Mending Villefort @onecalledfauste - Tumblr Blog

Twenty-Two

4 Phoenix, 1302 AE

“Lord Aguillard’s house is your home now. Go home, Heloise.”

“But, Mother, I –” Slam!

The scene played over and over in my head. When I came back to Egdemoor, named so by Nikki himself, I demanded my own rooms and there I remained through the New Year; ignoring the maids as they went to and fro, the sounds of child’s play in the halls as a few days after the first of the Zephyr brought the bastard boy into the house by drowning my senses in tobacco and alcohol to numb the betrayal and the loneliness I felt.

One wine-sodden eve around mid-Zephyr, I remember tearing open the door and throwing a candle stick in a dramatic display at the maid who chased him down my hall, screaming belligerently for her to keep him away from me. I do not know if Nikki spoke to her after that, or if she obeyed me herself; but I didn’t see the boy again that season. I didn’t see anyone until upon my nameday a confident knock echoed across the paneling of my door which opened immediately after. Maids, I had thought.

I heard feet shuffle across the rug in the dark, made by heavy curtains that didn’t allow high noon’s light in only to find myself blinded by the suddenness of their being thrown open and I sat up stark with every intent to scream at–

“BAPTISTE!”

The burst of joy and tears that came from me was uncontrollable as I fell from the bed, intent upon wrapping my arms around his chest. But, his hands clutched my upper shoulders at first and he held me at a small length to stare in my face. “First bathe,” he had said, “Then, I will hug you. You look like shit.”

I had obeyed him then. I wasn’t willing to risk disobeying, fearful he’d leave. I fooled myself into thinking my Mother might have changed her mind and he was here to get me, to remove me from the vile prison I’d made for myself and bring me home. Sometime later, when I expressed this hope, he frowned at me and I knew his reason for visiting was not what I had hoped.

“You made a vow, too, Loie,” he’d said.

I was wounded; sputtering at him and irrationally declaring my husband’s betrayal of our union to my brother who raised a hand to stop my rage in its tracks.

“He didn’t have an affair with the boy’s mother,” he began.

“You too? You believe such lies!” I had hissed, standing from the seat across from him, clutching the bathrobe tighter to my figure as I made to leave the room. “He’s four years old,” Baptiste’s voice boomed behind me, “It’s not physically possible!”

I stood above a silver platter on a desk, fingers trembling as I prepared the day’s 9th cigarette. A tear slid down my nose. He leaned against the door frame.

“What would you have me do, then? He still hid it!”

“Did he?” countered he, whose eyes I felt on my temple.

The question hit me. Did he? I didn’t actually know. I hadn’t said more than four words to him since Wintersday. He had respected my space.

“…did he ask you to talk to me?” I asked, turning slowly, cigarette sagging lamely between two fingers.

Only after scooping up the cigarette in his own fingers did he answer me with a dull, “Yes,” before he put it in his mouth.

“Gods damn you, both of you! What a childish thing to do to call you here to what? To talk to me!?” She threw her hands up and strode back towards her bed, intent upon tossing herself in.

“Childish is what you’re doing, Loie, not him. He made a mistake. Certainly you know what it’s like to be faulted for something you didn’t intend to do?” He asked, remaining in the doorway.

Mother, I thought. He means our mother. I paused at the side of the bed and turned to look at him. He continued.

“Break the wheel, Loie. You have the power to do so,” he said, shifting off the frame of the door and moving across the chamber for the exit only to pause.

“I love you, little sis,” he said, before he went.

Keep reading

#Heloise Villefort Aguillard #Their Life in the Past: Part 2 #A Lifetime Before #The Lost Name

painfulblisss

fotogrimsi-deactivated20230306

snowfallen-nymph

The surgeon oft found himself, in fleetingly spare moments of respite, withdrawing a single portrait from the inner pocket of his waistcoat. The listless braise of his leathern-coated thumb meandered across painted visage. "I remember this face," stroked vibrous wonder, inquisition stitching peppered brows in unison whilst recollection failed he. "Every time I catch the thread, the spindle uncoils in its entirety. I will know you, she who dwells beyond the veil."

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

The rhythmic sound of a grandfather clock, synchronizing to the steady albeit impatient tapping of a quill just as the hour struck three. Another long night kept a dour figure hunched over his desk within his chamber, to which those walls were lit dimly of amber flambeau, flickering dully against the collection of fine art and tapestry decorated throughout the manor. Buried beneath mountainous paperwork, surely such was at the fault of both procrastination and countless refills of an aromatic dark roast made prevalent not only by decadent scent but the numerous stains left encircling his mug. Encumbering responsibility bid a restless mind to wander if for naught for the briefest distraction; an almost involuntary effort which lead a singular hand to gravitate towards the photo stowed away in the breast pocket of his coat.

What image lay betwixt the thumb and forefinger of an idiosyncratic doctor was an orphic being painted of marbled finesse, not of this world. Yet, any sequence of imagery captured – prior to present point – simply remain blurred phantasmagoria to the oculi of the majority of this realm. Rumors were surely born of a maiden of myth; a balletic apparition only to be caught within one’s peripheral vision in eerie, transient moments. Locals commonly passed this knowledge along as mere folktale and nursery rhyme murmur.

Old wood creaked beneath the weight of its still restless occupant as he lay back languidly upon the heels of his seat; a ponderous sigh and the pinching of thin flesh along the bridge of one’s nose marked clear indication that another night’s defeat had occurred.

What fire brought warmth to the room would suddenly be met by an impending chill, snuffing hungering flame of a hearth with a biting frost that could hitch the breath from your lungs. Spiderlike limbs cast the walls in a shadow of rime, crackling as if splintering the very architecture that made up the building. Everything would begin to crumble around the surgeon. Even what world beyond those chamber walls would prove to be flawed. The sky was falling, and the earth shattered beneath his seat only to reveal that all was void of existence.

T'was blackness that engulfed the entirety of space around him until he sat alone in just that.

Nothingness.

Not even a sound of breath could be apprehended, nor the hastening pace of one’s heart as adrenaline inevitably pulsed through veins. All the doctor could do was remain statuesque, perched upon that old wood chair petrified with what one could have deemed evocative to sleep paralysis.

The song of a nightingale chimed, breaking silence with haunting locution, drawn-out and carried upon longing, funereal notes. A silhouette embodied within paraselene light pierced through darkness as sauntering footfalls brought forth the entity responsible for this phenomenon. The form of a white-veiled woman presented itself, swathed in gossamer silks and sheer lace that billowed weightlessly as if she had been under water.

Company never oft-desired, queer form it was for the nymph to bid invitation to strangers; such warning for young damsels to heed from their disquieted mothers that evidently she took light of. Slowly, hands rose in delicate manner, spindly digits curling inward of her veil, drawing back the translucent fabric that only vaguely eclipsed her countenance. When she drew closer to him, her lullaby then found its conclusion as the pale figurine slipped effortlessly upon his lap as if a throne; sinuous limbs draped loosely about the nape of his neck.

It was then when the walls of her mirage began to disintegrate, giving way to reality of her mien. What could’ve been fathomed as ethereal beauty had since began its gradual deterioration upon closer inspection, driven by the weight of the world that graced her melancholic features. Hollowed cheekbones, and from beneath her eyes marked violaceous halos, not cast by the shadows of dusky dollesque lashes – no, but perpetuated lethargy that kept ever-teetering along the precipice of somnolence.

The faintest incline of her chin bid errant curls of opalescent snow to spill over milken hues that dare not blink. The peculiar femme leaned close, frigid breath gracing one’s lobe, and from parted roseate lips spilled words of uncannily honeyed susurration,

“ I… knoooww… you… ”

{ @onecalledfauste Your move, Sir. }

onecalledfauste

Stilled in the brevity of siren’s grip, index’s gloved pad cramped the blotted ink upon leathern spire. As reality stripped from the stoic veneer, seasoned by bloodied trenches and the hellish scorn of battle, a youth persisted upon his visage. Angular features, centered upon a hawkish slope to nose’s bridge, depicted blithe regality. Satin flayed from flesh, patch dwindled from his right eye, the mirage molded he. The Hellion, forged inward of the errant limbo between the waking and fallen freed from her stoned grip. Saccharine timbre found claimed purchase amidst a most intimate proximity, thus gaining partial vantage to the chesire rictus plying dried tiers from imperious vice.

Comprising the sculpted hemisphere of his visage, a mismatched hue parted raven lashes to peel the lunar, gilded iris trapped within obsidian seas toward her. Once trimmed nails wreathed in tailored sheepskin bled to a canonic, vascular canvas whilst nailed talons pressed beyond the seams. A myth well within his own right, the relinquishing of earthly guise has unhinged the fluency amidst the realm. Infrastructure was but a distant, malleable construct, the chair remained nothing if not a symbol accentuating the beast’s restraint. Beneath the whimsy of satine threads glowered loosened contours of azure runes. Wafting miasma of faded words grew palpable, serrations chiming upon ear’s shell as the wartorn baritone plumed unburdened from beastial maw.

“Shadow-Lover, you alone can know How I long to reach a point of peace How I fade with weariness and woe How I long for you to bring release. Shadow-Lover, court me in my dreams Bring the peace that suffering redeems. Shadow-Lover, from the Shadows made, Lead me into Shadows once again. Where you lead I cannot be afraid, For with you I shall come home again- In your arms I shall not fear the night. Shadow-Lover, lead me into light.”

A medley to answer the call consciousness disallowed, a greeting known to reapers only. And yet, the dream-dwelling siren was perhaps all to familiar with woeful beckon. The apparition continued, verse purged from phantasmic confession.

“For so long, I believed you beyond the veil of my life. I sought you, longed for your grip to ferry me from this existence. I know better now, my kin, daughter of dreams, bringer of bliss and calm. It has been long destined, in this world we meet.” A clawed appendage peeled back the page of his ledger now saturated in crimson ink to reveal a lone card of prophecy; a second gravitating with the synchronized suggestion of middle-most digit’s magnetic urging. The pair lay painted before opalescent hues of the siren abaft his seated silhouette.

“The Hellion and the Siren,” remarked the elder whose ageless timbre embedded within hourless void. Rhythm manifested no more as prior verse vanished, abruptly devouring musicality to strip the pair of nightingale’s ballad.

“Both walk within dreams. The Hellion’s venom bleeds within the earthly realm, praying upon the desires and wanton vacancies to free one of their shame. And yet, such euphoria becomes nothing short of intoxicating, a quest within their subconscious to evoke awakenment. Earth shall never bring them such bliss, and so they plead the Hellion to claim them. And yet, the Siren mends such wounds, tethers the restless into the restful, radiating a hearth that embraces fear and desire without the judgement, neatly packaging the mind to traverse reality. Have you come, dear Siren, to ground me? Or release me?” The figmented spectre persisted, hallowed airs between the two as linked chains draped across his lap. Perhaps one could untie them quite simply, but the metaphysical mass left them utterly unmoving to the devastation bottled within flesh.

@snowfallen-nymph

#A Siren's Song to a Hellion #Where Dreams Part #rp thread

"You've changed my life and for that, I am forever thankful."

The man paused at the statement, his chilled veneer morphing into one of puzzlement. Most moments of gratitude came following a surgery, an appointment, all of which he was equipped to field. But abrupt and anonymous, he was not. Studying the note for a moment too long, he tucked it away into his waistcoat pocket, eclipsed in silence still.

“While there is a part of me that admires you I also fear you.”