“Oh.” Sonata froze and looked at the rose. She took it from Sunset’s hand and twirled it around. “Ouch!”
She had pricked her finger on one of the thorns. Without thinking much of it she put her hurt finger to her mouth. But she smiled at the other woman and giggled. “’hank you!” she told her. “t’s ‘eatiful!”
“Yeah…” Sunset said trailing off.
“But… Aria did tell me why she needed my blood. For some kind of new heartstone?” Sunset said scratching her ear. “I just… well, to be frank I didn’t give any to her because she did try to stab me. But… Sonata… are you guys ok?”
Sonata looked at her rose again and twirled it, this time carefully
so as to avoid the thorns.
“Yeah, we’re fine. See, the black gems we have now? They let
us digest about fifteen percent of the energy we pull from crowds or people when
we sing. Any kind of energy. Not just Hate like you saw us doing. That’s just
our specialty. But um…well, the fifteen percent keeps us from total starvation.
Which was…what was happening right after our gems broke.”
She wasn’t sure how much she should tell Sunset. She used to
be an enemy after all. And she did fear Adagio’s wrath. Even if she liked
Sunset quite a bit.
She bit her lip.
“We’re just really hungry. It makes us more impulsive,
irritable, moody…” she explained. “It’s not as bad as it was with no gem at
all. That was total starvation. We’re…like, immortal so. We don’t die. We just
starve and starve forever. It’s why Aria’s such a bitch about it, I think. She’s
scared. Forever is a long time.”
She shrugged. “But it’s not your responsibility to fix it,
Sunset. We tried to mind-warp your whole school. You retaliated. All’s fair in
love and war. We played hard and we lost hard.”
Sunset seemed to take a seat as she rubbed her chin in thought. Finally she looked at Sonata asking, “Do you have your gem with you?”
TheWanderingSunset2 