Beautiful Becca hummed, staring at her beautiful self in the beautiful mirror. Idly, she ran a finger along the jagged edge of the glass. A bit of light trickled out of her finger. Smiling, beautiful Becca leaned forward and licked up the light. Small tastes would hold her over for now. Soon, however, beautiful Becca would need to find more light.

In the meantime, she had her mirror. Beautiful Becca loved mirrors. You could spend the whole day sitting in front of the mirror. She frowned, marring her reflection as she glanced at the blemish sliding its way across her lips. Her mouth was leaking light. Raising her hand, beautiful Becca felt the squirmy light in between her fingers as she ran them along the edge of her face. Then she smeared it across her face, admiring the sparkles it spread across her cheeks. Rosy. She looked rosy.

Beautiful Becca loved her appearance. She loved herself in red. She loved herself in white. She loved herself in the dark and especially in the light. Light loved beautiful Becca too. It would sparkle on her skin in shades of carmine and pastel that made her feel like a princess. She was the dairy queen once, a lifetime ago when she lived on the farm.

Beautiful Becca giggled. It was funny how the fair officials named her cow queen when it was obvious she should have been a hog princess! Daddy and beautiful Becca raised fat pink piggies full of light and yet they made her a queen of the cows. Worse yet, bovine Becca didn’t have the same ring to it as beautiful Becca. Still, she had to admit, cows were cute.

But they didn’t contain as much light as pigs. Pigs were perfect for her growing up. They had to kill them regardless so nobody noticed her fascination with the job, and sometimes beautiful Becca even convinced daddy to let her hold the knife! She let a hand run down her body to the pocketknife sitting on her lap. It was her souvenir and her keepsake to remind her of daddy. It helped that the blade still had the shine of the pigs on it. Sometimes the shine washed out in the rain, but each time her pocketknife touched the lights it kept just a little bit for itself.

It was only small amounts of light that remained. You had to look close to see them sparkle. For example, right there at the base of the knife was the sparkles daddy left. At the tip, she had a glimmer of something special, curtesy of Beacon. Near the back of the blade was her new favorite spot, a glib little shimmer that came from a girl who tasted like ripe strawberries so lush that the juice dribbled down her chin when she bit into them. Thinking of the girl made beautiful Becca think of her old favorite spot at the edge of the hilt where her favorite flavor was.

His eyes were light. Other people shone. The pigs flickered. But he blazed. The first time she saw him she didn’t have a name, and nobody knew what to call her. Everyone had a different name for her. Only he knew who she really was. Only he saw her for what she really was.

It had been six years since she cut up daddy and fed him to the pigs. Then she cut up the pigs, looking for daddy’s light but it had vanished into the pig’s stomach and didn’t come back. It was unfortunate that the light couldn’t grow that way, she remembered thinking at the time. At first, she didn’t know what to do. She was too small to run the farm alone no matter how hard she tried, but things worked out alright in the end just like they always did. After a few days, men in suits came and took her to a foster home with lots of people and a swell of lights. The brightness of it all, in the city, overwhelmed her with sensation and for a few years she had a hard time speaking, concentrating, and worst of all she had to hide from the lights whenever she could just to cope.

She got headaches from how bright it was. When she was still a little princess they let her hide alone, but soon she was a queen in waiting and then all the boys with their intense lights came crawling out of the woodwork trying to find her when she just wanted to hide. One boy at the group home chased her down and took her to an alley where he made her spill light all over the grimy pavement. Lying underneath him, beautiful Becca realized it was suddenly darker, calmer, and peaceful enough for her to concentrate again.

Once she got over her initial feeling of surprise and jubiliation, she realized she didn’t need the boy, and besides he was being a nuisance with his pig-like grunting and squealing. So she cut his throat and let his light spill all over her in a flood of happiness that gave her warm little tingles down her spine. Overcome by ecstasy, she lay under him quivering and wiggling like a happy little fish in the sea of light that flooded her senses and drenched her pores. Finally, her quivers over, she opened her eyes expecting to feel the overwhelming assault of intensity again. Instead the quiet of the alley surprised her. Skipping out of the alley and back into the city of lights was glorious, and she danced up and down the lonely streets for hours before the feeling of overwhelming light began to leak back into the edges of her mind.

This time, she was prepared. Humming to herself, she found a nice man in an old truck that was more rust than red who promised to, “Give her a ride anywhere and anyway she wanted.”

He was nice, she thought touching the speckle of light on her pocketknife he’d become. After they left the city together and she'd seen his light she caught her reflection in the mirror of the car and sat there for days, staring at the different patterns of light running across her face and playing with the stars underneath the driver’s skin until they went cold and dark. She never learned to drive anything other than a tractor, but farming equipment wasn’t that different from a car and her memory was good enough to take her out to a field of sweet grass and grazing cattle. Squealing like a child, she raced around in the field until the rancher found her and brought her back to his home and his family.

She ate bloody steaks that night, or was it steaks mixed with blood? She didn’t care, she was wild and free and gorgeous running around in twinkles and sparkles. Wandering from house to house, she meandered her way toward the brightest lights and gobbled them up. But she had to take care of herself, and so she practiced her skills. The other foster kids taught her how to hit people so they stayed down, how to pick locks, and spot cops. Daddy taught her how to cut and slice so the animals would die quickly and painlessly. What daddy didn’t realize that you could apply the same knowledge in reverse to achieve the opposite effect. If you cut everything that didn’t kill, it would keep the light longer and make it flare brighter before it faded away.

Those were fun days! Learning, in her limited way, what she could and couldn’t do to make the lights stay. Then, after a year of wandering through isolated homes and hamlets in the nowhere streets she found her holy city. Him. He was looking for her, along with Beacon and Black Nod and the nasty brat Jennifer and Justice. They couldn’t see how bright he was, how he banished the darkness to the edge of the world and sent it cowering in contrition to the four corners of the Earth.

She wanted to bask in him for hours, days, or maybe if he could last long enough eternity. He met her on a street corner as she was walking out of a house full of normal people. She knew powers made the light brighter, but turning the corner and seeing him was like watching the sunrise on fast forward. He overwhelmed her, flooding her brain with succulent thoughts of all the wicked little things they could do. She wanted to carve out pieces of his skin and sew them back in with little kisses until he drenched her in his bright.

The rest of his team was there too, and some of them were even worth remembering. Next to him, however, they were a reflection unworthy of her eyes. So instead she scattered them, pushing them away with the intensity of her love. Then she stalked him, playfully. It was a game to both of them, him only using a portion of his ability and her doing the same. They circled each other around the city for hours until finally he caught her. Face flushed, she squealed and trembled just how the female pigs used to do on the farm when they were with their perfect match. He hardly noticed, and instead slipped a circle of his light around her throat as if he wanted to play some wicked game.

She couldn’t have that. Not when were just getting started. Things had to go slow, daddy always cautioned her about boys and the need to go slow and steady. “Give them what they want too soon and you’ll be left with nothing,” he used to say followed steadily by, “boys are like pigs, they’ll eat anything, spend most of the day dirty covered in crap, and are smarter than you give em credit for. You can teach a pig just about anything, but you never get to thinking they’re anything other than bacon at the end of the day you hear girl?”

So with a kiss of her power, she put her collar around his neck instead. That’s when it happened. Everyone else saw someone else under her power but he just saw her. And slowly, as she brought her pocketknife up to his stomach to start bringing out the light, he leaned into her ear and whispered in a voice that sent tendrils of red hot warmth spasming through her core, “You’re beautiful Becca.”

And he loved her! They danced in the rainy streets slick with bloody lights with one another until he was entirely hers. For the first time since they made her junior cow princess at the county fair, she was truly adored and revered. Each time Becca thought he couldn’t be more wonderful he’d whisper breathy nothings into the nape of her neck and let the knife edge of his power toy with her skin until she could feel aching rivulets of gasping joy spear her through and through. Then they would whisk away in a twirl of carmine bubbles and fall down another street until beautiful Becca lost herself again in his ocean of light.

Once, on the middle of a street she couldn’t remember and definitely couldn’t name, she paused and asked him for his name. “Ascherus,” he told her with a steely look that made her weak at the knees. She swooned right after, falling to the ground and dirtying her shoes. They had to make a puddle of light and clean them off after that.

Far too soon, it was over. The nasty brat Jennifer found a way to keep beautiful Becca outside of lovely Ash’s head and with that, he had to leave her. But she could see the longing in his eyes and the hunger in his gaze as he raked it over her body. Beautiful Becca sobbed for days, throwing herself into a pigsty and crawling around in the mud until she looked as horrid as she felt. Then she realized that if she wanted to see him again, all she had to do was go and find him.

So she washed herself off and set out to track him down. It was awful. No matter how hard she searched, she couldn’t find him. Depressed, she became unfaithful and started spending time with the other people who carried extra light. A few times, she got lucky and ran into his old team. More than once, she clashed with the nasty brat Jennifer. But searching high and low, far and wide, and even inside and out beautiful Becca couldn’t find him.

Beautiful Becca cried a lot. She would come to a new city and find herself distracted by all the confusing lights until she had to taste a few of them just to keep herself focused. Then the brightest lights would appear and she would of course have to have them all to herself. It occurred to her after a few years of this that if the bigger lights were attracted by smaller lights then maybe, just maybe, since lovely Ash was the biggest light of them all he would only appear if she gathered as much light as she could.

It was difficult, but daddy said you had to work hard for love! So beautiful Becca found herself as much light as she could, and spread it all over herself trying to call lovely Ash back to her. Instead, she found Beacon. It was disappointing, and in a childish tantrum she cut him over and over until she got the taste of him in her mouth. He had a hint of lovely Ash in his light. It was faint and twisted by something dark and beautiful that Becca didn’t understand but it was lovely Ash all the same. She almost went catatonic, shivering at the first lick of him after so long.

Soon after, the nasty brat Jennifer made her leave, but beautiful Becca didn’t care. She found herself a mirror and studied her reflection for days. All the while she primped and preened, massaging light into her skin until she was pretty enough for lovely Ash. Glowing, she set out to find a big enough city to meet him in and started gathering light once again. Once again, Beacon appeared with Jennifer close behind.

It was frustrating how the fighting kept ruining her hair and how the grime got on her shoes. Beautiful Becca wanted to look her best for lovely Ash and people kept getting in the way! But she was a woman in love, and you didn’t just give up on love according to daddy. So she stormed out of the city in a huff and found herself another mirror. Then she cleaned herself up once again and found a new city to meet him.

But no matter how hard she tried, beautiful Becca never had the chance to gather enough light in time before the nasty brat Jennifer or something else interfered. A few times, she was lucky enough to gather a large pool of light, but to her disappointment those were just a grouping of smaller lights and she rapidly began to recognize the difference. When one of those appeared, it meant lovely Ash wasn’t ready to meet her yet.

After each failure, she would find a pigsty and crawl in for a few despondent days of self-loathing and recrimination. It was hard to be in love! It was hard to stay pretty and beautiful with nobody around to appreciate her. Surrounded by the muddy sty where nobody would ever know she sobbed about it, spilling her heart out to the piglets. They would gather around her and snuffle affectionately and she would hold them tight and cry until they popped like little red water balloons of bright. Snot and tears running down her face, for beautiful Becca was not a beautiful crier, she would reach out for another of the darling delicate things and tell them her weepy story of lonliness again until all the unhappy thoughts were out of her mind.

Then, a miracle happened. Beautiful Becca wandered into a city just like each other time, hunting for lights. A particularly dazzling one caught her eye with the way it sparkled with the deep glimmer of an old soul and the impetuous sheen of youth. She wanted to sink her teeth into it and taste all its secrets. When Beacon arrived with it in the middle of a park, she had a tough choice to make. She could try something new, or take another bite of lovely Ash’s aftertaste lingering on Beacon’s dark luster.

Normally she would take lovely Ash over everything, even the aftertaste of him. But just as she was about to go for Beacon, she caught a refraction of a stray beam of something familiar. The light inside the new girl had touched something of Ash’s! She didn’t understand quite how exactly, but it was inescapably him.

She simply had to have a closer look, so she brought out the light in the girl in an attempt to puzzle out the mystery. She even took a quick taste, knowing it might contain enough of him to make her temporarily delirious with joy. It was that and more! Just the barest lick of the girl’s light was enough to drive her wild with memory. Lovely Ash’s fate, family, and light connected to her through a bond both exquisite and incomprehensible. It was almost magical, that strange little tie.

It wasn’t direct, and the more she felt it the more it confused her. Eldritch Maiden wasn’t bonded to lovely Ash directly, she’d merely come into close contact with someone who was. Beautiful Becca wanted to play with that connection until she understood it, and she tried. She was convinced the girl saw whoever the source of that connection was when she hit her with the full force of her power, drowning Eldritch Maiden in the love she held for him.

If it wasn’t for Beacon and a gathering of other lights she could have traced the connection back to the source and found him right then and there. But it was a gathering of lights coming for her and she knew what that meant. So with a heavy heart she left Liberty City. But for the first time, beautiful Becca remembered the name. She had to. After all, she mused as she brushed her blonde locks gently, beautiful Becca would be back.