IN THE PARAMETERS OF CANVAS, THE COFFIN OF THE FRAME -
the art of wreckage, how to figure ourselves in the ruins of what we can't traverse.
The sound of a crash from the opposite side of the tree sends Locust running – long strides that aren’t exactly panicked (she’s far too much of an adrenaline junkie for it), but possess a certain urgency as they carry her around to the opposite side of the tree. It takes her a moment to process what the mare is actually saying, beyond that it’s creepy as fuck. Locust has never seen a demon before, though she has heard stories of them – long-limbed creatures with too many mouths and teeth and claws come crawling up from deep-sea trenches to lead sailors astray or curse passing vessels – on her travels. Occultism did not necessitate believing in everything, so she had always assumed that those stories were just yarns, but, listening to the woman’s strange chanting, she considers adjusting her stance on their existence.
She doesn’t know how to describe the voice, beyond that it could not possibly come from the lips of the mare. It is dry and harsh, and it makes her think of the crackle of leaves under-hoof in late autumn, when they were completely dead, or the texture of coral, sharp enough to rake skin if you rubbed it the wrong way. Locust isn’t even sure that it sounds like a voice; she could compare it more easily to a cacophony of not-voice sounds, combined to make words.
Worst of all, however, was what that voice was saying.
”..and all we are, are bones in its path, and in its way, and soon we are dust, we are dust, we are dust…”
It occurs to her, vaguely, that her back is to the gnarled mass of unidentifiable tree; and that there is a whining, frantic dog jumping about the writhing mare’s limbs and licking at her face, perhaps in some effort to soothe her. A normal dog, by the looks of things – not one of the island creatures. She opens her mouth to speak, when, over the muddled, nauseating mixture of whine and unearthly rasp, she hears something that she recognizes.
Locust looks up from the scene unfolding before her, and, on the other side of the mare, she rests her eyes on a familiar gleam of pale gold. August - and he doesn’t seem to have noticed her yet, as absorbed by the mare as she had been before she’d heard his voice. Perhaps that tree wasn’t as cursed as she’d thought after all.
(Gods. He really is starting to look like his father, isn’t he? She still remembers him newborn – hell, when she found out that Goldie was going to have a kid in the first place. She’d never known, exactly, how to take the news, or the idea of anything tying him to shore; for once in her life, Locust could say with complete confidence that she didn’t know what Golden would do, and there was a part of her that half-expected him to stay ashore with his wife and son, and she knew that she couldn’t have blamed him for it, though she thinks that she probably would have found a way to do it anyways. But she liked the kid, and she wished he’d stayed with him. If he did, he might have been alive, and she would have been much happier to lose him to that than to the sea.)
(Anyways, she likes the kid. Loves him, even, in the same sort of way she’d loved Maribelle – which was most of the reason why she’d never offered him a place on her vessel, even after his mother died and he was taken to the Scarab, even though she would have much rather taken him with her, if he would have come.)
(But the sea was dangerous, and it had taken her far too long to know it.)
August looks up, and he sees her, pale eyes taking her in; his jaw dangles open for a moment, and she stifles a snicker, primarily because there is still a possessed woman between them. He dips his head, and offers a, hello, captain, and his brows knit in a way that suggests that he doesn’t know any more than she does about what’s going on in front of them.
“Hey, kid,” she says, with a brusque kind of affection – it tugs at the corner of her lips, something like a smile. (And her sidelong glance at the convulsing mare suggests that she has no more of a clue of what’s going on with that than August.) “Seems like I got back just in time for trouble.” Whether she means the island or whatever the hell was going on between them is an ambiguity that Locust doesn’t bother to remark on; she just takes a cautious step forward, as though the drafty mare in front of them is a snake about to bite, and, in a low voice, inquires, “Lass? Can ya hear me?” She doesn’t think that she can, so she doesn’t bother saying anything else – her convulsions seem to be coming less rapidly, that strange voice and chanting fading. Might as well see if they can wait it out.
Whatever this is, Locust is convinced that it’s probably that goddamned tree’s fault – and, with that in mind, she raises her gaze momentarily to August. “Keep an eye on that tree, will ya? It seems to…move.” She still doesn’t want to think through the implications of that (much like she doesn’t want to think through the implications of whatever possessed the poor woman in front of them), and, with her back to the branches…
@Kassandra @August || <3 || "sea of ice," callie siskel
"Speech!" ||
