![[ CLOSED♥ ] NOVUS rpg](https://novus-rpg.net/images/logo.png "[ CLOSED♥ ] NOVUS rpg"){kind=logo}
+- [ CLOSED♥ ] NOVUS rpg (https://novus-rpg.net)
+-- Forum: Realms (https://novus-rpg.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=5)
+--- Forum: Denocte (https://novus-rpg.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=17)
+---- Forum: Archives (https://novus-rpg.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=95)
+---- Thread: [P] heart made of glass, my mind of stone (/showthread.php?tid=3949)
heart made of glass, my mind of stone - Caine - 08-13-2019
tear me to pieces
skin to bone.
skin to bone.
“C
ome now, another!” hiccuped the ruddy-cheeked boy draped across the peeling tavern table. The remnants of a now bone dry pitcher of amber liquor—ale, if Caine remembered correctly; or had that been the last one?—dribbled down the slope of his whiskery chin.“Gods. Get up, Ru,” grunted Lorne, a Denoctian-born but Solterran-sworn spy, as he slammed his goblet down just shy of Rudolph’s bloodshot eyes. Leaned precariously against the legs of a toppled chair. “It’s late... time for us to go. Morning patrols tomorrow, ‘member?”
Caine laughed as he slid his own empty goblet across the splintered table towards Lorne’s. With enough force to ensure they clinked, like tinkling chandeliers. Crystal to crystal.
Saints, they were drunk.
“Lay off him, Lorne,” he said, with a curling smile. He surveyed the man’s stained blue livery, left pocket embroidered with the coat of arms of a Denoctian noble house, with contempt. Why he hadn’t changed out of it before heading to the Boar’s Head with the rest of Raum’s Denocte-sent spy crew was beyond him. “You and Ru patrolled this morning. Do you think the good captain would’ve let you two drink yourselves to death if you had patrols tomorrow?”
“Shit,” Lorne said, groaning in relief as he flopped back down onto the shuddering bench. The floorboards shrieked their dissent. “You’re right.”
A given, Caine clucked. He hadn’t drank the obscene amounts they had, for one. And for two, he thought, batting a strand of ink-black hair away from his eyes, he knew the weekly patrol schedules better than the scribes who penned them. Better than the king who decreed them.
The dark oak beams crisscrossing the ceiling spun cartwheels above him as Caine pushed himself off the lip of the table. Let hang his heavy head, loosened hair skimming the floorboards, to stifle the roar of his ale-deadened brain.
“Leaving already, Caine?” Rudolph chirped, before breaking into a peal of high-pitched laughter as a man at the table next to them doubled over and hurled into a refuse bucket.
Stifling a gag, Caine threw an irritated glance towards the young spy’s sprawled form. Watery blue eyes like crescent moons stared out of the disembodied head hanging backwards over the edge of the wood. He’s going to fall, Caine thought, and he’s going to break his neck.
Not that he cared. Shrugging, he reached towards the coat rack—a fancy term for a row of five nails horribly crooked in the wall—for his shadow cloak, missing it twice (damned cloak) before pulling it down on his third try and throwing it theatrically over his shoulders.
“I have business,” he said, to Rudolph’s lolling head. ‘Business’ being the one word among them that, once invoked, was never challenged. Besides their tenuously shared allegiance, they weren’t privy to each other’s specific assignments—a spy’s secrets were his lifeblood, and they would have to drink themselves to Death’s door before any of them forgot it. “Don’t forget about that morning patrol, dear Ru.”
He stepped through the exit to a backdrop of uproarious laughter, the stench of regurgitated alcohol, sweat-stained livery, and mold-eaten wood chasing him off into the sickenly lively Denoctian night.
An ache pounded a drumbeat inside Caine’s temples as he walked bleary eyed through the bustling, incense-choked streets. No matter how hard he willed it away, there the ache was. Pounding, sounding, grounding.
A dog-sized rat gnawed on the ankle bone of a cat skeleton in the long shadows of an alley, wedged between a closed shop and an abandoned cottage. Frowning, Caine kicked a pebble at it and watched as it bounced against the rat’s fatty pelt. It hissed furiously at him before scurrying away, ankle bone prize clamped between its teeth.
“A rat eating a cat,” he whispered, appalled, to no one. The rat was gone. He was alone. Always—
Alone.
He leaned his head against the cool, weathered sandstone of the shop’s outer wall. Wished for his head to quiet, yet relieved the incessant drumbeat ache drowned out the suffocating silence.
Brows scrunched against rock as Caine tried to remember how he’d been dragged to the weekly tavern crawl. Avoided it for weeks he had, procuring a name of another spy to serve as his sacrifice whenever he’d been asked. The ghost king had plenty of spies, and Caine had never thought it wouldn’t have been plenty enough.
Until the day (today) his hat had run out of names, and his mouth had run dry of excuses. The secret-starved spies had started to doubt his camaraderie. Did he think himself above them? They were avoided and hissed at by their people, by their own mothers. They wouldn’t stand to be avoided (and hissed at) by one of their own.
And one of their own, he was.
He didn’t want to go back to the castle. Back to the castle, back to Raum, back to lies and duplicity and tiptoeing on a frozen lake, covered with a skin of ice. Where one sudden move, one heavy step, and—
A muffled rustle underfoot pulled Caine’s attention to the ground. A crinkled parchment corner was speared into a miniature dune of sand; his enchanted map had fallen out from the shallow pocket of his cloak. “Saints,” he muttered, as he picked it up and shook the sand off—how careless! what if he’d lost it?—until, overcome by a sudden urge, he froze in his dusting, rolled the map open, and pressed it flat against the bumpy wall.
Searched for a certain name above a certain dot.
[ FIA ] he found at last, head swimming as he traced the dot. Eyes narrowing as he yanked the parchment closer while willing furiously for the letters to stay still.
He’d had a little too much to drink, he admitted, because surely the Resistance leader wasn’t in… Denocte? He looked at his own black dot, [ CAINE ]. Looked back at hers, and counted the squares of grid between them under his breath to make sure.
Five squares he counted. Five blocks away. A laugh bubbled out his throat. A passing merchant stared questioningly at him, mumbled something about “Denocte... going to the dogs,” before hurrying his hooves away.
How brightly fate shined when you were drunk.
“Audierunt autem umbrae.” He sighed as the familiar coldness, numbness, nothingness, seeped into his bones.
May the shadows obey me.
He was puzzling how best to approach her, when silver flashed through the door across the street. He stifled the urge to duck back into the alley—he was nothing more than shadow, now.
For all intents and purposes, Verona really did have new information to hand over. If his map hadn’t dropped from his pocket, if he hadn’t searched for Fia’s dot and found it in Denocte, if he hadn’t summoned his shadows around him, Caine would’ve been on his way to a quiet booth on the edges of the markets where one black raven waited to carry his message.
No longer needed now, he thought with a smile. The Raven of Vectaeryn, he’d been named. Tonight, a Verona-donned Raven he would be. Paper rustled in his grip as he sealed the envelope closed, signed it with a swirling capital V. (Pen and ink were the two other things besides the enchanted map lining the shallow pockets of his cloak.) Pushed it back into said pocket, and swept silently across the street. Tripped a bit in the middle, over an especially wide pavement crack, but who could see?
Creeping up to the half-open window, he adjusted his cloak with a final tug, rid his voice of his polished Solterran accent (the ‘r’s curled to native perfection), and knocked two knocks on the glass.
If Fia looked over, she would see nothing but shadow. So to help the girl out, he said, high-bred Taeryn accent dripping like ale-laced honey:
“My dearest Fia. How wonderful for you to visit Denocte.” He leaned closer to the window and laid his burning cheek to the cool stone. “As you were in town, I thought I'd deliver my next letter personally.”
{ @Seraphina "speaks" notes: here's my humble offering for your pile of 40 threads ;__; }
RE: heart made of glass, my mind of stone - Seraphina - 08-15-2019
☼ S E R A P H I N A ☼
on Tuesday - you wake - walk the back stairs to find a bird
half dead and thrashing - stunned by its own purpose
It is some ungodly hour of the night, and, to her chagrin, the once-queen of Solterra is holed up restlessly in an almost impossibly suspicious Denoctian inn, pacing.
The blood king was surprisingly competent for a man who’d failed to assassinate two queens and hadn’t noticed a rebellion brewing right under his nose; he had eyes everywhere. Since she was already in the area, she’d decided to stay in Denocte for a night or two longer, to see if she could flush out any of his spies and followers. She hadn’t spent much time in the night kingdom, and, though it wasn’t entirely because of the location, she felt ill at ease so much as lingering in Denocte’s labyrinthian back-alleys and rolling hills. Her accent was a difficult thing to disguise, and her general lack of familiarity with the Night Kingdom did her few favors in her efforts to navigate its underbelly. (It was hardly safe work, and she was hardly in a safe position; if she were merely visiting Denocte, she would have likely stayed with one of the Denoctians she knew, but that would do her little good in her search for Raum’s people.) Still – power spoke for something, as did her unyielding temperament.
Besides – she likes to think that this rebellion has improved her understanding of shadier, more unsavory dealings. Even if she isn’t altogether sure that’s a good thing.
Her armor lies in a pile in the corner of the room, accompanied by Alshamtueur and her arrow. The dull lamp-light emphasizes the silver gleam of her coat; she might as well be a metal carving, a girl-shaped trinket rather than a girl. (Of course, no carving would carry a knot of scars on her cheek.) The shadows linger awkwardly in the concaves of her ribs, making her look far hungrier than she feels, and they further emphasize the sleepless hollows under her eyes, the gaunt angles of her cheeks. She supposes it is for the best. No one will pay her much mind if she masquerades as a Solterran refugee – she certainly looks the part.
Still – her hair is unbraided, and, with little else to knead out her persistent anxiety, she finally brushed it out at some point during the hours that she’s been awake. (She has been halfway tempted to shave it off, lately, or at least to trim it, but the memory of Viceroy doing it for her has stopped her, if only as an act of defiance against a dead man.) In the absence of proper management, it has grown even longer than usual, nearly falling to her hooves. She’s going to have to trim it. Possibly not now, when she doesn’t have anything to use but Alshamtueur and dull lamp light, but-
There comes the sound of a knock from the window; it is halfway open. Summers in Denocte are stuffy and humid, and the room is hardly well-ventilated.
She freezes and turns towards the window. She is met by nothing but darkness.
However, before she could dismiss it as nothing but the night wind or her imagination, both of which were apt to play tricks on her, a voice floats through the open window. She cannot pinpoint its source, beyond right outside of her window, and she cannot pinpoint its owner, beyond vaguely familiar and aware of who she is, or at least who she is pretending to be. Her brow furrows. She opens her mouth, and then she closes it.
She fumbles for an appropriate answer – or any kind of answer, really. His accent is faintly familiar, and his voice somehow even more familiar, but she can’t piece together exactly who she thinks that it should belong to. (It comes out silky-sweet and smooth, though slightly slurred. Where has she heard that pronunciation before? It makes her think of someone, or multiple someones, but the thing that bothers her more than the familiarity of the voice itself is the familiarity of the accent, which is not quite like any of the courts’.) Her head tilts. She stares, her mind grasping for the arrow in her scarf, which lies in a spool in the corner of the room. She doesn’t do anything with it; she doesn’t even pull it out of its sleeve. However, she has it in her (metaphorical) grasp, and that is reassurance enough for her, for she knows how little effort it takes to put it through someone’s skull.
(Of course, she cannot actually see his skull to put an arrow through it, which, she thinks, could pose a problem. Then again, if he’d had any kind of malevolent reason to visit her room in the middle of the night, she doubts that he would have given her any forewarning; she has dealt with enough assassins to know that they prefer to work cleanly and quietly, and it is rather difficult to do either if you are caught in the act.)
Finally, she opts for a reluctant, stilted, “…Verona?” because she can’t think of anyone else who’d be sending her letters – that she doesn’t happen to know personally. (And, though she chooses to avoid it, she can’t think of anyone else who would be brazen enough to refer to her as his “dearest Fia.”) Seraphina takes a step or two closer to the window, her eyes narrowing to two-tone slits as she stares out of the foggy glass and into the Denoctian streets. Nothing. Nothing.
But she has a feeling that he is close. It doesn’t take seeing him to know; his voice definitely came from just outside of the (barely cracked) window, and she is fairly sure that she can see his breath fogging up the window.
And, after taking a few hesitant steps towards the window, Seraphina is abruptly hit with the scent of alcohol. She stares at the window, her eyes narrowing fractionally.
Should she be concerned that he can find her in the middle of the night in Denocte while rather inhibited by, judging by the slur to his voice and the fact that she can smell it from inside the room, more than a few drinks?
She should definitely be concerned about that.
That and the fact that she can’t see him at all – even as she presses the window a bit further open, a tentative gesture at best, Seraphina cannot make out any form in the persistent blackness of the street outside. She might as well be speaking to a disembodied voice. Or – there might have been the vague impression of a form, but it is so well hidden in the shadows that Seraphina cannot discern any identifying characteristics. Some kind of magic or enchantment, she assumes, which is likely quite useful for a spy (or whatever he’s supposed to be).
She doesn’t know where to look, so she stares at where she thinks he – might – be and hopes that there is still enough distance between herself and the window (or that his vision has been impaired by the alcohol) so that he cannot quite tell if she is looking in the wrong direction. “How did you find me here?” How did you find me in the first place? is perhaps the more important question, but it isn’t one that she asks, because she doubts he’ll tell her the answer even if she does.
(His letters had come from nowhere, with no indication of how or why he knew her – but, of course, Seraphina knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. His information has always been reliable, so she does not so much as try to pry too deeply into his affairs…suspicious as he is. She hasn’t wanted to risk losing his support.)
Her brow arches, and she waits. There is still some space between herself and the window, just in case she has miscalculated – but she thinks that she can trace his presence, to some extent, if only because his breathing is fogging up the window.
tags | @Caine
notes | I was not at all expecting to reply to this tonight, but happy...end of finals period?
"speech"
on Tuesday - you wake - walk the back stairs to find a bird
half dead and thrashing - stunned by its own purpose
It is some ungodly hour of the night, and, to her chagrin, the once-queen of Solterra is holed up restlessly in an almost impossibly suspicious Denoctian inn, pacing.
The blood king was surprisingly competent for a man who’d failed to assassinate two queens and hadn’t noticed a rebellion brewing right under his nose; he had eyes everywhere. Since she was already in the area, she’d decided to stay in Denocte for a night or two longer, to see if she could flush out any of his spies and followers. She hadn’t spent much time in the night kingdom, and, though it wasn’t entirely because of the location, she felt ill at ease so much as lingering in Denocte’s labyrinthian back-alleys and rolling hills. Her accent was a difficult thing to disguise, and her general lack of familiarity with the Night Kingdom did her few favors in her efforts to navigate its underbelly. (It was hardly safe work, and she was hardly in a safe position; if she were merely visiting Denocte, she would have likely stayed with one of the Denoctians she knew, but that would do her little good in her search for Raum’s people.) Still – power spoke for something, as did her unyielding temperament.
Besides – she likes to think that this rebellion has improved her understanding of shadier, more unsavory dealings. Even if she isn’t altogether sure that’s a good thing.
Her armor lies in a pile in the corner of the room, accompanied by Alshamtueur and her arrow. The dull lamp-light emphasizes the silver gleam of her coat; she might as well be a metal carving, a girl-shaped trinket rather than a girl. (Of course, no carving would carry a knot of scars on her cheek.) The shadows linger awkwardly in the concaves of her ribs, making her look far hungrier than she feels, and they further emphasize the sleepless hollows under her eyes, the gaunt angles of her cheeks. She supposes it is for the best. No one will pay her much mind if she masquerades as a Solterran refugee – she certainly looks the part.
Still – her hair is unbraided, and, with little else to knead out her persistent anxiety, she finally brushed it out at some point during the hours that she’s been awake. (She has been halfway tempted to shave it off, lately, or at least to trim it, but the memory of Viceroy doing it for her has stopped her, if only as an act of defiance against a dead man.) In the absence of proper management, it has grown even longer than usual, nearly falling to her hooves. She’s going to have to trim it. Possibly not now, when she doesn’t have anything to use but Alshamtueur and dull lamp light, but-
There comes the sound of a knock from the window; it is halfway open. Summers in Denocte are stuffy and humid, and the room is hardly well-ventilated.
She freezes and turns towards the window. She is met by nothing but darkness.
However, before she could dismiss it as nothing but the night wind or her imagination, both of which were apt to play tricks on her, a voice floats through the open window. She cannot pinpoint its source, beyond right outside of her window, and she cannot pinpoint its owner, beyond vaguely familiar and aware of who she is, or at least who she is pretending to be. Her brow furrows. She opens her mouth, and then she closes it.
She fumbles for an appropriate answer – or any kind of answer, really. His accent is faintly familiar, and his voice somehow even more familiar, but she can’t piece together exactly who she thinks that it should belong to. (It comes out silky-sweet and smooth, though slightly slurred. Where has she heard that pronunciation before? It makes her think of someone, or multiple someones, but the thing that bothers her more than the familiarity of the voice itself is the familiarity of the accent, which is not quite like any of the courts’.) Her head tilts. She stares, her mind grasping for the arrow in her scarf, which lies in a spool in the corner of the room. She doesn’t do anything with it; she doesn’t even pull it out of its sleeve. However, she has it in her (metaphorical) grasp, and that is reassurance enough for her, for she knows how little effort it takes to put it through someone’s skull.
(Of course, she cannot actually see his skull to put an arrow through it, which, she thinks, could pose a problem. Then again, if he’d had any kind of malevolent reason to visit her room in the middle of the night, she doubts that he would have given her any forewarning; she has dealt with enough assassins to know that they prefer to work cleanly and quietly, and it is rather difficult to do either if you are caught in the act.)
Finally, she opts for a reluctant, stilted, “…Verona?” because she can’t think of anyone else who’d be sending her letters – that she doesn’t happen to know personally. (And, though she chooses to avoid it, she can’t think of anyone else who would be brazen enough to refer to her as his “dearest Fia.”) Seraphina takes a step or two closer to the window, her eyes narrowing to two-tone slits as she stares out of the foggy glass and into the Denoctian streets. Nothing. Nothing.
But she has a feeling that he is close. It doesn’t take seeing him to know; his voice definitely came from just outside of the (barely cracked) window, and she is fairly sure that she can see his breath fogging up the window.
And, after taking a few hesitant steps towards the window, Seraphina is abruptly hit with the scent of alcohol. She stares at the window, her eyes narrowing fractionally.
Should she be concerned that he can find her in the middle of the night in Denocte while rather inhibited by, judging by the slur to his voice and the fact that she can smell it from inside the room, more than a few drinks?
She should definitely be concerned about that.
That and the fact that she can’t see him at all – even as she presses the window a bit further open, a tentative gesture at best, Seraphina cannot make out any form in the persistent blackness of the street outside. She might as well be speaking to a disembodied voice. Or – there might have been the vague impression of a form, but it is so well hidden in the shadows that Seraphina cannot discern any identifying characteristics. Some kind of magic or enchantment, she assumes, which is likely quite useful for a spy (or whatever he’s supposed to be).
She doesn’t know where to look, so she stares at where she thinks he – might – be and hopes that there is still enough distance between herself and the window (or that his vision has been impaired by the alcohol) so that he cannot quite tell if she is looking in the wrong direction. “How did you find me here?” How did you find me in the first place? is perhaps the more important question, but it isn’t one that she asks, because she doubts he’ll tell her the answer even if she does.
(His letters had come from nowhere, with no indication of how or why he knew her – but, of course, Seraphina knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. His information has always been reliable, so she does not so much as try to pry too deeply into his affairs…suspicious as he is. She hasn’t wanted to risk losing his support.)
Her brow arches, and she waits. There is still some space between herself and the window, just in case she has miscalculated – but she thinks that she can trace his presence, to some extent, if only because his breathing is fogging up the window.
tags | @Caine
notes | I was not at all expecting to reply to this tonight, but happy...end of finals period?
"speech"
RE: heart made of glass, my mind of stone - Caine - 12-07-2019
the only truly natural things are dreams,
which nature cannot touch with decay.
which nature cannot touch with decay.
T
here were three of her when she came, cautious as a caged hawk, to the window. Wisely, Caine chose the steadiest of the trinity Seraphina's to look upon. His breath plumed in clouds upon the cold glass. Rough stone bit into his cheek as he sifted the shadows around him, clearing out a pane of semi-translucence. If he squinted he could just make out the bright silver of her hair through the dark, unbound, spilling down her neck like snowmelt in spring.
But the bright of her hair deepened the hollow of her cheeks, and Caine frowned as he drew closer to the gap in the window.
"Verona?"
He knew she could not possibly see him. He knew; yet still it took all his sobriety (mere dregs in a wineglass) to muffle his sharp inhale when Seraphina's searching gaze paused just a mark shy of his own.
Gathering his voice, Caine shifted over and put his back to the wall. "None other; though I am pleased to have made as much an impression on you as you have me," he said winningly. (To his pleasure, he discovered it was not, in fact, the alcohol that made him endearing. It had always hung like an empty skin in the closet; he'd merely lacked the occasion to wear it.)
He ducked his head as a gust of briny wind whipped sand into his eyes; it smelled of the sea and a coming storm. A warning that bade him hurry with his business. Resigned, the parchment crinkled as Caine unfurled it from his pocket, shaped its corners into a parchment rose, and pushed it through the crack in the window.
"The latest departure schedules of the Crown's caravans." In ridding his Solterran accent the boy's voice had lightened, gaining a quality of lyricism suited to marble ballrooms and high-vaulted atriums. Far out of place in a court of spies and burning pyres. Surely she could no longer doubt his intent now; he hadn't even forgotten the flower.
"How did you find me here?" His ears pricked, suddenly wary. Seraphina's question was met with silence, as if the shadow-cloaked spy had departed as mutely and as suddenly as whence he came. But there he was still, breath fanning softly, close enough to be touched if she dared to reach out and seek.
"A magical map," he said finally, with no malice nor flippancy. But he elaborated no further. Instead, Caine drew his heavy head towards the sky and frowned at what he found greeting him.
Clouds blacker than night hung like curtains over the moon, stripping the world of color. What little light he'd used to navigate by was soon extinguished by a final, thundering mass, tailed by a fork of lightning. He couldn't stay. A precious layer of darkness lay between him and the recipient of his letters, the betrayer and the betrayed. How much longer could he wear Verona's mask?
He shook his head. He was too drunk, he decided, to act as judge and jury in matters as doomed as his own fate.
"It looks like it's going to rain," Caine said instead, locking his gaze with the girl behind the smudged glass. Though she could not see him, the effect was none short of a confession, and a shiver shot up his spine. His hoof scraped the cobblestones as he brought it down flush with the wall.
"Invite me in, carissima?" He would leave such matters to her.
{ @Seraphina "speaks" notes: WE CONCLUDE OUR INTERLUDE and get on with the show ;D }
RE: heart made of glass, my mind of stone - Seraphina - 12-08-2019
☼ S E R A P H I N A ☼
The corridors are the loudest - an artery of wailing - what nicks the heart -
drawn tight across all things?
"None other,” he says, “though I am pleased to have made as much an impression on you as you have me.” She gives a soft snort, caught halfway between amusement and exasperation. When he writes, it sounds like a line he spun out of a song, or some romantic novel. She’d thought it clever, when she’d realized there was a code to it; who would expect state secrets hidden beneath the harmless guise of a love letter? What she hadn’t expected was for him to carry it over into speech. Seraphina isn’t sure how to deal with it; she knows better than to think too much of it, though. She has always been a girl who is better-equipped to deal with bloodied blades than flowers, more comfortable dealing with harsh words and mockery than anything soft. She has never known what to do with kindness, where to put it. She doesn’t know how to feel about the prying, persistent warmth of his voice, beyond that it is familiar, but how-?
There is the sound of crinkling paper from outside of the window; a moment later, he pushes a paper rose through the slim crack between the window panes. If there was any doubt in Seraphina’s mind that she was dealing with Verona, and there wasn’t, that was enough to assuage it. Her mind wraps around the rose, gently fingers the edges of its parchment petals. It is delicate craftsmanship – complex. She wonders how he managed to do it. Even if she follows the folds, she is sure that she won’t be able to make it a rose again once she is done reading her, and it almost seems like a pity.
But she hardly has the time to be sentimental about a paper flower. Even less a paper flower with valuable information – schedules, he tells her.
“Thank you,” Seraphina says, because she doesn’t quite know what else to say. “Those will be…most valuable.” It isn’t a lie, but there is something else lingering on the tip of her tongue, something that has been bothering her since his first letter arrived - why are you helping us? But Seraphina doesn’t dare to say it. This still feels too fragile; if she pushes at it, and she stumbles, she is sure that it will break, and she cannot stand the idea of being any more alone than she is already. She cannot risk anyone else leaving. Perhaps it would be better, safer to stick to something fickle. How to fold flowers. Why flowers – why roses? And that would have been the wiser choice to make.
Of course – when she asks him how he found her, he quiets.
For a moment, Seraphina stands staring at where she thought he was, frozen to the spot. She blinks out into the darkness of the streets and swallows; she might have choked, if she didn’t know better, but she did. Instead, her expression stiffens, then settles into something resembling apathy. She turns from the window, back towards the dull, yellow flicker of the wax candle burning out in the far corner of the room, and she reminds herself of all the work she needs to do, now that she has these schedules. If she writes the letters quickly, she can call for Ereshkigal, and they will be with her agents in Solterra by the morning.
It wasn’t as though he’d left the resistance, she reasons.
But she hadn’t minded the company.
Before she can walk away from the window, he speaks again. “A magical map,” he says, simply, and Seraphina hates that she is glad that he is still there, more than she is glad to have the answer to her question. She turns back to stare at the window, at the white fog of his breath and the darkness outside. She doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t want him to leave, and she resents it, and she doesn’t want him to be quiet, because then he might as well be gone, but she doesn’t know how to deal with his voice.
How desperate of her. How horrible. She could sneer at herself over it.
“That must be useful.” Seraphina might as well have been a thousand miles away; there is nothing behind the soft cadence of her voice. She is speaking to fill up space, or to take up time, or to beg him without begging him to stay a while longer, because not even Ereshkigal is here for her now. In times like this, when she was a girl, she would pray, because god will always hear you, if you just ask for him to, but she is no longer so sure that her god is listening. Not to her. Maybe not to anyone.
It looks like it’s going to rain, he says, and, now that he mentions it, she thinks that she can smell it on the wind when she stands so close to the just-open window; the drifting scent of sea-salt and incense mingles with something clear and sharp and fresh. And hadn’t she heard thunder? She barely knows how to recognize the sound. In a desert, rain is rare. It was no wonder that she didn’t notice it. Seraphina inclines her head, unable to shake the feeling that he is meeting her eyes. She can’t see them – it’s only a feeling, an invasive prickle that runs the length of her spine. She can’t bring herself to turn away.
His hoof strikes stone. Invite me in, Carrissima? She doesn’t know what the word means. Only how he says it.
She doesn’t know how to do that, really. How to let someone inside. She looks out into the darkness, considering, her lips half-open in hesitation; she’ll see him, then, won’t she? Does she want to? She isn’t sure that she’ll be able to maintain any of this if she sees his face. And she can’t break this. She needs his help.
She licks her lips. They taste like salt. Salt and rain. An aftertaste of incense and candle-smoke. Then, without moving, she reaches the spectral fingers of her mind to the window. They hover there. She hesitates.
A little push is all it takes – a flick. She could break glass with her mind now, she is sure. There is nothing delicate to the hungry tide of her magic, but just for now, she lets it be tentative, almost gentle. Cold, humid air follows; the candle seems to darken behind her.
“Come in,” Seraphina says, her voice ghostly soft – barely more than a whisper. She can no longer discern what it sounds like.
tags | @Caine
notes | love of my life
"speech"
The corridors are the loudest - an artery of wailing - what nicks the heart -
drawn tight across all things?
"None other,” he says, “though I am pleased to have made as much an impression on you as you have me.” She gives a soft snort, caught halfway between amusement and exasperation. When he writes, it sounds like a line he spun out of a song, or some romantic novel. She’d thought it clever, when she’d realized there was a code to it; who would expect state secrets hidden beneath the harmless guise of a love letter? What she hadn’t expected was for him to carry it over into speech. Seraphina isn’t sure how to deal with it; she knows better than to think too much of it, though. She has always been a girl who is better-equipped to deal with bloodied blades than flowers, more comfortable dealing with harsh words and mockery than anything soft. She has never known what to do with kindness, where to put it. She doesn’t know how to feel about the prying, persistent warmth of his voice, beyond that it is familiar, but how-?
There is the sound of crinkling paper from outside of the window; a moment later, he pushes a paper rose through the slim crack between the window panes. If there was any doubt in Seraphina’s mind that she was dealing with Verona, and there wasn’t, that was enough to assuage it. Her mind wraps around the rose, gently fingers the edges of its parchment petals. It is delicate craftsmanship – complex. She wonders how he managed to do it. Even if she follows the folds, she is sure that she won’t be able to make it a rose again once she is done reading her, and it almost seems like a pity.
But she hardly has the time to be sentimental about a paper flower. Even less a paper flower with valuable information – schedules, he tells her.
“Thank you,” Seraphina says, because she doesn’t quite know what else to say. “Those will be…most valuable.” It isn’t a lie, but there is something else lingering on the tip of her tongue, something that has been bothering her since his first letter arrived - why are you helping us? But Seraphina doesn’t dare to say it. This still feels too fragile; if she pushes at it, and she stumbles, she is sure that it will break, and she cannot stand the idea of being any more alone than she is already. She cannot risk anyone else leaving. Perhaps it would be better, safer to stick to something fickle. How to fold flowers. Why flowers – why roses? And that would have been the wiser choice to make.
Of course – when she asks him how he found her, he quiets.
For a moment, Seraphina stands staring at where she thought he was, frozen to the spot. She blinks out into the darkness of the streets and swallows; she might have choked, if she didn’t know better, but she did. Instead, her expression stiffens, then settles into something resembling apathy. She turns from the window, back towards the dull, yellow flicker of the wax candle burning out in the far corner of the room, and she reminds herself of all the work she needs to do, now that she has these schedules. If she writes the letters quickly, she can call for Ereshkigal, and they will be with her agents in Solterra by the morning.
It wasn’t as though he’d left the resistance, she reasons.
But she hadn’t minded the company.
Before she can walk away from the window, he speaks again. “A magical map,” he says, simply, and Seraphina hates that she is glad that he is still there, more than she is glad to have the answer to her question. She turns back to stare at the window, at the white fog of his breath and the darkness outside. She doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t want him to leave, and she resents it, and she doesn’t want him to be quiet, because then he might as well be gone, but she doesn’t know how to deal with his voice.
How desperate of her. How horrible. She could sneer at herself over it.
“That must be useful.” Seraphina might as well have been a thousand miles away; there is nothing behind the soft cadence of her voice. She is speaking to fill up space, or to take up time, or to beg him without begging him to stay a while longer, because not even Ereshkigal is here for her now. In times like this, when she was a girl, she would pray, because god will always hear you, if you just ask for him to, but she is no longer so sure that her god is listening. Not to her. Maybe not to anyone.
It looks like it’s going to rain, he says, and, now that he mentions it, she thinks that she can smell it on the wind when she stands so close to the just-open window; the drifting scent of sea-salt and incense mingles with something clear and sharp and fresh. And hadn’t she heard thunder? She barely knows how to recognize the sound. In a desert, rain is rare. It was no wonder that she didn’t notice it. Seraphina inclines her head, unable to shake the feeling that he is meeting her eyes. She can’t see them – it’s only a feeling, an invasive prickle that runs the length of her spine. She can’t bring herself to turn away.
His hoof strikes stone. Invite me in, Carrissima? She doesn’t know what the word means. Only how he says it.
She doesn’t know how to do that, really. How to let someone inside. She looks out into the darkness, considering, her lips half-open in hesitation; she’ll see him, then, won’t she? Does she want to? She isn’t sure that she’ll be able to maintain any of this if she sees his face. And she can’t break this. She needs his help.
She licks her lips. They taste like salt. Salt and rain. An aftertaste of incense and candle-smoke. Then, without moving, she reaches the spectral fingers of her mind to the window. They hover there. She hesitates.
A little push is all it takes – a flick. She could break glass with her mind now, she is sure. There is nothing delicate to the hungry tide of her magic, but just for now, she lets it be tentative, almost gentle. Cold, humid air follows; the candle seems to darken behind her.
“Come in,” Seraphina says, her voice ghostly soft – barely more than a whisper. She can no longer discern what it sounds like.
tags | @Caine
notes | love of my life
"speech"
RE: heart made of glass, my mind of stone - Caine - 12-08-2019
It's the last dance of the evening
Let the moon just shine
Take my hand, we'll commit treason and let the man of prinsloo fight
Let the moon just shine
Take my hand, we'll commit treason and let the man of prinsloo fight
H
e shifted hoof to hoof beneath his cloak, pulling it incrementally over one wing, then another. It would not settle. (He would not settle.) But he had little reason to fret. Shadows leaked from Caine's body like rain off a gorged storm cloud; warmth alluded him—summoned shadows were hungry things and fed on heat like kindling—and Seraphina's lark-bright gaze, though uncannily sharp, remained grasping in the perfect dark.And yet. What a dangerous game he played. He had watched her reaction carefully, caught the little snort as it slipped from her lips and out the window. The wind had stolen it from him before he could memorize the sound; but better that it had. What was he hoping for? Why had he come?
Why did he watch her so?
He returned her thanks with a distracted nod, until he remembered she could not see him and pressed his lips together, suddenly, uncharacteristically, grave. "We must all do what we can."
It was not until after the words had rolled off his tongue did Caine frown, and swallow a dark laugh. Verona uttered such noble things. If only she knows who I truly am.
(And that was it, wasn't it? His cloak slipped again; he sucked in a breath when he thought he felt warmth seeping like blood along his spine. A warning, a condemnation. The shadows—unsettled, malevolent—whispered: you are afraid. you pretend not to be and perhaps you have half-convinced yourself of it but shadows do not lie and we must speak for you whence you are blind. you are afraid that she will find out that you are not Verona that you are a liar and a betrayer and then she will hate you for it. [a pause, hushed and gloating] if she does not already.)
They were each drowning. One in fear, one in loneliness. And the stars and the shadows did nothing but watch, cruel and cold and silent. Waiting for something to happen.
She invited him in.
The window swung slowly open, rusty hinges squeaking to a stop halfway between shut and beckoning. Caine's head followed the motion of the swing with a delayed sense of what he could only call vertigo. Invite me in, carissima? He swallowed, and it seemed the loudest sound in the world.
"I cannot reveal myself to you yet," he began, hesitantly, as he made for the sill. "And you will likely see me as a mass of darkness." Drily, he thought, and this is when a maiden runs screaming 'devil.' But the once-queen was no such maiden. Not when something worse than devil lounged upon her throne.
He eyed the height between the ground and the wooden frame with some disparagement. But doors are out of fashion. Grimacing, Caine nudged the panes out of the way. Nothing whispers devotion when a suitor climbs through balconies—and when absent, windows—to win his lady's hand.
And through the gap he vaulted. He landed spryly enough, impressive footwork for the alcoholically impaired, but a wing had caught in the frame and pulling it away had toppled a nearby vase. It fell to the floor and shattered, smugly.
"Not yours, hopefully?" he muttered, turning towards Seraphina in glum guilt before yanking his head back when he realized how close he had landed to her. He retreated to the wall, and fixed his gaze on the patterned wallpaper. It was a nice print, peonies and lace, but risked dowdiness. Despite himself, he smiled. He knew this must be an inn, but to imagine the desert queen who ran an underground Resistance sleeping in such a room—
Grinning, Caine wandered to the tidy bed and sat upon it. There was no other alternative, and his head still spun from landing (and other sources). The candle in the corner guttered, choked by his shadows, and hastily he drew them in until they gathered tightly about him like a cocoon.
He leaned his hand against the bed frame, and stared into the flickering candle. "You must be curious about who I am. But I will not tell you." His voice softened, lost between a sigh and a yawn, and his eyes slit drowsily. "Instead, let us play a game. I will tell you a story, and after, you may guess once who you think I am."
When he had vaulted over the window, the shadows had grown silent. Perhaps Rudolph had slipped something in his drink—he wouldn't put it against the electric-eyed spy to try something tongue-in-cheek wicked—but when put forth in front of him: to leave, or to stay?
One of them he couldn't bear to do.
What was he hoping for? Why had he come? Why did he watch her so? He had no answers, and the not knowing was worse than the fear. Worse, even, of her hatred. Caine had long learned not to believe in things that had yet to come true; she did not hate him, at least not him as Verona, and maybe, just maybe—
She would not hate Caine either.
"And if you guess right, carissima..." he trailed off, the sheets rustling beneath him as he shifted towards her, silver to his dark. Electricity fizzled through the damp air as lightning forked like a serpent's tongue upon the earth.
And in that instant, in that sweep of sudden bright, the gleam of his eyes was just visible through the roiling black.
{ @Seraphina "speaks" notes: he's really not trying to be casual about this. subtlety: 0 }
RE: heart made of glass, my mind of stone - Seraphina - 12-09-2019
☼ S E R A P H I N A ☼
Somebody please tell her I’ll love her more when it’s dark.
More when it’s sundown & I am drowning in the wind. Always in some war where my father reminds me there are no roads for violent girls. No places in heaven to end up.
If you asked her what she expected, Seraphina would not know the answer. She is not thinking, not really. It is too dark and too late at night, and she never feels exactly like herself when she is out of Solterra. She opens the window because it feels right, like something out of a song. (But she is not something out of a song, and neither is he.) She doesn’t expect him to come in through the window, not really. She knows he’s asking seriously. He’s drunk enough for it. But-
There is the clatter of his hooves, again, against stone. The air wafting through the open window is cold; she bites down a shiver. I cannot reveal myself to you yet, he says, the cadence of his voice suddenly stripped of all the confidence it had possessed only a moment before, and you will likely see me as a mass of darkness. She stares down the window warily, taking one step back, and then another, until she has given him the space he needs to climb through to the other side. Her telekinesis fidgets, ghost-touch reaching to finger the place where her collar used to be as the situation begins to sink in. It is too late at night. She’s been up too late-
“I understand,” she says, but of course she doesn’t, and the needle’s-edge of frustration in her voice is enough to make it evident. Still. She will respect his wishes, no matter how incomprehensible they might seem (because surely it would be easier – and safer - if she knew who her informants in Raum’s court were), and she won’t press too hard, even though she wants to. He isn’t too drunk to run if she does, though she can still smell the alcohol on the wind, paces away.
The shadows slither - she doesn’t know how else to describe their movement but like a swarm of writhing snakes – through the window, and they seem to suck the low light from the candle out of the room in their wake; she has moved towards the light, where they cannot quite encroach, but the room is dusky enough around the corners for the shadows to effectively swallow everything they touch up whole. The display should have been terrifying, but she simply stands stock-still, expression strangely subdued. The shadows seem to cling tight to his frame, but not tight enough to make out much of the shape of him, beyond a faint suggestion of wings. She wonders how he holds them together – is it magic, or something else entirely?
He breaks a vase. She blinks at the shattered, painted fragments of it mutely, almost dully, her mind in tangles; the sharp edges of the broken glass catch in the candle light. She’ll have to clean them up later. Someone could get hurt.
He asks her, in a roundabout way, if the vase was hers. She shakes her head silently, her eyes dancing his shadow-cloaked frame and struggling to decide where to rest. She doesn’t want to look at him, not knowing how to make heads or tails of the darkness that swallows him up wherever he stands; but her warrior’s training won’t allow her to leave a stranger unexamined, least of all one as ambiguous as this Verona. Least of all one who is, in spite of her best efforts to put space between them, standing so close. He seems to notice and jerks back, moving towards the edges of the room.
His shadows stretch out. Threaten to choke the candle. Her eyes never leave him as he walks the wall, then as he all but collapses onto the makeshift heap of cushion and blanket that comprises the bed. She doesn’t move. The candle is not so far behind her, where she stands. She knows how quick those shadows could choke it out if he came just a bit closer, and she knows that her telekinesis will do her no good if she cannot see. Seraphina is, in every intimate way, a creature of sun and light. In some regards, that is a terrible thing. The sun scalds and burns just as easily as it illuminates.
The darkness creeps too close. She is still asking herself what she is doing, and those phantom-touches of her telekinesis – they press against her throat, where the collar should be, and press the still-unfamiliar skin, as though the threat will snap her back to a proper state of awareness.
He has made himself altogether too comfortable, she decides, fidgeting. You must be curious about who I am. But I will not tell you. Curiosity is too simple a word, she decides, with another little prick of anger. His voice quiets. Instead, let us play a game. I will tell you a story, and after, you may guess once who you think I am. Her eyes narrow, caught somewhere between bewilderment and exasperation. A guessing game. Her frustration rears its angry head, the part of her that is always reminding her that she is running out of time, that she is running out of time, that they are running out of time – that every second spared might spare a life. She has no time for games, no time to be tugged along by riddles and stories.
Her lip threatens to curl, but she bites it down, reminding herself that he is intoxicated.
He shifts. She hears it before she sees it, in that mass of shadows, the faint sift of sheets. And if you guess right, Carrissima… That word again; she still doesn’t know what it means. Only that he is drawing closer, and she is not drawing back.
(A flash of lightning, bright enough to choke out his shadows. She can see his eyes in that roiling mass of void. She is not prepared to recognize them – bright chips of molten quicksilver, such a particular shade.)
Seraphina sucks in a low, rattling breath through her teeth, and, staring him down directly, pieces together a question. She licks her lips. Her voice is still soft – so soft. “Am I supposed to start guessing?”
tags | @Caine
notes | insert discord eyes emoji
"speech"
Somebody please tell her I’ll love her more when it’s dark.
More when it’s sundown & I am drowning in the wind. Always in some war where my father reminds me there are no roads for violent girls. No places in heaven to end up.
If you asked her what she expected, Seraphina would not know the answer. She is not thinking, not really. It is too dark and too late at night, and she never feels exactly like herself when she is out of Solterra. She opens the window because it feels right, like something out of a song. (But she is not something out of a song, and neither is he.) She doesn’t expect him to come in through the window, not really. She knows he’s asking seriously. He’s drunk enough for it. But-
There is the clatter of his hooves, again, against stone. The air wafting through the open window is cold; she bites down a shiver. I cannot reveal myself to you yet, he says, the cadence of his voice suddenly stripped of all the confidence it had possessed only a moment before, and you will likely see me as a mass of darkness. She stares down the window warily, taking one step back, and then another, until she has given him the space he needs to climb through to the other side. Her telekinesis fidgets, ghost-touch reaching to finger the place where her collar used to be as the situation begins to sink in. It is too late at night. She’s been up too late-
“I understand,” she says, but of course she doesn’t, and the needle’s-edge of frustration in her voice is enough to make it evident. Still. She will respect his wishes, no matter how incomprehensible they might seem (because surely it would be easier – and safer - if she knew who her informants in Raum’s court were), and she won’t press too hard, even though she wants to. He isn’t too drunk to run if she does, though she can still smell the alcohol on the wind, paces away.
The shadows slither - she doesn’t know how else to describe their movement but like a swarm of writhing snakes – through the window, and they seem to suck the low light from the candle out of the room in their wake; she has moved towards the light, where they cannot quite encroach, but the room is dusky enough around the corners for the shadows to effectively swallow everything they touch up whole. The display should have been terrifying, but she simply stands stock-still, expression strangely subdued. The shadows seem to cling tight to his frame, but not tight enough to make out much of the shape of him, beyond a faint suggestion of wings. She wonders how he holds them together – is it magic, or something else entirely?
He breaks a vase. She blinks at the shattered, painted fragments of it mutely, almost dully, her mind in tangles; the sharp edges of the broken glass catch in the candle light. She’ll have to clean them up later. Someone could get hurt.
He asks her, in a roundabout way, if the vase was hers. She shakes her head silently, her eyes dancing his shadow-cloaked frame and struggling to decide where to rest. She doesn’t want to look at him, not knowing how to make heads or tails of the darkness that swallows him up wherever he stands; but her warrior’s training won’t allow her to leave a stranger unexamined, least of all one as ambiguous as this Verona. Least of all one who is, in spite of her best efforts to put space between them, standing so close. He seems to notice and jerks back, moving towards the edges of the room.
His shadows stretch out. Threaten to choke the candle. Her eyes never leave him as he walks the wall, then as he all but collapses onto the makeshift heap of cushion and blanket that comprises the bed. She doesn’t move. The candle is not so far behind her, where she stands. She knows how quick those shadows could choke it out if he came just a bit closer, and she knows that her telekinesis will do her no good if she cannot see. Seraphina is, in every intimate way, a creature of sun and light. In some regards, that is a terrible thing. The sun scalds and burns just as easily as it illuminates.
The darkness creeps too close. She is still asking herself what she is doing, and those phantom-touches of her telekinesis – they press against her throat, where the collar should be, and press the still-unfamiliar skin, as though the threat will snap her back to a proper state of awareness.
He has made himself altogether too comfortable, she decides, fidgeting. You must be curious about who I am. But I will not tell you. Curiosity is too simple a word, she decides, with another little prick of anger. His voice quiets. Instead, let us play a game. I will tell you a story, and after, you may guess once who you think I am. Her eyes narrow, caught somewhere between bewilderment and exasperation. A guessing game. Her frustration rears its angry head, the part of her that is always reminding her that she is running out of time, that she is running out of time, that they are running out of time – that every second spared might spare a life. She has no time for games, no time to be tugged along by riddles and stories.
Her lip threatens to curl, but she bites it down, reminding herself that he is intoxicated.
He shifts. She hears it before she sees it, in that mass of shadows, the faint sift of sheets. And if you guess right, Carrissima… That word again; she still doesn’t know what it means. Only that he is drawing closer, and she is not drawing back.
(A flash of lightning, bright enough to choke out his shadows. She can see his eyes in that roiling mass of void. She is not prepared to recognize them – bright chips of molten quicksilver, such a particular shade.)
Seraphina sucks in a low, rattling breath through her teeth, and, staring him down directly, pieces together a question. She licks her lips. Her voice is still soft – so soft. “Am I supposed to start guessing?”
tags | @Caine
notes | insert discord eyes emoji
"speech"
RE: heart made of glass, my mind of stone - Caine - 12-16-2019
I had a dream, I got everything I wanted
Not what you'd think, and if I'm being honest
It might've been a nightmare
Not what you'd think, and if I'm being honest
It might've been a nightmare
S
hadows swirled around his wings and pooled in the dips of his spine, feasting at the warmth of the room like leeches grown thin on pond water. Yet despite the lack of an adversary (the single candle guttered still, wax-flesh dripping at alarming speed, sure to die within the hour), the shadows kept away from the center; away from the spectral silver, the holy fire (and a pyre—when Caine's sight blurred, he thought he saw the ashes of a pyre, blanketing her shoulders like snow) and contented themselves, like cats, to the corners.But how precious little it mattered. The death-pall gloom the spy brought with him into the room threatened to swallow everything in a darkness so profound, so primordial, that even its summoner felt a shiver ghost down his neck.
'Why do some fear the dark?' he had once asked Agenor, hunched over a game of chess. The settee he'd ensconced himself into had been so large that there had been very little boy left between the leather. Only the glint of colourless eyes, slanted down to his white king.
'Because of the inherent absence of light,' his master had replied, watching the boy keenly as the black queen glided across the board and slew a bishop. 'Is that such a terrible thing?' the boy had murmured, dark-eyed now as he foresaw his king's imminent checkmate.
'Perhaps not to me, nor you,’ said the warlock, ‘but to some—' he paused, and a half-smile played across his lips as the white king slid desperately behind a knight. 'Nothing could be worse.'
Caine drew himself upright and tossed his hair from his eyes to glance warily at Seraphina's prone form. Nothing could be worse. Perhaps she would agree. She was not a creature made for the dark. Her hair, her eyes, the gold of her scar; every part of her leaked light, as every part of him leaked shadow.
“Am I supposed to start guessing?” Irritation or reluctance or curiosity might have coloured those words, but drink had dulled Caine's perception to the functionality of a dirty mirror, and her voice had gone too quickly. His eyes narrowed, but he gleaned nothing.
So he laughed instead—a low, silken thing—and slipped back into the skin of Verona. “You wound me, Fia. Will you not listen to my story?” he asked lightly, teeth flashing in mirth. “If you listen—” And then he quieted, suddenly solemn and hopelessly uncertain, unbalanced by the events of the evening; which had finally, only finally, begun to careen and crash upon him like a roof done in by a tempest. “No guessing. I will reveal myself at the end. I am tired of games, anyway,” he murmured, and suddenly a wave of nausea spread from his stomach to the bottom of his throat. The room spun, and the cloak around his shoulders slipped. An inch, maybe more.
Damp sweat beaded Caine's temple as he pressed his cheek to the cool, wallpapered wall. Listlessly his eyes, pale as bone, wandered to the armor and blade stashed in the corner nearest the window, and then to the letter she held poised in the air, creased in the memory of a rose. Moments passed before his voice cut again through the dark.
“I will keep to this side of the room. Do not make yourself uncomfortable on my account.” And to honor his sentiment, Caine slid down from the bed to the worn carpet, landing with a soft thump. Wordlessly (and with great effort, though he did not allow himself to dwell upon it) he recalled his shadows from the opposite corners, and cleared her a matching space on the floor to rest upon. If she so wished.
Satisfied, he put his back to the foot of the hard bed pallet and chewed his lip thoughtfully. “I shall tell you the story,” he began, “of the boy who put Death in a sack.”
{ @Seraphina "speaks" notes: decided to postpone story time until the next post so that we don't get a gigantic Caine monologue that doesn't give Sera a chance to react! }
RE: heart made of glass, my mind of stone - Seraphina - 12-18-2019
☼ S E R A P H I N A ☼
Something laughs in the hills devours all I’ve left behind
shreds of longing hang from jaws as crushing as its absence.
He laughs – in a sound like wine and incense. She watches him uneasily, intimately aware that she is prone. Yes, she knows how quickly she can draw Alshamtueur. Yes, she knows that she does not even need the sword anymore. She can imagine the press of her spectral fingers to his throat, if she could find it under that cloak; she is sure, if she grasped enough, that she could. And that, yes, she is sure, is the reason why she cares to know who he is. He does not understand – she is not sure that anyone understands – what is growing inside of her head. What it means to kill with a thought, that each little twitch of her mind is deadlier and deadlier by the day. What it means that sometimes she barely thinks of it.
What it means that she wonders if someday she won’t really have to think at all.
You wound me, Fia- She is half-listening, a cold sense of unease settling into her stomach. She saw his eyes. She is sure that she knows them, but this isn’t – quite right. His voice and his words don’t match those eyes. (And I could have killed you, don’t you know that? Don’t you know I still could?) Her gaze clamps down on the space where his eyes were, but she can’t make sense of them. She can’t make sense of any of this. If you listen-
When he manages to finish his sentence, his voice is not the same.
No guessing. I will reveal myself at the end. I am tired of games, anyway.
Her stare lingers, bone-cold on the shadows. She opens her mouth, as though to speak, and then she closes it, swallowing, and simply nods. His posture shifts; she can tell, even beneath the cloak of shadows. There is something about it that strikes her as almost frighteningly sincere. Gaping silence stretches out between them, and Seraphina feels like she should say something - anything - to break it. She doesn’t, though. She simply stands stock-still, up against the wall, and the faint tilt of her head asks what next?
He speaks again. He assures her that he will keep to the other side of the room, and he tells her not to make herself uncomfortable on his account; she opens her mouth, managing a, “You don’t need-“ before he slips off the bed. (She doesn’t know why she tries to stop him. Perhaps she just doesn’t want him to run, though she is sure that, at the moment, running would be difficult. But Seraphina knows that running is not the only form of pulling away, much like physical distance is not the only form of distance – and she is sure that, when he agreed to reveal himself, something shifted. She is not sure if the change is for better or for worse.) Those ink-stains of shadows withdraw into him, leaving room for her opposite him.
It is almost fascinating to watch the way that they move. Horrifying, in a certain light – horrifying, certainly, as a creature of the day. But there is something to the way that they draw around them that makes her wish that she could move closer to examine them. They are almost like a living thing.
She does not want to repay the gesture with distrust, though a part of her longs to stay in the corner, deluding herself into thinking that the candle is some barrier. She doesn’t know why it matters. (But she is sure that if she falters at all – if she lets herself relax even an inch – that everything will come crumbling down around her. She is holding herself together by the skin of her teeth. There is no room to breathe, not even for a minute, because if she breathes -
If she breathes-
If she breathes, she will have to think all of this through, and then she will not be able to deal with it. All the death. All the failure, and the cruelty. The horrible, horrible realization that no one can really be trusted or relied on – that everyone is fallible. And that she had somehow started to believe otherwise, even though she knew better.)
Still. She draws forward, hesitantly, and lays down opposite him, snow-white hair fanning around her. Her posture remains woefully tense, her gaze focused on him like a steel trap. She waits.
(It reminds her, somehow, of when she was younger, of memories that she struggles to grasp at now. How she learned all those stories of Solterra. Long nights in the court, collecting stories from passers-by, and all the things she learned as queen. She doesn’t understand why it is becoming difficult to remember anything before Raum, that she had a life before Raum, that she had ever been happy, even for a moment, before that all-consuming dark hole that was Raum-)
I shall tell you the story, he says, and she lingers on each word, of the boy who put Death in a sack.
tags | @Caine
notes | my oral storytelling senses are tingling
"speech"
Something laughs in the hills devours all I’ve left behind
shreds of longing hang from jaws as crushing as its absence.
He laughs – in a sound like wine and incense. She watches him uneasily, intimately aware that she is prone. Yes, she knows how quickly she can draw Alshamtueur. Yes, she knows that she does not even need the sword anymore. She can imagine the press of her spectral fingers to his throat, if she could find it under that cloak; she is sure, if she grasped enough, that she could. And that, yes, she is sure, is the reason why she cares to know who he is. He does not understand – she is not sure that anyone understands – what is growing inside of her head. What it means to kill with a thought, that each little twitch of her mind is deadlier and deadlier by the day. What it means that sometimes she barely thinks of it.
What it means that she wonders if someday she won’t really have to think at all.
You wound me, Fia- She is half-listening, a cold sense of unease settling into her stomach. She saw his eyes. She is sure that she knows them, but this isn’t – quite right. His voice and his words don’t match those eyes. (And I could have killed you, don’t you know that? Don’t you know I still could?) Her gaze clamps down on the space where his eyes were, but she can’t make sense of them. She can’t make sense of any of this. If you listen-
When he manages to finish his sentence, his voice is not the same.
No guessing. I will reveal myself at the end. I am tired of games, anyway.
Her stare lingers, bone-cold on the shadows. She opens her mouth, as though to speak, and then she closes it, swallowing, and simply nods. His posture shifts; she can tell, even beneath the cloak of shadows. There is something about it that strikes her as almost frighteningly sincere. Gaping silence stretches out between them, and Seraphina feels like she should say something - anything - to break it. She doesn’t, though. She simply stands stock-still, up against the wall, and the faint tilt of her head asks what next?
He speaks again. He assures her that he will keep to the other side of the room, and he tells her not to make herself uncomfortable on his account; she opens her mouth, managing a, “You don’t need-“ before he slips off the bed. (She doesn’t know why she tries to stop him. Perhaps she just doesn’t want him to run, though she is sure that, at the moment, running would be difficult. But Seraphina knows that running is not the only form of pulling away, much like physical distance is not the only form of distance – and she is sure that, when he agreed to reveal himself, something shifted. She is not sure if the change is for better or for worse.) Those ink-stains of shadows withdraw into him, leaving room for her opposite him.
It is almost fascinating to watch the way that they move. Horrifying, in a certain light – horrifying, certainly, as a creature of the day. But there is something to the way that they draw around them that makes her wish that she could move closer to examine them. They are almost like a living thing.
She does not want to repay the gesture with distrust, though a part of her longs to stay in the corner, deluding herself into thinking that the candle is some barrier. She doesn’t know why it matters. (But she is sure that if she falters at all – if she lets herself relax even an inch – that everything will come crumbling down around her. She is holding herself together by the skin of her teeth. There is no room to breathe, not even for a minute, because if she breathes -
If she breathes-
If she breathes, she will have to think all of this through, and then she will not be able to deal with it. All the death. All the failure, and the cruelty. The horrible, horrible realization that no one can really be trusted or relied on – that everyone is fallible. And that she had somehow started to believe otherwise, even though she knew better.)
Still. She draws forward, hesitantly, and lays down opposite him, snow-white hair fanning around her. Her posture remains woefully tense, her gaze focused on him like a steel trap. She waits.
(It reminds her, somehow, of when she was younger, of memories that she struggles to grasp at now. How she learned all those stories of Solterra. Long nights in the court, collecting stories from passers-by, and all the things she learned as queen. She doesn’t understand why it is becoming difficult to remember anything before Raum, that she had a life before Raum, that she had ever been happy, even for a moment, before that all-consuming dark hole that was Raum-)
I shall tell you the story, he says, and she lingers on each word, of the boy who put Death in a sack.
tags | @Caine
notes | my oral storytelling senses are tingling
"speech"
RE: heart made of glass, my mind of stone - Caine - 01-01-2020
night falls. or has fallen.
why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn?
why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn?
AS the story unfolds, imagine it told like this: by a spy wrapped in shadows, some of it muffling his mouth—a bit like a thick winter scarf. His voice is quiet and unadorned, pitched tinglingly low, and aided by, in no particular order: a dash of melancholy, an unplaceable accent, and a backdrop of misty rain.
"Once there was a boy who's mother, on her deathbed, entrusted to him a secret."
The rhythmic shh, shh of rain slashing the window drowned out the creaking of old floorboards as Seraphina settled tensely down besides him. He tried not to watch her, out of manners (which Caine, as Verona, was obligated to practice convincingly). Instead, he allowed his shadow-veiled gaze to linger on her unbound hair, scattered like freshly fallen snow on the worn carpet. It was easier to admit how pretty he had always thought it—like a bolt of white silk, but finer—while his mind still swam in wine. Or ale.
Or Saints else Rudolph had poured into his cup that evening.
"This secret was not so simple as a string of whispered words." he continued. "From behind her pillow, the mother drew out a tattered flour sack. 'Let not this secret die with me. If you meet anything and wish to catch it, just open this sack and tell beasts or birds or whatever else to get into it, and they’ll do just that, and you can close the sack and do with them what you will.' The boy accepted it solemnly, tying it to his belt, and the mother passed on in peace. Years passed, and while the sack stayed empty, the boy carried it with him always. Because that is what you do with a secret—you carry it and carry it until the day it kills you."
Abruptly, Caine paused; stiffly, he leaned forwards. A tendril of snowy hair lifted up from the floor. Like a stunned moth it hovered, fluttering weakly, for half a heartbeat; before it was resignedly set down again.
"Or you kill it," he added at last, so low and quiet that the rain almost ran away with it.
Almost.
I am tired of playing games, he had told her.
(He did not think it was a game anymore.)
Blithely he drew back between one blink and the next, as if nothing had ever happened. Time resumed its flowing. Rain continued its drumming. Shadows went forth with their writhing.
Spies returned to their storytelling.
"One midwinter morning, the boy stumbled upon a painted palace nestled deep inside a pocket of forest, just north of his usual hunting grounds. At once, he knew he had found the king's abandoned winter palace.
That night, the boy went to the village's headman and asked how the king could desert such a fine abode. 'Because of the devils,' said the headman. 'Devils?' asked the boy. 'Devils,' replied the headman. 'Every night at midnight they crowd into the palace to play cards and bang pots and what with all the devilries that come into their heads, there's no living in the palace for decent folk.' Hearing this, the boy became aglow with determination. 'And does nobody clear them out?' he asked. 'And what, may I ask, scares a devil?' was the headman's bitter response.
'Send for the king,' said the boy, for he had the answer. 'Tell his majesty his palace shall be rid of devils by the morn.'
At once, the boy made for the palace with his sack tied around his waist like a belt. Arriving before midnight, he sat by the fireplace and puffed solemnly on a pipe as he waited. Twelve o'clock sharp, there started a yelling and a banging of spoons on pots. The boy adjusted his belt. As five devils with snakes for tails came bursting through the palace doors, the boy greeted them by adjusting his belt, and that infuriated them.
As the fattest devil of the lot swung his hissing tail at his head, the boy plucked up his sack and loosened the drawstrings. As the thinnest devil of the lot stabbed a glowing poker at his eye, the boy opened his sack wide and said: 'See this sack?' The devils froze, perplexed. 'Well, what are you waiting for? Get into it.'
One by one, obedient as dogs, devil after devil dove headfirst into the sack—and the boy drew the strings tightly closed.
And so the boy, now a hero, returned to the king his winter palace. As a show of goodwill the king promised to the boy his daughter's hand in marriage, which the princess had agreed to gladly. Heroes were rare in their little kingdom. Like a precious jewel, how ravishing it would be for the princess to have a hero on her arm. In time, from their union came a son; and it was in the spring of the little prince's ninth year that the story continues again.
The little prince had fallen ill—horribly ill. Blood streamed from his throat, and his face had turned a sickly white. With haste the hero called the best doctors of the land to see to him, but their prognoses were all the same. 'Your son will die, we are sorry to say. There is nothing that can be done,' they said. 'Nothing?' the hero asked. 'Nothing. We are all mortal, sire. We all die eventually. He will go in peace,' said one, and in fury the hero dismissed them.
'But what of the immortal?' whispered the hero, as he ran to his chambers and drew out a tattered brown sack from within a twice-locked chest. Loosening the strings, the hero reached deep into the sack and pulled a fat, quivering devil out by his whimpering tail.
'Tell me, devil,' the hero said. 'Look at my son, and tell me what you see.' 'Death, m'lord,' answered the devil after a pause. 'Death stands by him, and waits.' Smiling, the devil pulled a glass from his pocket. 'Do you wish to see?' The hero took the glass and brought it to his eye—and as he looked towards the end of the prince's bed, there stood a black-robed figure, gaunt and somber and expectant. 'I see Death standing by my son's head,' said the hero. The devil clucked, and tucked the glass back inside his pocket. 'If Death is standing at your son’s feet, he will be well again. But if Death is standing at his head, then nothing can save him.'
Before the devil could say 'I am sorry, my lord,' the hero grabbed him by the tail and murmured: 'I thank you. Now go back inside the sack.' After even the devil was swallowed up again, the hero did not draw tight the sack's strings. Instead, he held it open with one hand and with the other, went to stroke his son's head. 'Worry not, my son. It is not your time yet.'
And, looking straight at the spot where he knew Death stood waiting, the hero opened the sack as wide as it could go. 'Death, I bid you go inside.' And Death dove headfirst inside the sack.
From that time onwards, there was no more dying in the world. There were births every day but no funerals, not one, for Death was trapped in a sack. For many years the kingdom lived in a deathless bliss, and the little prince grew handsome and strong. Until one day, the hero—who was now king, as the previous one had tired of ruling for ever—came across an old hag struggling to cross the road. All bones and wrinkled skin, her gums were teethless and her legs shook like rattles. The king whispered to himself, in pity: 'It was time for her to die years ago.'
The hag raised her head, for she had heard him. 'Yes,' she rasped. 'Long ago it was time for me to die. I was ready for it, and was glad to finally be at peace. But then you trapped Death in a sack, and robbed me of my eternal rest. I am not the only soul in the world who is tortured as I am. Mine is not the only place that is growing dusty besides our Saints. Hundreds and thousands of us who should have died drag on in misery. Those that are evil cannot be killed. Those who are sick cannot seek an end. Those that are healthy must spare their grain to feed the sick, the old, the evil, and the newborn.' The king grew silent as the hag hobbled towards him.
'The world, deathless, is no longer a world for the living. So my king, I ask you this. Do you still believe yourself a hero?'"
He had not looked at Seraphina once since beginning his story; and as he blinked out of it, he found himself awakening to snow-white and a river of gold. Shadows spiraled dazedly around Caine, the chains of magic leashing them loosening and loosening until there remained only a thin, diaphanous layer sheltering him. He didn't care. Somewhere in the midst of his story—no, it had been earlier than even that—he had lost the will to care.
He cleared his throat, brushed his hair out of his eyes. Drew himself to his hooves and crossed the distance (the gulf, the ravine, the whole entire sea) separating them. Stopping before he could touch her. His cloak slipped from his shoulders and he did nothing to stop it, merely sighed as it hit the carpet like a dead thing. His wings shivered from the sudden warmth that engulfed them, heat sucked in as shadows fled like oil over ice.
She knew, didn't she? Who he really was. And if she didn't—if she hadn't—he wasn't sorry. Verona would have been, but Caine wasn't. And he wasn't sorry about that either.
It was then that he learned silence had a sound too. It sounded like him staring wordlessly at her; like his cloak fluttering down to the floor; like a candle snuffing out after a long, long fight; like the night as it waited for the warmth of the sun.
{ @Seraphina "speaks" notes: Caine's story is adapted from the Russian folk tale The Soldier and Death }