ᴡʜʏ ꜱᴏ ɢʀᴇᴇɴ, ꜱᴏ ʟᴏɴᴇʟʏ?

ice is forming on the tips of my wings, unheeded warnings I thought I thought of everything, no navigator to find my way home; unladened, empty and turned to stone can't keep my eyes from the circling skies; tongue tied and twisted just an earth bound misfit, I nimueh nawn of rhandirmwyn, lost until the solstice, migrated from mountains

[nimnawn-blog]

Felix:

“That won’t solve anything,” Felix said with a sigh, shaking his head. “He … he’s …” He bit his lip, not sure how to tell her without telling her, without alerting Cristofer to what he was saying and trigger another migraine. He hesitated before reaching forward to take her hand, moving it out of his line of sight, silently pressing her fingers against his temple, keeping his eyes on her face, hoping she wouldn’t say anything out loud. He was sure Cristofer was hearing the things he was, seeing the things he saw, through some sort of device in his head, or maybe his eyes and ears, he didn’t know. But there was something in his head that was giving Cristofer information and then reacting to Cristofer’s direction.

Needless to say, she doesn’t understand a single thread of his string of words, and is stuck rigid between walls that keep her from understanding, at all. There’s a stubbornness, an ignorance, the directs her to the foolish belief that she and Felix might find a private place, a safe place where they could be utterly alone. It simply doesn’t compute that such a place does not exist, neither does the reason why, until he holds her hand and lifts it, guiding her finger tips to form pressure points on his temple. His eyes upon her own seep a telling desperation that she can’t do much else than absorb, pained truths percolating the affectionate innocence she’s now letting flee the scene. An evil posses him, but Felix remains behind it, though shrouded in it’s darkness and often failing to emit his rays of light beyond it. 

There’s not much she can do to confirm her comprehension, taking what he wordlessly tells her as truth. For an elongated moment, she lets the silence settle like morning mist between them, while her expression gradually morphs to subtly convey the sadness meddling with the tempo of her heartbeat. 

She cannot speak, and knows well not to, so frantically searches for another way to communicate, but actions fall short of her grasp. The finger tips on his temple begin to heat with the feelings she harbours for him, and she manages a delicate bow of her head, brief. Her other hand moves, fingers lifting to her mouth where a chaste kiss is transmitted to her warm skin, and then the ghost of that kiss is pressed to his other temple. A vacant smile twitches one corner of her lips, and Nim accepts that this is all that she can do. 

[nimnawn-blog]

Felix:

Felix pursed his lips, as the pain began to ebb and fade away. He felt her presence beside him, and he also wanted to take her hand, but he was afraid of the pain he might feel if he made any sort of movement toward her.

“I-I can’t tell you,” he said softly, voice full of regret, as he glanced over at her apologetically. “I would if I could but he … he’s listening … watching …”

Being sat so close to him, it feels almost shameful to have to resist touching him, and unnerving in the first place, for though she respects the boundaries that have been wordlessly insisted, she doesn’t understand their reasoning. So Nim neatly, anxiously, folds her fingertips together, forming a plait in her lap. 

“How could he be?” She asks, not entirely obtuse, but most certainly pushing her luck - undoubtedly, any interrogation is likely to scare him away, so to mask the desire for answers under a veil of naivety, feigning ignorance almost, she is sure to be the most effective way to encourage and coax any truth from him, no matter how vague. She glances over both shoulders, tilts her chin to scan the branches above, and then looks back to him with a bewildered brow. “There’s nobody here but us, Felix. We could go to my apartment, if it is that you’d feel more comfortable talking in total privacy?”

[nimnawn-blog]

Felix:

“I don’t know,” Felix said again truthfully. He swallowed hard, reaching up to pull her hand from his face, giving it a small squeeze before letting it go. “I don’t … I don’t feel like myself. Father, he-he did something …” He grimaced, cutting himself off as pain erupted in his head. He moved to sit down, pressing his fingers against his forehead, attempting to stave off the pain, sighing shakily as it eventually subsided. A warning.

The pain exuding from his features is enough to send her into panic, let alone the words that stutter from his mouth. If her conscience was in order enough to contemplate such a thing, she’d analyse the many new emotions that Felix had unwittingly lead her to experience. Though ever frightening, she welcomes everything from him.  When he sits, she does too, rushing to his side and tilting her form, neck stooped to enable her vision to fall directly in line with his. He’s unbearably tense; she curses the reality that renders herself useless in aiding him.  “What did he do, Felix?” She says with a firmness, though everything else in the words’ deliverance are soft and non-pressing. Nim refrains from touching him now, and keeps her hands neatly folded on her lap, though she leans in close to him in attempt to create a safer space between them. “If it’s not safe for you to say, I understand. But I need to know, I have to learn how I can help you. I must-” she ceases a wobble that threatens to present itself in her speech, ending it’s journey on the tip of her tongue, and it takes everything she’s got not to take his hands in hers. “-I will.”

[nimnawn-blog]

[nimnawn-blog]

Felix:

Felix watched her the way a stray cat might watch someone attempting to pet it, tense and wary. The closer she came to him, the more nervous he became, until she stood directly across from him and her hand came to rest on the side of his face. He leaned into her touch almost instinctively, exhaling a shaky sigh, as he closed his eyes briefly.

“I don’t know,” he admitted softly to her question. “I miss you.” It felt strange, to miss someone so viciously when he’d barely known her past a few months before he’d been taken into custody. But he did. He missed his life before he became this … instrument for Cristofer’s will, though hadn’t he always been?

Though his wariness strikes her first, she later acknowledges his reaction, his malleable affection - that’s good, she thinks. He feels so fragile that she worries briefly that her tentative touch might damage him, and though every fibre of her aches to hold him closer, there’s something in his eyes that warns her, and she accepts that, in this instance, less is more. 

Nim’s instinctive reply would be to reciprocate the longing he simply verbalises, but she bluntly reminds herself that this meeting revolves around information, not sentimentality. It is possibly the hardest task she has ever had to carry out.  “There’s-” she stutters, bites her lip, chastely glides her thumb across his cheekbone, “-there’s no need to miss me, Felix,” a thin smile is pressed against her lips and her eyes do not leave his, not for one second. “I’m here. You are too, aren’t you?”

[aayla-securas]

“I just want my husband back…”

[nimnawn-blog]

Felix:

Felix looked over at Nimueh as she approached him, inhaling shakily when he saw her. No pain came to him at the sight, but he grew tense, knowing that at any moment he could experience that excruciating pain. He hesitated, biting his lip before moving to stand.

“Hey …” he said softly, reaching for her but letting his hand fall to his side before he came in contact. He swallowed hard. “Um, yeah, sure. We can talk.” He nodded, his chest aching some. “Are … are you okay?”

The way with which he weakly reaches for her makes Nim’s heart lurch and from her throat it attempts to leap into his lap. She swallows, nods, and with him standing now, her pulse corrects it’s quickened pace, and she cautiously edges closer until a mere foot lies between them. It has been so long since they have been in such close proximity - Nim has almost forgotten how she might have been with him before. It’s a strange sort of limbo she knows they drift within, one she’s keen to escape from, but knows not how. Perhaps this conversation would bring her light, despite her inexorable animosity over the plan to relay all to Jack. She isn’t a traitor - she intends to help Felix, and yet, she feels more like she’s embarking on the deepest of betrayals. 

Another step forwards sets her closer still, and she automatically lifts her hand that urges to trace every detail of a face she hasn’t touched for so long. Hesitation pauses it mid air, but she encourages it on. The hand moulds to the shape of his cheek, and she holds his gaze with a transmitting sincerity that she hopes will say more to him than the words that stutter from her mouth.  “Are you, Felix?”

[nimnawn-blog]

Felix:

Felix sat in the park, observing the people moving back and forth on their way to their various errands. He’d felt the shift in the wind and he knew something was different about Sunnybrooke, even though he couldn’t quite place why or how. But something had changed, and it made him uneasy. If whatever this was was going to mess up Cristofer’s plan, he wasn’t going to be happy.

But there was nothing to do but wait for instruction. So he sat and watched and waited.

(( @nimnawn ))

Relying on a heightened intuitive sense to guide her, Nimueh searches the town for a particular boy, and though her neurosis seems to tamper with the trail that leads to him, her will to locate him is so strong that no sooner than mid morning, she sees him - and has to force herself forward, battling the fear that would swiftly see her scarpering. She isn’t scared of him; there’s no trepidation whatsoever in what he may or may not be guilty of, and she doesn’t fear for herself either. What disturbs her, what stifles the steps and prolongs the approach to him, is the alteration in the person she knows, and the faltering humanity she witnessed in him the last time they spoke. She’s terrified of catching sight of his further dissipating spirit, and worries that every time they speak, he’ll morph a little more and it would feel like loosing what she had of him all over again. With all this turmoil she draws near, until she is stood beside the bench on which he sits.

‘“Felix?” She stutters, and her twitching digits fiddle worriedly with her coat. He doesn’t look any different, but he feels so much colder to behold, almost like he isn’t there at all. With a deep breath, she does all she can to shove aside the observation, and regards him with a calm and steady stare. “I was hoping I might be able to talk with you.”

[nimnawn-blog]

Jack:

“Yeah. I can meet with you,” Jack said with a nod. “I’ll try to talk Nixie into coming as well. Where should we meet?” In private would be better, but he didn’t want Nim to be uncomfortable and in turn refuse to give up all her information. He didn’t think she’d be at ease at his place, so he supposed he could allow her to choose the meeting place.

“Mine.” She says assertively, implying no other option, for she knows the disclosure of whatever conversation is had between her and Felix would not leave her lips safely in any other destination. From her satchel she fetches a notepad and pencil, scribbles down her address, and promptly (and not to mention briskly, so to mask the shake of her hands) hands it to Jack. “Perhaps come by tomorrow night. I’ll seek him out in the morning.”

[nimnawn-blog]

Jack:

Jack was braced to continue arguing, but when she turned around and changed her tune, he found himself softening as well. He nodded to her apology, thinking it well deserved for her snapping to judgement (not that he could really blame her for it). “We just want you to talk to him, see if you can figure out what’s wrong and let us know. If someone has brainwashed him or is controlling him, I just want the truth of it, so I can expose it. Can you do that?”

She would undoubtedly be far more eager to help if she were certain of the success rate, but murky waters surrounded the request Jack made. Nim had seen Felix since his return, and it wasn’t the reunion she’d pictured in the slightest.There was nothing rosy about it, nothing wholesome; it had left her disturbed, and felt more like torture than having him taken away. Aside from the strange ways with which things between them had been left, Nim was also positive of her likelihood to be biased. Without knowing the consequences, or the extent of danger that Felix should be in, her hesitance to report on his state would be inevitably amplified. There was so much uncertainty, but nevertheless, she had to oblige to the request, and only hope that Felix would be saved. 

“I can but try,” she croaked with a very nervous nod. “I’ll go to him tonight, and I’ll meet you afterwards?”

[goldilockscauldron-deactivated2]

Fairy bridge (1836) located in Lough Key Forest Park, Roscommon, Ireland.

[allyouneediswall]

Crane Dance

[wylansvaneck]

[nimnawn-blog]

Jack:

“Of course it can be both,” Jack argued with a huff of irritation. “You don’t even know what my article is going to be about. I’m not demonizing anyone. The article is going to be about the truth. About how the FBI is hiding something. About how Felix’s reappearance and new behavior is suspicious and someone is responsible for it. That is what my article is about and that is why it’s helping Nixie. But fine. I guess I can’t force you to talk to me. I’ll just go tell Nixie you refused to help her.” He shook his head, turning to leave.

Morality, as it always does, strips her bare of the hostility that had engulfed her in vicious tangles of thorns and projected into the innocent flesh of the well-meaning boy before her. Shame takes it’s place, tepid and unbearably uncomfortable; while it coils around her she reaches out to him, hoping to usher the alternative benevolence his way. “You’re right,” Nimueh mutters quietly, though with volume intent on transmission of sincerity. “I’m sorry. I am not as trusting as I ought to be; I beheld you incorrectly.”  There’s nothing else in her to soften; all corners now curved, all bold lines smudged, and every dent pressed. Entire spirit altered and ever changed to acquiesce (scepticism always lingers), she hopes he takes her change of hearts as earnest. “I’ll help, if you tell me how.”

[nimnawn-blog]

Griffin:

He’d tried to do it at the apartment, but the young hybrid had found it difficult to do while knowing Felix was there. Then he’d tried out in the back of work, but his shift had been rather busy, leaving him with no time. He’d tried once more after, but still he couldn’t. There was something calming about being near the water at Lake Ryn now as he took hold of one of the fangs his vampire side had given him with the pair of pliers he’d taken from the junk drawer, and used his vampire strength to rip it from the socket. Blood immediately filled his mouth, and he closed it, swallowing it down until it eventually stopped. He wasn’t sure how long it would be til the fang grew back in, the only other time he had ever lost them had been when he’d lost his baby teeth, and those had taken around a month to fully grow in. He took in a breath to prepare himself again, as he clamped the pliers down on the other fang to repeat the process.

Never could there be a sight of grizzly nature by which Nim could be anything shy of disturbed. Ever delicate in step and frail in mind, her sensitive disposition has always ensured her a rattled reaction to anything untoward. It is of late that her reactions have become stunted and, in the state of numbness that she has cocooned into, surfacing any sort of visible display of distress or terror has been more of a laborious task than that of an automatic flight or fight. Some might say that she is learning to cope with the horrors of a more extroverted life, but little do they know the internal perturbation she is subject to once left alone. To find peace, as unlikely as it may seem, she simply walks. Along the banks of Lake Ryn she strolls and idly remarks over the distortion of her reflection that icy ripples cause, and where grey skies meet near black water a thick fog resonates and fingers along the lakes surface like the loom of some deathly, inevitable poison. In such mid winter bleakness she fails to light any spark of joy, and unsaturated colours do nothing to turn her cheeks ruddy with merriment that often instills this time of year, instead pairing her complexion a mimicked pale. The glimpse of a figure beside the water merely jogs the tempo of her heart beat, but once she is able to detect who the silhouette belongs to, it quickens all the more. She's inclined to approach, of course, however when she draws closer she selfishly wishes she had kept her distance. “Griffin!” Nim exclaims and falls to his side as his mouth swims in his own blood and she's made queasy at the sight. Neglecting any fears of danger, she clasps the pliers from him and cements her stomach still as it attempts to churn due to the transferring of blood from the pliers to her hands. “What on Earth have you done to yourself!? And why!”

[nimnawn-blog]

Noel, Noel. Every 25th of December has unfurled as an uncanny, somewhat monotonous and repetitive day for the past century. She honours it in her own unique way, always the same way; dancing with the moon, rising with the sun, cinnamon tea, A Christmas Carol, and hymns sung to a God that isn't hers. She reads that same book every single year, her copy now beaten and worn, and she later finds herself shrunken in the back of a congregation, singing along to these carols that are usually so similar to each other, and honouring each language their choir speaks.

This year, not a lot of the above is practised, and traditional routine is disobeyed.

It's in these past six months or so, since arriving in this town, that loneliness has hit her the hardest. It's been gaining so much and then having everything gained thrown so viciously that has scared her into a state of imbalance, rendering her incapable of seeing through habits connecting her to an imagined place of comfort.

Thinking of everything she has learned to love, and all of it, them, and him, that has been splintered into tumultuously unsettle, she takes to the forest edge and though she finds minor comfort in her intentions, there are no glad tidings gathered by her solemn step.

In a clearing she has found, she begins to dance, and bathed in silver moonshine she creates elegant silhouettes with which she glides from the forest floor. The sounds of nature create a glorious melody, that would fall upon anybody else's ear as a simple whistle of wind or call of wild bird. This celestial music may only be accessed  by the dancers themselves, and the audience, which in Nims mind there is not at present.

Except, someone does watch, and Nimueh has yet to notice.

[calliestephanides]

Novels or books with a Christmas theme [2/5]: A Christmas Carol

“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?” “I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.” Ch. Dickens