in clarity.

independent and private caleb widogast.

[inklarheit]

what if i posted a starter call.

[inklarheit]

my work here is done, 

[inklarheit]

mightynope‌:

@inklarheit.

  It’s a mark of how far they’ve come — as people, as friends, and maybe even geographically — that when Nott sees his new coat she doesn’t immediately react. Neither unfavorably to the idea of change, nor favorably. She just tilts back her head, yellow eyes narrowed and nose scrunched in deep thought. It’s not just the coat, is it? Caleb has washed his face, and he shaves now, and doesn’t hunch so much inside his clothes.

  It’s not just the coat. Everything just changed, so fast. But she wants to read it as a good sign.

     “How do you feel about trimming your hair?”   she asks, skeptical.   “We could clean up those split ends… maybe braid a little somethin’ in… you would look very nice. Even more handsome.”

      Hand rising to rub at the faint darkness of stubble the last shave has left behind, Caleb lets her regard him with an open sort of stare. There is not so much hiding, now. From the Nein. Especially from Nott. 

     Not imperceptibly, his brow furrows. “There are flowers in my hair -- eh, all the time,” he says. The tone is gentle. Has a questioning lilt at the end of it. If the furrow deepens slightly at her complimenting his appearance, he pays it no mind.

     ( It does not matter, he thinks instead, that there have not been flowers in his hair since before Felderwin. It should not matter. )

[hobo-wizard-widogast]

inspecting the crystals

[mababwionarts]

“You look like you feel hopeful, Caleb.”

[movedscoresofzero]

A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort.

Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn. (via movedscoresofzero)

[rowyndodendron]

Campaign 2 Episode 55: 

Caleb ‘How Do Compliments?’ Widogast

[inklarheit]

thrownsoul‌:

@inklarheit.

cont.

  Alice keeps her eyes steady on him, whether he looks back or not, one arm cross loosely over her chest, the other hand raised to her mouth. Yes, that’s the word for you, isn’t it? 

  He probably thinks she’s reckless, not just by comparison. He wouldn’t be wrong. When you don’t have a lot to lose… And he does. She’s not sure what, besides Nott and his friends ( isn’t that enough? ), but it’s written all over him.

     “Caution will only get you so far, Caleb.”   She mirrors his way of speaking — quiet, distinct — but in that, there’s more of a challenge.   “If you want something, eventually you have to go get it.”

     A pause.

     At once, his brow furrows a fraction more, and his eyes lock to hers under the hood of his expression. “Oh,” he murmurs, the syllable long drawn and low in his chest -- foreboding. Magma shuddering beneath volcanic rock. “Of that, I assure you -- I am quite aware. But this--”

     Caleb leans forward. Not toward Alice -- toward the table. And he lifts a bandaged hand to press his index finger, pointedly, into the grain. And -- perhaps he is leaning toward her, just a mite, because he has still not broken his stare against hers, nor his expression, which tints with that ever-present desperation he has. That small smile, which is there and then gone in a blink.

      “This is not. The same. As that, Alice.”

[inklarheit]

mightynope‌:

  She’s grateful for the purring cat, for the relief from an awful, weighty silence. She is grateful for Caleb, and his hand in her hair, keeping her close. She’ll always be grateful for Caleb. She’s grateful they got out of Zadash before anything worse happened. So why does she feel like shit?

  His tone is familiar to her. It used to make her wonder what he was planning, in that mind stuffed with book-learning and magic and secrets. Since they talked to Beauregard, the question of what he wants to do, in the end, is less murky. But the end seems a long, long way off.

  They can do it. They survived together before, and they’re stronger now than they used to be. ( Nott tries to blow away the wisp of thought that the motley collection of lunatics made them better. She tries, but it stings like smoke. )

  Her voice is such an ugly sound, no matter how she tries to soften it, and it cracks.

     “Are you upset?”

      That gives him pause.

       It does more than give him pause: like marble splitting under a chisel, his countenance cracks and splits where Nott’s voice does as well. The line of his brow goes kinked at the bridge of his nose with the amount that it creases, and his chin doesn’t shift so much as it twitches, once, this singular startled motion.

       Then he shifts. Quick. Takes his hand from Nott’s neck so that he can push himself by his elbows, and crane his head down to meet her gaze, the rustling of fabric between them the only noises in the silence of the room. In this position, their foreheads are not quite touching -- but it’s close. And if she looks, his eyes are focused and clear and dark with concern.

      There’s a sense of soft urgency to his murmur. His clarification. “At you?”

[inklarheit]

that’s it. shh. shh. you’re okay.

    The town they are passing through is having a festival. It involves a bonfire in the square, and the burning of the year’s wreckage, that the ashes might bring new life in their wake. 

     And he thought -- he thought he would be ready.

     But he was wrong.

     All it took was the first flare around a splintered wagon wheel. That initial explosion. The flames, eager to eat, engulfing.

     Around the corner of the building he’d hovered next to (just in case), Caleb crouches low to the ground and trembles. His hands still in the air, and then jerk to his hair, seizing fists of it. Tugging.

     He doesn’t realize he’s stopped breathing until Nott tells him to; he sucks in one deep breath, and another, and realizes she’s rubbing his back, and has a hand on his shoulder, and is talking him through this.

     I’m not, he wants to say. He knows what he is. Okay is not it.

    Shuddering, he presses his forehead into his knees.

    They stay like that for forty-seven minutes.

[inklarheit]

mightynope‌:

@inklarheit.

cont.

  She shifts so she can wind her arm about him, the other trapped neatly between their bodies, then lays her head back on his sternum. Even through his scarf: B-buh. B-buh. B-buh. Nott wants to let the rhythm soothe her to sleep. But tired and sleepy are not the same things.

     “We’re gonna be all right, Caleb…”   She squeezes till she can feel the give underneath his coat, so he can feel it all the way down through his ribcage.   “We don’t need them.”

  But she wanted them. And for one bright flash in the dark she thought it might work.

     With a soft meow, Frumpkin hops onto the bed and makes a home out of the junction where Caleb’s side and Nott’s arm meet and begins to purr. Eventually his stroking slows, and his fingers rest at the nape of her neck -- but for several long moments, the action remains. 

     “It will be difficult,” he murmurs, finally. Already his planning runs parallel to the memories -- where they might go, what they might do, how they might survive. A thousand and one plans for a thousand and one dangers. 

     There is a sharp burning behind his eyes, but he does not cry. 

     Instead: a small, damp huff, a self-depreciating thing that masks nothing. “Or maybe it will be easier, in the end--? I do not--” The sentence cuts itself short, abruptly so, and there is a naked moment of silence. He presses his lips together, stares blankly at the ceiling, and tries again. “I did not know, at times, with them.”

[inklarheit]

“Your heartbeat’s really loud.”

       There is silence for a good long while.

      “Yeah,” he replies, finally. His voice is not there; it’s more a whisper, and his throat clicks when he swallows, and his lips press together and shift and squirm with words that stick on his tongue, and he cannot stop blinking. His pulse thunders through his ears, previously unheard under the crystalline memory of Ikithon’s voice. Though he does not deserve it, his fingers stroke, jolting, at Nott’s hair – pressing her closer – stealing this creature comfort for – as long as she will allow. 

      They stay like this for moments, and then he swallows again. “Yeah.”

[inklarheit]

You’re beautiful. And me? Not so beautiful.

     Caleb stills a moment. In the candlelight, and staring as he does at the tome in his hands, it is easy to see the sharp, angular features of his jaw, the striking flickers of colour in his eyes, where everything else is covered in a dark grime. 

     When he looks up, his brow is knitted. “No,” he says, and it is very soft. Caleb closes the tome, and his fingers rest against the leather cover as he leans forward, and his gaze is something electric and surefelt. “I do not think that is true.”

      A pause.

     “You have -- eyes that glow in the dark, yes, and many -- many misaligned teeth, to be sure. But. Your soul.” And there is no hesitation in the way Caleb’s fingers lift from the tome and reach to press against where Nott’s heart would be -- and Caleb knows where it is, because he is a studious sort, and he would know these sorts of things. “Your soul is -- is -- is -- so kind, and thoughtful, and smart, and so well meaning, and, and, and truly beautiful -- ... And mine is, eh, shit.”

      Black as tar and foul to match. Perhaps it says something that he doesn’t look away or flinch when he says that -- about the truth of it all, and the soul-binding belief in it. He just tilts his head a bit, the most tiniest of shrugs. What can you do?

      After another moment, he gives Nott a twitching sort of smile, and taps her on the nose, and settles back.

     “So you see, we are opposites, you and me.”

[aseaofquotes]

Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow

[inklarheit]

it means reading books and things, stupid. ( is an affectionate 'stupid.' )

    There’s a lengthy and almost meaningful silence.

    "Well,” he concedes finally, the edge of the word blending into a sigh, “I like books.” A pause, and he shrugs with the edge of his jaw clicking. “And I like reading.”

    Another pause. Caleb meets Alice’s gaze. Leans forward a bit. Breezily, direct: “And I like you. So I see no reason why we should not, eh -- do that. Ja?”

    And as if he had not said anything at all, Caleb turns and exits the room -- fishing for copper wire, that he might wrap it around his hand and tell Nott where they will be spending the rest of the afternoon.

[inklarheit]

at least i’m not afraid.

      His voice wavers at the onset. It’s soft, but resolute. “— I am not afraid.”

     It seems he cannot look Alice in the eye. There’s something hedge-y in the way his brow furrows and his eyes are shadowed and he jerks his chin away, sudden. The pad of his thumb and ring finger on his left hand rub quick circles around each other. Alice is not close to him but he can feel her presence -- a sun against his shoulder.

     After a pause, he clarifies. His chin jerks again -- upward, and he still doesn’t look. “I am wary. There is a difference.”

[funscarylaudna]

Critical Role I Campaign 2 Episode 18 ➣ Anonymous said: can you gif the moment trent introduced himself to beau and yasha and liam fkn FROZE