"Almost Green"

Holy Fucking Shit: 40,000

Meadows.

Meadows, meadows, meadows.

Andy remembered these meadows. Not once had the blossoming beds of blooming colors left his mind to take a quick smoke break. These amicable pictures were framed and nailed shut to his brain cortex, refusing to part under any amount of blunt or mental force.

These meadows. The Lateran meadows outside the White City itself, the Lawful images of Mother Nature's gentle and caring hand. They were always hovering somewhere between "pretty" and "nice" inside his head, and Andy couldn't ever decide which word fit them more. On one hand, to describe a living patch of grass-bladed land as "pretty" would be simply undermining of its true, idyllic beauty. A girl could be called "pretty", not these meadows. He would call Lem pretty. Used to, at least. The meadows deserved more – much more.

On the other, though, "nice" didn't really do them enough justice either. Why call them "nice?" Why describe something so beautiful and perfect as simply "nice?" A walk in one of the less homeless-infested parks of Lungmen could be considered "nice", not the sight of these endless green hills, the sound of an untamed buzz-chorus sang by hundreds of dutiful worker-bees, the smell of freshly chewed earth and sun-licked grass, the feel of a gentle breeze sieving through his hair...

The sight of a building growing in the distance. From a tiny seed of blurry outlines and messy shapes, the foundation, walls, elevation and roofings soon bloomed in one's eye. A fin-eye lens bloated the contours unnaturally and distorted them into a balloon of whites and browns, cut here and there with the emptiness of a window's reflection. Lateran infrastructure. Lateran engineering, and Lateran planning. The oval of a massive gate parted before the three, revealing a narrowly wide corridor. The blow of wind pushed through their shoulders, eager to enter first, blind to the values of savoir-vivre and the custom of letting girls enter first. Not like the "girls" minded.

"Big place." Andrew took a gander around the arching walls, commending the architect, whoever he might've been. A staple of Lateran building-planning, high ceilings and meticulously crafted, detailed supports to hold them up. "... Big dreams. I guess it fits the narrative, this image."

"What image?" Fia asked, keeping a close eye on the boy. Despite her earlier, emotional slip up, she still had to monitor the perp's every move. "The building? The Requietum?"

"The murder house." Mostima faintly chuckled. "... This is where they all end up, Fia. This is where your spent shells go."

"I know what this is, thank you." She responded, annoyed. "Don't make me remind you about all those "testing grounds" in Kazdel you cleaved into the ground with the staves."

"Hey, they had it coming." She elbowed Andy, eliciting some sort of amused reaction. "Right, Drew? Killing devils, huh? Good biz."

"The best!" Happily, he reached for a high five, and their palms met with a meaty thud. The explosion of skin against skin caused a booming echo to erupt within the Holy Hall, slithering past each pew that lined the walls. "We should've met up at some point. Y'know, compared kill counts."

"No, no, we shouldn't have. You'd feel too inconsequentially insignificant."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning," She smirked. "... Your socks would've been blown all the way back to Laterano. No chance to compete, Drewie. Like always."

"Heh." He chuckled at the thought. The image of a much younger, hornless Mostima flashed through his memory, a sight that bore a newspaper in one hand, and held his collar tight in the other. She was all laughs and chuckles that day. All cheers and squeaks, that idyllic year.