Xaviers!

Cailleach stops and starts laughing. "The right." she actually says out loud and she almost sounds... sad?

"There's nothing 'right' about this. We play the part we're given and we do it well! They may not realize it, but they need things like us. The lurker in the depth, the siren on the cliff, they need us to give texture to the endless night, to the abyss their minds cannot conceive of lest it break. The meaning in the ravages of war, the comfort of anything at all existing beyond the veil. Because without us there is nothing and they will be lost forever in the dark..."

Cailleach doesn't respond for a couple minutes as she stomps through the cold. The silence feels oppressive, the only means of any kind of contact or control cut off by the simple act of Cailleach ignoring her. Maybe it's even intentional. An attempt to punish Sam.



"Why do you keep assuming what you are is somehow better." she finally does respond. "You can't even hold dominion over your own body anymore."

"Before their time." she replies, aping Sam. "There's no such thing. There's no grand design, no big plan we all adhere to. Or else all that morality of yours is just the meaningless quabbling of something no different from that automaton beneath the Rift. A meat-puppet in the strings of fate, pretending to make choices."

"Madness!" she scoffs. "And you're just as ignorant of what I do as you are of your own actions."

"You ally yourself with fascists because they seem like your lover. You turn your nose when I give soldiers a more meaningful death than they deserved. And when I show you the truth you strike me down with the strength of your unearned feathers so you can drive a stake through the heart of a balance you know nothing about! You've done more damage to my world than I ever could have, gnawing on nightmares and bones."

"I wasn't!" Sam can feel the annoyance and frustration in Cailleach's thoughts. She even stops and balls her fists hard enough for the fingernails to painfully push into her palms. "You're so... boorish! Surprised, maybe, but not as upset as you seem to think! I grew upset when I found out how you squander the power used to best me! I cannot fathom how the two of us could possibly be two sides of the same coin. It... aggravates me!"

"How can you be so distressed by what I do yet completely unbothered by the hundreds that drowned as you scurried away. So vengeful towards the little girl playing with her ridiculous toy-world yet so indifferent towards the clay-boy's betrayal. So entwined with your role yet so dismissive of it you call it 'madness'!"

For a moment her hands unclench and Sam can feel a response coming on, but as Sam goes on Cailleach starts shaking and fingernails dig into her palms to the point of blood.

"Maybe I should show you!" she roars and beneath the too-large coat the skin above her shoulderblades tears from clenched muscles and bones stab out, muscles and tendons winding around them, followed by feathers. It's painful in a way her shifting never is, like clenching a muscle that's already cramping. Intentional and suffering through it just for the sake of hurting Sam along with herself. "Rathangan, Bracknagh Road, aye!?"

You... you can't just fly there. Not from here. She seems a bit uncertain, perhaps jarred by the sudden pain.

Even... as the crow flies you'd drop of exhaustion before you got there. Before we got there.

Look. I know the mean something. They mean something to me, and they damn well mean something to you. Deep down somewhere you want to forget.

What do you think doing this is going to fix? Do you think you can just take them from me and I'll see the light?

Or do you just want me to hurt like you were hurt?

The wings tear through the back of the coat and spread wide.

"You have no idea of the things I'm capable of! I want you to refrain from asking questions you so clearly do not want the answer to!"

"Shut up!" she shouts in a voice that is lacking it's usual affectation of superiority and old-fashioned choice of words.

"I wanted to like you but you turned out to be such a disappointment!"

"You asked what happened." she says, her fists unclenching just enough for blood to run down her fingers. "I did. I happened to them!"

There's a horrible silence from Sam's end before she responds, and for once she is afraid again.

...it was that night. Wasn't it?

In lieu of a response Cailleach let's out an almost guttural sound of anguish she tries to make sound like rage as she beats her wings and catapults them up into the air, again and again until they break through the clouds, the sun only a crimson glow on the horizon while they hang in relative darkness, suspend in weightlessness for a moment at the apex of their ascent. Cailleach's mind is blood and claws and her scream finally dies in her throat, fading into the thin, freezing air.