Search results

Brisa shrugged. "Hey, you're welcome. Don't be so surprised—I've been hungry for longer than this before today. That's all I've got, though." Unless you fancy gettin' by on my corpse, she didn't say. Starr didn't like morbid comments like that. She pulled some strips out for herself, and took...

Brisa nodded. Starr surely wasn't wrong. "He seemed kinda... frustrated, that I took it so well." Kind of like you, Starr... "He said he was workin' towards comin' clean to everyone, startin' with the most receptive. Seemed fair. He explained himself well enough for me to continue trustin'...

Brisa frowned for a moment. Starr kept looking away and shutting up whenever she tried being reassuring or gentle in some way. Was it... unwelcome? Something to think about. "Yeah, I've felt a similar kind of way," she said. "I made a decision to trust him when I came here, shady as he is, but...

Thought I'd celebrate three rounds of Blacklight and my personal artistic improvement with a re-draw of the first Brisa pic I ever did.

Brisa grinned. It was a profoundly unfamiliar facial movement, but... it felt good. Great, even. "You're serious? I mean, I know why you're sayin' that, but still. You give a shit about people, you're capable of change, you have a friend who believes in your better nature even after seein' you...

Brisa took a second to cool her head. If she learned one thing from this, it would be to think through anything Starr said before pouncing at her. "I don't get that," she said, when she'd recovered herself. "I don't see why I'd go tellin' everybody somethin' like that. The Bluff... that was...

"Get on with the team? Are you kiddin'?" Brisa laughed again, a wild high edge to it this time. "Did I not mention that Curio called me half the things Jesse used to? She doesn't want me. She knows what I am. And it's not just her. I fucked things up with you soon as meet you, over fuckin'...

Brisa nodded and listened, rapt despite how little any of this meant to her. "I'd love to travel," she said, without thinking. "I mean, I wander a lot, but only for my patrols." Starr seemed amenable enough to listening, so she continued. "I said I beat the shit outta bandits. That's part of...

Brisa nodded, knowing better than to push. She wouldn't like that either. This was the first time she'd told anyone this much about Jesse, and it had run her ragged. Starr's father sounded so much the opposite, giving out praise instead of recriminations, but... wasn't that just another way of...

Brisa laughed again, and more tension left her. There was a wild thrill in hearing someone talk down 'Delphox Jesse Stranger, world-saving hero.' As she laughed, her fur surged and lit up the room further, along with Starr. She did her best to return the awkward smile with one of her own. "I...

Brisa couldn't help but laugh, again. Something about Starr's willingness to take shots at Jesse was... incredibly cathartic. "Y'know, ya got a point there!" she said, between slightly-painful laughs. "I actually thought he mighta been makin' it all up, that he was just lunatic or lyin', until...

"Uh, yeah... people have been saying stuff like that. It's weird for me, y'know? You grow up with somethin', it seems normal. Even... even the stuff that guy did." Brisa shuddered. It was cold. She felt like she was laying part of her mind bare. It unsettled her to think of... of Jesse, her...

Brisa took a second to process what Starr had just said. Then she laughed. It sounded weird to her own ears... how long had it been? "Gods. Yeah. Thanks." Another breath. "Yeah, we have actual ferals too. 'Feral' is just also somethin' folks call sapient mon like my ma who don't wanna...

Starr shrugged off her injuries and the animosity Brisa had shown her as if it was nothing. Brisa knew it hadn't been nothing, but her expressed remorse seemed to pass by, scarcely remarked on. Why? If Brisa were in that position, being told such things by someone who'd hurt her... hated her...

Oh, gods. Maybe it was best not to pry. Whatever it was that Starr was remembering, it sounded like a truly hideous emotional wound. Brisa had no right to make Starr explain, nor did she know how to give comfort over something like this. Or even if she should—they weren't friends. All the same...

"You still don't understand the first thing about me, either," said Brisa, gently. "That's okay. I think I'm beginnin' to get why." Brisa's face was still a mess and Starr was working up to the same. It was dark. It was cold. The situation was close to hopeless. Brisa could do nothing about...

This took forever. Worth it.

Brisa maintained eye contact. Everything inside her had shifted. There was anguish in Starr's voice as she spoke of the thing which she had done, the thing which did not sound real, but must be, must be. For Starr to have told her this... the turmoil in her heart must be unimaginable. Brisa's...

The fight. They'd won the fight. Right? She was beyond disoriented. For all she knew, the world could be coming to an end. What was happening to her?

Brisa's eyes widened. She knew that tone. This wasn't a hypothetical piece of rhetoric, neither was it an implicit threat, this was about something real. 'On purpose.' Deliberate. Not a mistake. "Oh," she said, her voice as soft as it had ever been. "I get it, now." She returned Starr's...