Iron Drabble-- now for Gaudior

[rushthatspeaks]

Sisters

She’s been here nearly a month, and the coffin’s still in the courtyard crater where they landed. He hasn’t come out, not even to feed. They feed her here, and brush her hair, and send her to school in someone‘s spare uniform, because the daughter of the branch house loves her.

The two of them go everywhere together, but they almost never speak to anyone, not even each other: they have the important things in common, such as the feel of flesh between their jaws, and the endless, mindless fears that link them. Arm in arm, they do not remotely resemble a mirror image, but people still ask them if they’re twins.

One day soon, a person in pain beyond the pale of merely human endurance will try to hurt his little cousin, and the cousin’s friend will stand between them with her arms raised, heedless, ragamuffin child unbreakable by merely human violence.

One day soon, an angel of destruction will descend into the courtyard looking for his missing vassal. He will find a girl, waiting. Her teeth will meet in him and grind together.

It is never wise, even for an angel, to underestimate even a very small tiger.