Work Text:
Marcille cannot put her hair up anymore.
It's strange. She's not quite sure what to say regarding the loss of this specific ability. It doesn't even feel like a loss, not really; it feels more like that fragment of information never existed in the first place. Her body theoretically knows what it's supposed to do—first, take a hair tie, then, separate out a couple handfuls of hair, like so... but that's where the process self-terminates. There's simply no neural pathway her brain can go down that will result in completion of the desired task. It is as though someone drilled a tiny hole into her head and that miniscule pebble of information was just small enough to pop out and roll away.
Thankfully, there’s Falin.
Although, truth be told, Falin is only marginally better at getting the job done than she is. The younger girl has always been terrible at this sort of thing, her clumsiness spanning all the way back to their long-since-past school days. They spent so many evenings in front of the beat up vanity in the corner of their dorm room, Marcille patiently lecturing her about the connection between proper hair care and magic usage and how she really ought to consider growing her own hair out and honestly Falin, for such a cute girl, you act like you don’t care at all about maintaining your appearance!
But it occurs to her now that it was never about Falin understanding proper maintenance: she’s just naturally terrible at braids. Right at this very moment, she could not possibly be trying any harder to restore Marcille's hairstyle to even a shadow of its former glory… and still, despite her best intentions, she is unambiguously failing to accomplish her task. The part is wildly lopsided, and there's loose strands poking out all over the place, and she's fumbling hopelessly with the ribbons, her tongue poking out and brow furrowed with concentration. Alas: her efforts are all for naught.
The end product… leaves something to be desired. Marcille can see her reflection in the mirror; she knows full well that she looks terrible. What’s interesting, however, is the fact that she doesn’t care.
It’s kinda nice, she supposes, not caring. There’s a surprisingly long list of worries that she abandoned in the depths of the dungeon; countless troubles cast down into the pit, never to be seen again. You don’t realize how much it weighs on you, not until the burden lifts, but all those needless anxieties… it doesn’t take long before they start to add up. Silly things, trifling things, things that just don’t matter at the end of the day—things like whether every last golden lock on her head is tucked securely into place or not. The truth is, it doesn’t matter. Not when there’s far more important things in need of her attention. “I think it looks great,” Marcille says, once the fussing slows to a stop. “Thanks, Falin. I love it.”
Falin doesn’t seem to agree. “Are you sure it’s okay? I don’t know if it’s… quite like the way you used to do it.”
Marcille shrugs, moving the twin braids back over her shoulders. One is visibly thicker than the other. “It’s perfectly fine. So long as it keeps my hair out of my face, then it’s doing its job.”
“Mmm. If you say so,” Falin hums, shifting to sit down more comfortably, pressed up against her on the tiny cushioned bench. The vanity they’re sitting in front of now is far fancier than the one they used to share at school. In fact, everything is fancier—adjusting to life as royalty has been a journey in and of itself, especially after spending years traversing the dungeon, struggling to make it to the end of the day in one piece. “If I’d known a demon was going to eat your ability to do it yourself, I might have paid more attention all those times you tried to teach me when we were younger,” Falin sighs. “It would have been nice if he could have taken something else. Something I’m better at doing for you, anyway.”
Marcille thinks about all the things the demon—the dungeon—could have taken instead. It took Falin, at one point. Ripped her right out of her hands. And right when she had thought that she’d finally gotten her back, too. “I don’t mind,” she says, leaning a little closer to the warm, living body pressed up beside her. “The Winged Lion didn’t take anything I actually needed, in the end.”
“It took away something you wanted, though,” Falin protests. “Isn’t that just as important?”
It’s the kind of thing only she would ever say. But then, it’s not like there’s ever been anyone else in the world quite as amazing and bizarre and incredible as her, not really. It used to make Marcille feel so angry, so upset. To think that a girl like her would feel like she needed to sequester herself away from the rest of the students, amuse herself with picking berries and catching bugs in the woods, all alone... It just wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that no one else could see what it was she saw; it wasn’t fair that nobody cared. It wasn’t fair that she never thought to tell her any of this—not how special she thought she was, not how highly she always thought of her—until, suddenly, in the blink of an eye, she was gone. And it isn’t fair that she’s back now, thank God, and yet Marcille still hasn’t–
"Hey. Falin.” As it turns out, it’s easy. It’s effortless, of all things, for Marcille to move her hand so that it covers her friend’s. It might even be the easiest thing she’s ever done, to lace their fingers together and hold on tight. Then again, it’s never not been easy to reach out and touch her… For as long as she’s known her, Falin has always possessed this kind of welcoming aura, some type of invisible thing that calls out and beckons her to come closer. It’s what made Marcille feel like she could go up to her, get to know her, form a connection with her, become friends despite never having successfully made one of those before. Not before she met her, anyway. “Have you ever wanted something," Marcille asks, "Like, really, really wanted something... but not allowed yourself to go after it?"
Falin smiles, tilts her head, gives the hand holding hers a squeeze, and replies: "Nope. Never."
No, Marcille didn’t think so.
"I mean,” Falin wonders, “if you wanted something that bad, why not go get it?"
Marcille shrugs. "Fear, I guess."
“Oh,” Falin whispers, her face dropping. She looks concerned. Like she had no idea that that could be a factor. “Has… that happened to you before?”
Boy, has it. “Mhmm,” Marcille hums in response. “It’s happened a lot, actually.” She thinks about corpses. She thinks about bones, and graves, and the stench of decay, and a beautifully laid out dinner table, covered in gigantic, bloody slabs of meat. “But… the thing is…” She thinks about something else, too: a crowd of complete strangers, brought together by chance, sitting down to enjoy a meal. It was an impressive meal. A real feast. Marcille had never piled her plate so high with so many different types of dishes. She’d found herself wishing that Falin could be there with them, taking part in the banquet alongside everyone else. But then it hit her: she was there. She was there on every plate, in every seat, a part of everything, of everyone—she wasn’t missing out at all. If anything, Falin was the centerpiece, the guest of honor, the unifying force that tied every last individual element together. She was what made the whole event possible. And with that realization, all of Marcille’s misgivings had faded away in nothing, forgotten. For the first time in as long as she could remember, everything was finally okay. “The thing is, I’m just not scared anymore.”
Of anything, she almost adds; she’s not scared of anything. Not even of the things she probably should be scared of. Like when a hot steaming plate of completely unidentifiable food is placed in front of her. Or when she looks at all the people around her and imagines them wasting away into dust long before Marcille will reach middle age. These things aren’t scary, nothing she can imagine is scary, and God—isn’t that strange?
"Did the demon eat that, too?" Falin asks, reaching her other arm around so that she can brush away a loose strand of hair that’s fallen onto Marcille's face. "Your fear, I mean."
Did it…? Marcille hadn't considered that. "I don't think so," she decides, after a moment of deliberation. "I think it left that part of me alone." No, it couldn't have eaten it, because, now that she thinks about it, the fear isn't actually gone. It's still very much there, lurking at a distance in the background—the major difference being that now, it’s dormant. Under control. Marcille can touch it, she thinks, without getting burned. It fits in comfortably with all the rest of her emotions, balancing each other out, complimenting each other, much in the same way that a chunk of aged gruyére pairs perfectly with a glass of pinot noir. It’s just as well the demon passed on it, Marcille supposes. She doubts fear tastes all that good on its own, anyway.
“Huh,” Falin mumbles. She’s leaned in closer, so close that she can see the tiny crinkles near her eyes where the skin pulls tight when she smiles. “So you’re really not scared anymore, then?”
“No,” Marcille answers, and finds that she’s telling the truth. “I’m really not.”
“Oh,” Falin breathes. “That’s good.”
And then they’re kissing.
Which isn’t all that surprising, now is it? Makes a certain amount of sense, in retrospect. If one were to examine their shared history, they’d likely find that the two of them have been heading in this direction for quite a while now. Frankly, it was about time they arrived. The speed at which each of them got there might have been radically different… but it’s obvious that they were always traveling towards the same ultimate destination, nonetheless.
There’s no shock in that revelation, either. In the marathon of life, Marcille has always moved much too slow. She’s had fifty years to get used to it, to accept the reality that she’ll have to watch countless others run ahead of her, beyond the horizon, never to be seen from again. But for half-elves, fifty years is nothing. Marcille is still young, and wide-eyed, and oblivious, and so incredibly unprepared for the distressingly long life that lies before her. They say that slow and steady wins the race—but if there’s no crowd waiting for her at the finish line, no celebration, no congratulations… in what sense could that be called winning?
“Huh,” Falin remarks, once they finally pull away from each other. “You taste weird.”
“Wh- ” Honestly. Of all the things she could have possibly said. “I taste weird?”
“Mhm. Good weird. Like, you taste sorta… bright?”
“Bright,” Marcille echoes. “I don’t think that’s an actual flavor, Falin.”
She frowns in that singularly charming way of hers, the one that’s always made it impossible for anyone to remain angry with her for more than five seconds. “Maybe not, but that’s still what you tasted like.”
“If you say so,” Marcille sighs, even though she doesn’t actually have any room to talk. It was the same for her when she was the one tasting Falin for the first time. The usual words didn’t feel like enough to convey what it felt like—sure, there were different cuts of her, some that tasted sweet, or tangy, or savory, or rich… but it was more than that. There was more than that contained in the mouthfuls of food she chewed up, swallowed down, subsumed into herself. So much more than she knows how to express. “For the record, you tasted weird, too,” she adds, embarrassed.
She expects to hear a laugh in response to the playful rib. Instead, Falin sounds uncharacteristically meek when she asks, “Good weird?”
“What? Of course good weird!” That should go without saying! Everything about her is good! Just like how everything about her is weird. It’s the perfect way to sum her up as a person, as far as she’s concerned. So then, it’s alarming that she apparently thinks Marcille would ever judge any aspect of her to be lacking. “Haven’t I always praised you?” she demands, poking her in the side. “And told you how ridiculously cute you are, to boot?”
“Well, sure, but…”
“But?”
Falin twiddles her fingers. “I don’t know. I wasn’t sure if you still felt the same, now that I’m, um. Different.”
This is probably Marcille’s fault. She still makes a point of protesting whenever the subject of eating monsters comes up. It’s an important source of food for the newly-established kingdom, sure, whatever, she gets it! That doesn’t erase the months of trawling along the dungeon with a bunch of freaks, eating any old thing that crossed their paths. And just because the food wound up being (for the most part) edible, it doesn’t mean that being shoved further and further beyond the limits of her comfort zone was especially pleasant for her, either. When she first proclaimed that she would do anything to get Falin back, she did mean it... but she didn’t fully understand what she was signing herself up for by saying that. If you had told her about all the trials she would soon endure as a result of that declaration—everything from performing forbidden magic to being declared a fugitive, not to mention confronting the physical manifestation of all her hopes and fears and ultimately bearing witness to the end of the world—she might not have marched down into that dungeon so readily.
You know, Marcille really surprised herself. Before she got wrapped up in that adventure, she honestly had no idea that she was capable of pushing herself to quite the degree that she did. She knew that she cared about Falin, obviously; she might have even understood, on a subconscious level, that her feelings towards the other girl extended well beyond the bounds of simple friendship. But she had no reason to suspect that what she truly felt, deep down, was love. Isn’t that ironic? For someone so well read, she was so dreadfully ignorant. Marcille didn’t know—couldn’t have known—the truth about herself until she ventured out into the world and painstakingly translated theory into practice.
And Falin…
Falin is part monster now. That’s her truth. There’s no getting around that basic fact, not without denying a major part of what makes her fundamentally her. So if that’s what this all comes down to… if she had to weigh her dislike of monsters against her adoration of her best friend… if she needed to choose, once and for all, which to prioritize and which to let go of…
Well.
Then that wouldn’t be a very hard decision to make at all, now would it?
“I don’t see you any differently,” Marcille assures her, gently. “I mean, I guess you are a little fluffier now, but… that doesn’t mean you’re any less the person I became friends with in the first place.”
This seems to be the correct answer. “Yeah,” Falin agrees, ducking her face in an attempt to hide the blush blooming across her cheeks. “... Plus, having feathers is cool.”
Marcille can’t deny that. It’s a nice bonus, discovering that the girl you’ve fallen head over heels for has transformed into the human(ish?) equivalent of a down pillow. “I can’t believe they’re even softer than they look,” she mumbles, with something approaching awe, fingering the unruly tufts poking up around her chest and neck.
“Heh, I know. Although,” Falin says slowly, timidly, like she’d vastly prefer to not have to say what’s coming next. "There’s… more… than just the feathers."
How odd, to see Falin act visibly insecure. Marcille decides immediately that she does not care for it. "Yeah," she replies. "I’m aware."
“Oh.” Falin blinks in surprise. She must have been pretty worried about this. "So… you’re okay with that?"
Er… ‘okay’ might be putting too lightly. It was certainly cause for more than a little uneasiness on her part, at least at first. It was such a shame; if only there was just a little bit more of Falin’s original form to work with, they might have been able to avoid having to make that particular choice when rebuilding her body. The top parts of her were easy enough to extract, but everything from the waist down? Yeah, not so much. To put it bluntly, they were lucky just to have gotten her fully bipedal. So, with that in mind… "Sure, I don’t mind. I mean, it’s just another part of you now, isn’t it? If anything, I’m thankful for it. You wouldn’t be able to be here with me if a monster hadn’t lent that aspect of itself to you. So… no. It doesn't bother me at all."
Once again, Marcille realizes that they’re the same. She, too, would not be sitting here, happy and alive by Falin's side, if she hadn't given in and agreed to consume the food that was served to her—if she hadn’t taken parts of monsters' bodies and turned them into her own sustenance. And in the end, she can’t say that she regrets it, because survival is impossible without polluting yourself. Making the most of the life you’ve been handed means taking your preconceived notions of how you think things are supposed to work, and throwing them into the garbage. And guess what? It's all completely worth it. The more you let go of, the bigger this world gets; the more possibility life holds, the less fear holds you back.
"Oh," Falin says, gazing down at her abdomen. "That's… good! I was worried. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it at first, but I got used to it a lot faster than I thought I would. Actually, if you think about it, it's sort of an improvement over human anatomy in a couple of ways." Yep, of course: trust Falin to look on the bright side of a situation as weird as having a… ahem. "Um. Random question. You didn't happen to tell my brother about it, did you...?"
Marcille nearly falls over. "What in the world makes you think I’d ever tell your brother about that!?"
"Cause everyone knows Laios thinks cloacas are cool," Falin answers flatly. "Duh." Which is, regrettably, true. Marcille has served as a captive audience for too many spiels on the various pros and cons of the anatomical structure to not know exactly where he stands on the subject. Ugh, seriously, why couldn't that have been the piece of information that fell out of her head!? "Anyway, it's probably for the best he not know. Not that he’ll ever admit it, but he’s jealous enough of me as it is..." Suddenly, something occurs to her, and her eyes light up. "Woah. Wait a minute. Do you think I can lay eggs now?"
"I… I don't know." Oh God. She sure hopes not.
Falin is grinning from ear to ear. "Wouldn't it be awesome if I could? Oooh, we could make-"
"No." Marcille knows that face. It's the same one Laios makes right before suggesting that they ingest something that humans have absolutely no business ingesting. "No, no, no, no, no-"
"Aww, come on," Falin pouts. "You know, where I'm from, it's tradition to eat the placenta after-"
"Nope!" Marcille cries, getting up and fleeing from the room entirely. "Conversation over!" She’s shaking her head so fast that her already-messy braids are at risk of coming undone entirely. “Forget it! I take back everything I just said!”
She’s kidding, of course. They both are. Falin’s purely joking about dragging her into an act of autosarcophagy (or, at least, she’s mostly joking), and for her part, Marcille isn’t actually all that disgusted by the idea. If push came to shove, she’d probably allow herself to be bullied into trying it. It’s not like she hasn’t already crossed that particular line for Falin before, after all. It wasn’t even that big of a deal, when all was said and done. All it took was for Marcille to set the pointless question of what is right and what is wrong to the side, place her trust in her best friend, and take that first, unexpectedly delicious bite.
Still, when Falin chases her down the hallway and eventually catches her, laughing, in a loose embrace, Marcille makes a point to stomp her feet and cross her arms and make no secret of her abject annoyance. She scowls and huffs and grouches at the girl who blew her expectations away like it was nothing—the girl who taught her what life meant, and what death meant, and how incredibly thin the line between the two concepts truly is, so thin that they might as well be considered two sides to the same coin, neither of which is deserving of fear—and declares, in no uncertain terms: “I am never allowing you to make breakfast by yourself again.”