Thou Art Blessed [Reida, Safira]

There it was, that resignation and bittersweet result. A hopeful despair. It was that kind of circumstance that she could twist into something more. Miracles were often exaggerated weren't they? Even she might have to be guilty of that for her own ends. Her body snaked out of the water so she could reach up and cup her sapling's chin and create eye contact again.

"Then I promise I'll procure it for you and grant you a reunion."

Change was a process of destruction and creation, break her and recreate her in a greater form is what Safira intended to do. Her slitted pupils just needed to see that reluctance disappear from the other woman's eyes.

"Fine."

It was what it was. She'd been forthcoming, even offered this up to Reida as a sign of trust. She still didn't really believe it all, but that was just her paranoia. At some point, she had to make the decision, to follow through or somehow try and get out of here on her own. If she died, she died. It was what it was.

"Just give me whatever I've gotta eat."

"Excellent."

She pushed herself up off the woman's knees and stood in front of her, posturing like she was presenting herself. In some abstract way she supposed this was its own kind of punishment that her sapling could inflict for all that time ago. The feeling associated would be denied though.

"I'd tear something off myself but I'm about as weak as when you met me like this. I'm still in recovery after my resurrection. I'd prefer you didn't make it fatal though, that would be a little bothersome at the moment."

"Makin' me do it all myself, huh..."

It was what it was. Reida didn't much like any of this, but there wasn't an alternative, now was there? She was here. Sighing to herself, she reached out and grabbed the arrancar's wrist, staring at her for a few moments.

"Don't matter how much it is, right? Then this'll be fine."

Bringing her pinky finger up, Reida simply bit the tip of the finger, swallowing the flesh given to her without any time to process the act. It was simply something to get done as quickly as possible, nothing else.

She was so considerate. It brought a smile to her face as the blood flowed from her finger where part of it had been taken off. The blood dripping into the pool of water below. Small as it was, quantity and quality didn't matter in this situation. All her sapling had to was try to use the mysterious fullbring and try to find the memories in the reishi of the emptiness that drove a hollow mad - even without a life of despair to justify it, a hollow had to suffer that emptiness and craving to fill it. A fleeting feeling regardless.

While she should be doing that, Safira took a seat next to her again. She was going to take full advantage of the ingestion of her flesh to reach down and place her hand on Reida's stomach. The mark was necessary at some stage, and it allowed her to protect her sapling, so why not brand her now. This woman was going to become a bridge to the new world, she was as much a reflection of her as something she created from the inception.

Therefore it should be in the same place that Safira's hollow hole was.

Closing her eyes, Reida focused herself inward, a spiritual kind of focus that she rarely did much of at all. After all, she was pretty practical, only really applying herself in this way when it came to her spells or fixing her wounds. At first, it was hard to really find much of anything. But she'd committed to this, falling deeper toward the feeling of the hollow essence, her focus only on it-

Until, all at once, the hollow nature seemed to be everything. No, that wasn't accurate, it wasn't everything, it was nothing. There wasn't anything at all, anywhere, not in her mind or her heart. Even when she tried to imagine something, a door to step through to escape this, she simply opened it to find nothing behind it, a nothing so all-encompassing that she thought it might drown her. But what was she supposed to do?

She wanted to be more. She had to escape, she had to fill that void. The emptiness in her chest was unthinkable, she'd do anything to fill it if it brought a stop to this. Her fingers tensed, her arm lifted, and she plunged her own hand into her chest as if it were the easiest thing in the world, just to feel something there.

But still, there was nothing, and her eye shot open after those longer, agonizing moments. Reida had to catch her breath, ragged and uneven as it was, and she stared into seemingly nothing for a long while. When she spoke again, it was quiet, but even so, still not so different from before.

"...So, that's what y'all feel, huh? Think I only felt that once in all my life. Just once. Ain't intended to feel it again."

It had been a long, long while since then. The weight of it having been so immense, by comparison to her own experience, nearly made her sick.

"It is."

She looked shaken but fine which made her glad to see. Her free hand brushed through the locks of hair so that she could provide some kind of comfort to her sapling. A feeling of reassurance couldn't be too bad to have associated with herself, right?

"So begins your first steps to bridging the gap between us. You do look a little off though. The water might help you relax after your experience. Don't forget that feeling, it is what drives and motivates the growth of a hollow."

Safira didn't bother to check if she had become clammy by the thoughts, it was a harmless assumption for now.

Reida shrugged at that, slipping off her jacket with little particular concern. Sure, the water probably would feel good. As she slid her shirt upward, however, she paused, her one eye staring intensely at the mark she saw as she did so. Oh, she had plenty of scars, so maybe some marks might have gone under the radar. This one, however, did not.

"The hell is this?"

It was a demanding tone, a clearly angry but still so tired out that she couldn't put a yell behind it. Just as quiet as anything else she might have said, something akin to a growl of warning.

"It is my mark. You did eat my flesh."

Safira didn't seem bothered by the reaction or the hostility that came with it. Her eyes were focused on the mark itself instead like she was fascinated more than anything else. It came out perfectly, she thought. Why her sapling wouldn't like it seemed strange.

"This whole process will be a lot easier if you have it, and the boons I offer are nothing to scoff at either."

What exactly was the issue?

"Don't recall givin' you the okay for anything like that."

All at once, Reida's hand shot forward, grabbing the much smaller woman's hair and pulling her much closer, until they were only mere inches apart. She wasn't interested in playing games, not when things were so dire. She still had her aims of seeing things done right. She would dirty herself to any degree if it meant fixing the world. Fixing her own mistakes.

Maybe nobody would understand that. But they could at least understand she wanted to do the right thing, in time.

"How's about you explain it, then? So I don't go gettin' any wrong ideas about what you're gonna be doin' to me. Wouldn't want any misunderstandin' with all that trust we got built up, right?"