“It’s something one of my exes used to say,” she added quietly.

“You just keep your swinging to yourself.” Alma stroked her rifle, as if shielding it.

“Uncle Bel taught me a number of things. If I ever hurt myself with a blade, he’d glare at me and tell me I’d learned a valuable lesson. He wanted it ingrained that those swords weren’t toys to swing around and any fun expectation I’d have of them would always be secondary to their true nature as weapons to kill. He showed me how to properly slice, dice, slash, cut and hack any target that was deemed an enemy.”

“I guess you were too good to learn stabbing too, eh?”

“Stabbin’s an art. You can’t just learn it. It’s not as simple as firing off a little peashooter.” Hwalín laughed while stabbing the air in three quick successions.

Alma scoffed and playfully nudged Qu’l-Nia’s shoulder with her own. “What? No crumb of wisdom to add?”

“Both are rudimentary weapons to one such as I whose singing can cause ripples in gravity or tears in space.” The eldritch woman turned a page in her book before continuing, “And that is only surface level of the kind of repercussions that could quantifiably happen.”

“Wow. Calm down there miss supervillain. If that’s true, why haven’t you unleashed this doomsday weapon already and gone scorched planet on all of us?”

Qu’l-Nia finally reacted, knitting her brow. “I believe I had already made myself expressly clear about the lack of power in my diminutive state. And were it not so, you would not wish me to destroy your planet before we have a chance to save it. Would you?”

Alma pondered for a moment. “So, Hwal. You were saying about your uncle?”

“As a child, I was always getting into scraps,” continued Hwalín. “Would always get rowdy with the boys. There was this one kid, would always force him to wrestle me. And every time he lost, I’d make him propose to me. We’d have this cute little wedding ceremony in the forest playground. I’d wrap myself in a blanket and pretend it was the most lavish dress and he would walk me down the aisle of flowering greenery. But when it got time for him to kiss his bride, the li’l bastard would always run for the hills. Then the next time I’d see him, we’d do the whole thing over again. Uncle Bel put an end to that once he found out though. Told me I shouldn’t throw myself at any strapping lad I came across. That he should be able to beat me in a fight or he wouldn’t be worth joining in the family. Course once I got into my teens, I started going after them bloody bad boys.”

"Oh no. And you didn’t have an obstinate, doting older sister pressuring you into not making what she claims were the wrong decisions?"

“Just my uncle, and there was no way I was gonna let him know what I was doing.” Her lips squeezed into a melancholy smile. "I was in a gang for a while, you know. Invited by my then-bastard-of-a-boyfriend. Made quite the name for myself. I was known as the Yazata of Mitra.”

“The Ya-who-ta?” Alma noisily slurped the tea from her cup.

“It is a Hecatian term,” explained Qu’l-Nia. “A venerative title of worship. I surmise Hwalín was held in high regard by her peers.”

“Wait, you didn’t know about this?” asked Alma.

“I am in the dark, so to speak, as to Hwalín’s personal history. I know about as much as you, Alma.” She looked up at the Hecatian with a warm smile. “That is not to say I am not interested in hearing more. If your entire lives were both written down in a book for my perusal, I would be extremely excited to read it from end to end.”

“That’s… touching, Nia. Although I have always wondered how in the world you know so many languages.”

"She probably used her brain worms to suck the info from some poor red elfwin head." Alma struck with her usual teasing.

"Are you referring to my hair?" Qu'l-Nia's silky, platinum hair glittered like usual. "Would you perhaps like a demonstration?"

"I want to say yes… but I also don't want you to literally infest my brain."

"Alma. You are only partially correct. I believe I have touched upon this before but my ‘brain worms’ as you like to call them absorb and process the latent information around me. As for how I know Hecatian, however, it is quite the simple thing to listen to a language being spoken and using an algorithmic approach, to learn how to speak it. The same holds true for how I learned your language as well. There is no infecting of anyone’s mind.”

“You’re like a pretty, little black hole.”

“That was keener of an observation than you realize.”

“Wait, shit.” Alma smacked her forehead. “Sorry Hwal, my head gets distracted so easily.”

“S’cool, mate. I don’t even question it anymore.”

Alma opened her mouth to speak but failed to come up with a witty response.

“Weren’t no halcyon days,” said Hwalín. “Despite how much I try to paint them as such in my mind. Sure I had fun sneaking out to get smashed and party hard with the boys, but that was nowhere near the worst of it. We weren’t kids and the lot of them were always up to no good. It started out innocently enough, I reckon; Stealing from shops and getting past that dangerous threshold whenever we got high off some of the stronger stuff. And that’s not even getting into the shitfest of personal drama that was always choking the lifeblood out of our little group. I dated at least three of the blokes in our gang at different points in time. Including our leader, Karam. Two of ‘em even fought over me once. They ended their little bout saying they’d ‘take turns.’ Told them both to go fuck each other instead seeing as how desperate they were. They all used to joke about how often I’d get passed around, fucking my way to the top. I laughed it off back then, but now…” she trailed off, the color draining from her face as she remembered something she wished had stayed forgotten.

“As we got older,” continued Hwalín, picking the pace back up. “Couple of the lads started pushing red viris petals laced with some foreign drug I ain’t ever heard of. Shit straight sent us into a hardcore tizzy like we never felt before. Now I should mention that lacing flowers with any sort of drug is all kinds of illegal back home. Even my mum wouldn’t be able to save my ass if I had been caught with the stuff. I’m honestly surprised I avoided prison at all the way I lived."

“Wow, uh… Sounds like you had a hard life. I’m—I’m sorry.”

“It is what it is, yeah?” The Hecatian shrugged. “I don’t suppose your witch has any smokes I could bum, does she?”

“Just some weird long pipe thing that gives off some fruity smell when you smoke it. She doesn’t actually use the thing, she just thinks it makes her look cool.” Alma tried to stifle a smirk. “Actually, you could say that about a lot of the things here. It’s charming, until it’s not. I… don’t think it’s what you’re looking for.”