[noctvoid]

can i not grasp them with a tighter clasp?

can i not save one from the pitiless wave? is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream? selective and independent multimuse ─ ( low activity! ) this blog deals with dark and mature themes, user discretion is advised. 01. CROSSROADS incl. guide, characters & prompts , 02. ♡

[dailyflicks]

Dichen Lachman as Gemma SEVERANCE 2x07 "Chikhai Bardo"

[kaisources]

. ݁⁺ ⊹ : THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD . . . roleplay sentence starters based on complicated friendship, mundanity, &. uncertainties. genre: slice of life, family, romance, hurt and comfort, angst.

People get symbolic over death. I guess that's what they do.

That's the truth. Did you know that?

People die of tensions. That's all they die of.

Give me a cigarette, will you? And a match too.

I'm so glad you could come.

I didn't like it. It moved me, but I resented it.

What the hell is it all about?

It was done wrong, but it's done. So be it.

What do you wanna do? I mean, what do you prefer to do?

Do you ever feel that way? Knowing, you know, it's over.

Do you have your money? I want to eat.

I'll race you to the corner! Walking, no running.

All right, then. Let's have a drink.

Can I sing, can i do it again? C'mon, it's karaoke!

I have a song that means life.

How wild this party is.. WHO THREW THAT GLASS?

Honestly, but I had too much beer.

Sing it! From the heart. From the heart!

It's not that I criticizing you. It's that... okay, I'm criticizing you.

Whatever your life is, it's been.. you're not speaking to me.

You're not speaking to anybody. Not only I. I know that.

It was just a little love affair and I never thought you'd grow to care.

You are impossible! You're wrong!

A lot of people won't agree with this, but I think you're terrible.

You got some bitterness in your heart.

Don't do it again. Ever. Ever!

Would you do it better? Can you do it better?

You told me not to talk.

Can't you do what I just did?

I don't want to hurt you, I swear to god.

Where I'm from? I bet you don't know where I'm from.

Can you imagine, after all we've been through, not to be able to vomit?

You know, you look terrible.

Why do I get the feeling that you want to be alone?

I don't like to be sick in front of people.

I don't care what you feel.

I want to tell you what's really bothering me.

I don't know what I'm feeling. You see what I mean?

I never had bad thoughts. I swear to god I never had a bad thought.

As long as you've known me, I've always tried to see the good side of everything.

Hey, you got something on your mouth.

I've been onto you for a long time. I just have too much class to spell it out.

If I said what was really on my mind, you'd be crying.

Hey, Hey! Good friends don't fight!

You know absolutely nothing about people.

You know you screwed up last night.

I don't know why I bother with you anyway.

Who the hell could put up with me, huh?

What do you want me to do? go home with you?

Who asked you to say anything? Don't say anything.

You wanna be alone? You can't even be alone in your own house.

Look, you don't have to hide from me anymore.

Well, what's wrong with that?

I have my own problems, [name].

How can you go to work like that?

Just cut it out. I'm in no mood.

Could you just hold it one second?

I'm very nervous, you know?

I'm making an ass out of myself. I told myself that I wouldn't do it.

God, I can't stand this anymore.

The times we had together. Weren't they wonderful?

Why do you look so worried?

I don't care either, because there's gonna be no more talk.

You almost gave me a heart attack!

You won't get angry with me if we walk away right now, ...right?

They never saw so much money in their lives. That's for sure.

What do you think? What do you say?

Why don't you sit down? I'll buy you a drink.

That's the most amazing thing I've ever heard.

You have such observation powers, I can't believe it.

God, I don't know anything about you.

You're making it up. It's not real.

It's not real to you, but it's real to me.

What are the romance languages that interest you?

I was just wondering if you were gonna hang around or not.

Don't do that. Don't do that.

Don't make me lose my head.

I want to apologize, uh, for the behavior inside. I thought it was crude.

I think you're too complicated for your own good.

It doesn't make any sense what you're doing here.

There's nothing wrong with it. I just don't want to be touched.

Do you love me? Do you even love me as your friend?

You're not going to achieve anything by going mad.

I can't go through this anymore. I'm exhausted.

I don't want to make it uncomfortable for you.

Laughing is good. But we don't have to laugh. We could, uh, talk.

I'm sure there are things that you would like to tell me.

All my life, everyone been telling me, "Take a chance!", well, I took it!

I feel so goddamned disloyal. I feel like my - my heart is breaking.

Do I embarrass you?

Did I really misunderstand everything you said last night?

What do you want me to do? You want me to say, "will you marry me?"

Hey, where are you going in the rain?

Do you think - do you think that I'm selfish?

Emotionally, I am in deep trouble.

Why didn't you tell me before? You gave me the cold shoulder.

Listen, I'm gonna put my problems on you.

This is something that I learned a long time ago.

I adore you, [name]. You're my best friend.

Nevermind, my second-best friend. You're out of line.

What's [he/she/they] gonna do without us, [name]?

[noctvoid]

i've done it ! i'm finished with the biographies and updating my graphics. well, some verses & boards are still missing, but they'll be done in time :)c

[noctvoid]

(#𝔭𝔯𝔬𝔪𝔭𝔱.) ¦ * ❝ you know, the amazing thing is you actually believe that this plan could work. ❞ @tremaynes' FIONN TREMAYNE !

he glances up from the mouth of the alley, where water gathers in the cracks between the cobbles and carries soot in thin, black veins towards the gutter. a window hangs broken in its frame. charred timber shows through plaster like exposed bone. ❝ no, fionn. the amazing thing is that you have mistaken chance for optimism. a popular misunderstanding. ❞

a thread of cold has slipped beneath his collar and settled against the nape of his neck, where it becomes another small irritation among many. ❝ fortunately, our plan does not require belief. belief is what people employ when evidence has abandoned them. ❞ he takes two measured steps towards the side door set half-hidden beneath the sagging line of an old awning. this is not the main entrance. naturally. the main entrance is for police, grieving relatives, reporters, and anyone else determined to trample the truth into a paste before breakfast. this door sits low, warped at the bottom, with a scrape along the jamb where someone has forced it once and repaired it badly. hard to notice, easy to forget. a practical person's door. a culprit's door. and now perhaps the gate to all his answers. sherlock does not intend to spend the whole day here.

sherlock crouches. he studies the lock, the mud at the threshold, the blackened smudge just above the handle. no ordinary smoke mark. too concentrated. thumb-width. someone touched it after the fire, not during. soot transferred from glove or sleeve. left-handed? possibly. no, not necessarily. awkward angle, poor light, haste. he resists the little thrill that rises at the back of his skull. the world narrows. noise falls away. ❝ but your concern is noted. ❞ he rises again, brushing grit from his fingers with a quick, fastidious motion. his eyes remain on the door. easier that way. faces carry too many variables. ❝ the fire began above, spread downward, and yet this entrance shows post-incident disturbance. someone returned after the building was already declared unsafe. someone with either access, desperation, or an impressive disregard for their own continued existence. ❞

[noctvoid]

𝐓𝐎𝐎𝐍 𝐌𝐄 !

reverie would prefer their monocle, but occasionally they wear glasses as well ─ i, on the other hand, will immediately get a headache if i go without my glasses for longer than an hour ✨

tagged by: @frenzie ( thank you so much !! 🫵💕) tagging: @nerimoi (sentinel/isolde) , @atlastatlast (eileen) , @darkdevour , @graveflwers (dodge) , @doppogin (arthur) , @4shcroft & anyone who would like to !

[chosenstars]

݁ .⠀ ✩ THE LAST OF THE BUGS. part two of a collection of dialogue prompts from noah kahan's album the great divide: the last of the bugs. some liberties taken to better fit the overall rpc, adjust as you wish. WARNINGS FOR: mentions / insinuations of drugs, alcohol, and depression.

i would ask you how you’ve been, but it’s all over the internet.

if you’re looking for an autopsy or a half-assed half-apology, you picked the wrong time to make this call.

it’s not irrelevant that you stopped taking your medicine.

but it’s cold.

i don’t know, i’m alone.

there ain’t no shame in calling it quits.

you’re a ghost.

you’re poison spreading into my lungs.

i ain’t holding my breath or any faith at all.

i’ll pray for you, be in pain for you.

i’ll leave the porch light on.

you act like we just sit up here and wait for you to reappear.

i want to see you lose it.

i want to hear you say it.

i want to know the dark that i share a brain with.

do you still have a heart or did somebody steal it?

i’m far too tired to watch you lie.

another thing we don’t talk about anymore.

don’t worry, i won’t bring it up.

when i ask about the past, you deny it.

we’re both exhausted for different reasons.

i used to care to know your secrets.

you said you got a guilty conscience, but i ain’t ever seen it.

you can scream at me when i come home.

i always wish you well.

it’s gone to shit without you.

it was shit before, but at least i had you.

there ain’t nothing to report.

i’ve been taking your advice.

if i see one more cybertruck, i swear to god i’m gonna floor it.

i need somebody here to talk me out of things i can’t undo.

saw the world from up close, it ain’t much to look at.

i can’t make myself whole, most days i’d be lucky just to get half.

you’ve seen me in places so low, you can recognize when it’s real bad.

i used to hate the silence.

used to make me think about the old days.

i love you and i can’t fake that for a moment.

we go way back.

tell me that i have substance, that i’m important.

i’m always trying to run from what i’m known for.

gambling with the sun on which one of us dies young.

i ain’t afraid to hold the gun.

wipe your hands and wash your face.

you can fuck up all you want and blame it on your dad.

i want to be you, but i don’t want to be that.

where i’m from and what i’m worth have gotten too damn intertwined.

fuck it, i might even disappear.

i hope you’ve had a decent time.

gonna be rich in our own way.

i swear you’re gonna get it, kid.

they didn’t look scared at all.

tell me when it feels like you can’t escape me.

i’m just happy you still call.

some things live forever, even when they die.

everyone looks happy in a photograph.

i’m always on my own.

maybe i’m manic again.

i think this time i’m out for good.

this ain’t mine anymore.

i made too much goddamn noise.

i’m done staring at the void.

i was high when i met you.

life was something to get through.

we’re too old for both of us to keep howling at the moon.

oh my, what a time to be alive.

tell me, love, if the devil ever comes, to make good on the debts that i owe.

tell the stories i would tell.

make a few of your own.

i was afraid you might wake up and remember who i am, and what i’ve done.

i grew up with a feeling that what’s good must be fleeting.

some will never know they’re beautiful until the crowd points it out for them.

i’m on alien ground.

i’m an astronaut, you’re the moon.

even god is trying to warn you, all this ain’t for you.

i’m an aging wolf who lost the taste for blood.

i’m gonna lose you either way.

everybody’s asleep,  let’s talk about it.

you’ve been the best five minutes of a shitty year.

we’re so alone most of the time.

where do we go when we die?

i wouldn’t mind right here.

you told me how unfair it is, that i have what i have and you got what you got.

i’d give it all back if i could, i cannot.

i hated the way i made it all about me.

every day from back then is like a bad dream.

hey, that’s us.

you and i will be found.

we ain’t far from my house.

[bloomfruit]

' you know, i think i prefer you like this. prison jumpsuit suits ya. ' some things you just can't change. things might be bad, and getting worse every day. dutch was going to be livid when they got back. he would have to answer for his insubordination. the gang was falling apart, the law hot on their heels. and the creeping cough that he knew was killing him. everything had changed, but john was still his little brother. for better or worse. there was nothing the law or sickness could do to remove that part of him.

arthur knows they have a way to go until they get back to camp. he and sadie had raced there, pushing their horses to their limits, out of fear of being too late. but they can take their time now. abigail was waiting, but she would survive a few more days.

he hands john a bottle of unopened whiskey from his bag as they set up camp one night. he leans against a rock, taking a deep, rattling breath. even his bones hurt these days. sometimes, when he looks at john, he still sees that obnoxious little kid. even as he brings him back to his own child.

' they buried him while we were gone. hosea. nice little spot. next to lenny. '

⋆｡°✩ @noctvoid

[noctvoid]

john lets out a breath through his nose, something halfway to a laugh and not making it all the way. ❝ yeah, ❞ he mutters, turning the bottle once in his hand. ❝ real flattering. ❞ the night presses close around them, all dark timber and black hillside and the restless hiss of the fire eating through kindling. crickets work the silence.

his body complains at every stage of sitting down. bruises speak up. muscles draw tight. the old aches turn sharper by fresh ones. freedom, it turns out, still hurts some. he rests with his back against nothing, elbows on his knees, the bottle hangs loose between his hands, and stares at the flames. john's jaw sets. grief has a way of making a man feel watched. makes his face feel too open, his hands too uncertain. ( hosea. lenny. ) names that ought to have still been attached to voices, to movement, to campfire talk and unwanted advice and youth and patience and all the things this life has a knack of taking first.

the whiskey burns hard, a straight line of fire from tongue to throat to gut. he coughs once through his nose, swallows again, and feels it settle somewhere low in him without helping much at all. ❝ should've been there, ❞ he said after a while. ❝ how was it? ❞ he asked, and the question comes rough, carrying more than just the burial in it. ❝ the spot, i mean. have you been there before? ❞ his fingers tighten once around the bottle's neck before easing again.

[noctvoid]

random thoughts about my muses because i cannot think of them monotonously...

mihawk is at the height of his prowess, and perhaps half-drowned by the loneliness that comes with having no equal and nothing left that truly challenges him. the sheer boredom of it must be suffocating. does a man really need a better reason to train the one person who wants to surpass him? of course he would share his knowledge with zoro. of course he would take care of that ghost girl who suddenly appears in his castle, because what else is he supposed to do with all that talent and empty space?

imagine songbird initially believes there must be a way to use the cure for both herself and v, only to find out later that it cannot be shared between them. she was still in the process of researching when she contacted v. then later, v could have used the cure just as much as she could. so mi told v everything they needed to know in order to take it. she gives them the choice, but the choice comes at a price, like everything in night city, and it is never a small one. her whole life teaches her that survival is never clean and never freely given.

john's youth with dutch, hosea, arthur, and the rest does not fit the image of some dream family. he is basically pulled from one criminal environment into another, with the only real difference being that he is no longer alone. they do not shield him the way they later shield jack. they never truly teach john how to build a life of his own. dutch wants dependence more than independence. that becomes painfully obvious once john is working as a ranch hand after the gang falls apart. people had to teach him the most ordinary tasks from scratch, because all he really learned growing up was violence and impulsiveness.

she harvests the blooms at their peak, when the petals darken to a near black-red. geneviève dries, grinds, and sifts them, then mixes the powder with other reagents: iron shavings, ash from burned oaths, grave-dirt, and always her own blood as the binding medium. the result is an ink that looks like bruised fruit and congealed wounds. over the years, some of the older tattoos begin to pale, as though the colour is being eaten from within. where the plum shade once sits almost black beneath her skin, it turns muted grey-violet, like storm clouds rubbed thin. her body seems to consume the blood-pigmentation itself. the guild adds new designs, drives deeper lines, and stitches extra layers of cursework over the old marks. her skin crowds ... across the backs of her hands to the base of her skull. the old ink keeps paling. enough that some clauses feel looser, and some orders sting less when she hesitates.

[writwove]

[807]   “I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century.”   Kieran's hands gripped the reins with poorly disguised excitement,   a goofy wide smile spread across his face as he looked between John and Branwen,   whose front hooves shifted impatiently but otherwise calmly in place.   “Least that's what it feels like,   getting to go out and all,”   he chuckles quietly while glancing at the scarred outlaw,   "I mean & you getta leave camp whenever you want and all.   But I guess to say well … he's been needing to get out more than me."   Kieran says with a firm pat on Branwen's shoulder.   “What'd you say we need to get?”

[ … ]   randomized starter for @noctvoid

[noctvoid]

woodsmoke in his coat. coffee gone bitter in his mouth. trampled grass and the faint sourness of damp canvas warming under the day. all of it hung low and familiar, a life he had not exactly chosen but kept waking up inside anyway. ❝ just some supplies, ain't as grand as all that. ❞

his eyes narrowed against the light, turning briefly towards the road ahead, where it stretched out dusty beyond camp, a ribbon of both the unknown and certain destination. the morning sun had started climbing proper now. camp could start to feel too small, even when the open world beyond it had its own limitations. ❝ coffee, maybe some food. guns, if they've got any worth buying, and whatever else somebody might've forgotten they needed, now it's our problem. ❞

a breeze moved through then, thin and dry, carrying the resin-sharp scent of pine. it brushed the hair back from his brow and was gone. ❝ don't get too excited over flour and coffee, town's got a way of spoilin' things as soon as we get there. ❞

[noctvoid]

cells do not ask before dividing. mutations do not wait for the big applause. so why should i? if the world insists on being such an badly assembled thing, the least i can do is take it apart properly and see which pieces twitch the longest. people who have never held a viable thought until it became a risk, they sit with their neat stacks of paper and their tragic posture and tell me a request is ❝unreasonable❞. unreasonable. yes, of course it is. if it were reasonable, any idiot with a clipboard could think of it.

they want the future pre-chewed and labelled before they will hand over the money required to make it real. honestly, if discovery depended on committees alone, we would still be marvelling at fire. sometimes i think the walls are listening. i mean it. they have the expression for it. a room knows when you are about to say a revelation. the corners lean in. wallpaper rustles. cracks appear on the ceiling that you've never seen before. then someone enters and ruins the moment by asking where the scissors are, and the whole moment collapses into banality again. sigh.

[gearrscealta]

@noctvoid [sly] asked; nothing about the place makes sense. the ground beneath his boots is a patchwork of memory stitched together badly. one step lands on slate roof, slick with rain that does not fall. the next meets warped floorboards from a room he has not seen since he was a child, their varnish split with age, their smell warm and faintly sweet beneath the stronger stink of smoke. beyond that, there is a narrow parisian ledge hanging in empty dark, then the outline of a corridor that should belong to the cooper vault, then a crooked lamp-post leaning at an angle that ought to end in gravity but does not. everything bleeds into everything else. rooftops into hallways. moonlight into firelight. the past into something fouler. his tail flicks once behind him. somewhere above him, or below him, or maybe inside the walls themselves, something gives a long, rusted shriek. his spine locks. it is a sound he knows in the oldest part of himself. that scream of metal dragged across metal, old rage wound into every note of it. it reaches through years and skin and lands squarely in the place where grief and terror have always shared a room. for a second, he is young again in the worst possible way. his mouth goes dry. clockwerk. of course. who else could a nightmare wear so well? ❝ this is new. ❞ his heartbeat will not slow down. it hammers hard against his ribs, each pulse a bright little betrayal, but his voice holds. the old hatred between them hangs in the air like the taste of pennies and thunder. even now, after everything, after all the falls and fires and endings, clockwerk's presence drags a raw strip through the cooper line inside him. ❝ i don't know who built this little haunted scrapbook, ❞ he says, eyes fixed on the shape before him, ❝ but if you're as stuck here as i am, then we've got a problem. ❞ with that familiar slant of wit drawn tight over a much uglier truth, he adds, ❝ and for once, it might not be me. ❞

There is no vessel in existence that's fit to contain the full extent of his hatred for the Cooper clan. Alive or dead, awake or unconscious it festered like a a vile petulance, transferring from bone and feather to metal, to soul, to components both tangible and not, that wouldn't fade or degrade with the passage of time. Clockwerk, by his own admission was relentless in his quest to obliterate the thieving racoon lineage. And as in life, such a pursuit continued into other theatres, such as the realm of dreams. And... illusions.

No stable outline is given to the shifting landscape that surrounds them, which changed constantly, like a film wheel played on an endless loop. Sometimes, what constituted as the ground beneath his talons offered favourable conditions, such as an open rooftop, devoid of obstacles to cower behind. A place where he could stretch out his wings, donning the shape that became the last sight witnessed by every Cooper to fall dead before him. Whilst at other times, in his pursuit of ghosts, he's negotiating some interior or another, savouring, for the hundredth time, the unique thrill and satisfaction felt when this dream-space brought him back to Connor Cooper's abode, along with the Five. A pitiful sight that'll always he seared into the deepest recesses of his memory banks.

If only he'd gone for the child, rather than the book.

"ᴄᴏᴏᴘᴇʀ." Beak stays closed, but the usual, electronic tone carries against the distance keeping them apart. That could be crossed, with a few beats of his own wings, had he not cotton on to the deception being played out. "ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇ, ᴡʜᴇʀᴇᴠᴇʀ ɪᴛ ᴍɪɢʜᴛ ʙᴇ, ɪꜱ ʙᴜᴛ ᴀ ᴍɪʟᴅ ɪɴᴄᴏɴᴠᴇɴɪᴇɴᴄᴇ. ɪ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ᴏɴ ᴍʏ ꜱɪᴅᴇ." Which was to say, he'd settle for watching the pesky racoon wither and collapse from hunger and thirst first than chime in with a idea about where exactly they've ended up together.

If this whole endeavour was ever real to begin with.

"ᴀʟᴡᴀʏꜱ ꜱʜɪʀᴋɪɴɢ ʀᴇꜱᴘᴏɴꜱɪʙɪʟɪᴛʏ." Hooking onto a particular character flaw, the owl singled in on it, using it to lambast his nemesis. " ʜᴀʀᴅʟʏ ꜱᴜʀᴘʀɪꜱɪɴɢ.. ɪᴛ ɪꜱ ʏᴇᴛ ᴀɴᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ʀᴇᴀꜱᴏɴ ꜰᴏʀ ᴡʜʏ ɪ ꜱʜᴏᴜʟᴅ ᴄʟᴀɪᴍ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʟɪꜰᴇ ᴛʜɪꜱ ɪɴꜱᴛᴀɴᴛ, ᴀɴᴅ ʙᴇ ᴅᴏɴᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴍᴇꜱꜱ, ᴏɴᴄᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ꜰᴏʀ ᴀʟʟ."

[noctvoid]

the universe, in all its strange and broken imagination, can still find no better use for the dark than to shape it around clockwerk's voice. around the name cooper spoken by his machine of a throat like it is already an epitaph. somewhere off to his left, a window appears where there should be open air, throwing a square of warm lamplight into the black before it folds in on itself and vanishes.

he hates that the place knows what to reach for. his grip tightens on the cane until the leather at his palm gives a small, complaining creak. that is the trick, isn't it. always has been. not winning clean. not feeling brave. just knowing how to stand in front of the thing meant to break you and still give it your better angle. ❝ right, because patience has always been your most charming quality. ❞ the quip leaves him with a rough edge to it. there is no bentley here to smooth the panic into a plan, no murray to make terror feel temporary through his sheer stubborn heart. there is only him, the nightmare, and the monster his family spent generations dying beneath. so the joke comes out a little thin.

the dark interior behind him smells of old timber and wax and something coppery underneath, and he knows without turning that if he looked too long, he might find a hallway from his childhood home waiting with the door already open.

not yet, he thinks. almost angrily. not that one. not from you.

❝ you really don't know when to quit the dramatic entrance, do you, ❞ he says, eyes fixed on those red points. ❝ all this time, and you're still giving me the same routine. cooper this. cooper that. claim your life. end the line. it's kind of flattering, actually. in a morbid way. ❞

it's nauseating, realising your enemy has carried your bloodline like a lit coal through centuries, warming his hands over the idea of your extinction. sly has inherited a legacy that glitters until you hold it next to the body count. but clockwerk's hatred might be the only family heirloom that ever learned how to follow him into sleep. around him, scraps of the dream-space continue to stutter and rearrange. paper flutters past his ankle. not paper. ( pages. ) familiar illustrations in a familiar hand. the thievius raccoonus, or some cruel copy of it, drifting by in pieces before the ink blurs and runs like blood through water.

❝ maybe time's on your side. ❞ sly taps the hooked end of his cane once against the unstable ground. the sound rings wrong, too hollow, too deep, as though it has struck not roof tile but a vast empty chamber hidden under the world. ❝ but that only matters if this place plays by your rules. and unless i missed something, it doesn't, or else i wouldn't still be talking, would i? ❞

[noctvoid]

(#𝔭𝔯𝔬𝔪𝔭𝔱.) ¦ * ❝ i think you're in the wrong place. ❞ @atlastatlast's EILEEN THE CROW !

reverie stills so abruptly that the motion seems to happen to her rather than by her. one moment, there is only the page. graphite dragged into the soft tooth of paper. the thin rasp of her pencil. the private order of notes arranged in a neat hand. the next, a voice reaches her through the tunnel and catches somewhere behind her ribs, and the world lurches back into shape with all the tenderness of a blow.

──she lifts her head.

for a second she looks like someone pulled from deep water too quickly. a small, clean shock passes over her face. that ugly little dizziness of being made to cross too fast from thought into flesh. the passages around her return. damp brick. black mortar slick with age. the cramped ceiling beading with moisture. the rank smell of old water and older rot, threaded through with iron and herbs and the faint, stale ghost of blood that no stone in yharnam ever truly loses.

her fingers remain tucked around the spine of the notebook, though she lowers it by a fraction. one thumb is still caught between pages as if she refuses, even now, to lose her wrong place.

she does not deny them. that would be foolish. reverie is too intelligent for the comfort of foolishness, and too long acquainted with locked doors and improper thresholds to pretend innocence when found standing in one. there is always another room in this city. another passage. another structure that proves, when pressed just so, to be less committed to being a brickwork than first advertised. she has made a life from such discoveries.

her eyes find the speaker at last. still a trace of that startled look about her, but it is already being folded away, tucked back beneath composure. she takes in what she can at a glance. the obscuring line of the mask. the dark beneath it where the eyes sit hidden. the leather scent, the metallic tang worked into cloth by old work and necessary violences.

someone else might have answered with an apology. or wit. reverie has never been quick in the manner people find easy. she emerges like a body recognised not by its face but by the shape it leaves beneath a sheet. when she finally speaks, her voice comes soft from disuse, as it has spent the last hour turned inward and resents being summoned out. ❝ that seems likely. ❞ she glances down at the open notebook, the page crowded with observations, fragments, little stitched attempts at making a pattern. the pencil has smudged the side of her finger. she presses her thumb against the margin without thinking. cold seeps through the soles of her shoes. ❝ yharnam is full of wrong places, it has a talent for multiplying them. ❞

she simply stands there between the stone and the dark, slight and composed and a touch unreal, as if she has stepped half out of one of her own records and not yet decided whether to remain. her gaze lifts fully, steadier now, curiosity cutting through the remnants of that first disorientation. ❝ where, in your judgement, ought they be instead? ❞

it is an odd phrasing, distant by a hair, as though she has placed herself on the page too and is reading from there. but the interest in the reply is real as reverie waits for eileen's answer.

[noctvoid]

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐀𝐑𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐓𝐘𝐏𝐄 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔?

the matryoshka doll : someone with layers, and a painted surface hiding deep intricacy below. a person who changes completely in a blink of an eye, a person with contradictions but something cohesive holding everything together.

tagged by: @4shcroft dankeschöööön <3 tagging: @darkdevour , @mercysought , @atlastatlast , @avaere , @graveflwers , @viskozen , @doppogin & anyone who wants to !

[vicarlunares]

“ I believe it is a sin to deny your appetites. They are what make us fully alive as mortal men, “ said @indirges

“ — As it is to overindulge. ”

The favor of sweet fruit tastes almost rotten over tongue. All such indulgences were a matter of performance after so long, the Golden Goddess nearing the borders of opulent phlegm for such niceties. It extends to meat, leisure, physical pleasure, and all else. All of it a routine, if not a brokered reaction, to her. And while she was rightfully bothered with sinking into a crucial boredom, consternation twists her gut tight from seeking guilty vices beyond all that. 

For a Queen, Marika almost appeared modest. Her appearances a customary obligation along with the proffered itinerary and dignitaries that wished to be graced by her blessing and guidance of the Two.

A passive ennui smooths the hard-line of her features, reforming her holy visage into an identical mirror to her stone idols. Fortissax may plead a reasonable argument. With a single glaring exception ——

“ I am no mortal nor am I a man, ” spoken with a limp shrug, rolling the commentary off both tongue and body. “ However, thou’st seem to be declaring I stand upon equal footing to thee tonight. ”

[noctvoid]

his pupils draw thin, black slits against the glimmer of his eyes. the chamber's glow worries itself over his face, over the sharpness of cheek and jaw, over scales too lustrous to belong to any ordinary courtly thing. ❝ thou dost speak it as though such footing were a wound put upon thee. ❞ fortissax has never much trusted courts. they gild insult until it shines like praise. cruelty is duty, worship becomes a blade so ornate that men forget it cuts. marika is the centre of it, the bright nail driven through the world's palm. queen. goddess. vessel. prison. perhaps all these things at once.

his gaze shifts, briefly, towards the way by which the prince should return at any time, but the hour is not late enough to concern him. almost. soon, perhaps. fortissax hears distant footfalls elsewhere in the palace, the far-off murmur of attendants, the whisper of fabric, the small sounds of a place pretending not to breathe. ❝ if it be thy expectation that i should lower mine eyes because grace hath made a throne of thee, then, by the storm that yet remembereth my name, never shall i bow. ❞ a faint pulse of red crawls beneath his skin, not bright enough to threaten. it moves like banked embers through the veins at his throat.

the fruit upon the table glistens wetly in its dish. its sweetness has begun to thicken in the air, cloying at the back of his tongue. he dislikes it. overripe things always carry the threat of collapse. soft skin giving way. sugar turning starchy.

❝ thou art more than queen. i grant thee that without quarrel. but rank is a poor measure of worth, and worship poorer still. men kneel for many reasons. fear. hunger. habit. hope and seldom wisdom. ❞ his claws flex once against the tiles. a small click. ❝ i have seen beasts with nobler hearts than kings. i have seen warriors with empty hands hold more honour than lords with vaults of gold. i have seen a prince choose mercy where conquest would have sung louder. ❞

[le-flaneur-visuel-blog]

Emotion, Nobuhiko Ōbayashi (1966)

[vicarlunares]

“ I've come to know the face of tortured rest well enough, “ said @indirges

Stress && strength carries the scarlet-blessed upright. Her constitution is stiff with a stubborn rigidity; a puppet strung straight by the strings of golden duty. She endeavored to hide this weakness from others, beyond what disadvantage she was cursed with —— refusing to appear as anything less than the gilded knights of Halig. 

With a limp shake of her head, Malenia silently denies Harleigh’s observation, treating it no more than a hasty assumption. 

“ You have me mistaken, ” she suggested with little conviction behind it. 

The nights have drawn on for far too long. Many guarding cycles were often sleepless as many days were without respite. This rot festering throughout her flesh-shelled complex better served as a second spirit to pilot her towards the next camp. Did Malenia ever dream ? Could she anymore ? Perhaps as a knave and once a child, she had, but all such were memories to her. And, rest did not become her as it once did, either.

“ What brings you to me, ser? ” she thought to ask, dividing the attention of the topic away from her; she whom should be no one,” does your lord have business with mine? ”

[noctvoid]

with the haligtree gathered all around him in pale silence. full of life, and for that reason all the more disquieting. the boughs above breathe in leaves and gold. somewhere high overhead, branches shift with a soft, dry hush, like silk drawn over old bone. green sweetness. living bark. a bitterness he cannot quite name.

it is beautiful enough to unsettle him.

across the white-gold limbs of this impossible tree, across its roots folded into walls and halls as though wood and stone had long ago agreed to become one body. no fevered red. one of the dragonflies that had followed him for part of his wandering had long since vanished. now there is only the hush of bushes and malenia before him, straight-backed despite the fatigue she tries to refuse. ❝ my lord has sent no business by my mouth, ❞ he says at last. his voice is low and even, unhurried. it suits the corridor. the haligtree seems to prefer nothing spoken too loudly within its living bones. ❝ i am only set to attend a messenger. they are engaged in the conversation they came seeking, and so i have found myself briefly unclaimed. ❞

to be given purpose and then left without immediate use has always sat strangely on him. he is made for ritual, for action, for the intimate certainty of blade, blood, prayer. not for waiting on the fringes of another's exchange while words are traded like measured coin. his eyes move to the stretch of passage behind her and beyond, where light pours in through the woven limbs of the tree. the haligtree reminds him of a body opened with exquisite care. life so insistently alive it skirts the edge of violence. his unease deepens each time he notices another lovely thing.

❝ i wandered, ❞ he admits, and there is the faintest thread of dry candour in the word. ❝ your haligtree does not make stillness easy. ❞

each turning had seemed to promise some further inner chamber of the thing, some more secret ligament, some hidden pulse. he had followed roots with a reserved and absent devotion, drawn by the pressure of fascination. he has always understood sanctity best where it bruises.

❝ if you wish to hear them for yourself, i can take you there. ❞