to you, apatouria - decietful prometheus. the clever and crafty, bitter beyond all bitterness, who has sinned against the gods in bestowing honors upon creatures of a day - to you, thief of fire, i speak. listen well.
when you wake, you swear you can still feel their teeth sawing into your skin.
kaleidoscoping talons and teeth gnash with bones — branches? bones? they fracture with the ease of wood but the sick sinewy snap of bones — seem to squeeze, to tighten around sikyung until his vessels threaten to burst at the seams. he still chokes on his blood; it’s impossible to see but sikyung knows in that garbled clarity of dreamscapes that it’s a fox. sikyung swears he can feel its smile in his skin, twisting his flesh. and underneath it all, the antler god’s voice seems to reverberate through his skull; demanding presence among pandaemonium; all sikyung can hear among the everything.
it’s cacophony that shatters into sudden clarity.
late nights at work — to avoid that which finds him anyway, sikyung grumbles at the irony — mean light already threatens to pierce his bedroom, rising rays burning through his curtains into an eerie redness. sikyung clicks his tongue, stares past himself in the mirror. it’s too early to feel, so he remembers; idle hands rub exposed skin to soothe nonexistent wounds, stitching his thoughts together instead.
firstly, sikyung supposes he has an answer; despite everything, a grim smugness settles in his chest. while it’s nothing good to know, knowledge is still power. sikyung has an eternity to panic, nights dragging deeper standing as proof; but fear can always come later. it would only serve to muddy the waters. with that line of thinking, the choice becomes clear as his reflection; and perhaps just as wrong with the way his image seems to shift.
you can’t read a book you don’t have access to. you can’t play a game you aren’t a part of. sikyung can’t know truth from untruth if he drops the matchbook before lighting whatever is before him, be it candle or be it blaze.
and if the antler god does surround him — made obvious, now, with its knowledge and admonishment — it reminds him of trying to light his cigarettes on windy, rainy nights. how often sparks would be snuffed. sikyung snatches the mirror off of his bedside table.
some might call it cowardice, the way sikyung slinks back through the forest. it might be easy to imagine a tail between his legs with the way he keeps his head down; sikyung counts his steps. he knows it’s fickle fear, scowling at himself for the way he shudders as the trees begin to grow taller and the path gives way to unfettered being. he feels exposed.
it’s not too long before he returns to where he stood not long before. this time, sikyung does not kneel. the compact mirror hits earth with a dull thud, seeming so far away to him. sikyung’s own sigh snaps him out of it, hand still hanging open from where he had dropped it. he clicks his tongue, stuck between speech in silence. perhaps it doesn’t actually matter too much.
“very well,” sikyung says after a while, just as unceremoniously as he gifted his mirror. “i suppose this is the part where i also apologize for my behavior.”
sikyung wouldn't say he frequents the crow's nest, but the din around him is familiar all the same. too in his head, he knows; staying deep within his own roots is doing nothing but seeming like a cage, phantom brambles still buried in sikyung's psyche. surely, plucking them out should have come with ease — yet the sting of talon still seems to overpower the taste of the whiskey down his throat.
eyes flit from person to person; such a small town means sikyung can name almost everyone, particularly with his profession. peoplewatching was the plan, initially. to simply watch and take stock of the village's flock, ethereal weight of nightmare sitting on sikyung's shoulders. perhaps the uncharacteristic stress is what ignites sikyung to slither through the crowd upon seeing a particularly familar face — though sikyung is still used to features more youthful than the ones he sees upon ilwoo's face now, there's still that air of...something, sikyung supposes.
"hey," at least the smallness of their town means sikyung doesn't have to raise his voice too much to be heard. he smiles as though he slept well. "what brings you here tonight? is there something on your mind?"
THE ANTLER GOD ENTERS YOUR DREAM —
on your nightstand, you have the mirror your family gave you, propped up and easy to see. you’re used to your face, the tired features that the night invites. but this time, when you look into the glass, it isn’t yourself that you see. your face is an empty shell of a thing; devoid of a nose or a mouth or eyes. you’re not sure how you’re seeing anything with no eyes (where are your eyes?), but you are. and so you can watch as your face changes. the skin melts and drips to the floor and a skull emerges, horns sprouting from the top and your not-eyes start to burn as you take in its image. you wrench your impossible gaze away from the mirror and suddenly that same skull is in front of you instead of inside you.
“bring me your most valuable possession and i will reward you. leave it at the mouth of the forest, under the tree with eyes. follow me, and find the truth.”
you look back to the mirror and you’re wearing your face again. you hear yourself breathing too fast, feel your feet tangled in your sheets. you were sleeping. you’re awake now, but you still feel its presence in the dark. you won’t forget it.
moon rises high and sikyung stirs in the silence between sleep and wake. there’s a haze to the feeling of it, shadows pulling shapes out of the corners of his room. liminality stretches into unreality as his face stretches, falls, drips and twists like lichen. a mask of nothingness becomes bone, exposes hollow underneath. the pits where eyes should be, should gift him sight, stare back at — at what? who? anyone at all? sikyung seems to slip into the shadows as the antler god takes his place as though it rightfully belongs to him. if his grandparents were to be believed, perhaps it was. but they’re long since dead, and so sikyung levies his lack of gaze against the deity’s eyeless return. in the morning, he would snort — is it even a conversation at all if nobody is there to speak it?
somehow the memory of the dream comes clearer to sikyung than the dream itself had felt. usually, it’s the opposite; dreams of his often swallowed and eaten by inky night. it doesn’t matter much — not until the jarring difference is illuminated by wisps of sun through the windows. the presence of the antler god still feels as though it sticks to sikyung like tar, even as he rubs his skin raw in the shower. rivulets of water help him think, he convinces himself — even as sikyung stays awake far earlier than he knows he should. 3:33 the clock ticks, too early to be up. yet a deal has been struck, far sooner than sikyung expected. he almost expected nothing at all, with the way his mother seems to have all but forgotten. he won’t ask her, she’d simply joke. he knows what her grandmother would say, knows she’d chastise him for even asking. but though sikyung is a moon, he is not his mother, he is not his grandmother.
truth, the god has promised, like he seeps under sikyung’s shed to see his secrets. as though the antler god is the only one who can see sikyung’s desires laid plain. it begs questions that sikyung wants answered; the truth is an easy thing to want. if he were a god, he would want followers. he wouldn’t have to tell the truth, he assumes, because even if a mortal caught him — what could they do?
perhaps it should have been answer enough for sikyung, that the antler god does know all. but the question bores holes into him that the shower water drills into his skin; like the holes of the antler god’s skull, and he shudders.
by the time sikyung emerges, rinsed anew yet no more refreshed than before, at least beams of sun kiss his skin. at least he has a plan. sikyung dresses himself as calmly as he is able, dons his mask of a calm smile. it’s easy for him now. his job is to smile in the face of hard things, deliver harsh news with the gentleness of a hug, usher people through the darkest times of their lives and beyond; a little nightmare is nothing, he tells himself.
he remembers the stories his grandmother would tell him, the pallor sinking into her as sikyung couldn’t help but ask more, beg to know what happened, perhaps far too young when he’s told the story of the sacrifices. these shoes are easier to slip into than the god’s — the shoes of a follower are only just different from his own. he wouldn’t want to worship a god like that. a god so petty and vengeful.
a god who’s already been tricked once, he thinks, opening the trunk beneath his bed. no, he would never give the god his heirloom — never, he says, as though he doesn’t still glance sideways at it. no, the antler god would not be getting his most prized possession…but close enough, really, sikyung notes the lurch in his chest as he takes hold of a fraying length of rope.
he still remembers the day he received it. his grandmother had been there, and his grandfather. mom and dad too; after all, sikyung was finally seventeen. it was a monumentous cornerstone for the moon family. he had been helping in more small roles before, but seventeen was when sikyung was allowed the responsibility of embalming corpses, too. his grandmother had watched him the whole time, finally bequeathing him a spool of rope to be used to help swaddle the bodies in their burial shrouds; an important part of ensuring people reach their final rest. while sikyung had used most of this first length of rope long ago, the last bit — too short to use — he held onto in an uncharacteristic bout of sentimentality.
if he said nothing, perhaps this could be important enough. even if it isn’t, sikyung still gains a shard of the truth; if the antler god calls him on it, he can be sure even his thoughts are listened to. he still gets the truth, in a way.
it’s easy to slip something like that into his coat pocket, and it’s easier still to lie about some random errand to his mother’s questioning. sikyung clings to that ease and carries it with him through the woods, weaves through the trees like the webs he pretends not to see clinging to leaves all around him. singleminded to a fault, he can be. high above the treetops, far obscured from sikyung’s sight other than pinpricks of ember piercing through leaves, the sun barely strikes noon when he makes it to the tree with eyes.
“i am not sure if i’m supposed to bury this,” sikyung intones to the forest around him, shadows dragging across the brush. “but it feels wrong not to, considering what the purpose of this is. was, i suppose.” he gently corrects himself, used to the way the dirt clumps under his fingernails as he digs. deep enough to truly bury the rope, which is deeper than many expect. “this was gifted to me by my grandmother for my first embalming. it represents who i am, in a way.”
he supposes there is a half-truth to that as well. it’s the only thing to make him tremble as he covers the rope with dirt — the antler god’s appearance perhaps should have been the scariest part of the nightmare, but he sees the facelessness still when he closes his eyes. he pats the ground firmly, as though it will shake the image from his mind.
hey y'all! my name is harley (he/they) and i present you with moon sikyung, our snake canon. he's (one of) onyang's resident morticians, and the moons have been at it for a long while. i'm still working on my profile details, but sikyung's bio is up here! under the cut i'll be putting a bulletpoint of most of the important stuff. if you wanna reach out to plot or dm here or on discord feel free to! my handle on discord is radkxng. without further ado, here's some basics!
sikyung may be a mortician, but he does his best to be approachable. he has a rather kind smile, and deals gently wherever he can. in conversations, sikyung prefers to ask questions rather than answer them.
it's not meekness, though; sikyung carries himself with confidence, and while he doesn't try to attract attention (especially not negative attention), he does admittedly thrive in it a bit when he's the center of it.
the morgue has been in his family for generations. inheriting it wasn't one of sikyung's big dreams or whatever, but he decided not to dread it. he uses it to his advantage as much as he can, keeping general tabs on the population and, in his mind, help keep them safe. as someone who struggles to deeply connect with people, sikyung also likes the sympathy it gives him.
sikyung tries to at least establish a hello with most of the people in their small town -- after all, he knows one day most of the people in their small town will end up on his table.
he's rather kind, and appears to be rather open, but a lot of that openness is...not fake, per se, but a bit of an illusion or a tool. sikyung very rarely gets close enough to people to divulge his true thoughts and feelings (especially with regards to the folklore of the town) but he tries to present enough "surface level depth" (as he calls it) to maintain his friendships while remaining possibly all too cautious.
his father died of a heart attack a couple of years ago, and shortly after his mother retired - too tired, hands aching from so much detail work over the years. now, sikyung more or less runs it on his own.
i feel like im forgetting something so obvious but idfk what
hi :>
o as far as plots go idk about anything in specific yet! but esp if you have an angsty plot idea (but i'll take anything! i just thrive in ic conflict - even if not direct, even if it's just something lurking. aaah. or not conflict between them but with sth else idk i hope u get my drift! it also just makes sense w his job and his uhh melancholy self beneath the veneer of soothing cheer)
maybe someone actually close enough to sikyung to try and chip away at all his layers of presentation?
