#( digging up old bones || etruatcaelum || salem )

[hopeandharmonizing]

Head hangs in hover and tail remains at rest as Briar waits, patient, though she has far less time to spare compared to Salem. She does not unsettle from silence, the world never stilled even when voices would. The woman breathes, she can hear that much through the cracks of wreckage not finished crumbling, the bare basic of a living being. Leather-covered legs shift so slightly, redistributing weight, no burden on her. Briar understands the importance of rests between beats, to emphasize the vibration of carefully crafted words.

Briar does not waste hers, and yet the sound drifted off, lost to the shadows.

Oh, what a conversation they could engage, if only Salem had taken the hook and led it there. If only she weren't so used to having no one but the voices in her own head to talk to. Briar cannot defend herself from being shot down within the echo chamber of someone else's mind. Though it tells her this much in the end: if Salem does not open the door to other possibilities than her own thoughts, and if she is lonely, and angry, and hungry as the grimm countenance she bears, without pride, then she moves about the world out of balance.

The she-wolf aches over it, leans in and listens closer. Her semblance proceeds with its prowl, perhaps not so unlike a beowolf stalking about and discerning predator from prey from pack, and the perfect timing for fight or flight.

And suddenly fur stands on end at a disruptive wave through the air, Briar's blood pressure spikes as her heart drains into her belly, just like muscles on a pale face no longer hold their expression. Even silence can change its tone, restful to oppressive. The rise and fall of ancient breath slows to a pause from the crushing emotion of a single question.

Dammit, that all played out backwards. Empathy meant for mere acceptance, and the challenge meant to answer. She-wolf huffs.

So there it is - the curling in, the walling off, the pushing back. But the stitches woven around Salem's weak points do not hold quite as tight as she thinks.

Like a seam ripper, the first thorn sticks.

The half-angry irony cast towards her in narrowed red eyes suggests the woman knows it, and could nearly guess the answer to her own question.

"Briar," she-wolf sits up straight and pronounces, "Briar Rieka. I assume you are Salem." and at this point, that is all she assumes to know. But her parents and her brothers and her whole village always called her curious from birth. Ravenous for the world and any scraps life threw her. From beneath a table to the top of Briar's own brambled pedestal, that world keeps breaking open further than someone so grounded in their roots had ever thought.

She follows the current thread, digs in, unwilling to let the subject change yet.

"You get used to it after awhile, right? The loneliness. It helps you learn yourself, when that's all you have. And if you can do that, then the grimm," marigold eyes trace along scars clawed and bitten into her skin between and below the ink on her arms; faded. She had always thought it as simple as starting to carrying more hope than despair in her heart, so they left her alone, but...? "...they act different too."

Excited gaze turns up again, her tail even flicks awkwardly, absolutely unappalled by the scene still surrounding them. Too good at spotlighting, maybe. "Well, that's how it went for me, anyway. ...What was yours like?"

The importance of pride; the impetuousness of youth. Her lips part around a flicker of real humor, though from any other throat that lancing, voiceless release of breath could not be called a laugh. Pride before destruction, and arrogance before a fall; is there any emotion more self-defeating, or more venomous when it twists to bite the hand that feeds?

She let it seduce her but once, and for her arrogance that world had died: first in fire, then in darkness and the cold of ages. Even still, she is the butcher’s knife held to Remnant’s throat, pitted and rusting with the blood of millions and whetted by the brittle ego of a god who would break before he bends—and break him she shall, in the end.

Better to writhe shrieking and humbled in the dirt than kneel chained before the altar of pride. Better to taste the poison of humiliation and learn humility than let oneself wither for fear of being made small; there is always something greater.

She sloughed her pride away long before this world began: she would sooner die than exhume it.

Salem lingers where she stands, palm pressed flat to the broken back of the wreck, and casts a wry glance at her new... acquaintance. One cut of a similar cloth as Arthur, as Cinder; bold enough to speak from conviction where most would seek to appease.

Honesty does inspire a measure of ease. She dislikes the groveling.

More curious is the inquisitive feathering of the woman’s aura against her skin, crisp as the bite before snowfall and—one corner of her mouth lifts, ever so faintly—proudly unsubtle. Perhaps in this case the daring comes from an uncommon familiarity with grimm, then; she wouldn’t be the first faunus to stumble into an echo of that long-forgotten kinship.

Among beasts and monsters indeed.

Sounds lonely, the woman says; and all trace of emotion wicks away in an instant. The bare smile flattens; her gaze shutters as every seam in her body pulls carefully taut.

For a long, crawling moment, Salem waits. Fanatic defiance and terrified pleading are the more frequent reactions, by far; mercenary interest, tiresomely common; sycophantic reverence, not so rare as she would like. Overtures of… sympathy… or other such pointless appeals to emotion occur only in the confluence of brave moral idealism and complete ignorance of Ozma’s sordid little quest. But they do follow a dependable script: one demanding no meaningful participation from her.

…So the unfolding silence rattles her. Cinder’s emerging talent for scorching new holes into old theories aside, Salem does not often feel perplexed these days. It takes a few minutes to digest, all while she stares in absolute stillness.

At length, she unseals her lungs and collects the breath to say slowly, “Less than you… imagine. I have known loneliness before.” Her hand spasms, piceous claws skittering over metal. The tower. Her deterioration, after. The doubt behind their eyes. She exhales. “I have my grimm.” And, eyes half-lidded: “You haven’t told me your name.”

[hopeandharmonizing]

Briar keeps walking, compelled by command; black boots trod one after the other. She cannot scent anything further from the woman, olfactory too overwhelmed with rancid flesh and leaking oil, seared scrap so sharp like flakes of airborne shrapnel cutting across mucous membranes.

She can start to see her now, though, faunus eyes capturing every horror of her surroundings clearly though the night. No time to conjure an image since the announcement, and still, somehow, the sight of Salem matches none of her expectations. Grimm colors made sense, but a sleek dress over a statuesque figure and intricately bound hair carries such poise on shorter shoulders than what she thought. Her presence feels larger than life, scraping over skin and charging the air throughout the city block, though she doesn't look it. Less of some mad witch of ruin and more a calm, controlled centerpiece influencing the tone of the surrounding table and all its carefully set parts.

The mastermind behind the horde. Sanity made it scarier. (How does one keep their mind intact that long?) Pupils shrink, black within marigold focusing in further to the point she can hear the beat of her racing heart and feel the acid splash of her squelching stomach, but Briar's steps do not slow. Salt-and-pepper tail does not tuck.

Her fangs miss their mark, and the hollow truth within the woman's words, delivered with the wisdom of elders (the click of a conclusion knitted together by so many experiences that the lines blur) - not to mention the way her flesh tears into nothing and immediately mends no matter the rending so casually walked into - makes the she-wolf realize the crushing futility in a pup, by comparison, playing any pack games from the start.

And yet, Salem answered, even through the sarcasm. And tucked away her own condescending tone. And isn't actively striking Briar down, nor following up with any new threat. Briar breathes, and lets her hackles fall, and comes closer still, soul-semblance screaming - howling out its song to soothe the volatile static filling empty spaces, echoing from high mountains of debris down into the gaping chasm between beings.

Salem's skin shines pale against the sky, marred from the inside out by the stretch of veins to the surface... not unlike vines stained into Briar's. She has been called a monster, too. She has had sticks and stones cast at her, too. Witch. Bitch. People fear what they do not know.

Fire and blood and stench and sick have surrounded her before, and she has survived, and she has learned. Sticks and stones collected and arranged correctly can form a solid foundation for a stronger self.

She always said the gloomy, broody ones at the back of the bar had the best stories... and, if what few conversations she's had with Qrow and Oscar and Ruby have led her correctly... is it not their stance to sit and talk? to seek peace?

(Not time enough yet, too, for anyone to tell her that Salem's meant to be exempt, because, um... hmm.)

Though Briar holds the teachings, and the armaments, and the heart of a huntress as she-wolf keeps walking into the face of that fear and the possibility of death, she does not do it to preach nor perish as a hero or a weapon. No, she approaches on her own terms: as a loving voice attempting to attune to its audience.

(If nothing else so noble, perhaps stalling a few more seconds would spare her dearest ones for now.)

"That's a shame," she huffs back, "I think pride's important."

Feet stop at a short pile a few feet away, and Briar plops down upon it like a stoop, not much else to do but stay in sight as instructed, head canted in curiosity. She will take a seat at Salem's table, then, casting starlight onto that centerpiece.

"Well, that's far enough back I wouldn't be able to pull a number up for it either," gregarious tones soon dip lower, "Not being able to ...participate, not even holding on to your own pride. Sounds lonely."

Salem tilts her head, silent, as the young woman saunters closer: the polished façade of indifferent scorn allayed by the calming of her aura, the shrieking notes of panic whittled away with disciplined ease. Behind that mask of false bravado is the face of genuine bravery.

An interesting thing to hide. Her gelid stare thaws to merely cold.

The woman’s eyes are of a fiercely hawkish yellow, bright and alert above the charcoaled sneer; she holds Salem’s unblinking gaze without flinching. Her bearing gives away nothing of the fatigue written plainly in her aura, in little jags of disruption, in the way it spits and slivers out of her.

Proud, but not brittle.

Then:

In hiding. The insinuation of choice sparks a glint of amusement in her eyes; to say she has been hidden would cut deeper into the truth. A sardonic breath snags low in her throat and dissipates there, not quite a snicker.

Provocation. Cute.

“Long enough,” she says mildly, “that I have no pride left to sting.”

Hands folding behind her back, she shifts to regard the pyre again. There is nothing left anymore but a skeleton of twisted, heat-warped metal. Her fingers curl. The flames evaporate: vanishing as if swallowed whole by the noxious smoke.

How long has it been? A few hundred years, perhaps. She might, in a more extravagant mood, venture a thousand. It still feels so bitterly close to the present, the memories still ordered and legible, not yet bled into the dreamlike confusion of the distant past. The sly magician's trick Ozma had made of periodizing the modern calendar does not, she reflects with no small disgust, help.

Salem clicks her tongue once and slinks forward, making only a half-hearted effort not to step on the broken glass and tortured scrap littering the pavement; easier, to let her flesh tear and knit closed again, than to convolute her course to the next wreckage. A smaller vessel, crumpled beyond sure identification. She has to stoop to see into the cockpit; the dim interior reeks of blood and death.

No bodies left. She straightens, sighing softly.

“…I don’t count. The last time I attempted to… participate–” A leaden pause. “Mistral,” she offers, “did not exist, then.”

[hopeandharmonizing]

Darkness.

Atlas, the shining city in the sky... which always cast an unspoken shadow on those below. Honestly, Briar can only scoff with no surprise that all the pomp and bravado simply taunted something higher and mightier to come along in attempt to overthrow it. Nature finds a way no matter how much tech dresses The Brother's creatures up.

And like most frail boasting, it starts to crumple like paper walls of false security; a city of nothing but too-easily pliable tin around its center of a broken heart. The huntresses tried to sound the warning bells and garner reinforcement from the very first hole in the wall, but... well, too late for all the 'could haves.'

Briar's here, now, working from the best of her whole self. A star shining brightest from the surrounding dark and the bleak; a lone wolf huntress poking ceaselessly around for that next breach in Atlas's defenses, a sneaky way in to rescue falsely accused friends. The hard light forcefield already fritzes out, forces on both ends - grimm and soldiers alike - thin exponentially, so does more brick and mortar and steel. Doors and windows literally burst wide open to her now, in all of destruction's beautiful jagged edges. She just has to find the right one...

But boots halt dead in their tracks when Briar smells it. Fire. Fire burning up a smoke the likes of which has never hit her nostrils, unnatural. Sturdy has the Big Bad Wolf stood in the face of all the terrors around her, but then she hears a keening voice of nightmares following that scent of the worst day of her life. A sharp freeze down her spine stiffens from ruffled bangs to toes and tail-tip.

Salem. The one Robyn had warned them about. It had to be. Of all the catastrophic crazy happening today, that would be the only part of it that made sense. Well, that and Briar once more finding herself alone against a much older, much larger threat, with nothing but an insatiable hunger for survival and swelling pride to save her.

The air doesn't taste right, no longer satisfies. Her chest feels so tight that her lungs can barely expand, choked by her own thorns closing in around her. Is this how it feels on the receiving end of her semblance?

shy. skulking. invalidating words meant to subdue, and for a moment it had worked. but they are not the truth, and Briar has worked hard to be more than her fear, and she is not alone. no pack wolf ever stands by themselves; her ancestors have not stirred within her semblance for over a decade, but she senses them now in a wash of warm, shimmering silver across her skin. their strength and their sacrifice have always helped move her. She turns towards the voice, and the smoke, and the pyre, and pulls her lapels up against the winds of war.

(Briar does not skulk, she prowls, thank you very much!)

Fires of hate took everything from a baby girl. Fire also forged a hopeful songstress, happy huntress out of the ash.

She-wolf's nose wrinkles into a snarl above black-painted lips as she leaps down from the rubble and crosses the courtyard, closing the distance between the barracks and the worst of the wreckage. Postured. Performative.

Briar calls out along her way, projecting, "A bold statement from someone who's been in hiding for... how long now?"

Clearly with current revelations, she can no longer fully trust what she'd been taught in school. Though, one fact remains: best to get your information from a primary source.

Leave it to a she-wolf to dig up old bones.

[ @hopeandharmonizing // for salem ]

Bleak.

The ruptured pavement sings underfoot with acute unease. Salem slows to trace the husk of a gutted aircraft. Her fingertips pulp, streaking darkly down until bone scrapes the frosted metal; and there are bodies in the cockpit, still. A cloying miasma of pain and terror. They had not died quickly.

She lids her eyes, exhaling, and steps away. This part of the city, nestled against the flank of the academy, bore the brunt of her assault on the fleet: shattered battleships lie amid the rubble of buildings crushed by falling debris. Even the school, well-fortified as it is, had not emerged unscathed, although most of the campus is still standing. Her lips purse.

The Atlesian military never did impress; but even judged by its own standard, it had risen to the occasion of defending its city with dire incompetence.

Absently, she sets the wreckage beside her ablaze. For a moment, the only sound is the greedy roar of unnatural fire; Salem watches it burn in unmoving silence, thoughtful.

Life simmers beneath her feet, but nothing stirs on the surface. The stillness—the unrelenting fear is confounding. Her forces are gone: eradicated in an instant by the hand of a child. From a flock of almost a quarter million, less than a thousand remain, and yet…

Gnawing dread still chokes the city.

Bleak. Bleaker, if anything.

Slowly, she turns away from the makeshift pyre, gaze finding the academy once more. Her eyes narrow. The staff is still in the vault, if the unaltered presence of its crisp power in the foundations of Atlas is any indication, which perhaps rules out Cinder as the one responsible; and if not her—

Salem stills, lips parting as she inhales sharply. A breath of change. The thinnest trace of aura limns one of the drafts churned by the fire, clear as new ice in all the smoke and terror. She glances sideways and finds nothing but lifeless rubble. Desolation.

But oh, yes, now that she’s paying attention to it the whisper of aura in the air is unmistakable, and the cold implication of a smile touches her lips. “Let’s not be shy,” she says, low and venomous. Then, flatly: “…Come into the open, or leave. I don’t care either way. But I will be unpleasant if you persist in skulking.”