Mirror, Mirror

Mirror Mirror Chapter Twenty Three
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… Once more, with feeling! InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink, Dracena and Greywolf are loverly and wonderful for archiving/hosting. ProPhile: More to come… Morgan: *pokes with pokey stick * Readers/Reviewers: I think hope pray my computer is sorted out… Cross your fingers. Thanks tons and heaps for reading/reviewing as you can! J



Amara closed her eyes against the silvering light of the pre-dawn sky. Her lips moved in prayers that were ancient when Nova Roma was young, calling to the dawn goddess silently, her breath so faint as to barely fog in the early morning air. The sky had faded from deep blue-black to nearly royal purple, tinged with the faintest traces of pink, one silvery star waiting for the sun to creep over the horizon and drown out it’s shimmering light. Breathing her invocations, she raised both hands over her head, palms up as if cupping the light.
“Sorry,” a thick voice muttered behind her. “Thought it was empty out here…”
Amara sighed and lowered her hands only slightly. She did not turn to face Kitty but inhaled deeply, straightening her arms again and reaching for the dawn.
“Um, I’ll just go, I guess…”
“Oh, for the love of…” Amara dropped her hands to her sides and turned to face Kitty, eyes narrowed to angry slits in the dimness of the small clearing. “I’m praying, Kitty. This is what I do every morning. You know my altar is out here and you know I do this twice a day, come out to greet the dawn and then to greet the moon.” She folded her arms, lips pressed into a thin line of annoyance. “Do I come to your…your…whatiscalled and bother you while you’re doing your prayers to your god?”
“No,” Kitty sighed, dropping to sit in the pine needle strewn grass, her forehead pressing against her raised knees. “I said I was sorry. This is the only place on the grounds I can go where I won’t be bothered. You won’t give that look and whisper when I walk by.” She sniffed hard, an ugly and childlike sound in the still clearing.
Amara raised a brow but did not change her posture to one more conducive to sharing confidences. “I heard about Kurt and Jubilee,” she allowed.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Kitty suddenly snapped. “I just… I just… I want to choke Jubilee till her eyes pop out, then stuff ‘em back in and choke her all over again! And Kurt…” She looked up, her eyes gleaming with a sadistic streak Amara had never suspected the other girl possessed, “I want to shave him bald, dip him in honey and put him on an ant mound.”
“Don’t dip all of him in honey,” the Nova Roman princess said after a brief pause. “Just the offending part of the anatomy.”
Kitty gasped at the unwanted mental image, then snickered in black humor. “That’s terrible.” She stood, dusting off the back of her jeans. “ Really, really terrible…”
“And choking Jubilee like that isn’t?” Amara asked archly, closing the distance between herself and Kitty by a few feet. “I thought that you and Kurt had taken a break.” She frowned thoughtfully, adding, “Though if Lance had done that, even if I decided I needed time apart from him, I’d likely emasculate him.”
Kitty had the distinct impression that Amara did not mean verbally. “Kurt and Jubes aren’t the only thing wrong. I don’t even know where to start, you know?” She sighed deeply, scrubbing at her face with her fingers, clearing away traces of sleepless nights. “It’s like everything I thought I wanted, I don’t. It’s like life is just…wrong.”
Amara opened her mouth to make a snide comment, but something tempered her; a tiny voice in the back of her mind pointed out that Kitty could help her and this same voice seemed to be pushing the harsh words aside and urging new ones out of her mouth. “Kitty, I need your help with something very important,” the Nova Roman heard herself saying.
“Huh?” Kitty blinked, momentarily taken aback by the sudden change in topic. Her brows beetled as she looked askance at Amara. “What on earth do you need my help with? This isn’t some weird ritual or anything is it?” As interesting as she found Amara’s practices, she had her reservations about actually participating. She could hear her Yaya telling her that it was not proper and she was a good girl, always remember that.
“Lance is going to fire the opening salvo in a war we cannot win, not if it goes the way it is planned to,” Amara husked, her eyes focused on some point far away, somewhere Kitty could not see. “We will be knotted and tangled, blood for blood… I don’t see this future as a vision, Kitty. I see it like I see my own soul, like I see you and this clearing and everything around me.” Her voice had become even softer, traces of her accent growing heavier as she spoke. “I need your help.”
Kitty, a hard chill settling in her bones, nodded slowly. She felt compelled to believe Amara, despite the nagging sense of melodrama that she had grown to associate with overblown plans. Amara, she reasoned with herself, was not one for grandiose schemes and Scooby Doo-isms. Her cheeks flushed guiltily at this last and she nodded again, swallowing hard and hoping Amara did not notice. “What do you think is going to happen? Why do you need me?”
“Lance has chosen a path that was not his to take. He’s started things far too early for us all. We’re not ready, never ready.” She inhaled sharply and, on her exhale, seemed to come back into herself. Kitty’s worried expression made her wonder if maybe she had said something incorrectly, embarrassed herself somehow, but she did not ask, dared not ask. “I am not precog or psychic… I just… know.” She smiled thinly. “You are like me, Kitty. More than you want to admit. You have a cunning about you. You should be a daughter of war.”
Kitty opened her mouth then shut it like a fish on land, not sure what to say. Finally, she settled for “Um, thanks… I think.”
“When I am finished here, I will find you in the house. I have much to discuss with you… How long are you staying for?”
“No idea,” Kitty sighed as Amara turned away and went back to her altar. “None at all…”