she can see the black and silver burns, the scars of your service to uglier things.
Jade wraps her arms around you and pulls you in close, you can smell the honey-and-clover smell of her hair and you wilt, a little.
"I missed you," she says.
"I'm sorry. I had things to do."
"People to kill," she says, and bumps her nose against yours. "I know. Are you back now?"
"I don't know."
There's nothing left of New York, or your mother's home, the places you spent your childhood days glomping around all unsure and stiff. There's nothing left for you out there, not really.
Jade kisses you, and her mouth is a bear trap. A lock. Locked lips, long nibbling thoughts of old days and her hands curled in your lavender sheets, before everything went to shit.
"Come home, Rosie," she whispers.