If evil were a lesser breed,
then justice after all these years,
the righteous would have freed the world of sin.
The house wins.
Oh, the house always wins.
ROYALREEF; an indie, selective mermaid OC. complete with original worldbuilding, lore, and setting. mutuals and 18+ only. advised by [REDACTED].
rules + about. mobile friendly.
A study in: to temper creatures of flesh and blood like steel. no price so high or depravity so low that it cannot be justified if it furthers power and authority. the vast chasm of understanding between even closely related different species. abuse as total obliteration of the soul. comparative anatomy through shared ancestry, the unpredictably in firsthand accounts of animal attacks. the red queen hypothesis.
(( Merfolk are hypersocial macropredators. This shouldn't be new information to anyone on my blog, but the sheer extent of merfolk sociability cannot be overstated. Their social nature is the entire reason they were able to become and specialize into macropredatory niches in the way that they have. Their close relatives, the leviathans, are an excellent example of what merfolk might have become if they didn't have their intense communal proclivities — being much more typical, expected examples of a secondarily aquatic large marine predator akin to marine reptiles of the past and whales of the present. Without their social bindings, merfolk might have entirely lost their hands for flippers, would lack their heightened connection to sound and language, and certainly wouldn't have shaped the ecosystems and the world they inhabit in the same way.
For this, merfolk relationships are complicated. They started as a way of forming a simple hunting group and handling life in large colonies, but as merfolk specialized further, so too did their relationships. More and more they focused on interpersonal politics and the complications of maintaining a large social group that was constantly evolving and shifting, which fostered the growth of their intelligence and sapience, which then led back even moreso into needing the ability to maintain and keep up with their relationships.
A merfolk in isolation is not a merfolk at all. While the exactness of this thought varies across their different cultures, it still holds true for all of them. On a literal level, merfolk can and do die of loneliness, their social needs as much of a requirement to them as the need for food or water. If you were to isolate a merfolk, to the point where they could not hear nor see anyone else, then they would endure a brutal one or two weeks, and then die. Every other need can be met, they can be otherwise entirely healthy, but without anyone else around, they cannot live.
On the more metaphorical level, a merfolk cannot exist solely on their own. Most merfolk cultures accept that the individual does not exist, and that there has to be some outside dialogue with other merfolk in order for them to even be alive. The self and identity are inherently plural to them, a multifaceted soul which exists in the bodies and lives of merfolk in a group, and which can't be broken down. Maintaining relationships and fostering them is as essential as feeding yourself, or feeding someone else.
For all of this, merfolk require much higher amounts of social interaction and connection. This is not to say that introverted merfolk do not exist, but they would be introverted by the measure of their fellow merfolk, and not by what humans might judge them to be. Much like how even the most introverted human could not endure the life of a solitary snake or spider, an introverted merfolk could not endure the life of an introverted human. Similarly, even an extroverted human could not compare against an extroverted merfolk.
Likewise, not every social interaction is the same to merfolk, and they maintain different emotional connections with different people, fulfilling a wider assortment of social needs. In fact, it is easiest to think of merfolk social structure as being like one large, interwoven, piece of lace, where each individual merfolk is represented by a single knot. They are all tied together into larger pieces, repeating patterns, all working together to create a singular, complex web of all the ways every merfolk is connected to every other merfolk.
For this, merfolk have different names for each different pattern, each different part at different scales and sizes. All are important, even if some are closer and tied nearer to the individual merfolk in question, and require greater maintenance to keep healthy.
These patterns and connections are, by far, what is most important to a merfolk. It might be best, in fact, to consider merfolk as not experiencing platonic, familial, romantic, or even typically human sexual connections, and certainly not in the same manner as is expected of humans. None are appropriate nor all that similar to the connections that form within their relationship hierarchy, and all are secondary to the nature of the hierarchy itself, to the extent that all else pales before it. In fact, the specific dynamics contained within any point within the relationship hierarchy might be quite varied and unique, as are the specifics of how they operate within the larger structure of the relationships around them. To a human, this can come across as odd, as certain relationships will still outrank others in terms of importance, depending upon their place within the relationship hierarchy.
Hence, from the smallest unit to the largest, this is (approximately) what the merfolk hierarchy of relationships looks like:
Yuu'itv + Ul’kiha
This can be thought of as the singular knot, as the individual merfolk themselves. This is what is most familiar to landfolk, as it typically does not refer to any more than one merfolk.
To the merfolk themselves, however, this is more theoretical and functional than a real part of their relationship hierarchy to be maintained. This is the building block of identity, the pieces which make up one true self, but pieces which are not as concerning or deserving of as much time as the selfhood itself.
The exception, as you might have noticed, is the inclusion of ul'kiha at this rung. Ul'kiha (in the standard-technical language) is loosely translated as the water that runs through someone's gills, but in the plural. Less literally, it refers to a shared breath, a breathing as one. A shared body, in less flowery terms. Soulmates, in the easiest localization.
In short, an ul'kiha is another merfolk and individual who is so close to another merfolk that they are thought of as one person. A plural-becoming-singular, if you might. Other merfolk will treat two ul'kiha as the same person, talk to them as the same person, view their relationships to them as one person. It represents the tightest, closest bond any merfolk can have.
For this, ul'kiha are rare. Most merfolk will never take an ul'kiha in their lives, and for those that do, taking more than one is next to unheard of. While ul'kiha can split up, if one ul'kiha dies and the other doesn't, the living partner is expected to never take another ul'kiha again, and quite often the loss is enough to kill them too.
Miivt'ia
These are the first few knots the initial knot is tied to, and the first true rung on the relationship hierarchy.
In a sense, the miivt'ia is a merfolk's inner circle. These are the people who they are closest to in their lives, who they have a unique and potent bond with. A miivt'ia, likewise, is a group which is exclusive to itself, and all the members of a miivt'ia will feel the same way about each other, and count themselves in each other's miivt'ia.
The closest example we might have to what a miivt'ia is would be the concept of a friend polycule. None of the members inside a miivt'ia are what we might recognize as exactly platonic, familial, romantic, nor sexual with each other, but they have a tight and exclusive bond which is solely shared amongst each other. In fact, each member of the miivt'ia might feel differently about every other member of the miivt'ia and have their own, unique dynamic with every other member, but all are united in the closeness given by being members of the miivt'ia.
Miivt'ia are often formed right as a merfolk is first growing up. Family members can be included in the miivt'ia, but not always, and those included are almost always siblings, cousins, or others who are similarly close in age. Childhood friendships that begin to deepen often become a part of the miivt'ia, as are the most serious of recurrent relationships. However, miivt'ia can also be created outside of these formative years, and there are many miivt'ia that essentially act like guilds or a "family" business, being closer than mere coworkers but sharing the same job.
Miivt'ia are the people with whom a merfolk has near-constant contact with. They are expected to live together, and often will share the same job, or similar jobs. All of their personal belongings are considered as belonging to the miivt'ia over any individual, and legally the miivt'ia is the individual upon which laws apply to. A merfolk without a miivt'ia is effectively homeless, and spiritually merfolk consider the miivt'ia to be the soul. Any children the miivt'ia has or adopts is considered the child of everyone else in the miivt'ia, the members all acting as parents and considering themselves equally as responsible in the care for that child. Miivt'ia are not only expected to be constantly in contact with each other and to participate in everything together, but they are expected to care equally about every other member of the miivt'ia and to feel each other's emotions as one.
For all of this, merfolk are highly loyal to their miivt'ia and will defend the members of their miivt'ia with their life. Any threat to any other member of the miivt'ia is considered a direct threat to all other members and to the individual merfolk's lives, and the loss of any member of the miivt'ia is mourned by all others to the highest degree.
There is a lot of responsibility placed upon those included in the miivt'ia, but the miivt'ia also has an emotional closeness and intimacy that isn't shared by any other merfolk in the relationship hierarchy (except the ul'kiha, see above). Being too overtly close and intimate with a merfolk can be seen as not respecting the miivt'ia and be seen as a threat to the security of the miivt'ia. Likewise, if someone wishes to join a miivt'ia, they will often endure a "courting" phase with all the members of the miivt'ia, where they attempt to forge connections equally as close to and intimate with every other member.
Dhe'jny'p usae
If the miivt'ia was the smallest initial pattern any relationship can have in the larger weave, then the dhe'jny'p usae is the actual shape of that pattern, when something becomes not just an oval, but a petal on a flower.
Dhe'jny'p usae, in standard-technical language, is closest translated to "drift family". Humans might recognize the dhe'jny'p usae as being something similar to friends. They are not as close as the miivt'ia, but they might represent the next nearest thing, being a close emotional connection with associated responsibilities. The dhe'jny'p usae would be the closest other miivt'ia to the existing miivt'ia, acting as neighbors or close-knit family. If the miivt'ia had children, then they would be expected to provide care and look after those children alongside their own, and would cycle wider, communal responsibilities with the miivt'ia. Miivt'ia and members of the miivt'ia would hang out with and spend a lot of time with their dhe'jny'p usae, and this forms the base of wider merfolk sociability.
While the dhe'jny'p usae would be excluded from the private, domestic matters of the miivt'ia, they might still be gone to for emotional reassurance, or to simply have someone to talk to. Dhe'jny'p usae are expected to help in providing food for each other, and will switch out communal duties that require a layer of intimacy with each other, and legally are considered very similar entities. While they wouldn't share all personal belongings like the miivt'ia, they might share what counts for money, and be responsible for dividing it up among themselves. Dhe'jny'p usae, likewise, might live together in larger communal houses and share chores among themselves, but this might be considered closer to the individual members of a household, and its not as intensely expected for them to live together as the miivt'ia.
Faa'nek hus'llu
If the dhe'jny'p usae were the equivalent to people living in the same house, the faa'nek hus'llu is closer to the neighbors. These are acquaintances, support-friends, those that they are close to, though they maintain a degree of separation. If the dhe'jny'p usae was a flower, then this is the daisy chain, the interlocking patterns which form a distinct function.
More than anything else, the faa'nek hus'llu can be thought of as the connective tissue. They bridge the gap between the intensely bound and closely connected dhe'jny'p usae and miivt'ia, and the wider social community of merfolk. They do not bear the brunt of the emotional responsibility and are free to come and go in any merfolk's life as they please, but there is still a degree of familiarity here, a sense of belonging. While dhe'jny'p usae might live in the same communal house, faa'nek hus'llu live in the same town, neighborhood, community. The responsibilities they bear are far more physical, often serving as shifting turns for communal guard or repair duties, ensuring that everyone gets their turn taking care of everyone else.
The downside is that faa'nek hus'llu enjoy far less emotional connection and intimacy. What is shared and offered is far more obvious and physical, and far less detailed than that which other, closer relationships would receive. They might know someone is tired, and they might know someone is in grief after losing a member of their miivt'ia, but they wouldn't be able to navigate the emotional complexity beneath that. Trying to do so can be seen as a threat, either to your own dhe'jny'p usae and miivt'ia, or to theirs, demanding familiarity which has not been earned nor received.
A'antiu Muur'l
This is the far end of any merfolk's immediate social connections. The a'antiu muur'l is not merely the knot, nor the petal, nor the flower, nor the daisy chain, but the sides of the lace itself, the largest part that fits together with all others.
This is the community as a whole. It is a town, a city, a city-block, more of a legal entity than a social one but a social one nonetheless. The a'antiu muur'l is far more location-based than the other rungs on the relationship hierarchy, and merfolk only truly change their a'antiu muur'l with a change of physical location. The a'antiu muur'l is the community from which community names are given, and the a'antiu muur'l is to the commonfolk what a royal lineage is to a royal.
The a'antiu muur'l in standard-technical best translates to "song family", and to a merfolk, this is because it is intended to include everyone that a single merfolk might hear at any given time. They are strangers to the individual merfolk, sure, but they are all singing together and speaking at the same time, and working to build the same song together to flesh out life and the place in which they live, so there is a degree of emotional connection. It is abstracted emotional connection, yes, but it is emotional connection all the same.
Merfolk might even include physical landmarks as part of their a'antiu muur'l, such as in the case of their singing buildings, or for a particularly endearing local landmark. This can include a large reef, or mountain, or entire mountain range, but so too can it include the one weird shady area where all the kids hang out that the adults don't want them near.
Ghray Uw'ghta Faahl
In standard-technical language, the ghray uw'ghta faahl means "all-body". It is far more theoretical than the others, being spoken of to promote a sense of universal connection, but is not something that's quite so easily envisioned in turn.
In essence, the ghray uw'ghta faahl refers to all merfolk. All of their connections, each a'antiu muur'l, each faa'nek hus'llu, each dhe'jny'p usae, each miivt'ia, and each yuu'itv. Each and every merfolk is included, down through time, because each and every merfolk has had an emotional connection, and thus each and every merfolk fits into the ghray uw'ghta faahl.
Thus, the responsibilities here are far more abstracted, and far more represent the responsibilities all merfolk have to each other. This includes their hospitality culture, yes, but far moreso it includes a sense a dignity and a need to recognize that each merfolk has someone else and belongs somewhere within the ghray uw'ghta faahl. It's a source of recognition, and of community, and of understanding.
How much it actually fulfills that role, as ever, varies, but the thought and theory and gesture is still there, all the same.
(( Anyways, I've mentioned this before, but for Pride Month: most merfolk languages tend to specify the object (aka, grammatically their pronouns) in term of relationship to the speaker, prioritizing their position inside of the relationship web and making this information immediately obvious to any onlooker. It's what's most important to share and know about any interaction they are having at any given moment, and what they can default to when names start to fall by the wayside. This also operates for all nouns, not just names, because merfolk are intensely relational and this is part of how they relate to their environment as well, as well as most religions and merfolk spirituality being animist in nature.
Again, technically, she/her pronouns are what we would consider misgendering for Miranda. She doesn't belong to a gendered system, it feels uncomfortable and horrible to her to have it forced upon her. But they/them pronouns are equally as uncomfortable. Same for it/its. It's not even necessarily the pronouns over how aggressively gendered everything is on land, how inescapable it is that she has to always engage with it because it is always present, there is no way for her to possibly interact without being gendered in some manner.
In particular, it feels isolating. She is being pushed into being sorted into categories, categories which she has never once understood how they work or why they exist, told that they define her entire existence despite having constant proof of how much of a lie that is, and everyone she interacts with as a major facet of her job and life is going to judge her by it. It is especially awful because they are individual categories, things which a single person belongs to and which defines them. It makes her feel alone and isolated, shunned no matter what she does, because she cannot ever get that acknowledgement of who she is and what relation she has to anyone when the language itself does not ever make that possible.
(( Pro: If you ever capture Miranda's attention, it's hard to not always feel like you've found something special that you alone get to enjoy. There's the obvious — Miranda is someone who occupies the center of everyone's attention, used to being the focal point of any room she's in, not just holding the social court but directing it as she pleases. She comes across less as an extrovert, and more as the queen in her throne, with an unconscious pressure to appease or avoid her ire. Sitting by her side, being her second hand, allows someone to share that spotlight, allows them to feel special in that same way, gives them power in a way that is hard to replicate.
But, far moreso, she often does capture the feeling of being... unique, in some way. She presents such a different outward appearance to how her personality actually manifests when she's comfortable with someone, that getting a taste can feel like someone is allowed to have a secret, or see something that no one else is allowed to see. Miranda is playful, and childish, and clingy, and she never wants to be alone and gets scared and stressed when she does, and she really wants to listen and hear about all the world beyond what she knows because she wants to play pretend about it, making the world into something less frightening. She is offputting and powerful and cruel, but she is also passionate and vulnerable, and especially seeing that vulnerable side, and ever being able to understand why she feels that way or what she's scared of happening, is the kind of thing that people don't forget. It makes them feel special, that they get something that is only available to them, and not to anyone else.
Con: Miranda never comes alone. The fact of her title is always present, always self-evident in every interaction and every move, and this doesn't just go away or vanish because someone decides that they love her or that they want her. Miranda cannot ignore demands that have shaped her long before she was born, things that she was designed and made for in ways that those without such a purpose cannot claim to know. She has people she has to answer to, and cannot be met with silence. She is viewed as a manifestation of empire itself first and foremost, a hand of her family line. Existing as a person, with wants and desires, has always come second, and she cannot even view herself as a person either, so fully this has existed in every moment of her life.
At some point, if you really do want to go anywhere meaningful with Miranda, you have to turn your sights towards Yg'lloze'aa. You have to understand what it means, and you have to understand that you are but a small speck in far greater currents than anything you have known before. Either you can accept this, and use it to your advantage, or there will be trouble, when you realize you'll never even be second place in Miranda's life.
a collection of dialogue prompts for or about characters who have been treated or trained as weapons by others, valued only for their capacity for violence, destruction, and harm. trigger warnings for mentions of murder and violence. change & alter as needed.
THE WEAPON:
"I'm not proud of the person they've turned me into. But it's all I know. And it's too late for me to change now."
"If there was ever any good in me, there's none left anymore."
"I don't know where the blood ends. Where my hands begin."
"I do what it takes to survive. And I don't care if that makes me a villain."
"I'm good at hurting people. I'm not going to apologize for doing what I'm good at."
"I'll never know who I could have been if they hadn't made me into this."
"This is your fault! You did this to me! You're the reason I'm like this!"
"Don't try and get close to me. You'll just get yourself hurt."
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm... I'm not very good at being good."
"I don't really know how to be gentle."
"I'm not nice, and I'm not going to pretend to be. Deal with it."
"They made me a monster."
"They're all afraid of me. And they're right to be. You should be, too."
"I know I'm a villain. I don't need you to tell me that."
"Look at what they did to me! Look at what they made me into! It's their fault! They ruined me!"
"I wish they'd just killed me. I wish they'd just killed me instead of turning me into this. Being dead is better than being a monster."
"I know you're scared of me. It's okay. Everyone is."
"What does it matter whether I feel guilty about it or not? I still did it. Being sorry doesn't change that."
"Who am I if I'm not a monster?"
"No one could ever love me after everything I've done."
"Why aren't you afraid of me? How can you not be afraid of me?"
"I don't even know who I am without them pulling my strings."
"You want me to be the villain so bad? I can damn well provide."
"I don't want to be like this anymore. I don't want to hurt people. I want to be gentle. I want to be good."
"Who am I if I'm not what they've made me?"
"I don't need a weapon. I am one."
"Do you think I have it in me, to be good?"
THE WIELDER:
"You look so beautiful covered in somebody else's blood."
"And where did this little crisis of conscience come from all of a sudden?"
"You don't get to say no to me. Not after everything I've done for you. You owe me."
"You belong to me. You're mine."
"Where would you be without me? Who would you be without me? ...That's right. So let's try and be a little more grateful, hm?"
"I gave you everything, and this is how you choose to repay me?"
"I made you! You're nothing without me!"
"You don't make the rules, darling. That's my job."
"You are a dog, and I hold your leash. Never forget that."
"I didn't make you a monster. I just brought out what was already there."
"Look at you, coming when I call, eating out of my hand, doing everything I tell you... such a good dog, aren't you?"
"You think you can just walk away from me? Where are you going to go? Nobody else could possibly love a sick thing like you!"
"Monster is such an ugly word. I prefer to think of it as... helping you reach your fullest potential."
"I've got you trained so well, don't I?"
"I thought you knew better than to disobey me."
"Do you really think you can be a hero? After everything you've done?"
"Well, then, if I really ruined your life like you say, why don't you just kill me? We both know you're good at that."
"This is all you're good for. Don't go getting delusions of grandeur on me now."
"You couldn't survive without me. Don't ever delude yourself into thinking otherwise."
"I give the orders. You take them. Not the other way around."
"Destruction is really the only thing you're good at, darling. Take that away, and what's left?"
THE OBSERVER:
"You don't have to be what they tell you to be, you know? You're not stuck. You can change."
"You're not a monster. You're my friend."
"Being gentle doesn't come easy to you, does it?"
"You're a good person. I'm sorry they made you think you aren't."
"You kind of have a little... blood... on your face. ...Don't worry, I'll get it for you."
"I'm not scared of you."
"So, have you ever... you know... killed somebody?"
"You're sick, you know that? You're really sick. I can't believe you seriously do this kind of shit."
"Look, I know who you are. I know what you've done. And I'm not running away from you. You can't scare me off."
"You really are a monster."
"Why do you listen to them? Why do you take orders from them? You don't have to obey everything they tell you."
"So, let me get this straight: you know how to kill a man fifteen different ways, just with your bare hands, and you wouldn't even break a sweat... but you don't know what to do at a party?"
"You're not as mean as you want everyone to think you are."
"You say you're not a dog. So why do you blindly follow orders like one?"
"You don't have to do this. You don't have to be like this. You can choose your own path."
"You really are as bad as they say."
"Don't touch me. You have blood on your hands."
"I know you won't hurt me. I trust you."
"No! Stay away from me! Don't come any closer!"
"The world isn't just heroes and villains. You don't have to be one or the other. And just because you've been one doesn't mean you can't be the other."
"You don't have to listen to them. You don't have to obey."
"They don't get to decide who you are. No one but you gets to decide who you are."
@royalreef reached out:
There is a ghost in the machine.
It is glimpsed, here and there, off in the distance, only a smudge and little more. Off-pink, or dull blue, long. Once and gone again before anything more could be gleamed from its appearances, never settled, never solid. Never anything that seemed important, not for a long while, easy to forget because it was only ever that: a smudge. Some glitch of the rendering, maybe, or the shader misbehaving, or something else of the same keen.
Easy to misplace the feeling of being watched, attribute it to something else. Easy to disregard the particular way that smudge would stick to the shadows, that it would never be spotted when there was more than one person around, that it would keep to places that made it easy to miss in the first place, that would make it easy to lose track of the way it moved. Easy to forget that it seemed to be keeping track of them.
When you are being haunted only by a faint shape in the distance, forgettable save only for its new presence, for the way it did not seem touched by the rest of the Circus around it, it is a simple feat to go off alone. There is no danger. There is nothing to fear.
Not yet.
Not until, there in a long hallway with none else around to see, footsteps sound behind Pomni, soft and slow on the floor, as the shape peels herself from the darkness.
Part of the assessment from afar was correct. There's something awry here, because the colors are just... off. Off, as in, here, in the Circus, everything is bright, eye-searing, saturated. Soaked through in color until they singe against the eye, ever more enticing than the last, so that even the deep black of darkness is more perfect and eternal than the darkness that could ever sit behind someone's real eyes.
The first thing about the shape, before the rest, before the other strange features of her model that don't match up, the oddities that don't make sense, is that she does not match the palette. It is not that she is desaturated, either, because if she were really touched by sunlight, by daylight, then the dusky roses of those scales would surely pop, the pale creams of fins and undersides to serve a neat contrast. But those were colors informed by pigments, by the interplay of light inside structures inside her skin. Here, against a backdrop of too-neon yellow, she looks almost grey, the blue capelet and dress fitting her nearly boring against the contrast of the searing.
And, furthermore, she was not modeled the same as Pomni, as the other players. There was something reptilian about her stance, saurian in a manner, arms held just over the ground and body horizontal, the shape and form more like a crocodile, like the real thing, than anything else here. There was a long neck, rising up to hold a heavy head, long and solid, set with two eyes that gleamed with disquieting intelligence.
Enough was alien about her, about this, that it was hard to begin with any one aspect, find any one aspect to pierce the issue with, not when enough was so strange already, long before she began to speak.
"You are the one they refer to as Pomni, yes?" Her voice was melodic, rumbled in a deep tone so smooth and easy that it felt like it began somewhere lower, beneath the throat. "May I ask you a few things?"
Pomni's bicolor pinwheel pupils narrow in slight fear; the sound of footsteps forces her to turn around so she can face the creature before her. Her appearance reminds the jester of Gummigoo. Could she be a new NPC?
"Hm?" The creature's voice snaps her out of her thoughts, and she swallows hard. "Yeah, it's me. Ah... questions? S-Sure, what is it you want to know, miss..." She replies carefully, not sure of how to call this creature.
Fins twitch, a set of three pairs each placed at the end of the cheek, where an ear might sit on another being. Their tips move first, a faint shifting that flicks up and then settles back down, but the movement continues down the length of the featherlike extension, wide and flat, their edges ruffled and shifting now, like so many blades of dune grass peeking out just above the expanse of the sea.
The movement, the shifting, and whatever it means, does not touch Miranda's eyes. Her face, already strained by the effort of crossing the chasm of translation between the familiar and the wholly unfamiliar, is plainly unreadable, unweathered by the tides of emotion that might be moving the finer points of anatomy. She looks ahead, mouth relaxed into something akin to an easy and pleasant smile, mouth tipped up in the middle and lips curled up along both sides of her jaw, and watches Pomni's reaction as it unfolds.
Those eyes truly are something else. There's something in them, something beyond the simplicity of all their facts listed out. Their pupils are slits, narrowed and thin, cut deep and dark in this bright light. There are no whites to them, not even at the far corners, not at the fronts where they taper off into a long organ in a sheening grey-purple. They are only the same uninterrupted blue of a perfect shallow sea, a tropical getaway far away from everything else, far away from reality, the kind of place that should not, in reality, truly exist, because such places did not exist in that picturesque form, not beyond the glimpses inside of travel brochures and inside the mind's eye, unspoiled by the existence of other humans whose hands might have touched it instead. Worse yet, there is some interaction between the narrow trench of the pupil and the endless iris, something that mixes to create intention. Even the literal fact, that she is staring at Pomni, is not enough. She is peering through her, peeling her apart, taking her apart in only the way that intelligent creatures can truly be said to do, and it is disconcerting. Something is awry.
All of her is rendered in such immaculate detail. There are clear indents of muscles in the long bough of her neck, sophisticated anatomy underlying that skull that is now peering so curiously at Pomni. Tinier movements, too, bobbing in the throat and little twitches where tendons want to tug at the skeletal structure.
"You are a new arrival here." Statement. Not questioning, understood, establishing. Miranda tilts her head slowly, a measured action paced so slowly that she hardly seems to move at all, occurring entirely in tricks of the light and lapses of memory, that she was not already with her head slightly cocked to the side. "How long have you been present? What has the acclimatization process been like?"
🐍👑🎸 - YO! It's been a long time since I've been around the block here, but if you'd be down to interact with a canon-character-basically-turned-oc Billy Joe Cobra of Dude, That's My Ghost fame that both explores the darker side of Hollywood stardom & dedication to The Bit... then hey, could be a great blog for You to write with! A reblog or a like would be appreciated. :)
Lovingly written by AJ/Cobra --- RULES & ABOUT
