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@mrch7th
today is also #MRCH7TH! an independent & mutuals only roleplay blog for march 7th + evernight of honkai star rail, as written by qiu ( 18↑ + they/them ) please read my rules before following!
navi : rules ꕤ muse ꕤ icon border ꕤ header art blogroll : lyney ( @feliscus ) ꕤ multimuse ( @songwept )
*✦ where the story begins ✦*
( the girl in the meteorite ✦ albedo & march 7th )
the true tale of the mountain did not begin five hundred years ago. but long after the fall of sal vindagnyr, its children’s claim to the mountain lost to a deep snow-buried tale, a vagrant perched on its crags to witness her share of sin brought unto this world.
and sin it was. it answered the lost princess’s final curse upon the mountain, it calcified ‘humus’ out of dirt before ever birthing chalk. it fed white soil to this beast, over and over, until the perfect imperfection finally came into being. it was as golden as its master, and it was named her magnum opus.
the culmination of these sins entertained her fickle whims for a time. once she grew bored of even this too, the winds of time, death, space and life had whisked her to her next conquest. the perfect disciple, ‘cretaceus’, read her letter left to him in the snowed-in ribcage of his first brother’s skeleton. this was the one and only time he had ever felt the sheer cold of the mountain.
its subzero temperatures do not affect albedo even today. going about the motions with his insufferably rolled sleeves, waltzing about his timeless haunt that few others would dare (dragonspine, now, is their name for it), it is of course mondstadt’s chief alchemist who discovers her first.
the climate was harsh, but her ice was sturdier. phased in its sheet layers, unfazed in its makeup. still, he could not quite leave the anomaly unguarded; or rather, unknown. to stall the inevitable swarm of questions waiting for him in town—although timaeus had taken one glance into the ice before unwisely shooting his boss a scandalized look—albedo only sought the muscle of a few to help haul the meteorite to his camp further up.
he stayed there. mondstadt never questioned that much. notes piling by the day atop his desk, he ran his many tests both alchemical and elemental.
nothing. he pinched the bridge of his nose, midnight oil burning dutifully in his lamp. she continued to slumber, bathed in ethereal pink and blue. observing her, teal eyes in the night almost reflecting the ice’s gleam, albedo wondered what it would be like to sleep so peacefully himself before nudging aside his instruments and flipping open his sketchbook.
halfway into the third week, dragonspine’s midday sun did not seem to beat down upon the peaks any harder than it had weeks one and two. and yet, standing before one of his bulletin boards while poring over a missive, the first subtle shift of frost to him may as well have been deafening.
his head immediately snaps in its direction. / @mrch7th
at the beginning of time, an aeon dies. or it might be more apt, perhaps, to say this aeon does not yet exist. before there is fuli, there is their corpse. and from their corpse, there is a girl.
she is not unique in this. there are many others like her, all bearing a shared fate. at the end of time, only one will ascend. so they hunt her. they covet what should not be theirs. and, in turn, you hunt them down one by one, all those who dare to harm the peaceful existence of the girl who slumbers in a cradle of six different phases of ice. even if it means scorning the aeon from which she was born, it is your purpose. your sole obsession.
but you know they will hunt her to every end of the universe and down every stream of time. where can you run that those eyes will not inevitably find you? (there are no shining headlights in the distance to save you.) they will always be watching and waiting for the opportunity to strike.
no, you cannot do this forever. it cannot be her fate to slumber eternally, unable to see the world she was born for. and the only life you can gift her is one free from the burden of her destiny.
and so you close her eyes in a land where even their gaze has yet to fall. and the girl wakes.
she does so in fits and starts, all six phases of her cradle and cage shifting around her as though to accommodate. confusion melts away the first layers, with the restless shift of one only just returning to consciousness. as comprehension dawns, so too do the next bend to her will, eyes sluggishly blinking open as she comes to.
and fear, last but never the least, shatters what remains. with her first inhale of breath, she falls limply to the ground.
a pair of wide eyes can only stare up at the man, the same brilliant colors of the ice that had just held her. her hands raise slowly, wariness writ in the tension of her limbs, but she makes no other movement.
and if she notices the cold, it doesn’t seem to bother her. then again, the cold is all this girl has ever known.
✦ blog housekeeping , march 2026.
hello and happy march, my friends! i meant to get this done in february but i ended up being busier than i expected so here we are instead. with the turnover to the new month i am formally transitioning my blogs over, though i still have a bit of housekeeping to do on them so if you find something that is still a wip or see things randomly change over time please just pretend you didn’t HAHA
hello, friends! as always, it’s darcy, your local march 7th writer. there’s nothing i can really say that has not already been said—and in much better words than i can muster at the moment besides—but i hope you’ll permit me my small love letter to this group that has come to mean a lot to me over these past two years anyway. i’ll not subject the dash to reading all my sappiness haha, so the most important note before the cut: i’ll still be around! and i’ll continue to be around as long as there are people to write with on the dash.
ꕤ⠀a world that cannot cherish us,
but which we cherish.⠀⸻⠀dan heng & march 7th.
His arms still feel a little odd. When March returns with the water glasses, Dan Heng takes a moment to ensure he can actually lift his up without dropping it before he brings it up to his lips and takes a sip. It goes just fine, thankfully, and the refreshing, cool liquid does a great job waking him up properly as it passes through his body.
... So, it seems like Evernight truly has gone dormant by now. "That's... good to hear," he responds, though a note of hesitation can be heard in his voice. Is it okay for him to say that it's good that a part of March is gone? Sure, he wouldn't mind his friends holding this sentiment towards Dan Feng, but that doesn't mean his approach has to extend to them.
"It's... nothing big," he continues, shaking his head to her question, but his lips press together into a wince as he does.
... They're going to go nowhere if they keep being dishonest with each other, and he's hidden too much for too long.
He saw both her and Caelus' reaction when they went through his travel logs. He wouldn't have simply blown it off had he read such notes coming from them, and however much he wants, he shouldn't expect the opposite.
"It just confirms to me that I'm the one conjuring the images in my head, and not her. That's all. And it's a good thing."
He sighs as his hand reaches absentmindedly into the open bag of chips. It takes a moment before he looks up at March. In spite of the everything going on, he musters a light smile for her.
"... But... I don't want to speak negatively of her. She's a part of you, and besides... there was a reason why she did what she did, right? She meant well, she just... used rather extreme methods." The snack he'd grabbed lingers in his hand for a while longer, as if he'd forgotten he took it in the first place.
"In your and her position, I can't promise I wouldn't have done the same thing."
However much he didn't want to admit it at first, Dan Feng forced him to look himself in the eyes and understand just what he was capable of when pushed to the brink. How can he honestly fault others for doing the same? He, too, is important and valuable to others, even if admitting it still feels like narcissism.
"So..." What else can he say right now? What would he want to hear if their roles were switched? "I'm... going to be fine, I just need some rest. And I don't blame anyone for what happened. I asked only to make sure. And I hope that whatever plagues you... that you can also recover from it. Let me know if you find... any way in which I can help you with that."
the words bubble up defensively in her head (evernight wouldn’t conjure—) and then die before they ever make it to her lips. she would. she has. she put caelus into that memoria tide and made it so dan heng would have to go and save him. each and every step planned and plotted, carefully constructed over the time spent waiting for them to arrive.
“...i’m sorry,” march whispers. he says it’s fine, but how could it ever be? after everything she put the two of them through, she wouldn’t even blame them if they could never forgive her for it. but they don’t, of course. her friends do not blame her, because her friends are good people. “i asked her to protect the two of you. i didn’t know she would—i just didn’t know what else to do...”
and, to evernight, it had been her way of protecting them, she knows. just close your eyes and the worst of it all will be over before you can even blink. when you open them again, everything will be all right.
nothing had been all right. but march would still do it all over again in the exact same way, as long as it meant they made it through safely.
she reaches over, but her hand doesn’t go for the chips. instead her fingers curl, until only one is pointing out to poke him in the shoulder. “i think i’m a little scared of being alone in my room,” she confesses with a laugh, “but i don’t think you can do anything about that. it’s kind of stupid.”
another poke to his shoulder, as though she needs just a little more proof that he’s still there. then she finally withdraws, reaching for a handful of chips to save herself from speaking for a few moments. “...and having a body again is kind of weird,” she continues after a beat. “you have no idea how many times i was just sitting there watching the two of you. and don’t get me started on when caelus took a bad picture with my camera. you didn’t even try to stop him!”
the tone of her voice is light, but there’s something tired about it too. march feels so much older; she’s barely aged a day.
she takes another careful sip of water, then, “...but you’ll tell me if you aren’t, right? fine, i mean.” a faint laugh to punctuate as she glances sideways at him, grinning a little. “i know cold, dark, and mysterious is your whole thing, but still. friends tell each other these things, y’know.”
and, to march 7th, they are friends. it is a very simple fact of life—like how pom-pom will always be the astral express’ conductor or how this train will always be her home—and it has been since she first awoke there. to her, they simply have always been, even when dan heng had been much more cold, or dark, or mysterious than he is to her now.
ꕤ⠀a world that cannot cherish us,
but which we cherish.⠀⸻⠀dan heng & march 7th.
"No... I'd like you to stay for a while, if you can."
The answer comes faster than anything else, without a shade of hesitation, in spite of how unusual, really, it is for him. It's certainly a big contrast from the Dan Heng of old, as many would note - the Dan Heng that would get annoyed by people coming into the archives to chat, hang out and try to just... make friends with him, as he came to realize after it was too late. The Dan Heng that accepted it just out of silent, subdued politeness, but ultimately made enough wincing faces he failed to hide and deadpan remarks that came out more unpleasant than he'd truly intended for others to realize he didn't like it.
For him to get a visit like that, in the middle of the night no less, and actually ask the other person to stay? This quickly and desperately, too? It would be enough for the others to jokingly ask him if he was feeling right in the head.
At least, if it wasn't already blatantly obvious that he wasn't.
"And..." He hesitates for a moment. This really is... unusual for him, isn't it? And it's now that he begins to realize that maybe that's not really okay. No time like the present to start learning, and nothing to push you into it quite like a rather distressing need. "... Some water and snacks would be good, too."
He rests for a while longer while March goes to retrieve things. It takes a moment of getting accustomed again to how his body feels - how slow his breathing becomes once he relaxes and stops chasing demons he himself conjured, how much calmer his heart is now that it's not pounding like crazy in his ears, how his arm slides gently across the bedsheets when it's not being pinned down by monster claws - before he finally finds the strength to move and his body slowly begins to cooperate again, and he awkwardly shuffles himself back up to sit on his knees.
"... I take it you also... had trouble sleeping?" He asks quietly. No point pretending that that's not what he was doing, after all. His thoughts aren't entirely in order yet, and perhaps that's what influences his next question.
"I hope Evernight hasn't been... bothering you?"
... If this ends up giving her the idea on what his nightmares were about, then he supposes it is what it is.
if march is surprised that he asks her to stay, it doesn’t show at all—so maybe it’s not really surprise that flickers across her expression in a faint smile as she hurries toward the door. “back before you know it!” she calls over her shoulder. and she is, a glass of water in each hand that she sets down on the ground before going to retrieve her fallen snacks and blanket.
and so is she sat cross-legged next to him, her blanket returned to its rightful place around her shoulders and a bag of chips torn open between them, when dan heng speaks again. this time, it is surprise that colors her expression, her brows raising just a fraction. “evernight?” she echoes, a little lost. “why would she...”
the words die on her tongue as quickly as they began. to march 7th, it’s a silly question. despite everything that she did on amphoreus, she knows that the last thing evernight would dare to do is bring her harm or inconvenience. everything she had done was in service of the promise she made to march, however misguided.
to her two other friends, though, her other self had delivered more than her fair share of grief—and all in the name of march’s plea for their protection.
“...i couldn’t sleep,” she agrees after a beat of silence, “but that’s not evernight’s fault. i haven’t heard from her at all since she gave my memories back.” and she does not say anything about how some of them fit oddly in her head, like watching her own life play out through a screen. evernight’s memories may be ‘hers,’ but they don’t feel like she’s lived through them at all.
march wonders if that was how it felt the other way around too, when she gave up her memories to evernight. if those simple joys she’d experienced on the express and with its crew had felt like distant daydreams she wasn’t allowed to touch.
she takes a long sip of water to stew on the question that rises instinctively to her lips in turn. in the end, though, she still voices it.
“is that...” is she? am i? “...what’s bothering you?”
✦⠀the death of advantage.
elation :⠀the vidyadhara & the heliobus⠀⸻⠀acheron & evernight.
Acheron hadn't been present for the battle with Irontomb, but as the news filtered across the cosmos, she'd made a few careful changes to her plans. To hear that the Nameless had been at ground zero of it all, some of them trapped within the sabotaged Scepter for what had amounted to thousands of years on the inside...
Her memories of them have begun to blur and fade as Nihility continues to take its toll, but the followers of the Trailblaze still stir warmth within her heart, and so she'd altered her course to try to meet with them again. That had led her to the Xianzhou Loufu, to a meeting with March 7th amid the skyship's bustling markets - a meeting that had almost immediately been interrupted by a young vidyadhara. Or, more precisely, a heliobus possessing them, using them as a vessel to rant about - something.
Acheron finds herself far less concerned about Xianzhou politics than she is about March's safety.
She could easily rescue March; could strike faster than the child could react, certainly. But exorcising the rogue heliobus from its stolen body is beyond her talents, and so such a strike would kill both entity and host. Which is not an option. And March is pleading for her to wait, to hear them out - no, not pleading. There's something different about her voice, not merely the exhaustion she'd been carrying but something colder and harder; and as she looks up at the young Nameless, she realises the bright spark's gone from the girl's eyes.
Just what did you have to become, she wonders, staring into those cool, calculating, ruthless eyes, to survive within that Scepter?
She takes a step back, and lowers her hand from Naught's hilt. "Very well. What demands do you wish to make?"
They begin ranting on and on about vidyadhara supremacy and the glory of Abundance and the everlasting might of Permanence; Acheron simply hums politely here and there, keeping an ear out for any sign of the Cloud Knights, or the Ten-Lords Commission, or literally anyone actually equipped to handle this situation safely. She locks eyes with March, and gives her a slight nod. I will get you out of this alive, my friend. I promise.
miss acheron does not draw her blade—and just as well. evernight worried what she would have to do to ensure march 7th’s safety if she had. it would be a quick thing to simply end the vidyadhara, she supposes, between herself and the emanator of nihility. if she could distract the child long enough to ensure they would not have the opportunity to cause harm before miss acheron saw to their untimely end...
it would be untimely, though, wouldn’t it? ultimately, they are but a child, and they had not asked for this. even with her own life on the line, march 7th would try every avenue she could before deciding on the least favorable outcome.
her other self was right, of course. perhaps evernight is the naive one of the two of them.
she tunes out most of the child’s ramblings, struggling as appropriate and pretending to hold her breath in fear otherwise. all the while, a little jellyfish creeps up behind miss acheron, floating silently until she speaks.
“miss acheron,” evernight begins quietly, through the memosprite, “do not startle. it’s just me. no need to raise your voice; i’ll hear you just fine through evey.” a pause, then a bit helplessly, the most like march 7th she’s sounded so far throughout this whole mess, “...you wouldn’t know anything about exorcism, would you? i would rather not harm a child...”
of course, neither of them are in any position to be acquiescing to all their demands—frankly, she wonders why they’ve chosen such a poor captive audience for all this—but if she has to lie through her teeth to get them to settle, then what else can be done about it? as long as it gets march 7th back to safety.
ꕤ⠀a world that cannot cherish us,
but which we cherish.⠀⸻⠀dan heng & march 7th.
J̸͉̲͂̐ư̵̗͝ş̷̝͌t̶̜̻̎͌ ̶̪̩̀l̵̬̊͝ě̷̜͎t̴̖́ ̷͎̏̆g̷̡̝̓̑o̸̫̽͂,̴̩̐̀ ̵̻̘͌̿t̴̻̎͘h̴̖̫̉̐ĕ̶͚r̷̬͙̍͂e̸͖̜̒̈́'̴̼̫͌s̵̛͚̝ ̴̝͊n̷͍̒o̷͕̔t̵͉͖̎̾h̶͓̎͗i̴̧̐̏n̴̫͗g̵̖̀̀ ̸̨́y̴̙̥͆͝o̷̟̅u̴̥͋ ̸͚̔c̴͉̺̔̋a̷̗̕ǹ̶͇̓ ̶͚̃d̵̰̈́ò̴̝͑
The voice distorts into eldritch screaming as his spear cleaves another monster in two in the same moment its fangs reach for his arm, golden blood spewing forth from both its and his wounds. He throws the now disembodied head away and jumps into the next car of the Express twisted into eternity by whatever madness taking over his dreams that conjured this place.
He doesn't know, nor does he care.
He knows only that he has to find them.
D̴̝̥̮̼͍̃o̴̭̼͗̅̊͝n̸̛͖͖͙͇̙̂̐͐̚'̴̱̎t̶̨́͂ ̷̗̮̗̍̇̈͜ͅy̵̱̱̙̦͒o̸̬̗̐͆̕͜͠ŭ̴̢͇͚̳̋̾͌͂ ̶̛̣͝u̴͉̍̌ň̸̛̯̌d̶̨͎̻̤͕̆ḙ̷͙̰͉̌̎̎̾ͅṙ̵̼͓̣̄͐ͅṡ̸͚͚̦t̷̳̙̝͝a̴͙̥̓̓ṋ̵͛͑͋͒̀d̵͕̝̉̏ͅ ̷̞̲͔͗t̷̖͇̥͔̼̾͗͐͒̑ḧ̵̬͔͖́̀ę̷̬̈́̏̐y̸͓̑̈̈́̕͠'̸͇̿͗͝ͅr̶̰̗͚͕̀e̵͚̦̽ ̴̬̞̬͐̊̓̄n̷̨͍͔̤͒̈́ǒ̸͔͛̀̚ţ̶͓͖̒ ̴͕̑̆̌̚h̴͙̥̻̪̒̐̏̍͝e̶̩̜̒̅ŗ̸̠̲͎͒͛͐̕e̷̖̤̐̎̊
Another train, another pack of monsters, like many before it, like many that will come after.
He will find them, no matter how many he has to go through.
He will find them
He will find them
He will -
Amidst the crazed whispers and howls and screams of pain and fury, he continues without end - slashing, cutting, swinging, stabbing, cleaving -
T̶͍̖̳͇̓͘h̷̯̗̞͘ẹ̷̊̽̂̈́y̷̨͇͇̚ ̴͓͕͔̆̀̿͊͝ą̶̦̞̮͆̎̌́l̷̡̟̯͆̒̿̐͋r̵̩͚͐̇è̴̟̫͔̪̜͆̇̿a̵͔̅̔̎ḑ̴̘̺̑ÿ̷̬̰̹́ ̶̙͊̈́̂͝ĺ̴̙̱͉̥̰͝e̴̺̟͆f̶̛̣̉́ṭ̷͊̅͊͊ ̶̩̆̂̈́̈́w̸̝̎͊̔̓̂î̸̜̐t̸̨̞̹̥͗h̶̹̪̊̀ǒ̶̟̼ṳ̸͑͠t̸̢͋̍͗̃̀ ̶̢̛̗͈̿̿̀͌y̵͇̞͆̇͘̚õ̴̥̐̔͝u̸̢̢̪͕̔͌
- until the largest of the monsters tackles him from behind and pins him down, claws digging into his chest and arm; teeth reach for his head and he has to block the jaw by shoving the Cloud-Piercer in between the fangs. They're in a deadlock now,
D̸̗͓̂̏ä̸̠́̓n̵̮̈́̕ ̴̯̕Ḫ̴̮͑̄e̸̟̫̅̆ń̵̡̖g̸̛̜
ẃ̴̢̨̦̘͉̖̻͝ȧ̸͇͓̯͖̮̘̰̣̓̇̈́̈́̇͝͝͠ͅk̷̙̲͍̣̱̟̗̈̌̈́͋̀͝ͅẹ̸̗̇͌́̏͝ ̸̣͈̀̓́̐̀̚̚ư̵̠̅̈́͌͆̍͊̆͜p̶̦͍̲͍̞̮̘̞͖̏̀̀̀̈́
he groans as he tries to push the beast off of him, all while something keeps shaking him, and shaking, and shaking,
Ḣ̵̼ḙ̸̭͘ÿ̴͚͙̾,̸̩͈̽̓ ̴͖̼̈́ẃ̵̳̈́a̵̮̲͗̔k̶͉͠e̸̤̯̓́ ̸̧̜̈́̔ư̴͆͜p̶̨͂
but then the enemy suddenly frees itself from the lock and reaches for his throat again -
He jolts awake with a short, inarticulate scream, and freezes as he meets a wide open pair of eyes in front of him. Evern—
That's not Evernight...
"... March?"
The word comes out like a dry whisper that even he barely recognizes as his own voice. He stares at her for a moment, trying in vain to process what happened, and regain his bearings in time and space. Slowly he lifts his eyes past her to look at the room, or whatever he can see of it in the darkness. His brain fights with itself to understand why all the voices are suddenly gone, and recall whether it's natural for the night to be this quiet. Was it always this quiet?
He's in the archives. It's... normal.
There's no monsters, no blood. It's not warped. March is... normal, too.
He feels dizzy, and it's only in that moment that he realizes he's holding his breath. Carefully, he inhales, exhales - and in that moment, as though in some kind of debilitating self-defense mechanism against his own insanity, he feels as his arms, supporting his upper body, lose their strength, and he collapses back onto his pillow.
"Sorry..." His voice sounds a little better now, but it still barely goes above a whisper as he's still trying to catch his breath. "Just... a nightmare. Sorry I scared you... Did you need anything?"
she flinches more than she means to when he wakes, reels back with wide eyes and hands pulled closed to her chest as he jolts with a scream. any placating words she might’ve had die in her mouth as quickly as they might have formed, the shape of his name faltering on her tongue. despite it all, though, march’s gaze never leaves him. and if there is a part of her that fears he might disappear if she does, it lingers like a physical weight in her chest, no matter how nonsensical it might be.
“...yeah, it’s me,” she agrees weakly when he calls her name. who else would it be? but it’s a question they’ve since come to learn the answer to, so it feels more like twisting the knife in both their hearts to voice it. her lips part again, to say something, anything else to fill the silence—
instead she jumps, immediately alert, as he collapses—even if it is only to fall harmlessly back onto his pillow. sorry, dan heng says, like there is anything to apologize for, and she frowns. there are many things she’d rather he apologize for, march thinks, like not smiling nearly enough for her camera or feigning innocence in a snack heist as if he wasn’t just as guilty as the rest of them. scaring her because he was having a nightmare doesn’t make the top ten. it doesn’t even make the list at all.
“oh, please,” she says, forcing the weight of her usual headstrong confidence into her voice, “it’ll take much more than that to scare me.” but it doesn’t last, her shoulders slumping.
march doesn’t ask what his nightmare was about. he’s not the only one having them these days, after all.
but there’s something silly about having to voice her reasons for being here aloud now that he’s asked. while march’s real age may be one of many questions she still has no answers to, she’s grown enough that having to admit that she couldn’t fall asleep is embarrassing. falling into bed at the end of a long day used to be one of her favorite habits. now, she can barely be alone in her room without a sense of unease creeping up on her eventually—and always when she least expects it.
“it’s fine, forget about it,” she lies cheerily, the corners of her eyes creasing as she shakes her head. “i’m more worried about you. are you okay? do you need anything? i can go get you some water. i brought chips to share too, but you can have all of them if you want. i have more in my room.” the words fall from her lips one after the other without pause as march already begins to rise on unsteady legs.
there’s nothing false about her concern, at least. when it comes to her friends, how could there ever be? she throws out an arm to catch her balance against the railing, offering a shaky smile that she means to be reassuring. but if it slips entirely as her gaze catches on the data bank, there’s nothing to be done about it. march has always been an extraordinarily bad liar. you could probably read all her feelings on her face with ease if you tried.
( “come on, dan heng. just a little peek? i’ll see it anyway when you upload it to the data bank.” but after reading it, she hadn’t known what to say. selfishly, march almost wished she hadn’t asked to review it in the first place to spare herself the guilt that simmered in her stomach every time she had to face him after the fact. and then she just felt guilty all over again for wishing that at all. )
her gaze snaps back to dan heng. “water,” she repeats, mostly for herself, steadying her weight against the railing as she makes for the steps. “and...” her steps slow. “um.” come to a stop. “if you want to talk, i’ll always listen,” march offers quietly without turning back to face him. “you know that, right?” really, it’s what she should’ve done back then, just a little overdue now. she shakes her head and takes another careful step. “or i can go if you want. don’t worry, you can still keep the snacks.”
she already dreads the thought of returning to her empty room, but she hates the thought of imposing even more. besides, pom-pom might still be up somewhere on the express. and if it really comes to it, shush is company, even if one more likely to set her off into an even worse mood than she left her room with.
peonies of love
Ah, a rare commodity, then. Kazuha laughed a little lightly with her. “I see, my mistake, then,” he smiled, his gaze returning to where the flower would be. No wonder there is such urgency for it to be found, that which was considered valuable was more likely to be fussed over than something of lesser value. Well, if we are to only think of monetary value, that is.
“Oh?” his gaze returned to the other, quite the sentiment. However… did he know anyone who’d take advantage of it? He hummed, in thought. Maybe one of the crew members? They shook their head, very few had any thoughts of the future except to stay on the Fleet.
“I agree, it’s a nice sentiment. I believe we are in the same situation then, there are a number of companions I’d wish for fate to keep in my life as well. Are yours around here? If so, I’d say you have the chance to follow the tradition, albeit more platonically than initially conceived.”
A stray thought, a stupid one, really, something he shouldn’t be thinking of now that… but… Would the whims of fate kept him in my life if we found this flower together?
It was stupid to think it possible, but humans were never truly known for their rationality, were they?
He bowed lightly in greeting. “Kazuha Kaedehara,” they introduced themself, “ah, no, thank you for the offer, however. I doubt the flowers would last long out at sea…”
march tries to imagine it, dragging one of the other nameless down from the express just so she can say a few heartfelt words in front of a pot of flowers she can’t afford. she can’t imagine any of them would refuse to humor her after enough cajoling, but it seems a little silly now that she’s imagining it in her head.
i hope we can trailblaze together forever. what a weighty wish to put upon others who may still have places to return to when all is said and done. march 7th already knows that her past, present, and future are set solidly upon the rails that astral express follows—to its end, and far after. if the others choose to depart before then, all she can do is see them off with her brightest smile.
“maybe if i can drag them away,” is her non-committal answer, her smile settling into something more muted, but still warm. “who knows what trouble they’re getting themselves into right now?” at least in belobog, they’re not likely to get thrown in jail for it.
“how about you, mister kazuha?” march asks, turning the question back to them. her brows knit together briefly—at sea, they’d said? they really couldn’t be from belobog, then. she can’t imagine anywhere you would be able to sail on the icy planet. “are your friends far away or did they come with you?”
Buried in the Ice
Attacking the Fragmentum with Lumine and March 7th // Elation Commission
Lumine was nothing if not used to battle. From her days traveling with her brother to being the Abyss's Ruler and controller, she had truly done it all.
But Belobog. Belobog made picking up her blade hurt. Was it due to the solider she had sent to death with the Abyss? Perhaps the fact she unintentionally threw the fairy she saw as a sister? Yet, she knew it was none of them. For she couldn't protect Paimon, just like she couldn't protect Aether. And the mission with the floating girl made it oh so clear why the two got along. She couldn't begin to count the amount of times she almost called Aether's name.
No matter.
She was granted a rare second chance. It'd be wasteful to not use it, no?
The Princess tore her sword out of a defeated monster, watching it collapse and turn to dust. One of many. But with her previous "success" here, one was enough. At the very least, this area was clear. Well, mostly clear.
Her boots crushed the snow beneath her as she walked just a few yards to the girl with a bow. "Thank you, for your aid. I could have eliminated the group myself, it was only 5 of them after all, but it was still useful. I got done a lot faster." She meant every word. Admittedly she wasn't on her best footing, so the long range help was truly a blessing (if she believed blessings to exist that is).
"Say, you aren't too busy are you? I think we could get some better progress together than alone. Melee and ranged combat do fit hand in hand after all."
@mrch7th
it's in the nature of march 7th to leap before thinking.
and so, when she sees someone fighting the fragmentum all alone, she leaps and doesn't think twice about it. six-phased ice bursts to life to cover her back and arrows fly to beat back the approaching monsters.
does the other lady really need her help? well, probably not. march can recognize a skilled fighter when she sees one. but if there's one thing march has never quite been able to do, it's leaving things well enough alone. you never do really know when the fragmentum has a nasty trick up its sleeve. if it were one of her friends charging in all on the lonesome, she'd say—
“no matter how skilled you are, everyone should have someone watching their back.” it's not said to be nagging, simply matter of fact as she slings her bow over a shoulder to hold out a hand. and then, march smiles, wholehearted and warm. “it was no problem. i'm march 7th, by the way!”
but those two-toned eyes drift before long, restless. “though, to be honest, i'm here by myself too.” she laughs, shrugging helplessly. the astral express is the only place she can claim to call home, but belobog is special enough to her that she would protect in a heartbeat like her second one. “some of the belobogians were still worried that the fragmentum might overrun the city, so i promised i'd come over and help a little—”
march takes her bow back in hand, an arrow crystalizing in the moments just before she draws the string back and releases it. it strikes a flamespawn straight in the head before the monster falls limply from the air. “—so, not busy, nope! we probably shouldn't stand around for too long, though.”
ꕤ⠀a world that cannot cherish us,
but which we cherish.⠀⸻⠀dan heng & march 7th.
there's an invisible line, march 7th has found in recent days, in which silence suddenly circles back to feeling too loud, even when there's no sound at all.
it's the absence that sets every nerve in her body on fire, too restless to actually rest. anyone who knows her would say that she takes up space. she exists loudly, so as to never be forgotten. that is how she carves out a place in this universe for ‘march 7th.’
sometimes, though, it seems like she's almost forgotten how to. a question from pom-pom will hang for too long without an answer. the places where she might normally interject in a conversation are left empty. her gaze drifts emptily across the liveliness of the astral express like an observer that's never allowed to touch it, content to just watch.
after the second hour spent staring blankly at her ceiling, twisting and turning every which way to get comfortable and failing to each time, march finally accepts that maybe sleep isn't going to arrive any time soon.
blanket still strewn across her shoulders, she ambles out of her bed in a tangle of limbs, tripping her way over to the drawer of snacks she keeps beneath her desk to grasp blindly at the first thing her hand finds. it's an apology, and a peace offering, and also because dinner was so many hours ago that march is hungry again.
...she grabs a second bag of chips, just in case.
in the end, though, the journey she plans to make is quite short, merely the few steps walk from her room to the archives next door. half of her blanket dragging against the floor and her offering of snacks bundled into an arm, march delivers three slow knocks to the door before sliding it open with her elbow.
“dan heng?” she calls in a hushed whisper to announce herself. it's not the first time march has showed up without warning, and he would know by now that she's rarely ever there for the data bank. “i brought those chips you liked last time as a peace offering, so—”
the snacks fall from her hands first in her haste, her blanket slipping from her shoulders next to join them across the floor as she skips the two steps up to where the mattress her friend still continues to call his bed is and falls to her knees by his side.
“dan heng?” march repeats again, a deep-seated worry woven into the syllables of his name. her brows draw together in concern, a hand hovering for a moment before she finally gives his shoulder a firm shake. she'll take a scolding for barging into the archives again later if he wants to, but there's no way she can just turn around and leave after seeing him like that. she shakes him again. “dan heng, what's wrong? hey, wake up.”
@renascinem
ꕤ⠀out of body, out of mind.
messages ping through one after another, it's hardly anytime at all before her blurred stars are buried by the flow of conversation. deep in her chest, nestled beneath the warmth of new beginnings there is a cold twist as her mind draws up a blown up image of caelus' old room stretched across foreign space. she ignores it till it begins to ebb.
[ txt ] the express sounds so full of life!
the second message is typed and deleted, unsent words hanging across her shoulders and breathing frigid breaths into her ear. march doesn't deserve to be crowded by the ghosts of caelus' past. firefly's messages trail through one after another, not quite possessing march's prowess over they keyboard.
[ txt ] well, silver wolf is usually happy to have a player two [ txt ] even if she always complains i have no strategy when i play games... [ txt ] she says i just go 'clank clank, bang bang' and it's over [ txt ] i like to bake! blade is willing to try them even when i'm sure they haven't turned out right... [ txt ] kafka keeps me company often, she has a really good eye for styling things! [ txt ] i model for her when she's in my room. she styles things in way i hadn't even thought of...
her fingers stall as her thoughts linger on march's expression. would it be too forward to ask? sifting through her thoughts leaves her unsure if march would even feel comfortable divulging her troubles. she might just want company, firefly can understand that feeling all too well. light taps drift to her ears as she continues.
[ txt ] ah, but they are all preoccupied at the moment. i'll be keeping my own company for a while haha [ txt ] what about you miss march? are you up to anything?
the stellaron hunters sound so full of life too—march isn't sure why it surprises her. then again, she's not sure what to make of their group these days. sometimes, it feels like they're the nameless' enemies, making them means to an end as they steer them to the lines of their scripts. sometimes, it feels like they're the nameless' allies, working alongside them for the best ending.
if she thinks about it too long, it'll make her head hurt. in this moment, miss firefly is simply miss firefly—and that's the important part.
[txt] nothing aside from talking to you!
her fingers pause over her keyboard for a moment as she turns her gaze out the window again, toward the starry view. so many twinkling lights—a long time ago now, before the express came upon her, she was one of those lights too, wasn't she? but with no light of her own, she could only reflect the stars.
and even longer before that? the questions that evernight had so neatly sidestepped about her past... there hadn't been time to press for answers then, but if she could ask them again, would she even get an answer?
march blinks back down at her phone. ah, she's probably kept firefly waiting too long, hasn't she?
[txt] ah, sorry!
[txt] i'm so spacey these days. honestly, it's starting to become a real problem [txt] pom-pom had to ask me three times what i wanted to drink with dinner earlier [txt] i guess i'm more tired than i thought from our last trailblaze
✦⠀the death of advantage.
elation :⠀the vidyadhara & the heliobus⠀⸻⠀acheron & evernight.
if you ever need me again, feel free to awaken “my” power... it is, of course, a promise she still intends to fulfill—a promise she will always fulfill, anywhere and any time—but she hadn't expected it to be so soon. she claws through the darkness toward the light, tearing her way to consciousness to settle the frantic butterfly beats of the heart in her chest. don't worry—rest for now. nothing bad will happen to you.
and what have we here? an irritating child of the permanence, thinking her life is cheap enough to be their pawn. the politics of the xianzhou are of little concern to march 7th, so how on earth has she become a hostage here?
(it is an answer that is, of course, exceedingly clear to her: march 7th's bleeding heart would never allow herself to turn away from those in need.)
“that's—that's enough! if you don't adhere to my demands, this girl will suffer for it!”
they are a small and scrawny thing, hardly threatening if not for the torrent of water that swirls around the pair of them, lifting them up and out of reach from the ground. did they want to drown her? they would have to see if their cloudhymn magic could move faster than her six-phased ice.
she feels every bit of exhaustion that weighs down march 7th's limbs, however, and already knows her answer. it had been a long trailblaze through amphoreus, after all, and little time for recuperation. in some part, she supposes, the blame for that lays with her.
evernight swallows her tired sigh, and casts her gaze toward the companion that has joined march 7th to calm this rampaging child. it takes her but a moment to conjure the name from her memory: “miss acheron,” she pleads, reaching for march 7th's sweet cadence and falling just short. (she supposes she will never quite reach it.) a reliable companion, memory recites, from the nameless' journey in penacony. but would her blade be faster than the child?
it is a gamble that she is simply not willing to make. “let's hear them out,” she continues, and forgets to be panicked about it, “just for a little bit.”
@flower-of-oblivion
plotting: elation.⠀shaking my empty tin cup in your direction. spare threads?
portrayal notes & updates.⠀so i finally got around to finishing this long overdue update following the events of back to earth in evernight HAHA it will mostly have spoilers for 3.6 as a result, though these are also generally some post-amphoreus characterization notes for march that will be in my writing for any threads going forward so just a hint of caution if you don't want any spoilers for amphoreus at all.
the non-spoilery tl;dr is that march 7th has some super cool, secret powers of her own, but the journey getting there was kind of miserable and lonely. on the surface, she'll mostly appear to be fine, if not a bit out of sorts from the recent trailblaze, but she's been left with her fair share of baggage to think about and process.
ꕤ⠀out of body, out of mind.
hours slip from her fingers, days blurring to washed out memories beyond her grasp. at some point her thoughts lull and a dull drone overtakes her conscience. goose flesh prickles the skin under her plug suit. puffs of breath condense to fog through blurred vision. shadows pass over her but their faces remain beyond her recognition.
when she returns to herself, it's with sluggish limbs dragged through every movement and aches so deep she feels they'll never truly leave her. this heavy wakefulness is brief but she finds the strength to force her body into slow, easy movements. filling her fleeting moments of freedom with stretches is not what she wants, but she will be thankful for it in her next waking. she will endure. she has to.
whilst stretching does little to truly relieve her, it would be a lie to say sinking into kafka's chair doesn't feel like release. she lacks even a smidge of kafka's elegance, with a water bottle clutched between tensed fingers in place of wine and her limbs folded and pressed against one another, as if she curls deep enough in the chair that drowning slumber will not find her once more.
beyond the astragal bars that run the expanse of the window, stars glow against the endless depths. they can almost seem eternal fixtures, lights found no matter the galaxy. firefly knows how stars can fall, have fallen under her own heel. even the brightest stars can be extinguished with a heavy enough hand.
her ruminating is caught before it can run too far from her by a chime from her phone, curiosity finding it's way through the grey of her mood at the sender's name. firefly picks apart the pieces of people even when she doesn't mean to, the shift of their weight, the wandering of their eyes, the grip of their hands. it's impossible for her to not notice the out of place expression on march's face.
[txt] the view from your window is pretty as always, miss march! [txt] a picture of the view from where firefly is sitting. the camera focuses on the bars across the window, leaving the stars blurry. [txt] not again! the photos from this window never turn out right... [txt] if the photo wasn't so blurred, you be able to see i'm not doing much more than looking at the stars haha
a hand presses against the glass as she waits, watches as it fogs from the cold of her palm. it creeps outward, a slow crawl to cover the glass that she idly observes to pass the time. march expects no reply, really. at least, not any time soon. who knows where the stellaron hunters are right now, after all? they always seem to keep just as busy as the express. but her phone buzzes in her other hand, and she draws her palm away to scan through the messages.
the photo catches her eye first, and a quiet laugh spills from her lips.
[txt] miss firefly you have to focus the camera! [txt] if that's too hard you can always try going closer
when in space, there's not much else to do but look at the stars though, is there? it's not like march is doing much else either. she supposes she could sneak off to someone else's room for a chat, but it's too late for her to feel comfortable being a bother. after everything that's happened, the whole express crew could probably use a few days of sleep.
her head slumps sideways against the top of plushy pom-pom's head as she hums to herself, tapping one-handed against her phone's keyboard. she must be practiced at it by now—the messages all go through one shortly after the other.
[txt] do you have anything else to do over there? [txt] i mean the express has loads of stuff. shush could probably talk my ears off if i went over to the party car [txt] someone's always up to something in the parlor car [txt] though right now i think it's just pom-pom doing some cleaning [txt] and don't get me started on caelus' room. that place could be a whole train car all on its own!
peonies of love
A break in? It seemed like his guess was correct, she was better equipped for this area. His gaze went to the broken glass (with ice over it?), to the missing flower. Ah, so it was called a ‘ball peony’.
Was it common for people to ask her that? Perhaps the break in was a bit ago.
He shook his head. “I haven’t been here long enough to catch wind of it,” he replied. Seemed like she had, however. It also seemed as though there was a reason she remained here, or perhaps they were overthinking this particular situation. They turned to face the other, returning her smile.
Undying love… It certainly was pretty enough for such a concept.
“Hm, I suppose so,” they hummed, “but wouldn’t that make it all the more precious? Is it common to give the flower to another?”
There were few commonalities between nations and love persisted as one of them. Would it be wrong to assume the same of here?
there's an amused knit to march's brow at the question, her head shaking as she laughs. “well, maybe if you can afford it. it's kind of pricey.” and kind of was already pretty huge as far as understatements go. just think about how much milk tea could she buy with all those credits...
“but they say if you propose in front of them when they're flowering, your love will last forever.” a charming thought, even if she knows can't possibly be true all the time. but it's only as romantic as you let it be, isn't it? it's only as true as you believe it to be.
march smiles, looking thoughtfully down at the bloom. “i think it would be nice if it were true. i don't have anyone i'd want to propose to, but if i could keep my friends in my life forever...”
a blink, then she starts, setting the flowerpot aside to stretch her hand out and greet the stranger proper. “oh! i'm march 7th, by the way. vaska is out right now, but if you need something i can try to help. did you want to buy some flowers?”
