[P] a word and a flower

[Fiona]

there is still the sun that shines,
and whispering rain in the evenings,
and blossoms and birds at the window
that greet one in the gentle mornings

Fiona had wandered past Tinea Swamp without realizing it. The ground had eventually grown more solid, drier, beneath her steps, the air less damp and quieter, less of a buzz filling her ears. When was the last time she had left Terrastella? Though, Amare Creek was hardly that far outside the borders of her home. This forest was brighter, more light filtering through the autumn trees. A shy covering of fallen leaves was on the ground, although most still clung to their branches, displaying their fiery radiance in the late afternoon light.

In the distance, the lavender girl could hear the babbling of the creek as it fed through the trees and she made her way toward it, steps light and quiet on the grass. Her bright eyes took in the sunlight through the leaves, dappling the forest floor and she was suddenly struck by the urge to draw. Unfortunately, Fiona had anticipated walking this far when she had simply gotten lost in her thoughts while searching the swamp for late blooming orchids. She did not have her drawing pages with her, but she thought she could make due with her notepad in a pinch.

Once she arrived at the creek Fiona dropped carefully to the ground and allowed herself to get comfortable in a patch of light. The gentle sound of the rushing water was tender, serene, and she pulled out her notepad and pencil, flipping past used pages toward the end where she kept sketches and pressed flowers. Then, she began to draw. The pencil slipped over the paper, creating flowing strokes and sharper, contrasting angles—the lilac painted girl became lost in the littlest movements and details as they came to life on the page—and the tranquility cradled her imagination.

@Raum c:

[Raum]

 


It is the scratch of a pencil that catches his attention. For once the Crow has been walking in the open. Along the weaving bank of the creek he meanders. Raum was the Crow that should have been silver, but this day he is as black as a raven’s wing.
 
Magic blooms in obsidian across his coat, is baptizes him in the darkness of Caligo and marks him as a worshiper of his Night goddess. The girl who sits with a pencil poised and working, is a creature like none his corvid gaze has ever seen.
 
In silence he drinks in the gloaming of her skin - a pastel lilac, that belongs only at dusk; it is painted over the slender curves of her torso. The scent of Terrastella clings to her skin, the Crow does not need to sway towards her to smell her thus. No, the wind is mischievous and bright, it carries all she is to him in one: the smell of paper and stars.
 
Raum might have passed her by, let darkness come to consume her when it might. But his eyes, electric, fall to follow her pencil like static upon her paper. The world comes to life beneath the work of her pencil. If this girl’s medium was a graphite, well, Raum’s brush was a dagger and his paint, blood. Chaos was his medium, created by a quill made by a crow’s feather.
 
Through his corvid eyes (so strangely blue for a creature now turned black), he watches this girl. They are yin and yang, so wildly separate: artists separated by morals enough to claim each star in the sky above them.
 
In silence the Crow approaches, his body remembering how it should be silver, how it should move like mercury – wicked, poisonous, invaluable. The air does not betray his dancer’s step  (if only he truly put it to dance and not the dance of devilry).  He arrives beside her in silence. Amare holds its breath, tremulous and faint, for Denocte’s Ghost as he stands beside Fiona.
 
He studies the girl’s work, his thoughts kept behind closed lips. It is a travesty his dagger rests so close to a work so delicate. Raum is a travesty here, with his wildfire love – so angry and violent. He takes love and makes its savage teeth shine.
 
“You manage to make things so beautiful.” He says, as if he has never seen the world as beautiful at all.

@Fiona <3 <3 eeee let's see what these kids make of each other!

 

[Fiona]

there is still the sun that shines,
and whispering rain in the evenings,
and blossoms and birds at the window
that greet one in the gentle mornings

The lavender girl startled, losing her grip on her pencil as it dropped to the paper. Her lashes fluttered, her eyes rising to settle on the man who had come up behind her like a ghost. Fiona drops her head bashfully, a shy smile curling the very corners of her lips. She was not used to others seeing her work since she so often sought out secluded places like this in which to draw.  Though she had gifted art before, those pieces were always intended to be seen. Most of her art was meant as a medium to help her think.

Fiona flipped to a blank page, once more brandishing her pencil, and began to write. I only draw what is already there. A pause, a moment of consideration, then, Do you not see the world as beautiful? The flower girl dipped her head, inviting him to join her if he wished. Though truthfully, she imagined it might be more comfortable for him to read her flowing script if he could get closer. This part Fiona was used to: sharing her thoughts, getting to know others in such an intimate way. It was the only way she knew. How else was she supposed to build new friendships?

It was that thought that brought a look of distress to Fiona's fine features, like a hostess who had forgotten to set out the drinks before the guests arrived, like she had forgotten something terribly important. Her pencil passed over the paper again. Forgive me, my name is Fiona. I am mute. It was an afterthought. A defining piece of her, perhaps even what made her who she was, but she so rarely thought about it. To her it was almost like saying Hello, my name is Fiona and I breathe, but she believed out of courtesy it was a bit of information she needed to offer. Not everyone would be willing to have a half conversation and she understood that.

@Raum Fiona: doesn't think twice about a strange man showing up behind her without making a sound, no matter how long he stood there for

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 

The creek babbles merrily in the background, the hum of summer slipping slowly on. Sunlight pours down through leaves and dapples like liquid light upon the ground.
 
Raum found her beneath the shade, her dusky coat brightened by the sun, her hair swept by the idle breeze. Upon her page, the creek and the home it meanders through is just as Raum sees it, and yet, it is something more.
 
Though he stood behind her for too long, silently watching, silently listening to the scratch of her tools across the paper, she is not surprised when he speaks. There is no ripple of shock that slips like electricity up her spine. No, Fiona is as unperturbed as a swan upon an empty lake.
 
This creature is grace, she is the softness of summer mornings, the glow of flowers mid bloom. At her back, Raum is the poison of mercury, slick shapeless, dangerous. Fiona looks to him, as if he is a flower and not a creature with death in his veins and ghosts in his past. His daggers are weighty upon his legs, they are fierce within his heart. Maybe it is a portent then, that this girl who looks to him like he is merely a flower she paints, is merely a symbol for what is to come: the day his daggers turn to flowers. The day he tastes the blood of the coming Night Queen.
 
Then the painting is gone, its leaf fluttering in the wind. She turns to a new page, blank and white as freshly driven snow. She takes a pencil and brings the paper to life with a cursive script that curls with elegance. He says nothing as she writes, but he feels the words as though etched upon his skin. “No.” He murmurs when her first sentence is drawn. “You draw what you see there.”
 
But Fiona is already asking him, through her perfect writing, if he sees the world as beautiful. The Crow does not smile, he does not even flinch. He watches her write of her weakness, her muteness. Ah, a girl who could not scream for help? She was indeed the perfect victim for a silent monster such as he. But, Raum has no business with this girl and her lovely paints, her naivety in the presence of horrors such as he.
 
Yet all the same his muzzle tips down to the shell of her ear, “No, the world is not so beautiful to me. See, there,” and he directs her gaze to a tree barren of leaves, jagged, gnarled and angular from a lightning strike – was it one from the Stormsinger Aislinn? “A tree struck by lightning - death residing in life. Go to the fringes of the Day Court and Night Court and see the poverty of their people. There are stark lines drawn. There is the disease, the suffering, the poverty. Go and see the scar upon Bexley Briar’s face, made by a blade and the hatred of an enemy. Go and see the corpses that litter the fields and paint the meadows red with blood and fill the air with cries. See the orphans who are starved of food and love… Is your world still beautiful then?” He asks of the girl, the one who sits in beauty and draws the most beautiful thing she can find. That voice of his it never rose, it never became anything but silk, though each word cuts like a blade.
 
Raum is the one who paints the world with blood, whose blue eyes are deep enough to drown, whose scarf ties about the throat of his victims, his lovers. “Go paint those pictures and then tell me if the world is still beautiful then.”

---

@Fiona 

[Fiona]

there is still the sun that shines,
and whispering rain in the evenings,
and blossoms and birds at the window
that greet one in the gentle mornings

His words do not make her falter, only make her tip her head slightly as her pencil moves over the paper again. Perhaps you have only been blinded to what is truly there, she rebutted, lavender eyes glancing up at him. He may be a wraith but she sees only the wandering soul beneath silver skin.

Fiona wonders what beautiful things he has touched and not realized their beauty. She does not wonder if he touches them and makes them black and ruined, as he does.

Then his breath is in her ear and his voice sends a shiver down her spine as a cold winter wind might: unbidden. Fiona's eyes trace the shape of the tree as he points it out, looks at the way its barren branches reach up toward the sky, grasping for the sun and stars all day and night long. When he stops speaking she is still silent, always silent, but then Fiona begins to write once more.

What of the tree's ability to still stand tall against the wind and rain? What of those, hungry on the streets, who give their meal to another hungrier? What of forgiveness, she challenges him every step of the way. What of the ones who survive, and the healers who give everything that they have for them. And what of those that care for the orphans, feed and clothe them? Is the world not both? One does not devalue the other.

She pauses, breathes, waits, and then, What of a girl whose mother abandoned her because she could not speak, who was always the odd one out? Should she not try to find beautiful things in the world because of the things that are not? And then she looks him in the eye, a fiercer quirk to her brow, a braver set to her shoulders.

Raum is a predator but Fiona is not his prey, not a mouse who will run and hide. He might write his wrongdoings on the wall in blood and black but even he could not cover up all the good still left behind. Perhaps you should spend a day giving instead of taking and then tell me it is not, were the last words she wrote on the page in her scrawling script.

@Raum