LIRO || completed

• 9.1 •

The sheets twisting around her calves acted as shackles as she fought to wake herself from the nightmare the writhed between her ears. She was shaking, jerking back and forth so violently that the bed beneath her back shook.

The sounds inside her head, they were real.

Every fibre of the elegant gold and red dream-dress she wore, she could feel it when she rubbed her fingers together. The cool air against her sternum as the neckline plunged, the tightness around her stomach as the fabric tightened and then billowed outwards at her feet.

The malice in her sisters eyes, glinting like half moons through their heavy stares.

The memory was hers, and terrifying. Liro knew the outcome, knew now that her attempts at hiding her treachery were not lost on Yasri and Emina. They could see her very soul, as if cutting her down the centre and peering inside.

No matter how haunting her own mind was, her own memories, Liro couldn't wake up. Not as she struggled, nor as she watched the past play out.

"You look lovely, sister," Emina said, tracing a single fingertip down the careful stitching of her dress. "The colour of blood suits you." She cocked her head to the side, a smirk pulling the corner of her lip upwards. "Perhaps we will see you wear it again?"

Liro didn't balk at the remark. "I prefer the real to a mere copy."

Emina's lips pulled back from her teeth in what was a painful attempt at a smile.

"Perhaps once you've seen the real thing, you won't look like a sack of bones animated by a puppeteer," Yasri jibed. "You've circles beneath your eyes big enough to crawl through." She winked. "A bit of blood revives the soul."

Liro wanted to scream at herself as all she did was smile.

It was like peering through a screen. She could see her actions, and the actions of her sisters, yet that was all. She could watch every deadly mistake she made and do nothing to remedy it. It was infuriating.

Liro's eyes flew wide as pain blossomed across her back and shoulder, nipping at the base of her skull. Her eyes began to water, a few precious droplets leaking and running smoothly down the side of her face. Liro struggled to breathe as everything registers.

She'd knocked herself from the mattress with her tossing. She could feel the sheets, wet with her sweat, holding her ankles millimetres from the icy floor.

Liro let her muscles relax. She hadn't gotten to the end of the dream. No, the memory. That much was a small blessing from the Mother. Liro knew how it ended, she didn't need to see it play out. 

The ritual was as horrible as it was enticing. Liro had both dreaded and anticipated her initiation into the Sisterhood.

If she tried incredibly hard, Liro could still feel the texture of the pigs heart between her teeth. 

Eat all of it, they'd urged. Finishing means strength. Don't you want to be strong?

The pigs heart hadn't made her as strong as she'd wanted to be. No, her desire for more had lead her to more ... unsavoury rituals.

It was less difficult to remember how she'd looked in the reflection of the pond following her meal. The red dress had not been the precise colour of blood, and Liro remembered being disappointed at the revelation. 

The blood around the widely cut cuffs and speckles all down the torso stuck out like fireflies in the night. Unwanted, and entirely too pesky.

She'd been so unused to taste of blood, however, that when she sank to her knees to try and scrub at the cuffs of her dress, she'd retched. Every bit of the heart had come racing back up, and sank to the bottom of the pond promptly.