βOh, fuck me, this spiel again. No one cares you were Queen in 1632!β Sajida snapped.
βI havenβt heard this story before. Please, let her finish,β Chloe fumed at Sajidaβs interruption through her teeth while outwardly smiling. But she was crestfallen when Sita complained about mortals being rotten. She really got where Sita was coming from here, but knew she couldnβt be a vampire like them
βNor have I,β Kalisha genuinely smiled, laying her head down on a backwards facing chair.
βKalisha! Are you alright?β Chloe wondered.
βI apologize for us both,β Sajida mumbled.
βI...Iβve been better, certainly,β Kalisha said. βWithout my waterfeet, I donβt know...itβs like they were my heart and now thatβs gone. Not to mention Gambit, the best who ever lived, who- who gave his last breath to save me. Iβll miss all of them dearly. But I will not wallow in despair, or let this war overwhelm me.
βSo what if the mountain tries to keep us down? Nothing in the universe is forever, so eventually we will be free. And even if not...Alice and Abigail were able to go home. Why? Iβve been back and forth from the mountain to my fields...why? There is always an explanation for everything. We just have to find it.
βAnd so what if there is a war now? If itβs taken so much from us? If we have lost much long before its arrival? If it will take from us in the future until we feel spent? We are still alive, are we not, in whatever way that means for each of us? Well, I donβt know about any of you, but my father was a fighter before he became a rancher, my fatherβs father canoed from Jogadunda across the Aoitivo Ocean to Sudavadiria with twelve notes in his pocket and found his dream with my mother, and this-
this shows I am a fighter. Together, we can fight anything off.β
Kalisha now flashed her clockwork arm (which Sajida rolled her eyes at) and proclaimed, βSo, let us feast on Gambit; I know he would not want to be wasted, and we will all need something in our bellies if we are to figure a way out of our predicament. But first, I see that you have an old
tangent. Let me play
A Friendβs Send-Off, to make sure we celebrate his life.β
Which she began to do while everyone else was still silent.