Femoral Dilemma (Closed / Rem)

[Sister Berenice]

A feast day, with nothing but the meat of demons to sup upon. A feast day, with no priest to deliver Mass, no faithful to deliver it to, no choir to sing hymns. One small nun, one small monastery.

It wasn’t even a feast day. Or maybe it was, somewhere. There were so many saints, even back when she walked the Earth, so many that Berenice eventually just decided to worry about the more important ones. She got chastised for it, but the glint in the eyes of her old prioress held no small amount of understanding. Maybe even a bit of amusement; she’d been a young sister once, too. Berenice laid in her little bed, the cotton of her nightgown tangled with the sheets, and wondered just how many more souls had been honored in her absence. What did they fight for, now, in that strange new world of glass and metal and light? Were they still fighting for the same things the people of her age did? Kings, power, faith, wealth?

And the lost causes? What were the lost causes of this new world? Did the shining artifice have room for champions of the despondent and the lost? Did they still have despondent and lost out there, after all this time?

It feels a bit sacrilegious to start a feast day out like this, her conscience chided. Arise, lest your candles melt down to the stone, Sister Lazybones.

Berenice got out of bed long after the time that her Matins would’ve been said, time she marked in the melting of candles. She muttered fragments of her Matins under her breath, eyes crusted with sleep as she shuffled along and lit fresh candles. Black tapers, stained by the pigmentation of Hollows. It was easier to rend the fat from them than it was to weave each wick. Lord, she hated the weaving. If her bones weren’t constantly replenishing themselves, she would have long gone arthritic from the weaving.

Without a calendar, she had no choice to decide feast days but by the feelings that clung to her person. If some general mood or pattern of thought arose, and seemed to persist for enough time, it only seemed right that the holy day of a saint was emerging on Hueco Mundo’s horizon. One saint in particular lingered in her mind: today would be his.

A small holiday meal would suffice for his honor, she hoped. Nothing sumptuous, of course. As poorly as she carried out her holy duties, Berenice knew well enough that lavish portions were excluded by the vows she took so long ago. Not that anyone would dare call the meat of the Hollowbreed sumptuous; it reminded her of game meat, tinged with acrid smoke. Like wild boar, if wild boar could devour forest fire. And no matter what, her mouth always felt… oily, afterwards. Soaking the meat in brine seemed to cut the oiliness, but never the bitter flavor of smoke. She winced, the image of a platter of blackened flesh clear in her mind’s eye.

Maybe… her imagination drifted towards the pale human thigh she had been keeping preserved in salt. The blood was not yet congealed when she’d found it, following the trail of gore and other mangled limbs. She could share it with the strange desert critters outside, the chittering monkeys and shy lizards in their bone white masks. The lost causes. They were meddlesome and loud but never truly malicious. As much as she could like something in this barren land, she liked them.

Berenice skipped across the refectory hall, filling it with susurrations of soft cloth on stone. She wouldn’t dine here today. She wouldn’t be alone today. In a small dark room, further within a small wooden crate full of white crystalline grains almost undistinguishable from sand, she hauled up a salt-crusted thigh. The desiccated exterior cracked off easy enough, the meat underneath still good and all the more tender after its long salty nap.

Earnestly excited, Berenice ran bounded across stairs, through the myriad halls and doorways of her own construction, out to where the critters lingered. She failed to notice how easily the heavy quartzwood doors yielded to her grasp. The flood of alarmed and mindless beasts nearly knocked her off her feet. The chittering of the invading monkeybeasts filled the space with shrill and agitated noise. Masked lizards crawled up the stone columns and watched the door. A small dog, white mask slightly bloodied with its own black blood, limped in and settled at her feet.

Once the din had settled into watchful, anxious silence, Berenice gingerly stepped over the dogbeast and out onto the bloodied marble stairs, thigh still clutched in arms. Her glare held its ground… and then dissolved into a tired shadow of its former self. A quiet sigh and some muttering followed. Her fingers dug into the meat of the thigh and tore away a thick strip.

"Here. It’s the feast day of St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of lost causes."

[Rem]

Hueco Mundo. The world of the Hollow. An empty dimension, or might as well have been. For all the innumerable Hollow which dwelt upon those sands, it was rare to encounter much of anything. You journeyed across the endless shifting white dunes, observed the quartz trees as waymarkers in your journey and oriented yourself in the starless sky by the moon, marking only the passage of time by the shift of its cycle.

Rem spent less and less of its time upon these dunes but it still made up a bulk of its existence. The means of maintaining the tending of its seeds meant travelling to the human world. But across the surface of the Earth the most fertile soil was spread far and wide. Journeying in the human realm was not possible, and so it made the trip in the mirrored distances across the shifting dunes.

Rem wondered, how many of those who dwelt in Hueco Mundo had travelled as much as it had? Probably few, it decided. A thought it had innumerable times as it trudged across the trackless dunes, observed the near featureless surface underneath the unchanging sky.

Days passed in silence, giving way to months, stretching mindlessly into years and more. Rem did not seek novelty, it chased oblivion it could not bring itself to embrace so these endless wanderings were no different to it than any other.

Or so...

Well.

Even Rem could not ignore a wonder.

So it was that it altered its intended course. An impressive structure sat upon the dunes, impressive if only for the very fact it existed at all. Rem had seen such things before, in the ceaseless traversal and the infinite span of time it could imagine empires which now hosted travellers walking amongst their corpses. This, however, did not seem some ancient wonder ground down by the passage of time. Worn, certainly but far from abandoned. It could feel the buzzing of collected nothings. Could hear the distant chittering as Rem neared.

Rem's presence was felt as it crossed the threshold of the wall that outlined the structure. The first signal of its arrival was the tremor in the congregation. With Rem's next step, they had turned in observation. Those particularly skittish had already begun to bolt. A moment later the rest beat their hasty retreat. Some might have sought to hide, hoping to blend in within.

Rem sat at the threshold, hunched on its all too long legs, gunmetal skin stretching tight. A pure white mask, and wide maw, peered within towards the remaining inhabitants and for a moment it said nothing.

"...This is no place for mortals. Why are you here?" The deep baritone filled the air, a tone impassive belying utter disinterest yet the question remained.

[Sister Berenice]

The question came, as it inevitably would, before anything else. With her eyes still fixed on the crouching visitor, Berenice pulled the handle of the door behind her as she stepped forward, closing the heavy quartzwood slab. From where she stood, she could just slightly hear the skittering behind the door as the creatures used their freedom to go hide. It would be a very long game of hide and seek later on; hopefully, they wouldn’t knock over any of the candles… or eat them.

She took a moment to study them and let the question sit (even if she already knew her answer). Legs and arms like that would give her a tough time if they deigned to fight. Half again as long as their torso, each limb glinting in the moonlight as if a hundred longswords had been melted down and poured over their skin. Berenice preferred the fuzzy ones and the fluffy ones. At least they looked somewhat like animals.

“I can no longer live in the land of mortals. What my body requires for sustenance would eventually destabilize any area I settled, whether I fed on animals or humans. I would be hunted down and killed.” Her voice remained neutral; so many years, so many times she had recited this to so many other curious demons. Their reactions always helped to remind her of what words should be used, whether her composure was cracking. Most of them delighted in reminding her of that. “Here, it is a given that I will be hunted, because that is the rule of this land. I can hunt without…”

Her sentence died in her mouth before it could reach his side of the courtyard. Without what? Without hurting anything or anyone? Berenice thought about the times when not fighting would’ve meant her body devouring more of itself than she could afford to lose, or when one of their kind would have settled for no less than devouring her. Most of them didn’t beg. She figured that eventually, they learned not to engage in behavior so utterly pointless. None of them wanted to look weak after all.

They always looked so weak just before they died. Like they could finally be done, be broken, be tired of all... this.

Did they hate that more than the pain? How they must’ve hated seeing the wellspring of sympathy in her eyes, even as her mouth distended and stretched around them… her gaze focused on the visitor once more.

“…Without bothering anyone. Besides… my life on Earth was not so different from this. Lonely, quiet, contemplative. If I returned, I’d only be tempted to break the vows I swore.” She shook her head, answering her own question. An unacceptable idea. A desire that would go unsated. Especially while her appetites had such free reign over her body.

“Tell me, though. Why are you here? Did you come to see the monastery, or did you come because you felt a mortal presence?”

[Rem]

Rem remained crouched. It was a good listener, dutiful. It watched as the mortal-like creature moved, its vision fixed on Rem. Perhaps it was assessing the threat it presented. It found that amusing in a quiet way. If it had hostile intent it wouldn't have approached from the threshold and all but knocked. Still, could it fault them for the reaction? They were in the land of the Hollow. Given its familiar with the least of Rem's kind, surely it knew the rules. Such a structure would take ages to weather down and fall but it felt like it would take just as long to construct. Building in the place of static nothingness.

The way she moved through the space confirmed that she had not discovered this location, it was hers, effortless while her eyes remained locked on Rem.

Ah, a curse. Fascinating. Rem leaned forward, just so. Hunt without? Without what?

Oh. That was interesting. She had such an interesting facade that it almost seemed at odds with the hesitation. Maybe it was the structure, but Rem had thought this one was a fixture. Here for ages, set in stone. But no, there was potential there. It nearly salivated. She was unresolved, uncertain, growing, changing, full of potential.

Its maw widened, just so. No threat of violence with it, not yet anyway.

"Ah, curious." It replied simply. It almost laughed. She was draped in contradiction. "Both. The site of your monastery and the sensation of a mortal in a land of nothingness caught my attention in equal measure." A monastery, the term resonated within it.

I prayed to god once upon a time. I prayed and prayed and prayed in the depths of the worst of human misery. I prayed for the salvation of the people around me, then I prayed for my own. And when at last my faith broke, I continued to pray to you but I used the names the others called you, I hoped that out there there was anything with the power to save me and perhaps it might if I used the right name. I prayed until the last of my dying breaths and salvation never came. Then, I lingered in purgatory. I was your child, broken, and despondent until at last I could pray no more, and when the last of my faith was eaten away I became this.

Rem flinched and shifted back, no expression reflect the turmoil of the uncomfortable thought. A moment passed in silence before it spoke.

"Tell me of your vows."

[Sister Berenice]

“My vows?” Surprise cracked Berenice’s façade. She fanned out the memories she still had within the confines of her mind, pages fluttering between their leather bindings. This question was new.

“My vows…” Her hip rested against the solid block of balustrade at the top of the steps. Underneath the stony façade, surprise gave way into that faraway look. She gazed at some unknown point just past the visitor’s head. Perhaps a little to the left. Wherever it lay, she made sure not to make eye contact.

“Promises to both your convent and, in my monastery, Christ. I had to study a little bit before I could take the simple vows. Those last a few years, and at the end of that time, the novices would either go back home or decide to stay and take the solemn vows. The ones that are for life.” Reverie danced with all seven of her veils at the back of Berenice’s mind. How easy it would be to get lost in the recollections of that time. She shook her head to clear away the veils, but her eyes still rooted to that mysterious spot in the desert. “I think they thought I’d go back home once I was of age to marry. But I took my solemn vows instead.”

A small flash of pride lit Berenice’s face, all the brighter in the midst of her sorrowful mood. She shifted the weight in her arms to one side, holding one of her wrists’ out for the visitor to see. The light brown beads and a small crucifix dangled shyly within the shadow of her sleeve. The white marble inlay on the beads seemed to glow just slightly, as if sucking the moonlight out from the space beyond her sleeve. In contrast, the dark stagnant rivulets that bled through the wood made the black of her sleeve look dull and ashen in comparison. She held it proudly for him to see. A half second too long: reverie ripped the veil from her eyes, and she remembered, painfully, what that once-proud relic looked like now.

Her hand fell slow and limp to her side, like a doll having its limbs put back into the correct place.

"My powers could’ve been called holy, back then. They were, by the ones who could see the demons and the ghosts, the ones with the swords. I’d lived there longer than I lived with my blood family, and yet it took just as long to understand what all the hymns sang of. I found a purpose, so I took the vows.” Her eyes had been anchored upon a tree, one of the quartzwoods she had planted within the walls of the courtyard. For a second, she could almost, almost pretend the sky behind it was blue, instead of the endless stony gray.

“A vow of obedience, to the Holy Scripture, to St. Benedict’s Rule, to the abbess. A vow of stability, to my… home, the monastery. The vow of conversatio morum, to live in humbly and chastely among my religious sisters and brothers. And…”

She was forgetting one, wasn’t she? She’d never known, always thinking it was three instead of four. It was three, right? For the other nuns, it was. But she had a special vow. One she made, one only she kept herself to. Berenice closed her eyes. It was there, wrapped up in all those veils. Wrapped up in silk, in cotton, in linen bandages. Under scar tissue. In a jar somewhere, preserved in formaldehyde, with a tidy and neat little label on it. BERENICE'S PROMISE, smugly scrawled.

Her eyes opened, cast over with a simmering shadow of anger. “That bastard stole one of my vows.”

[Rem]

Ah, there was an enticing meal here wasn't there? Rem had thought otherwise, a static little oddity living eternally within the unshifting sands of Hueco Mundo hardly presented any kind of potential but no, there was something there wasn't there? A steady thread of faith.

It watched as she moved, caught by what it would assume was an unexpected query. Vows were a fascinating thing, it had seen people draw strength from promises made and also those who were caught up in the shipwrecks of their lives dragged under by them too. Perhaps it varied by person. The more she spoke the more she seemed like both.

She never looked at Rem, a thought that crossed its mind as it stared directly into her eyes only to look away when she presented the crucifix towards him. It practically glowed in comparison to the rest of the nothing around. It shifted its weight, just so, near imperceptibly away from her. Then turned its eyes back to her.

It felt a twinge, an emotion that was unfamiliar with what it drove Rem to do. It was ignored, of course with the rest but it was a curious sensation catalogued, considered for later.

She was special, a story like a few of the similar mortals it had met before. Some of them made good meals, others were grave nuisances. One had potential. She seemed to too. The question then remained was, why did she still live? To have had the means to travelling here was one thing, but what allowed her to survive? She had been here, certainly, for countless years. A place rich with the nourishment Hollow's needed to thrive but she was decidedly unhollowed.

Was she?

Rem leaned forward once again with grave interest.

Solemn vows. So many people wound up alone against their will that Rem couldn't help but wonder that it should count as a vow. She was certainly in no danger of breaking that one.

A vow of obedience? Rem almost craned its head around to make the point. To whom, it wondered? Certainly, no others dwelt here to command her, and certainly, no demands on her time were made by her lord god.

A vow of stability. Stagnancy was a kind of stability it supposed.

A vow to live humbly? Perhaps, but compared to whom? Certainly, it knew of those with less, and among which sisters and brothers?

Still, even with that it couldn't help but feel a sense of pity that perhaps resembled respect. So many things in life were so transient, human life was meant to be one of those things. Yet here she remained. Worse yet, she remained with shackles that for so many others eroded swiftly. Vows were simply spoken words, to give them weight, to allow them to remain, in some shape, for so long was...

Unusual.

Rem regarded her anger plainly but spoke again.

"Perhaps you should get it back?"

[Sister Berenice]

“I can’t.”

Her anger crumpled. She crumpled. Any living being, any being of life and hope and potential, would have crumpled under the weight with which she spoke. Two words, and yet they were so dense with finality. Those two words, her anchors, were the summation of nearly 400 years spent looking her own fate in the eye.



400 years of yielding, praying, sobbing, begging.



“His name, his face, they are lost to me. When he took out…” Berenice stopped, running her cognition over all the mental gaps, like a tongue over emptied gums, “My… gifts, my memories went with them. Some of them. Most of them. I don’t know if it was intentional or not. I hunted your kind, but you are used to that, are you not? Why would he retaliate for something so mundane among your kin, then?” She folded her arms, lost in thought. The longer she sat, the more her hands grappled and rubbed at the forearms they desperately clung to. If only that missing piece could be found so easily; she would’ve whipped herself bloody for the promise of those memories.



Her hands stopped. Berenice found herself not looking at the beast for all that it represented, but… just it. The form of it, the weapon-like skin and… unnervingly patient disposition. A pang of guilt struck. The beast had been indulgent, while she was selfish enough to step into every single pit of memory that swirled around him.



“Ah, I’m… I’m sorry. I’ve been terribly rude. It’s been a long time… I don’t have the opportunity to talk about all those with another… soul, often. It’s different from just being locked up inside my own consciousness.”

Berenice dusted herself off. No winds had blown, no sand kicked up, but the habit remained. She took the stairs down to where he stood two at a time.


“When you’re alone, you end up running into the same thoughts. You start to run out of new ones about 50 years or so without any other stimuli. I think it’s 50. I recorded it, once. I carved it into a tree.” Her smile is… tenuous.



“What is your name? Surely, there must be something you call yourself, in your own thoughts.”

[Rem]

Rem leaned back in its position, hunched and observed her passively. It would, perhaps to someone entering the scene look like some odd gothic statue. It listened to her intently, there was no doubt that it was, the only thing that moved was its eyes, following her as she shifted, and considered and spoke.

She was an old thing, but not yet at the end despite her long time. That was curious. What was left for someone who had existed for so long? It wasn't common that mortals mattered much at all, let alone to live so long. Perhaps it wasn't correct to claim that she was truly mortal? Not anymore. She was a lot more like Rem than she was like them. But then, that seemed to be true of most mortals that caught its attention.

It spoke to her, a half-intended question, and nodded just so. Rem let her lose herself in her thoughts before it spoke again and shared whatever insight it had on the matter. "Even if I did not react out of a sense of emotional revenge, I might seek to hurt you in unimaginable ways if you crossed me if only to ensure that others did not follow you in crossing me again. Then again, some of my kind hold on to things they do not need. Mundane it might be. But the same reason you might seek to hurt my kind is the same reason some might seek to hurt yours. Irrationality is not solely held by mortal kin, even if they possess the lion share. It would be hard to suggest why one of my kind would do whatever they did. Same as any other."

"And, you haven't been rude. I've put myself upon your home. You have not invited me in and owe me no hospitality. I am an intruder." These were rules that existed before its Hollow'd existence, immutable and persisted into Rem. Etiquette may have rarely mattered now but there were some who observed those ancient monoliths even in the dunes. When it was afforded, Rem observed them too. There were enough ways to perish and this was one of the most efficient methods afforded to avoid unnecessary threats.

"But I understand, in the shifting sands, all things are worn down with time. You seem to maintain yourself and your home well enough." Ah, Rem realized now what it was. It was impressive, perhaps in some way it felt a sense of awe and curiosity. It also felt...hungry.

"Surrender to that passage. You might measure fifty years, but then what does 50 years compare mean in a place like this? Perhaps it's a sign that you need to sojourn elsewhere. The mortal world has served that purpose for me, perhaps it could for you? I suspect your home would remain fine with a brief absence."

"You may call me what I call myself. I am Rem."