Private black rabbit in the alley.

if he's a serial killer, then what's the worst
that could happen to a girl that's already hurt?

✧

o cure Rook, I will have to go to Delumine.

I still remember the stories he'd told me about his court. About the boys and girls who grew up reading so many books that they became scholars, men and women who dedicated their entire lives to books, to reading and writing and praying to Oriens for more when they ran out of them. (I'd asked him if he was one, to which he'd grinned with all his teeth and said, proudly, that he was on his way to becoming one.)

In particular, though, I remember the Library. (Capitalised—when I had drawn it out on the sand with a stick he'd reached over and added one more line to the l, before plucking a flower from my braid and dotting the i with a petal.) He'd regaled me of the Library's wonders—how it was the best one there was, how it attracted scholars from all over, how it was grown out of a forest of trees and was always expanding because of it. How once he'd entered it as a child barely taller than his diplomat father's knees, he'd never wanted to leave.

I remember furrowing my brow and asking him why, then, was he here with me, deep in the swamps, if he loved this Library of his so much.

I remember blinking too fast when he'd looked at me through his lashes, smiled like a cat, and drew his shoulders up in a shrug both elegant and coy.

Rook looks at me now, his eyes milky with malice, and drags his antlers down the bumps of my spine.

You should guard your thoughts better, Daisybird. They always leak through to me. I level a tired glare towards him and flip my mask all the way over my head. Do you miss me as I was? he asks, his laugh dark and airless in my head.

I don't. I think, Maybird Maybird, that I'm so much better this way.

I feel his eyes in my back like two bright thorns as I push him aside and walk forwards, into a copse of white birch. "Isn't it great," I say, loud enough that a flock of starlings burst out of the viney undergrowth, "that I don't care what you think?"

Through my mask, the world is all shadows.

✦

« r »| @~~Nicnevin~~ | Nic you are not ready to meet both Bird and Rook

RE: black rabbit in the alley. - Nicnevin - 08-03-2020

WHAT HE IS CAPABLE OF, YOUR MIND,
in the moment, scrambling to revise what you thought you knew of him and how with what you now know

When my father passed, his soul became a tree.

I was away, when he died. When I returned, tear-stained and weak at the knees, the priestesses woke me up at the crack of dawn and led me into the woods – deeper and deeper, until we stood in front of a small sapling, so small that it could barely even be called a sapling at all. I assume that it was my old, laurel-wreathed friend who told them to do it. When my mother passed, my efforts to find her were foolish and desperate.

At the time, the sight of the sapling offered me no comfort. Even now, as a grown tree, I am not so sure that it does; I can stand among my father’s roots, and I can look up at his canopy of leaves, but I can no longer speak to him, or see his face. We have passed far beyond the realm of understanding – two points with no intersection, no longer a father and his daughter.

So long as the tree is still living, I will not speak to my father again.

(I will not speak to my father again regardless.)

The trees in this “swamp” are not like my father. They are, in most cases, charcoal-black, and, more importantly, dead. It is hard to parse what that means; after all, I have been “alive,” in a sense, and inanimate, lingered in my own corpse – down to the bone – after my own death. It would explain why they are still standing, watching over the dull waters and moss-stained rocks like some silent council. They are dead, but with each creak of the wind or crumble of bark, they seem more like they are asleep, as though they could pick up their boney roots and walk out of the damp soil at any moment. The forest is quivering.

It is unnerving. It isn’t unnerving at all.

The birch trees attract me both because they are alive – unlike so many of the trees that line the path (likely choked out by persistent rainfall and standing waters) – and because of their color. I recognize them, loosely, as birch, but they are bone-white, and I feel some pull of familiarity from the look of them, if not their form. I am halfway to the trees when a flock of starlings dart from the brush, barely missing me in the progress; over the shudder of their wings and the panicked screech of their voices, I manage to make out a few words.

-that I don’t care what you think?

The voice is pretty and faintly caustic. I press forward into the trees, urged by some measure of curiosity to find the source.

There is a girl, there – she reminds me of a bird, and for more than just the ash-grey feathers that sprout from her hindquarters and the mask that obscures her face. She is grey all over, and petite, and probably younger than me, and, though I don’t have a clue how she sees out of it, she moves with a precise elegance. Her hair is milk-grey and long, interrupted here and there with braids. She is remarkably lovely, in a way that I find unusual among outsiders; I am not sure how many of them are comfortable with wearing a dead thing, least of all as anything but some trophy, but she seems to wear that dead-mask like she doesn’t much think of it at all.

But – my attention is quickly distracted from the girl. My skin crawls, and I feel myself bristle at the sight of the deer. (The knight-in-me grasps for her blade; the part of me that was once-a-sword pulses with ugly familiarity.) The deer is black as night, nearly depthless, with blinding-white antlers. That itself is unnatural, but it is his eyes that are worse, infinitely worse. They look like they should be blind, and yet they move, and yet they see- and they don’t see at all in the way that a deer should see.

Sometimes you look at something, and you know that it has lived before, because it moves in its body like it doesn’t belong there. I am still clumsily adjusting to my new skin; but I have let go of my other selves (as much as they can, when they still compose so much of my memory) in favor of this new one, this Nicnevin.

The priestesses warn that not everyone can. They warn of the consequences.

The deer looks like a deer, but a deer should not look like his teeth are sharp. A deer should not look like it would devour you, happily, and anything else with it-

There is something deeply, deeply wrong with that deer. So deeply wrong that it makes bile rise in my throat; makes me want to retch. Regardless, I stand my ground, and I look at the girl instead.

I settle my face into careful neutrality – tinged, perhaps, with a healthy amount of concern. “Are you alright, Miss?”

(What I mean, technically, is do I need to get rid of that creature for you?, but I possess just a bit too much tact to say it out loud.)

@Maybird || aaaaaaaa we're threading again?!?!?! | "the older boys," grady chambers

"Speech!"

RE: black rabbit in the alley. - Maybird - 08-13-2020

by me (ralli)

no-one 'round here's good at keeping their eyes closed
the sun's starting to light up when we're walking home
tired little laughs, gold lie promises,
we'll always win at this, I don't ever think about death

✧

unning away, Daisybird?

You know I prefer not to.

Ah. You only tell others to.

And then they don’t listen.

You left out the part where your mother would butcher me like one of her butterflies.

I feel Rook’s anger begin to glow inside him like the blade of a red-hot knife. I know what I have to say to calm him. I know what he wants to hear.

Then I’m sorry. Sincerely. Does that make it better?

I am brushing away a sinister branch of brambles when I feel antlers dig into my back and I yelp, half in shock, half in baffled, slow-gathering anger.

You don’t mean it. Before, he used to think that I meant it. When I had dragged his head out from the muddy swamp water he had said, between hacking coughs, that he knew I would come to save him. Even when I had blamed it on the will of the flowers, he had insisted on thinking the best of me.

I feel what you feel, Bird. But do you know what I feel when you apologize? I curl my lips back, the bramble branch snapping towards me. But I don’t reach out to stop it. My eyes are wide beneath my mask. If I had a mirror, I would see that they were wide yet still blank. Like a doll with painted-on irises.

And then I would be disappointed. But I don’t have a mirror, so I allow myself to believe that my wide-open eyes are showing the proper amount of shock as expected of one so cruelly accused.

I feel nothing. Rook presses his head to my mask. His eyes, blindingly white, sear into mine.

“What do you want, Crow?” I say aloud, my voice echoing through the brambles and the trees and the flock of jeering starlings. I jerk my mask up and he ducks to avoid it, before I step forwards and the tip of the dead beak digs right into the center of the triangle branded against Rook’s forehead.

“To hurt me?” His antlers dig into my neck but I continue pushing forwards, forcing him back, my hooves breaking twigs as thin as sparrow bones.

I see his answer in his eyes. He can’t hurt me. He can’t. “To kill me?” I am an empty shell. All I can do is rattle. I have known this since the day I was born. Ma knows this. Elder knows this.

Rook had always refused to believe that he knew this, too. Deep down.

“Are you done trying to save me?” I watch, my eyes perfectly blank and visible now with my mask flipped up to the sky, as my words sink their teeth into his flesh.

“Are you alright, miss?”

I startle, freezing in place like a bug-eyed fawn as a voice seems to come straight from the dreary clouds. I feel Rook tense against my shoulder, his anger momentarily held at bay, and I follow his milky gaze until I see the girl.

She is painted in the red-gold-browns of autumn brought to magnificent completion. Immediately I remember, as if I’d forgotten it, that autumn is my favorite season. Things are not born in it, like spring, and things do not die in it, like winter. It is not loud and full of itself, like summer. It is a quiet season. It sits inside itself and contemplates, feeling no grief for the leaves that fall, putting no real effort into making itself beautiful. It simply is, and is at peace.

I like, too, how it's sometimes called 'fall'. It's one of the few names, like mine, that gives it to you straight.

The autumn girl is as tall and slender and lovely as a golden ginkgo tree, and thinking this, I decide at once that I like her enough. To help her case, no one has ever asked if I am alright.

Slowly I unstick myself from Rook's side and step gingerly towards her. “As well as can be expected.” In one of the few books in Ma's house, there is a scene of a girl greeting politely a beautiful lady from the city. Is your mother well? —Very well, thank you. And your father, is he well? —Very well, thank you. And what about yourself, Lucille? —As well as can be expected.

I can't see him but I know Rook's mouth is twitching. I've told him about this scene, before. About how funny I'd found it.

With my mask still flipped up (like Rook's anger I momentarily hold it at bay) I can see so much better—so with great interest I watch as she watches Rook, and discern quickly that she is afraid of him.

“Oh. He won't hurt you.” I wonder if I am supposed to say are you well? so that she can say very well, thank you. After Rook, the autumn girl is the second I have met from outside the swamp.

And the first I have met far away from the reach of Ma.

✦

« r »| @~~Nicnevin~~

RE: black rabbit in the alley. - Nicnevin - 08-16-2020

WHAT HE IS CAPABLE OF, YOUR MIND,
in the moment, scrambling to revise what you thought you knew of him and how with what you now know

The girl didn’t notice me. I can’t tell, with the deer and his milk-white eyes; he doesn’t seem to startle like she does, or freeze up, but I think I can see a contraction of his muscles that suggest he has gone tense at my appearance. I catch myself just short of thinking good, and I tell myself not to expect the worst. That would be rude.

The deer sees me first, his empty stare training on me, and I stand beneath it unflinching, though not hostile. She seems to follow his stare to find me, and, when she does, she watches me for what feels like quite some time. (It is likely not so long at all, though she is moving slowly.) She steps away from the deer and towards me, and somehow the new space between them grants me some measure of relief.

The girl responds to my question with, “As well as can be expected,” like a courtly lady or a princess; and, now that I can get a good look at her, I think that she seems quite like one, with her slender, mottled moth-grey form and her pale eyes, and her long hair. Those feathers at her hip start to seem less like a simple oddity, or a quirk, than the residue of some fairy-tale curse or quest. I wonder if she has been a bird before, in this life or the last. I think that it would make sense. She looks like a wisp, some lady-turned-forest-spirit, right down to the dead crow’s skull (that is far too large for a crow) that sits on her forehead, momentarily turned up.

(There are stories of princesses who speak with the disembodied head of their dearest animal companion. I have always liked those, because I remember being a sword, and it always seems to me that it was a pity that I could never speak to my wielder; but, then, if I did speak, I would cease to be a sword.)

(If she is cursed, if they are cursed, or they were cursed – I suppose that would explain the stalking cat in deerskin.)

My proper manners take over, even though I’m not quite sure what to say - that isn’t what I meant might be a bit insulting, and I don’t want to trouble her any further. “I’m glad to hear it,” I say, instead, and sincerely. I don’t know how well I am expecting her to be, and I’m a bit afraid to ask for clarification. If she is being antagonized, she doesn’t seem particularly inclined to tell me about it.

She adds, a moment later, Oh. He won’t hurt you. By “he,” I can only assume that she means the buck, and I don’t quite believe her, but I don’t say it.

It’s not me I’m worried about him hurting, I want to say, but I don’t say that, either. I have a feeling that I shouldn’t – that, if I did, it might break the fragile peace that has descended upon the clearing. That it might make that poor, possibly-cursed soul angry, and, for the both of our sake’s, I think it would be best to avoid trouble.

“Alright,” I say, instead, and decide to trust her, or, at the very least, try to. (My knightly impulses refuse to allow me to put my guard down entirely, at least around something that seems so wrong in its own skin.) She must know her companion better than I do, after all, and I should know better than to go sticking my nose into the business of total strangers. (They both look a little bit scuffed up, though – and that’s to say nothing of what little bits of their conversation I heard her saying before I showed up.)

She doesn’t say anything else, as though she doesn’t know how to, so I keep talking instead. “I’m Nicnevin,” I say, and dip low into one of those compulsive bows, wings outstretching; they are so long that they brush up against the birch trees on either side of the grove, “a knight of the Winding Gold. Who are you – and your companion -, miss?” I raise my head slowly, a few unkempt chestnut curls falling between my eyes; I swipe them away quickly, almost without thinking, my eyes trained on the two of them.

I know I should be keeping my eye on the buck, but my stare keeps lingering on the girl’s pale green eyes. They’re striking, against her coat, and they remind me pleasantly of new growth.

@Maybird || discord eyes emoji | "the older boys," grady chambers

"Speech!"

RE: black rabbit in the alley. - Maybird - 10-30-2020

by me (ralli)

I dream four great hawks and a speckled bird.
I dream Quetzalcoátl, Ometeótl, the Great Manitou
who leaves me a vision to make me strong,
who lifts me to birds
from a mere
cat girl.

✧

e shouldn't linger, Rook says coldly, but I ignore him.

His voice has lost his edge at the appearance of the autumn-girl and without it, he is only a stag, matching me shoulder to dark shoulder. The tines of his antlers dull down to bones. The malice in his eyes curdles to milk.

I step past him flippantly, but not before whispering a singsong, concerned, Crow? into his coal-black ear.

I want to talk to the autumn-girl and Rook snarls because he knows he can't stop me.

My hair tumbles around my face as I tip my mask up, up, up. "I'm glad to hear it.” A tingle goes down my spine at how lovely her voice sounds as it echoes through the boggy glade. Like it belongs there, cradled by the leaves and the moss and the little white daisies like snow. I think back to Elder's row of glittering perfumes.

Bottled up to be lovingly emptied, pretty things put up on display. Can the autumn-girl's voice be bottled up as well, to be carried with me forever? I tilt my head, blow at a strand of my hair.

Smile at her a secret smile.

I look down as I walk, so that I won't break a leaf or, worse, a mushroom. I don't look up again until I have made it all the way to her, the moss in my wake undisturbed, the daisies (and mushrooms) spared from a cruel crushing death. Rook trails behind, as sullen as a lost shadow. In his silence I hear his anger, a little like green wood spitting on a fire. Yet my coat is as mottled grey as a stone. I throw him a reproachful smile over my shoulder and mime (in my head) stamping down on our telekinetic bond.

Until that beautiful voice drifts again through the glade, and my childish spite is instantly quelled. “I’m Nicnevin,” she says, “a knight of the Winding Gold. Who are you – and your companion -, miss?” And then she bows, a motion so magnificent, so practiced, her wings skating up against the birch, that even Rook stops his sulking to stare.

Did she say... knight? But of course I heard it too. I nod, forgetting to sneer, and Rook's head slips to a rest over my neck. I raise my brow yet say nothing. I will forgive him this incursion because I know him too well to miss the wonder stippling his thoughts; he'd accused me earlier of not guarding mine enough, yet his have always leaked through like floodwater out of a shoddy dam.

“You — are a knight?” I say, asking for us both. I wonder if there is excitement in my voice; it is a little lighter than normal, a little airier, and if I listen I can hear the thud thud thud of my heart in my chest. (Reminding me hostilely of its importance.)

Rook's head shifts and his antlers tangle like whispery branches in my mane. She must not be from any of the courts. There are no knights in Novus, Bird — only in stories.

“There are no knights in Novus,” I parrot, my eyes blinking, lashes tangling. “So you have come from very far, haven't you?” My bird's tail twitches, like a cat's does when it's happy. A breeze whistles through the trees and curls of white lotus petals flutter down from my braids.

“Oh.” She'd asked for our names. “My name is Bird, and this,” I nod, gesturing towards the stag with his head resting sourly over mine, “this is Rook.” Another breath, before I smile like Elder had taught me.

(Strings at the edges of your mouth, dragging upwards. Gently, gently. And squint your eyes, just a little. So that they curve like two half-moons.)

I wonder what we look like to her, two pairs of eyes in the growing dark. One like half-moons, one like a milky abyss.

✦

« r »| @~~Nicnevin~~