coffee break

beauty

Written in the perspective of Clarissa Fairchild, after her first encounter with 'Sylvia's' true form. Of course, this would have been painted or sketched in her opinion, but some things are better written down for us to visualize ourselves.

And, because this author and artist is too lazy to do a good quality drawing for a simple one shot.

Beauty.

What was beauty, really? I ended up asking myself that question every day after meeting Sylvia, or what she was actually called, Arthella. What is beauty?

Some said beauty was in the eye of the beholder, that beauty was objective and a figment of our human minds that didn't exist, which we created to sustain order in our world of similarly-looking beings. Now, that's just getting philosophical, which means this is going way overboard.

I guess there were different types of beauty. You had Izzy's beauty, because no one could possibly say that Isabelle Lightwood was not beautiful. Her beauty was like a fire: hot, strong, apparent, bold. She was stunning, captivating, and as Simon would say (as her boyfriend- I mean wife, it's hard to remember these things nowadays- of course), the 'only girl in the world'.

Being blatantly excused from your own parabatai's thoughts because of your boyfriend's parabatai's hot sister who was also one of your best friends hurts a little, don't you think? But even I had to admit, Izzy was one good-looking Shadowhunter.

Then there's the type of beauty which is more subtle. That beauty isn't one that seems obvious, but instead something that you realize over time. Instead of amazing fiery hotness, this beauty was more like water. Calm, collected and pure. Some might say faerie illusions were like this, but I don't have a very good reputation with faeries and their illusions, so I'll keep it at that.

And then I met Arthella.

I met her as Sylvia first, when she saved us from the giant. At the beginning, she seemed weak and assuming, but so did I, so I didn't judge her. She seemed to carry this emptiness around with her, but did not waver when Jace questioned her. She did make some very rude comments about his intelligence, and me as his girlfriend should be defending him, but honestly, his cockiness was endearing and infuriating.

When she broke down and started yelling at us, it was amazing how a person so mad could look so graceful as she was doing so, even though she looked like she was actually going to physically explode. She then cordially invited us to jump out of the window. That would never get old.

And then there was the second time we saw her. We had decided not to listen to her warning in ignoring the faerie drugs going around, and as the co-head of the New York Institute, started a search across Brooklyn for this drug trade. We had instead fallen into a trap.

Jace had been knocked out first, which was probably why we nearly died. Demon poison right in the face, too fast for him to dodge, and he ended up falling limp onto the floor the moment he was hit as a hiss of toxic gas from the demon's mouth knocked him unconscious. Simon had followed, the tail of another demon whipping across his chest and slamming him into a fence.

Izzy had gone to protect her husband, and she too was swept back after killing the demon with the poison barb tail. For her, it was a demon with a grotesque sucker for a mouth, dragging her towards its oozing mouth as it sucked in her whip, and then catapulting her across the field and next to Simon.

Alec was next, but before the demon sank his claws into his chest, it made a horrifying screaming sound before vanishing into golden dust.

And replacing it was 'Sylvia'.

She wasn't in the black-top-black-pants fashion aisle anymore and instead was dressed in silver. From my perspective, bleeding and scrambling to trace an iratze across my forearm, she looked like a goddess descending from the sky as she casually levitated in front of us.