𝑳𝑬𝑮𝑨𝑪𝒀 𝑶𝑭 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑳𝑶𝑺𝑻 • 𝐴𝐶𝑂𝑇𝐴𝑅

001. STRIKE ONE

001. STRIKE ONE

          —ERZA FAVERIN, THE FIFTH TO HER NAME, has been wandering this green earth for as long as she can remember. Eons, perhaps. Far longer than she is capable of recalling with detail, and far longer than she cares to dwell upon. It's easier to let them blend together; it helps to keep the sanity in check—not that 'sane' has ever been a great, or even correct, way to describe her.

She's seen the rise and fall of species that believed they were everlasting. She's seen wars ravage the lands, seen incurable plagues decimate with even more efficiency. She's seen the small rifts that tear between worlds, welcoming devastation through their gates—not unlike the one that left her stranded here. She's seen birth and death, creation and destruction, beauty and carnage.

  All this, she's seen...and it's getting quite old.

  She's bored of watching the inevitable end that always follows the beginning, and the new beginning that comes around just after that. She's tired of seeing the same cycle over and over again.

  Incurable diseases? Been there.
  Bloody battles? Unoriginal.
  Toppling empires? Predictable.

History repeats itself endlessly; such is the way of life. And she's starting to really hate it.

  Erza looks up to the overcast and utterly dull stormy sky, to the faceless deity this current generation is so sure presides over them. The evolution of divinity maybe interested her once upon a time, but in all her years, never has she seen proof of any god or godlike happenstance. Thus, she errs on the side of the disbelieving. (Though it is nice to have some arbitrary force to blame and curse when she is in a grumpy mood.)

But she'll pray to this Mother, she'll even pray to that rusted Cauldron; she'll pray to whatever god she has to, she just wants something new.

  Rolling her eyes, already humiliated with what she's about to do, she raises her hands in front of her, palms up. Supposedly, closing your eyes is supposed to create a stronger connection to the gods. She calls hokum on that, but if it'll persuade this supposed deity to grant her a miracle, then so be it.

  So with shut eyes and awaiting arms, she prays to the sky and earth and anything that will listen:

  "We've been together for quite some time, haven't we? I've been here through your good, your bad, and even your ugly—and it's gotten real hideous, at times, you have to admit." Maybe it's better to be well-mannered when in communion with a god, but she's already in this ridiculous position. The least they can do is ignore her attitude for a short minute. "Anyways, I just think that my patience and constancy deserves some sort of reward. Preferably in the form of a natural disaster, like that one you created ten-thousand—no, twenty-thousand—no. That one quake from a long time ago. Really shook things up. Or maybe you could change up the seasons? Those prissy males are getting a little comfortable in their palaces, don't you think?"

  Erza cracks open a single eye, a tiny part of her almost hoping for some instant change in the poor weather. Nothing.

  She huffs and squeezes her eyes shut again, no longer concerned about being respectful—not that she really had much regard for it before. "Or maybe you could just send a lightning bolt down from the sky to strike me down! Anything!"

  Now when she opens her eyes and drops her arms, she knows not to anticipate anything—though, the lightning has a fair chance with the storm clouds still roiling and prepping to downpour. But it's just the open field she'd wandered to just this morning. Just her, the meadow, the rumbling grey sky, and the annoyingly repetitive birds chirping in their tree top roosts.