[P] groundhog evening, dancing on the ceiling | party

[Ishak]

☼  ISHAK  ☼
اسحاق

"we're too far gone / nothing I say will mean anything"

Strains of a string band come drifting in, and you turn your face towards an open window. Cool night winds come through, rippling the curtains and silks festooned about the hall. The floor is shine-stained — mica and cosmetics and blood.


The stars glimmer, and for but a moment you are the colt tracing the patterns of your father’s maps. You are the press of cool wind and sand in your mouth and gathering clouds on the horizon. You close your eyes tightly, choosing to focus on reds and purples instead as you wobble slightly.


You are, perhaps, a drink shy of one too many.


You’re relentlessly tired of this party, as it spills into overlong hours. Some fool had gone and stumbled into someone else’s unsheathed blade, and now Ruth is busy patching them both up. (If it’s actually a foolish and botched assassination attempt, you can’t say you care. Unless someone is trying to kill Ruth, it’s your firm opinion that it’s none of your business.)


You grimace as you catch sight of a wine stain, of its accompanying broken wine glass. Even here, tucked away from the whirl of energy that is the body of the party, there is work being made for the servants. You hear a moan of pain, and of complaint, and you’re not in any mood to be Ruth’s surrogate bedside manner.


You check instead that the door is firmly shut.


If you thought the walls would actually silence the music, you’d slip into Ruth’s rooms and pass out on the pile of cushions in the corner. It feels like the further you get from the center the louder the party is, but that might just be your fast developing headache speaking.


Irritated, when you hear the clip of hoofsteps, you are quick to say, “Room’s occupied. I’d recommend against interrupting.”

---

@Corradh | syn <3  | “million pieces” - bastille

[Corradh]

my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves

I follow him, because I am bored and drunk and it is late. I am lonely in a way that never feels like loneliness but, instead, an inescapable kind of hunger. 

I follow him, because I recognize (albeit through a blur of whiskey and moonshine and wine—a combination that could kill, really) that I have never had a proper conversation with him. In fact, in my inebriated state, I cannot even think as to why he occupies our estate as he does. I know it has something to do with Ruth, and if she were any of my other siblings I might assume they were lovers. But, because it is Ruth, I think instead it is far more likely that he sold his soul. 

(As much as the men in my family would like to claim semblance to our magical mother, I think it is the women—I think it is Ruth’s hard eyes, and Hagar’s cunning, and Miriam’s anger, and Delilah’s—well, Delilah’s otherness).

And anyways, he is handsome, not that I have particularly high standards. It is simply a matter of—well, curiosity. 

Yes, curiosity. He is far from the other occupant’s of Pilate’s festival, in a corner where the music sounds like the memory of music instead of its actuality. I don’t mind. In fact, the quiet I find on the fringes of the gathering is a welcome respite. I am tired of painting, and being painted. I had seen where he had gone from the corner of my eye; the “accident” had caused quite the commotion, and I knew with such a previous injury Ruth would be busy at work practicing her medical skills. 

Room’s occupied. I’d recommend against interrupting. 

I don’t allow the words to dissuade me, but push past. (I might even find it more entertaining, the idea of walking in on something I am not supposed to. I am nearly disappointed when he is alone). The door slams too loudly on the opposite wall. 

“Ah, my apologies.” I say it in a way that makes it clear I am not truly sorry. “Although, really—it is my house.” 

He does not belong here. He does not belong in the Ieshan estate. He does not belong with my family. I wonder if, perhaps, he is under some spell, to remain—or perhaps we entertain him.

It is different, for me.

I can’t leave—blood is thicker than water, and all that bullshit. “What was I interrupting?” My voice is softer, less ironic; it belongs to this dark room, and this quieter space, and the way that my hair falls wild and unkempt into my emerald eyes. 

|| "Speech." || @Ishak 

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