Scarlet Fever

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[[include component:preview
text=Xo and Noemí were children playing war, and the war had outgrown them.]]
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[[include :scp-wiki:theme:our-open-veins |our-dark-veins= -]]]

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[[module Rate]]
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[[size 80%]]##757575|by Rez De Chaussee##[[/size]]
[[/div]]

Xo waited for the dusk to bleed before starting her hunt. Having only one arm meant she had less blood to offer in her magic, and she found her veins surged with power just before nightfall. It was just one of many new mysteries Xo kept discovering in her body and blood after almost a decade as a Sangrador.

She remembered Noemí adoring her curiosity. //"We're eighteen, Xiomara," Noemí told her. "It's only a mystery because we're in a profession where people don't get this old."// Xo dwelled more easily on the past ever since she lost her other arm, as though the forced retirement had made her philosophical.

//Then maybe you should have left it while you could, and then I wouldn't have to find you!//

With careful steps, Xo followed the path over the treacherous overgrowth and thick roots, skipping on the roots and boulders and trees quickly enough that her footfalls sanded the bark, and the trees still quaked when she'd long left them behind. She used her bloodsight to find traces of her splashed on tree trunks, sometimes enveloping the whole tree. Sometimes, she would spot birds with flecks of gold upon them. It was as if Noemí's pain painted the forest in her colors.

"Mrow." Accompanying her was Noemí the Cat, a big black cat with ember-yellow eyes, implausibly sleek hair, and a long tail that swished when he was annoyed and stiffened like a periscope when there was food. She adopted him as a kitten because Noemí the Person insisted Xo couldn't drink his blood. He liked to bully rats by smacking them around, though he preferred eating birds. He followed Xo everywhere, no matter how dangerous the situation, but she could always make him hide by scraping her knife's blade on a rock.

"This is. Her fault." Xo whispered to Noemí the Cat. "Told her to. Leave me. Behind." //No, it's my fault.//

"Mrow."

"Dumbass. Never belonged. Here." And couldn't accept I did.

"Meow."

"Dumbass!" Xo growled, but glanced at Noemí the Cat, and his face looked a bit too quizzical, "Okay, A bit harsh."

And then the air turned.

The aroma of the Jungle air had curdled from smoky bark to ozone and gasoline. Xo's skin no longer crawled with skitter legs. The Jungle's birdsong had ceased. //Death! Death!// The Jungle had shushed the birds to warn her. And then she heard a cacophony of shrieks and cries as if torn from the mouths of burning children.

Xo ripped her knife from her holster and struck a nearby rock so hard it sent sparks into the murky gloom, and Noemí the Cat scurried into the dark.

//Chimera.//

Chimeras were walking weapons, crafted by Valravn with Scarlet magic to hunt Sangradors. Scaled, shaped like jaguars, with thick tusks and razor-sharp claws, yet human in uncanny ways, as though men wore their bodies and walked and crawled in its skin. They were persistent and ruthless, drawn insatiably to the blood of their prey. It would pursue her until it tore her open and drank her empty and ate her heart. The man part of the chimera gave it a man's appetite for cruelty. It would make her feel every second.

//Move.//

Nowhere to go but up. //A good thing I trained how to climb these things with one arm instead of listening to you.// She ran towards the tallest Bleeding Tree she could find, a rust-colored throbbing arbor that grew out of the earth like someone had spread the texture of a Barrigona on a cone-shaped mass of muscle, festooned with writhing vines and terminating in a cloud of thorny leaves.

//Move! Fast! Fast! Fast!//

Xo sank her spurs into the tree's flesh, causing it to pop and bleed. Wrapping her arm around the trunk as tightly as she could, she leapt as high as she could onto the tree, and clinging to the thorny bark with gritted teeth, she whipped her left leg back and plunged it into the deep trunk—

SLAM.

//Noemí needs you.// Xo's body screamed as though her bones had cracked from the strain, and the force redoubled the stings of the thorns on her skin. "Fire, walk with me." She hissed and readied herself for another—

SLAM.

//NOEMÍ NEEDS YOU.// She knew it was necessary, but it was agony, every strike shattering her, every climb tearing at her.

She had not quite made it to the top when she heard the commotion grow ever louder. //Not fast enough.// Xo bit her tongue to stifle her scream as she stabbed the tree again, and threw her arm around the tree for a bit more leverage—

And then a vine caught her wrist with a whistle and a snap, and pulled.

Xo struggled not to be torn from her perch, even as she was already running out of time.

"No!" Xo snarled. "No!"

Now she heard the metallic panting of the roused Chimera, the crunch of rotten vegetation it trampled in its path, its high-pitched caterwauling filling the air with a baby's screams.

Xo shivered, from cold and fear, drenched with blood and water. This was new for her. She did not shake. Yet she was shaking now. Her mind was not in her body; in that tree. I am not in control. No, she had never been in control, but what little she had before was gone now.

Another memory, rhyming with her panic: //“Xio," Mamí said like the words were brittle china. "Stop. Please listen to me.”//

//“We can, we can get you to a doctor. We, we just need to find someone—“//

//“Xo, there is no one." Her mother said. There was the faint sound of liquid trickling on the floor. The blood from her belly had soaked through.//

//“What, what can I do?" Xo tried to think of what her Papí would do. Poor Mamí. Poor, poor Mamí. He would not cry. So she wouldn't either. "Please tell me what I can do.”//

It was her mother’s final lesson to Xo: Death was easy. Dying was hard. And the Chimera would make it very hard.

She wrenched her wrist from the vine and seized it as a handhold, crushing the thick root between her fingers—

"SCREEEEEEEEEEEEE."

The Chimera had found her. And then the vine started to bleed.

She began to slip. Her weight would carry her into the ground, and the Chimera would be upon her.

"Should have left. Me behind." Xo whispered, "Bitch."

//Stop panicking! THINK.//

And then she saw her only option.

She whispered an incantation, there was a flash of red light, and then she heard her obsidian knife fly out of its sheath and in front of her face. In a flash, Xo caught the handle with her teeth and swung it into the tree just as her hand slipped away, stopping her fall.

She grabbed the knife with her good arm and looked down at the Chimera as it mounted the tree to climb up after her. She would only have one chance.

//Mama Scarlet, witness me.// She growled, invoking the protection of the Scarlet King in life or likely death. Gritting her teeth, she carved the sigil into her hand, then mashed her blood into the thirsty thorns of the tree. The bark glowed red beneath her hands.

Dangling five meters in the air, Xo pushed herself off the tree.

An instant later, as her body slammed into the ground, there was a timber quaking, bird scattering BOOM as the tree and the Chimera burst into flames.

"Should have left." She whispered, soaked in blood and shivering in pain.

[[div class="blockquote" style=border-radius: 10px; margin 10px]]

Xo met Noemí the Cat back when he was a dying kitten.

It was after she destroyed a munitions bunker for the Fixer, for which he had paid ten silver bars. Xo had to do much of the heavy lifting, so she was very Hungry and was scouring every fern, tree, overgrowth, and nest for fresh blood. Yet as the explosion had Rusted much of the surrounding area, what could flee had fled, and what was left was spoiled and unsafe for her to drink.

"What in Christ's name are you doing, Xiomara?!"

The dead body she found the kitten hiding under was spoiled by fire and picked clean by Chimeras. It wriggled out of the corpse's denim pocket. It had lost an ear, a paw, and its little matted-fur body was slick and radiant with Iosis scars. It dragged itself over towards her with one paw.

//What a waste.// It was too small to be worth the drink. It was suffering so much, she knew she should put it out of its misery. She hated interacting with helpless life, hated the sentimentality of it. //Maybe nature will finish the job.// "Almost there. Little guy." She muttered, watching it writhe. "Come on." But every time it appeared to fade and die, it would perk right back up. "Tough lil bastard." Her fangs bit her inner cheek.

"What in Christ's name are you doing, Xiomara?!" A lilting, tear-choked voice screamed.

It was Noemí Herrera, the new Sangrador. Xo usually worked alone, but Noemí was from Cordoba, and she owed them, so she agreed to train Noemí and take her on a few missions. She was obnoxiously taller than Xo, with wavy, long chestnut brown hair she kept in a smooth ponytail on missions, large, dark eyes, and a full mouth. Her face reminded Xo of that of her Auntie Inez's spoiled housecat. Her eyes had the same fire as Xo's, with the black of her pupils smoldering like dying coals in the dark.

"Waiting."

"What is wrong with you?"

"Don't like. Killing cute things." Xo pointed to the animal. "Waiting for nature. To finish the job.

"You're waiting for the kitten to die so you can eat it?"

Xo wrinkled her nose. "Only take. Blood from a kill. Other blood. Touchy-feely."

"So that's your response, huh? Either kill or let it die? Don't you want to save it?"

"Why? Not my problem."

"Those scars are Scarlet Magic. It's dying because of what we did!"

"What they did. Valravn brought weapons. Just blew 'em up. Early. Ruins Jungle either way." Xo took a deep breath. Talking hurt her head so much. "Stop being. Dumb. This is reality now. Your Christ. Ain't watching you. Anymore." She remembered holding Noemí's hand, watching over her for two days and two nights, soothing her fever with washcloths she soaked in the nearby river, hearing her endlessly call on Jesus for help, hearing her curse Him when Jesus let her burn. //Guess the poor girl forgave him.//

"You're heartless!"

"And you are. A bitch." Her empty stomach crankiness took over her mouth.

"Excuse you?" Noemí grabbed Xo's arm and twisted her around to face her. "What'd you just say?"

"You are a. Bitch." She punched Noemí back at the first place she could think of. "And you take. Too many. Baths!"

"Ow!" Noemí shrieked. "You punched me in the tit!" And then Noemí tackled her. Xo didn't want to kill Noemí, so she kept her attacks to open-handed strikes, while Noemí scratched Xo and pulled her hair.

Somehow, Xo's arm started bleeding, and she didn't notice the kitten licking the blood from her scratches until it was too late. "What the. Fuck!"

The kitten purred, and its scars began to vanish, and its ear grew back. "Fuck!" Xo screamed again and shoved Noemí off her. "Well. Can't eat it now. Hope you're happy. Now. Bitch." She groaned, exasperated.

Noemí cocked her head in confusion. "What just happened?"

"Disgusting. Drinking blood of. Another. Heals you. Also bonds you. To them." Xo shook her head. "Stuck with this. Pest. Till it dies. This is why. Living blood. Gross!"

As though to underline Xo's point, the kitten walked over and headbutted Xo's ankle. "You. Ruined my day. Know that?"

"What are you going to call it?"

"Dunno," Xo said. "What should I. Call it."

"Name it after something it reminds you of."

It was cute, annoying, cloying, sentimental, and seemed intent on derailing her life.

Xo smirked. "Great idea."

When Noemí found out that she named the kitten after her, she was enraged and slapped Xo. A week later, she demanded "visitation rights" to see the kitten for that very reason.

[[/div]]

Xo made her way back to her riverside camp, limping from her fall. She did not stop to check if the conflagration had killed the Chimera, and pleasant surprises were rare in the Jungle. She could only move forward.

Her camp consisted of an improvised shelter, with her upturned canoe and a small hut of assembled branches for Noemí the Cat. The smoke of distant fires soaked the sky with a raw pink blush, and the thick canopy of rust-hued trees sprinkled the Jungle floor with patches of early night. A bouquet of stray winds cooled Xo's sweat-soaked forehead. Ever since she lost her arm, her body got warmer more easily, and the wind became a dear friend.

//Perhaps it'll rain soon.// She liked tasting cloud-cooled water, provided the storm didn't break her shelter. Then again, a storm would likely cause the river to flood.

Between the noise and the fire, she had drawn the Valravn's attention, and their people would be swarming the area. She would need to travel upstream, and fast. And one-armed women with at least one broken rib did not travel fast.

"Mrow." Noemí the Cat

Xo breathed a sigh of relief. He always found her, but she never got used to expecting him. Her life was too slick with blood to expect to hold onto anything for long.

"When I save. Her. We're. Gonna talk."

"Meow." The cat rubbed his head on Xo's ankle.

"Gonna get her. Out of the Jungle. Will drag her out. In handcuffs."

"Mrow."

"She'd like. That."

Her eyes stung, and she couldn't stop blinking and sighing. Her face was wet. But her chest felt heavy, and the memory of her mother’s pallid face seemed to drive fiery pins into her heart, and then the tears rolled into her mouth, but she did not taste salt—

She looked in the river to see her reflection, her cast-off red-gradient Insurgency fatigues, just one size too small. The sleeve of her remaining arm had been shorn off, and every bit of exposed skin was covered with scars of ritual markings. She looked for her almond-shaped eyes under her mess of frizzled and wind-tossed hair.

Streaks of red poured from her almond-shaped eyes down her ebony cheeks.

She was crying tears of blood.

A burst of black unfurled in front of her, and a swarm of butterflies enveloped her in a dense spiral towards a break in the trees. She felt smothered in a coffin of angry wings, and the world around her burned blood red.

The Jungle was speaking to her: //If I go upstream, I will die.//

Xo greeted this with sadness, but not towards her fate. The Jungle had not always been like this. Before the war, it kept its counsel, and those who lived with it had not needed its guidance. The Jungle had only found its voice because the war had taught it to scream.

//So be it.// She smiled sadly. //If that's what it takes for Noemí to leave, goodbye and good luck.//

The swarm subsided. Xo thrust her back into the canoe and flipped it over, then dragged it towards the river.

Noemí the Cat followed close behind, his smooth black tail stirring the air. “Don't get ideas. This is. For the King." She pulled out her ritual dagger from its holster with her hand and placed its handle between her teeth.

Gripping her teeth around the bitter-tasting handle, she pressed her palm into the point of the knife and carved the sigil cycle she needed into the skin, then opened her mouth to let the knife fall to the ground. She thrust her bleeding hand under the water, and muttered an incantation.

At first, the blood from her hand danced down the stream along the current, and her heart sank, before the blood billowed against the current like smoke tossed in a whirlwind. The drifting strands multiplied, grew, spread upwards through the water like stormclouds through a summer sky.

Before long, the entire length of the river had turned blood red, as far as Xo could see. It was the nature of the magic. The red flood poured from lands at rest to the lands of slaughter, and Xo would be able to ride it with ease instead of trying to fight an upstream current with one arm.

Humming with satisfaction, she plucked the knife from the ground.

Noemí the Cat trotted towards the canoe. "Oh no," Xo tutted. "No, no, no." She slid the knife on the canoe, and the cat ran for cover. "No room for you. One-way trip."

She pulled the canoe into the river and jumped into it. The red current dragged her upstream, leaving her with nothing to do but daydream and scratch her stump.

Xo turned and saw Noemí. He was perched by the riverbank, watching her float away from him. It was not the first time she saw him shrink away in the distance like this, but every time felt like the first. She was indifferent to most people, but she would miss him if he were not there.

She said her farewell to the poised feline. “When I die. You better. Find and eat my corpse.” Xo always made sure her family ate.

[[div class="blockquote" style=border-radius: 10px; margin 10px]]

Xo had just turned eighteen when she lost her left arm.

The war had come to her. A hunter-seeker team with her name and number. The fight had badly hurt her, and when she wiped her face afterwards, she only felt bones and blood. She crumpled on the ground with the corpse of her killer, letting herself flow from her opened veins and ruined limb, feeding the hungry earth. //Good riddance.//

And then she felt someone's soft skin against her own, and smelled strange flowers that did not grow in the Jungle, felt someone’s arms lift her in the air, and she lost consciousness.

Noemí was the one who rescued her, even holding her hand during her ordeal.

When she woke, she was in Inez's daughter's bed, and Noemí the Cat was curled up by her side, purring away. When she tried to lift her arm, all she summoned was pain. Of her arm, all that remained was a molten-looking nub of bicep and bone; the remainder had practically melted during her fever.

//I will never work again.//

Noemí tried to console her. "Your Aunt wants you to stay with her. It's better this way."

"HA." Xo burst into a peal of laughter like the mirth ripped itself from its lungs. //You stupid bitch. My life is over.// "Sorry."

"Inez asked me to try to fix your arm," she said, "But I told her how you felt about donor blood."

"Fucking right."

"But why not?"

Xo wanted to grab Noemí by the ears and scream, "Because you're gonna leave me behind, and I don't want it to hurt so much when you do. Because you're smart and because you're pretty and because you don't belong in the Jungle and you know it, I know you know it, so why do you pretend to care?" She didn't understand Noemí's naiveté, surely after five years of being a Sangrador she understood the gravity of sharing someone's blood, of the door that opened between their souls?

But she owed Noemí too much now. //You can't be a bitch to someone who bled for you.//

There was a peculiar smell in the air, now that they were alone together in a house instead of the aromatic cacophany of the Jungle. Xo sniffed Noemí's skin. Her blood was sour and dull. "How long. Since you last ate?" Xo asked.

"This morning."

"More than four hundred calories?"

Noemí was not a liar, but looked at the ground with a bashful frown, and that told Xo all she needed to know.

"Idiot. Come with me. I'm making. Lunch."

"Wait a second, uh—"

"Shut up."

Xo dragged herself into Inez's kitchen and found an abattoir. Her blood soaked the wood of Auntie Inez’s dinner table and pooled on the floor beneath it. The walls and cabinets were crusted over with scarlet film. "Guess we're. Doing some cleaning. First." Xo rolled up her sleeves and started her search for a bucket. "Sit down, Noemí. Will make you tea."

"Fuck that, Xioxi, I wanna help."

"Mrow."

She made Noemí spend one night a week in Córdoba so she would eat enough. Soon, Noemí stayed in Cordoba every chance she got, and Xo always made sure that she ate. The kitchen always smelled like her own blood unless Noemí was there, when it would smell sweet.

[[/div]]

The river was ordinarily the softest place in the Jungle, all that connected the villages of the Jungle with the wider world, snaking through the war like a long black vein. Xo wondered where she could find the heart it bled into, if only to know where to stick the knife.

She rushed along the river for a while, the light in the sky and in the river snuffed out by the empty moon. Even the stars were absent, with her bloodsight making her charnel road the only thing she could see. She pulled out her pistol. She couldn't fire it worth a damn, but it would look scary enough that maybe they wouldn't notice her other arm was missing.

//“Ch-check the thing on the handle—" Mamí explained how to check the chamber if a round was there, how to load a round in the gun, how to turn off the safety, and at last, where to point the gun so it would be quick for Mamí.//

There was a faint buzzing in the air. And it grew louder.

//Drones.//

Her stomach dropped as adrenaline surged through her. The buzzing intensified.

//A swarm.//

The sounds were all around her in the dark. She was too far from either side of the riverbank to steer for cover, even if she had both arms to row anywhere near fast enough to do so.

The humming crescendoed into razors' buzzing. Her ears picked apart the dueling rhythms. Six anti-personnel craft whose guns could tear her into pieces within the blink of an eye. If her body were not falling apart, if her connection to the Scarlet weren't so unstable, she could have cut them open from neck to nuts with a flick of her wrist.

As it was, her options were far more limited. And horrible.

//Mamí, help me.//

But her resolve was already steeled. Holding her breath, gathering her strength, she grabbed the edge of the canoe and threw her weight against it.

Once.

A gun swiveled.

Twice.

She heard the whine of the drone's minicannons as they began to spin.

And with a roar, she felt something give, and the boat flipped over and capsized, and she crashed underneath the surface and just barely managed to hang onto the underside.

It was a struggle to force her mouth and nose to drink the air in the small pocket, and her one hand was losing its grip on the canoe. "Damn you. Damn you!" she hissed.

She heard beeps and hums and screeches above her—the drones were looking for her. Had she fooled them into thinking she drowned?

She heard the whine of the minicannons warming up again and got her answer.

There was no place to go but down.

//Mamí, give me the strength.//

She let go of the canoe, and expelled the air from her lungs, and her lungs empty of buoyant air, she sank in the raging red, and the viscosity of the lower depths dragged her deep under the rushing gore, so deep and dark she could no longer discern which way was up.

Despite having bathed in blood throughout her years as a Sangrador, her body froze at the prospect of what she was about to do. Animal instinct abhorred it. Human dignity rebelled against it.

Her heart raced in her ears, the pain built up inside of her, overwhelmed her, and then her body compelled her to submit to the last reflex of the drowning dead.

She opened her mouth and breathed.

And her chest erupted in pain as her lungs swelled with blood.

Writhing and sinking and dying, Xo mouthed an incantation as darkness covered her eyes.

And gasped as her body disregarded the state of her lungs, and she felt like she was gliding as she cut through the viscera and broke through into the riverwater, all but hugging the floor as she crept towards the shore, her body ignoring the current.

She fought her way through the blood and the effort hurled her onto the riverbank as the sound of gunfire erupted behind her, and then her chest spasmed, and she heaved the blood from her lungs onto the soil of the riverbank.

Xo turned around and watched as her canoe exploded into pieces in the distance, as the drones mashed the river with bullets to finish off what they thought was their kill. She had gone too far to return to Cordoba and her pet, and likely not far enough to reach Noemi's last known location.

"Scarlet Mother, witness me." Xo ground her teeth, trying to master the crushing wave of sickness and pain roiling inside of her.

She lifted a scrap of the shirt she wore last night that still smelled like Noemí, and as she breathed deep her lavender scent, her bloodsight lit the world again, and she saw anew the path she needed to find her.

Xo crashed through the wilds, following Noemí's blood scent, fleeing the angry knives and claws behind her. Every breath scraped her irritated lungs and strained her broken rib, every footstep stretched skin raked with the angry teeth of Bleeding Trees and spread sweat into the wounds.

//Move. MOVE!//

Valravn hunter-seekers, everywhere. She could smell the bitter stink of their kills, the acrid stench of gunpowder, the acid lemon sting of their anti-Iosis meds. They'd wring her like a sponge for every use they had for her and then feed what was left to their trained chimeras. One-armed, hungry, veins running dry, she would be an easy kill, so she needed to be an invisible target.

//We're being hunted. We've been hunted.// They were children playing war, and the war had outgrown them.

Hours passed, the moon disappeared, and the ink-dark night began to thaw into daybreak.

Then, the trail disappeared.

She had reached a clearing, carved out of the Jungle by either a Chimera pack or a Valravn platoon. It was carpeted with spoiled grass so ruined by Rust that it squished instead of crunched under Xo's careful feet. Ashes and herbicide marked the scars where trees once stood.

At the center, a sour-smelling bundle dangled, covered by a sack-like shroud. It was lashed by its neck and wrists to a long, bark-shaved pole. The stench of the bundle had likely dispelled her trail. //Do I burn it? That would likely make the situation worse. Do I move on? But what direction do I pick?// She took out her knife and walked towards the body, and noticed the feet dangling beneath the shroud in the air, saw them kick, and the toe-nails were red.

//Nail polish in a war zone?// Xo wanted to laugh, and then suddenly her mirth was cut by two angry scents.

//Burnt rubber and gasoline.//

//THAT Chimera.//

Xo whirled around, but there was a flurry, a lunge, then things STOPPED.

Euphoria. Xo is giggly, growing lighter by the second, shock soaking her sweetly like she was slipping into a warm bath. Hollow and leaking.

Its arm is inside her. Xo smells its writhing anger in its fire-cracked flesh and boiled eyes as it pulls her towards its blood-charred tusks.

She feels funny inside. The arm is wriggling inside of her.

//I'm dying, I'm running dry. Wake up!// Instinct took the reins. She jammed her knife into the crook of the Chimera's arm and shrieked a dismembering incantation-the bone erupted with a pop, and the arm melted from the Chimera.

//So much gone. So much pain.// The arm slowed the leaking, but she couldn't absorb its blood. Chimeras were filled with poison. She was too tainted already.

Xo sheathed her knife and pulled her pistol as the Chimera raced at her, and she emptied the magazine into its head, each shot burying itself in the beast's carapace. Not deadly, but painful and stalling. She discarded the pistol and pulled her knife just as the Chimera charged her again. It swept towards her face with its remaining arm, and she blocked it—

With her missing arm.

The Chimera's claw slashed across Xo's face, and she saw the light no more. Agony took its place, and as she buckled to her knees, the Chimera pinned her body to the ground.

Xo's bloodloss smothered her pain, and she tried not to mind as the Chimera crushed her legs beneath its feet, pried its claws into her eyesockets, and began to pull.

"YRAAAAAAAOR."

//I'd never heard the cat scream like that before.//

"SCREEEEEEEEEEE"

"YRAAAAOR!" The Chimera released its grip on her face, and she felt its weight leave her.

//THE CAT.//

Noemí the Cat had followed her. //You dumb fuck.// Xo mused in pride, and then her pride was swallowed by her dread. //NO.// It was fighting the Chimera.

And then resolve charged her blood. In the dark, she smelt the Chimera's blood, felt it loom over her, felt the pulse of its throat.

And lunged forward and sank her teeth into its neck. And drank all that flowed therein.

"SCREEEE-" The Chimera's scream died in a whispy gurgle, and Xo bit down. She bit deep. Each bite and each drink of its pulse fueling the next. It was her turn to roar. She roared, and she bit, and she roared, and she drank and...

Before long, her teeth and claws ripped open its chest, pulled out its heart, and her nails pierced the skin, and the sprint of its rotten blood ceased.

What strength remained to Xo melted away, and her feet surrendered to her wounds as she spilled on the ground.

Noemí the Cat curled up next to her and mewled, a flickering candle in the limitless night.

[[div class="blockquote" style=border-radius: 10px; margin 10px]]

It was four months into her forced retirement at Córdoba, and for once, it was Noemí throwing the tantrum this time.

"So annoying! Why is she. Like this?"

"Mrow."

Whenever she and Noemí fought, Xo would talk to Noemí the Cat while they cooled off. He followed her everywhere and always reacted to the sounds coming out of Xo's mouth. Too, it helped Xo get her thoughts in order for when they would inevitably make up.

It was right after Noemí offered to let Xo drink her blood and get her arm back. Nonsense, of course. She'd always offer, and Xo always refused. She was just being nice, but that just wasn't a thing friends did. To change the subject, Xo said Eloisa, a nice girl in the village, was a nice dancer, because she put on a show the other night during the festival.

And then Noemí screamed at her, saying she wanted to dance with everyone but her, and stormed off.

Nonsense. Xo didn't want to dance with anyone! She only said that about Eloisa because Noemí was always telling her to be nicer to people. She didn't know what Eloisa's dancing looked like because during festivals, she would spend the whole time talking to Noemí.

And, in any case, Xo was supposed to be the one who did the screaming and storming off. She didn't like being confused.

With Noemí the Cat following close behind, Xo ran to the ruined watchtower, which was where Xo herself would run off to when she was mad.

Sure enough, she found Noemí, leaning against an acid-matted wall. She had taken off the machine-knit peasant blouse she usually wore and her pleated matching skirt, now wearing a tank top and practical cut-off shorts, so the sigil-scarring on her limbs was in proud display to Xo and the Jungle behind them.

They both had specific outfits for when they were around civilians, and more comfortable attire when they were alone together. Xo herself preferred wearing her dagger-tailored fatigues whenever she wasn't dressed in the lavender scented clothes Noemí bought for her from the city.

Xo did not try to hide her irritation. "If you were. Trying to hide. Need more practice."

"I wasn't trying to do anything," Noemí's voice snapped like a brittle twig, and then she was in front of Xo, kneeling to pet Noemí the Cat.

"What's your problem?"

"Just forget it," Noemí grumbled. "If you're going to play dumb, I don't want to play with you."

Xo wanted to throw rocks at things. Noemí was so annoying when she got like this. "If you won't. Talk to me. Maybe Eloisa will." Xo had no intention of talking to Eloisa, the girl seemed nice, but only Noemí could make her laugh. But the girl's name annoyed Noemí before, and Xo felt like needling her again. "Eloisa. Wouldn't leave me. Looking like a fool." That part felt more intentional. "Wouldn't confuse me. All the time!"

"That's because Eloisa doesn't know you." Noemí got to her feet. "You don't know what you're doing with those badly fitting shirts? You don't know what your chest does when you leave those buttons undone?" Noemí breathed. "Stop playing dumb!" She started to pace.

"What are you. Talking about?" Xo was so confused. "Shirts? Chest? What?"

"You are going to tell me you can't tell she likes you?"

"W-what?"

"You are going to tell me that—" Noemí shook her head. "You play so dumb, but I know better—"

"I don't know better! Please! What am I. What am I missing?" Now Xo's head was really starting to hurt. "What do you mean. I'm pretty? I'm nice?" And then the unspoken truth wrenched itself from Xo's mouth: "Just stop. Pretending I'm not. A freak."

"Pretending? Now you're the one talking nonsense!"

"Brain broken. Can't talk. Lost an arm. No manners. Dress like shit. Hair's a mess. I'm a freak!" Xo wanted to stop talking, but could not stop, like a dam crumbled in her heart. "You think I. Like it here? I only stay. Because it's your home! It's not mine! I don't know. What to do. When you leave!"

"I won't leave."

"You will! You will! Always talk about. Moving out. Always talk about. Bogotá."

"I won't leave without you."

"You don't. Belong here."

The air swelled with hints of lavender and sweet blood. "I can't leave without you!"

"And I can't. Leave the Jungle!" Xo cried. "Can't you see? I don't belong. Here. I don't belong. Out there. To live as. I please. And die. A stupid death. That's what I am! No pet. Of yours. To take into the city." Xo covered her face. The beer in her belly was making her voice and cheeks do things she did not mean to do. "You're leaving. Me behind. I'm trying. To grow. Trying. To be a person. Because need to. Live without you. You? City clothes. Long legs. Magazine hair. Heart isn't here. Heart is out there. Gonna leave me behind. Why jealous. When I'm..." Xo slid her hands from her face. "I'm...what are you doing?"

Noemí's back was turned to Xo.

"I know you, Xiomita. You'd hate for me to see you cry."

And something snapped in Xo, and she seized Noemí and swept her around. "Not crying. You smug jerk!"

And then Noemí slid her hand around Xo's hip and pinned her against the wall with the press of her body.

"W-what are you doing?" Xo murmured, but the scent of Noemí's blood was overpowering, and she felt the way it was rushing to all the parts of their bodies that touched, the shock that ran through Xo's body and heart when Noemí's chest touched hers through the thin fabric of their clothing. Noemí's face was turned down towards Xo, so she lost herself in the fire burning deep in Noemí's pupils, and she melted in her gaze.

"Have you ever..." Noemí's voice tiptoed, voice as soft as shuffling leaves, "I mean, w-with anyone else?"

"Was waiting for you," The words burst from a deep place where Xo's heart drowned in a sea of heat. Xo slid her hand around Noemí perspiring neck and damp hair and drank Noemí's smile with a wet giddy kiss. The taller Noemí seemed to shrink into deep, ragged moan.

Then Noemí answered her with a deeper embrace, and Xo's blood began to bloom, melting as Noemí's tongue filled her mouth. Xo made a sound weaker and more desperate than she thought her body could make.

She'd almost lost her balance because her stump couldn't maintain her posture, but Noemí caught her, untucking her shirt, her fingers gliding along her waist. Xo's felt her legs scissor open and Noemí's upper thigh notched between them.

Xo glowed in her joy, gasping in between deep gulps of it, her body filled with thanks to the Scarlet King for Noemí's eager lips and hungry teeth.

[[/div]]

Xo crawled through the darkness, led by Noemí the Cat. The Jungle howled all around her behind a curtain of colorless black.

She made her way towards the sour-smelling body. Something familiar haunted the air, a lantern of desire in the sightless night, and Xo was consumed by it like air is swallowed by fire. //Flowers. Sweet. Clean. Beauty. The outside.//

//Lavender.//

"Noemí?" Xo whispered, and a raspy wordless moan replied.

//No.// She cut the bounds on the bundle's wrists and neck, and the body sank into Xo's arms, crumpled, dead weight. They folded together into the Rusted soil, and Noemí's skin was damp with Xo's blood.

She felt Noemí's arms around her, felt her thin fingers spread over her body, pressing care into her skin, but as Xo whispered her name, Noemí only answered her with groans.

//Where's your voice, babe? Please, make me feel ugly again.// Her anguish broke into the world, straining Xo's own throttled voice. "Noemí, t-tell me something. Noemí, tell me. Tell me I. Dress like shit. Tell me. About city music. Tell me! Anything!"

Xo felt Noemí's fingers brush her face, trembling, and then Xo leaned her head forward and felt Noemí's lips press against hers, and Xo greedily drank her kiss, and Noemí opened her mouth, and Xo's tongue danced with-

Nothing. She kissed Noemí again and again and again, babbling into her lips.

//What did they do?//

//What do I do?//

Her fingers glided over her face, where cheeks once bloomed with joy, burns now made Noemí hiss at the touch, rough grooves now wrapped her slender, elegant neck, her chest...voids and stitches lashed Noemí's body, a net of agony that wrapped her flesh, and stiffened where it used to shiver, writhed where it used to revel.

//She was the smart and pretty one who would go away, and I am the ugly monster who would stay. She is the woman, and I'm the Jungle creature.// Yet it was not jealousy in those thoughts. She wanted Noemí to be happy, since she wore happiness so much better than she could.

Valravn had made sure she would never burn bright again.

//If only the Chimera had killed me rather than I found her like this.//

Xo wanted to scream, then wanted to be strong, but then broke down under her own helplessness. What could she do? She would have spilt every last drop of blood in her body to save Noemí's life, but she couldn't offer her blood now, tainted with the Chimera's corruption.

//Who would take care of her?//

And Xo drowned in lavender and sorrow.

[[div class="blockquote" style=border-radius: 10px; margin 10px]]

When Valravn came to Ameranta, Xo was cooking with her mother, helping her prepare for the holiday festivities. Xo learned to chop vegetables quickly and evenly, learned to work the dough so it would not stick or tear. They would fill their table until it practically creaked under the weight of the food. Everybody visited everybody's houses, nobody locked their doors, and Xo and her mother cooked so much more than they needed.

It was about making sure everybody ate.

It was when she was going out to grab more ingredients from a neighbor that the gunfire began.

Xo managed to hide beneath the stilts of a house and cover herself with moss to avoid notice. She heard her father and older brother scream as they were taken before four successive gunshots silenced them both.

The coast had cleared around Xo for the moment, as the Ravens were preoccupied with their current haul of looted human capital. She made her way to her family's house and opened the door.

There was the corpse of a raider with a kitchen knife embedded in his skull and her mother, sprawled in a rocking chair, a pistol on her lap.

"The raiders will return," she said. “It will be quick for you. They do not torture children. But…they will hurt me. They will hurt me so much, and there is so much pain, and—I’m dying. I’m dying.” She stared meaningfully at the gun. "Please, help me."

"What, what do you—"

"Please stop the pain." Her eyes glistened with tears. "Please, before they come back. I would do it myself, but I am too weak—"

"Mamí, please, please, don't make me—"

"I need you to be strong for me, please. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Papí promised to help me with this if we ever had to, but I need you," Mamí broke down in tears. "Take the gun. Please, please."

At the mention of Papí, Xo picked up the gun. "How do I—"

"Ch-check the thing on the handle—" She talked Xo through how to check the chamber if a round was there, how to load a round in the gun, how to turn off the safety, and at last, where to point the gun so it would be quick for Mamí.

"Please look at me, Mamí."

"Xiomara, please, I want to die thinking of home."

But even with her finger curled around the trigger, Xo could not do it. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, Mamí. I'm so sorry."

"It's okay to be scared at first, Xio. But you have to be brave for Mamí. Please."

"No, no, I can't. I can't."

"Please. Mamí is so scared."

//SO AM I.//

"Xioxi, it's okay." Mamí swallowed. "Xiomara, I'm not your mother."

"Mamí?"

"I did not want you to know like this. There was a place along the river where the land for miles around was burned and the soil soaked with blood. I heard you crying, next to a dead woman, and I picked you up, and I loved you, and I love you, and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry for lying to you, please, Xiomara, it hurts so much. It hurts so much—"

Xo's hand shook too much when she pulled the trigger, and only hurt Mamí more, so Mamí had to hold onto the barrel the second time to make sure the second bullet ended it. The bang took the sound from her ears, so she could not hear her say goodbye.

[[/div]]

"What do I do, Noemí? Wh-what do I do?"

Noemí's fingers brushed through Xo's hair, and then she pulled Xo into a tight embrace, her face brushing against Xo's, and Xo felt her damp cheeks, wet with tears and not of blood. She heard Noemí struggle to say something, and then Xo felt her face pulled somewhere, pulled towards the nape of Noemí's neck. The scent of her blood is overpowering. The life in her flesh answered the death blooming in Xo's, and Xo's body howled in answer.

//Please, no. Not again. Not like Mamí.//

"No," Xo tried pulling away from Noemí's hold on her, but almost succeeds. "No, no!" //Not like this. Not like this.// Xo knew if she started drinking, it would not stop until Noemí was dead.

//My soul is too charged with the blood of mine. No more. Noemí, I'm not worth it!//

And then, as she was distracted, Noemí took Xo's knife and slid it across the nape of her neck, drawing a pretty red line that began to weep, and then, as Xo was too weak to resist, she pulled Xo close again until her lips and teeth tasted the wound.

“I’m so sorry.” Xo whimpered. “I’m so sorry."

Noemí letting out a maternal hush and kissing Xo's cheek as if to say, //It's okay, I want it to be you.//

And then—

The thirst—

Flooded every inch of her burning body, and Xo drowned in Noemí's blood and tears, all conscious thought swept aside in a river of need.

Xo's teeth sank the rest of the way, her fangs cut deep, and her mouth felt wet, and she drank with greedy gulps as Noemí flowed into her mouth and all around her.

She heard Noemí sigh, with relief or even rapture, Xo could not tell which, and her grip on Xo's body tightened so much Xo felt like her ribs might burst, but then the crescendo ebbed, and she felt Noemí fade through her touch, her skin, the pulse of the blood, the slack stiffness of her once proud body.

Noemí let go long before Xo finished slaughtering the second of the only two people she had ever loved.

And then Xo cried, but not tears of blood.

She smelled smoke, she tasted salt, and then she saw the light.

Scarlet Fever

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