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Again, her sister’s eyes went blank. It was not so much her eyes, but her entire body: it was rigid and straight, as if she had suddenly resolved a problem and had to stand perfectly still and completely poised for it to come true. But there was a hardness in her eyes that Tayui had known all her life, and which she had always confused with hate or anger. Both of those emotions were represented with subtle differences by Aurèle, but they all made Tayui feel like shit. Even now, with her daughter dead and her sister mourning, all the pale luperci could think about was how her sister had not changed a bit. How it had been her stoic, pure white sister to bring her the bad news, how she had not even had the decency to carry something black with her or hide her shameful coat.
Stop it, came her sister’s words: abrupt and uncensored. Tayui snarled in reply, about to bark off her own retort. Stop what? Feeling? Experiencing emotions and pain? Tayui thought to herself, viciously biting off the ends of the words so they came out guttural and forced. But her sister continued and did not give her time to add her own fury to the growing storm. Already, Tayui felt the anger and sullen emotions brewing beneath her breast; when she spoke, she unleashed it all.
“What?” she screeched. Her voice was thick and sharp and snapped like a whip. “What are you talking about? Now, with Noir dead, all you can do is accuse me of not knowing what it was like to feel alone when it was you who made me feel that? Especially when our half-brother burned our home to the ground?” Tayui didn’t know what Aurèle was trying to prove, but it was pissing her off. Where did she get off lecturing Tayui on loneliness, when she had tried so hard to fit in? And with her daughter dead, why was Aurèle even digging up these old ghosts, who had long since migrated to the other side? They were dead; there was nothing left. They had new deaths to grieve for.