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“...Have you come to torment me? Torment me with my own failure? My own naïveté?”
Starfruit glared. Her voice shook, but she dare not back down.
Pomegranate did not speak. There was a heavy weight in her eyes, a heavy stone in her heart. The mirror she once held no longer resided in an iron fist of a grip.
The Starlight Pantheon was silent. The small priestesses slept, the two elders presiding over the temple in the yard tending to the fireflies. Today they will be gathered, tomorrow they will be poured into lanterns to show the fledging priestesses how constellations are formed.
“Tell me!” she screamed. “Tell me Pomegranate Cookie!”
Starfruit clutched her staff. Wide blue eyes met blood red ones, but the air was still.
Pomegranate did not speak. Yet again. Her mind was blank, her heart even blanker.
Starfruit looked at her with a scowl and a fist. The stars foretold of crossroads to come to her soon. Crossroads of light and dark, with a single red giant star at the fork. Betelgeuse, one of the brightest stars in the sky, the star that held Orion together.
This would be easy. She will reject this star and snuff it out, leaving nothing but the hot air which it was made out of to go cold in the void forever.
“...Leave. Now,” she said. “You are not welcomed here. You betrayed me.”
Pomegranate’s eyes drooped. That classic little sparkle she put on to become sweet, and alluring. Starfruit tore herself away from those eyes and shut her own in return.
“...No,” Pomegranate said.
“No? No?!” Starfruit snapped.
She grabbed a pebble from the fountain. Filling it with cosmic energy she almost hurled it at her until she saw Pomegranate had sat down and bowed to the temple. To her.
That pretty red hair...it was worn. Worn down hard. The box braids Pomegranate tied into two glittering buns before were fraying, frazzled at their ends. Her bun was even coming undone, once wound as tight as a well-oiled clock.
And that reminded her...Starfruit never saw Pomegranate in her visions without her ceremonial makeup. Her long, drawn on white eyelashes that seemed to be made out something positively ghastly. The ones that accentuated her face and gave her something of an smooth, moonlike visage.
It was all smudged when she came into the temple. Starfruit hadn’t noticed then, but now it hit her as she watched Pomegranate’s bow.
She held her staff tight, trying not to let her heart leap out of her chest.
“...What do you want, Pomegranate?! What...what do you want from me...if...if you want the Nebula Chalice, you’ll have to go through me first!”
“I want none of that,” Pomegranate said softly. Head still bowed to the ground. “If I wanted that, I could have taken it easily.”
Starfruit tensed.
“...I am choosing n-not to follow you, Pomegranate,” Starfruit said shakily. “I...I know of your master now, and I know who you are...I won’t do it, I won’t plunge this temple into darkness for you...!”
Pomegranate looked up. Her face had that half-lidded stare, the same one she gave Licorice when she used to berate him for his uselessness.
“...Forgive me for breaking this bow, but that’s not why I’m here.”
“...What?”
Starfruit relaxed. Pomegranate yawned. She would need to find somewhere to sleep tonight.
“...I am not here to do anything but see you,” she said softly. “You understand me after all. You have always understood me the best.”
“I don’t understand anything about you!” Starfruit yelled. She stomped her foot and clutched her staff tightly. “I still don’t understand why you left me when we had what we had!”
Pomegranate did not flinch.
She instead looked to the floor.
Starlit glittered outside and warm summer air hung in the pantheon. The crickets chirped to the beat of their heartbeats and Pomegranate finally gazed deeply into Starfruit, having denied herself the pleasure until now.
Starfruit was still beautiful after all this time. With her beautiful sapphire eyes and hair as brown as ebony. She still wore that beautiful priestess’s white that Pomegranate often likened to a wedding dress. A certain type of one anyway, but one Pomegranate would have nonetheless enjoyed seeing her wear.
Pomegranate did not speak. A sadness hung in her eyes that Starfruit had seen before (but not on her), but before a word could be uttered she bowed to the floor again. Letting the delicate light from the pantheon’s dome wash over her.
Starfruit waited.
“...Leave. Now,” she said. “I won’t have anyone hurt me like that again! Especially not you...”
Not after our kiss... she thought.
Pomegranate looked up at her again.
Their first little kiss they had together...a small peck on the cheek, in a little bath of sunlight...the dome of the temple colored sunlight into astral blues and yellows, as if stars danced upon your shoulders.
“...I do not know what I am supposed to do here,” she said. “...I want to apologize. But it seems you do not want me here.”
Starfruit stopped. Pomegranate held her face in the long arms of her robes. Only her head was visible, and she blushed in hot shame.
Finally I got it out, she thought. Her heart burned at seeing Starfruit so upset, but she had to steel herself. Steel herself away from the emotion of it all. That way the thorns she had grown wouldn’t hurt her, and she would be left just as stable as she ever was.
But you don’t realize how much fun it is to watch you stumble and fall, Kumiho had said to her. Back when the deal was struck, when Pomegranate’s mind was aware of the road she could go back to.
It was only supposed to be a deal to get Kumiho to join over to Dark Enchantress. If Pomegranate made her wish come true, if she became a real Cookie, she would join. She would give herself over.
But she had forced Pomegranate to swallow her bead during the spell. In the heat of her stomach, the head burned away Pomegranate’s mind and all was ripped open to reveal knowledge of the earth, sea and sky.
Her village was still out there. And she would never destroy it. She saw thousands upon thousands of generations of Cookies, walking hand in hand, smiling and protecting the Sacred Pomegranate Tree. It would only die when the Earth has nothing left to give, when her Master had faded into less than dust, less than irrelevance.
Not a single tongue would remember her. Or her fruits. Or anyone she worked with and for.
Wasn’t that proof enough that all of this was going to fail?
Kumiho had giggled when she taunted the priestess, flashing her nine tails at her and swallowing her bead back again. Pomegranate tried to kill her in the moment, but it was too late. In a flash of light, the fox was gone and so was everything she had ever known.
The curtain was lifted and she had seen it truly contained nothing behind it.
Had she been looking hard enough? Had she been looking for long enough? Or was she only seeing what she wanted to see? Red eyes seeking red lies, lies of chaos and darkness and broken people stepped on to achieve all of it?
...She didn’t know. Her mirror didn’t work anymore. She lost her gift, and now she needed to find her way again.
What was the world really like? What was she going to do now?
She could still go back. Still go back to Dark Enchantress and ask to be broken in the same way Dark Choco was.
But would it all be worth it?
What did she have besides the darkness back there?
Was that really worth going back to?
(It was beautiful, and it was strange. Nothing else quite like the darkness could consume and eat and break and tear—nothing else quite destroyed like it did. In red flame and black fire, until nothing was left and you were stripped bare. Love didn’t matter, health didn’t matter, riches and grace and beauty and dreams—all of it was ripped out in a instant and eaten by the fire. Somewhere in her heart, Pomegranate wanted to see that beauty in action again...)
She stared at Starfruit again. Silence filled the room once more. She did not want to look at that crying face. She did not want to hear her voice breaking, or see her beautiful hands shaking.
“...Apologize...?” Starfruit asked meekly. “...Um...what?”
“Please don’t make me repeat it,” Pomegranate said.
“Repeat what? You haven’t apologized to me yet...”
Her heart sped up and she blushed hard. The thought of Pomegranate close to her again...holding her hand, putting her face close to hers...
The thought of a quiet kiss by the fountain again...
...Stop that, Starfruit told herself. Stop getting your hopes up, she hurt you. And betrayed you. You’re supposed to hate her.
But she couldn’t hate those beautiful eyes. Or that beautiful face. Hell, Pomegranate’s hair was still beautiful, with it being as red as rubies just like the first time they both met.
Pomegranate covered her face again. The same way she did when she was scolded as a child, and the very same way she did when scolded by Dark Enchantress. She hated her face being exposed during something like that—it reminded her of her own failures and made the stares and disappointment of other people hurt less. Besides, sometimes it made her look way humbler than she actually was. And if she could earn trust like that, by false humility, then it made not learning from her own mistakes hurt less and less.
And made it easier and easier to inflict that pain onto others. (What else did Licorice exist for but to be someone she could look competent as in comparison?)
But she had none of that now. And she knew she wasn’t supposed to, that was one of the teachings of her old home. The blame did not fall to others for your own failing, it was you, and you alone.
Pomegranate Cookie did not want to be alone anymore.
Not with this.
Not with the heart she had inherited from the fox fire.
Starfruit and Pomegranate gazed at each other before Starfruit ignored her own gut and went over to her. As she got closer, Pomegranate backed up, but not before Starfruit grabbed her hands.
Pomegranate pulled them again. Starfruit gasped, but Pomegranate buried her face in her robes again.
“...What is it that you want, Pomegranate?” Starfruit asked. “You came here for something, that much I still know about you. Are you trying to apologize to me?”
“...Yes.”
“For what?”
Starfruit grabbed her hands again and Pomegranate looked down at the floor, trying to tug away again. Of fear? Anticipation?
It would be easier to go back and pretend none of this ever happened. Forget about Starfruit and travel down the road she had always been foretold to go down.
But Starfruit held her hands like fate did when Pomegranate peered into the future. The same kind of grip that didn’t let go, that didn’t waver, that didn’t back down to personal challenges. Even as shaky as they were.
“...I don’t know,” was all Pomegranate managed to say. It was then that Starfruit let her go, trembling. Trembling and holding her staff close, looking to the ground at what to do.
She didn’t want to get hurt again. But her heart was leaping out of its chest at the idea of holding her again; holding that body against hers and watching the stars pass by together. Did Pomegranate really understand fate the way she did? And how the stars spoke? Her method of future sight was different, and reliant on the Earth. But Starfruit always wanted to know more about that kind of thing, about how to write paper charms, about how they worked. How those who listened to the trees and the Earth communicated with fate, because her method was so high in the sky only those who were blessed and chosen could wield such power.
How a future was told...she remembered Pomegranate writing her a half made paper charm on how to keep spirits out of your bedroom. It was a charm of bringing on a restful future; one in which you were not plagued by spirits that would come into your room and tempt you with the worries of the day. You stuck it to the top of the middle of your door, or else it wouldn’t work.
And it didn’t work now in its half finished state, but Starfruit wanted it to. She still wanted Pomegranate to show her how it worked.
And maybe then they both could have written their own charms together. Maybe.......Starfruit could have made some for her.
The two looked at each other again before Pomegranate held out her hands for Starfruit and began to tear up.
Her voice did not break, but she wanted to. Crying in the pantheon of someone she betrayed would be dishonorable though.
Somehow, she felt like Starfruit wouldn’t have minded.
“...I am here because you are the only one who really understands me,” she said again. Softly. “I have been illuminated as to what paths fate really has in store for me. And now I have nowhere to go on my undecided future. I figured maybe...you could help me.”
Starfruit crossed her arms. Pomegranate‘s face went red again and she screamed internally at herself over the scowl Starfruit had with her now.
“...I...I know...what path I was on...before,” she muttered, softer than ever before. Starfruit had to strain to hear her. “But I can see two now where there was only one. And I figured...that if I want to make true a decision...I must visit all the stops along this new path illuminated before me. And that includes you...”
Pomegranate knelt to the ground and kept her face covered. Starfruit’s scowl softened, and she knelt down next to her.
“...Do you still care for me, Pomegranate?” she asked.
“...Of course. I did then and I do now.”
“How can I be sure of that?” Starfruit asked with wide eyes. “You prostrated and plundered this temple for your own deeds, then...used me to bring about something horrible.”
“I know.”
“Do you feel any remorse about that?”
Silence.
“...I don’t know what remorse is supposed to feel like.”
Alarms went off in Starfruit’s head as she took a step back. But nothing before Pomegranate spoke halfway as she got up.
“But I know I don’t want to see you sad anymore. And the way your heart breaks like a bug being crushed under a heel...I cannot stand it. I know you still love me—I can see it in your eyes. And I can see it in your heart because when we were together you never forgot a bad day that stars foretold.”
Never forgetting anything or anyone. Pomegranate liked that in people. In minions, in associates, or even in friends. (Not that she had any.)
Yet.
Starfruit watched Pomegranate get back up and hold out a hand. One more time. Face fully uncovered now, her buns having finally lost all the hair in them and falling to the side like glimmering shrimpfish.
It glimmered in the soft starlight. Morning would be breaking in a few hours, but the sky was beginning to dawn the beautiful baby blue shade that it took when the most central star of all came out to greet everyone.
Starfruit wondered how beautiful Pomegranate would look in the morning sun again. Those ruby eyes of hers, with that beautiful hair and smooth round face.
She grabbed Pomegranate’s hand, pulling her close enough that they touched bodies again. Starfruit was trying not to give into the urge to hug Pomegranate again, knowing that this might all just end up in pain as it did the first time.
The pain of knowing Pomegranate had taken her secrets like a knife to the back...that Pomegranate looked upon something as beautiful as the Nebula Spring and decided despite its beauty and honor she could and would exploit it.
Pomegranate might make the decision to hurt her and hurt everyone else again...could Starfruit really be apart of that? She wasn’t ignorant of the escapades she had gotten up with the world’s forces—the sea nearly gave up hope for the moon to come back because of the one she served. Not to mention influencing Tree’s protector giving into his own rage and loneliness to smite the Tree who gave the Earth life.
But those wide eyes betrayed everything Pomegranate felt and Starfruit got lost in it all. Worst of all, especially to Pomegranate, they betrayed tears. Starlit tears, that rolled down her faces with several pithy cries.
Starfruit finally chose her crossroad and held Betelgeuse close to her. She was not loud, she did not startle much, but she held onto Starfruit as she held onto her, and the two were forced to the ground by the weight of the futures they had ahead of each other.
Pomegranate knew in her heart what she did wrong. But luckily for her, she also knew a simple apology would have never sufficed. Fate was not something so easily maneuvered by pretty words, but it broke under the yoke of a heart yearning to change.
Did Pomegranate know what was in store for her anymore? No.
Was Starfruit once again giving over to the love and feeling she once had, ignoring the reality that this person stabbed her in the back before? Maybe.
But they felt at peace in each other’s arms. And they would stay like that until the sun came up and it was time to decipher the crossroads into the future.