── restlessness isn’t unusual to ronan. he can sit still for the sake of going unnoticed yet it never lasts as long as he’d like, something in his veins that burns hot enough to agitate, that which keeps him moving and interrupts his sleep. this evening has come with a particularly AGGRESSIVE sort of disquiet, even for him, finding himself torn awake well past midnight with his nightmare still on his heels. and so now he needs to move, lest anything catches up to him. he’d hoped that getting out of his claustrophobic apartment would help, and now that he’s actually outside he’s not so certain. it’s more exposed here. the early summer air feels like breath down the back of his neck. there’s too much empty space behind him, he thinks, the black maw of the street, tries to clear away flashes of his dream--- blood on his own neck, a weight on his chest of water-filled lungs, sounds of sharp footsteps though the echoing hallways of the database. still, he’s set himself out and refuses to turn back out of mere paranoia.
the convenience store isn’t of much importance, is simply a place to make as a destination that’s at least open at this hour, lit up among the otherwise quiet dark of the town. some sign of life. he’s barely expecting anyone to be there at all, let alone someone he knows, and he’s glad for that. ronan doesn’t care to be seen most often and ESPECIALLY like this, shaken-up, shoddily dressed and with sweat still through his hair and up his back. nothing is ever so easy for him, however, and he simply sighs when he spots saint in the parking lot before him.
of course. ronan’s monster has been terribly present for the night, even if in his head, and the hero types are never far behind when some beast makes itself known. he’s not sure if it’s a divine joke on their behalves or his own, but it’s an UNAVOIDABLE one regardless, so he pushes past his instinct to simply ignore saint as he approaches. “ hey. ” he starts, pulling at the front of his sweatshirt to try and shake some of the obvious sleep out of it. “ you’re out late. ”
Charms and shit. Gods save them both. A simple protection charm against a curseborn monster wasn’t something she thought was going to work remotely, not even if she burnt herself out for trying, but there was something that spoke to her in the back of her mind, a feeling of dread that seemed to consistently appear in times of distress. High monster classification. Under her breath, she spoke something in ancient Greek, the thought of hunger and the smell of a good dinner running through her mind, stilling herself and taking a few seconds to realize it was wafting from Ronan himself. Horrifying. The gods really were horrifying when it came to their punishment. He was barely in his twenties.
“Then we’re going to try and get you started with what you need. .” January grabbed the knife and the reagents, holding the blossoms in her right hand. “People think magic is all talent, but they’re idiots who burn up and fade away—it’s hard work and elbow grease, Ronan. If we’re going to do this, please at least try.” She enunciated the spell, the words rolling off her tongue and disjointed enough so that he could follow. “That is a simple warding—could you repeat the incantation? Just so I know you won’t summon something from Tartarus, like—well, just repeat it.”
── there’s a beat where she’s seemingly thinking, or otherwise distracted, uttering something under her breath that ronan doesn’t understand. he isn’t certain what to do with himself, flexing his hands slightly out of habit. magic and its users are often CONFUSING to him, dealing in a careful way he can’t quite keep up with--- ronan isn’t used to subtleties. he, his monster, his curse, all seem to take up a loud kind of space in the world, harsh edges and throwing themselves through situations. there’s nothing thoughtful about the way any of it handles.
“ think i won’t try ? ” ronan counters. lack of effort has never been his issue. at least she isn’t as gratingly, stiffly POLITE as the facility employees, however, so he shrugs it off. straightforwardness is far preferable to the evasive sort of professionalism of the database. “ summon ? that a possibility ? rather leave tartarus out of this. ” he’s half joking, though a tilt of curiosity comes out in his tone. ronan knows magic can be volatile, especially the sort that belongs to some of the others at the database, and with his apparent predisposition for chaos, he isn’t sure that bodes WELL. still, he repeats her words, more haltingly than she had, less fluidity in his speech--- voicing anything has never been a skill of his, and his lack of conversational practice certainly doesn’t aid him here.
MODERATOR : thank you for speaking with us. before we can move forward with relocation, we need to better understand what we should be preparing for.
#0237632 : fine.
MODERATOR : what can you tell us about what this monster looks like ?
#0237632 : i’ve never seen it. no one has.
MODERATOR : any description is helpful, even if vague.
#0237632 : i don’t know. it’s dark, i think. harder to see at night.
( it’s clearest in his dreams, the ones he mostly forgets that next coming morning. the shape of it is stitched together from snippets of memory, storybook monsters and horror-movie hauntings that piece into something he can recognize— not quite real and not quite his, at least half fiction, but enough of a form for him to understand. these dreams were always most vivid when he was younger, childhood imagination leant itself to creating a better sight of it. as he’s aged, they’ve grown starker, less fantastical. it’s evolved, grown as he’s caught more glances of it, but the basis of it is ever the same. it’s dark, always, the kind of near-black that nearly seems blue, hiding away at night and in shadows and burning through his nightmares like melting wax, hot and fluid. there’s a huge inky mouth— sometimes doglike, all gums and canines, or the narrow fangs of a snake. the gape of its jaw is often so wide, come to swallow him whole, that he thinks the entire beast must turn itself inside-out. a thing of negative space. )
#0237632 : it doesn’t move like anything else.
MODERATOR : please be more specific.
#0237632 : [ pause ]
#0237632 : don’t think it touches the ground. never seen footprints. never heard it coming.
( it’s slick, like running fluid. molten, serpentine, the wind of a river. if he didn’t know better he’d wonder if it had weight at all. there are times when it’s so big it fills the width of an alley, others when it seems to fold in on itself enough to slip beneath the crack of a door. just because it’s nebulous doesn’t mean it’s insubstantial, though ; ronan remembers a time when it’d pinned him down with his chest flat to the ground, the full body of it over his back, crushing the breath from his lungs. there was nothing intangible about it, then. there’s a shift when it’s nearby, ozone in the atmosphere as if a storm is about to roll in, the held-breath of water pulled away from a shore before a great wave hits. it’s the almost-disaster, the precarious waiting for something unavoidable to land. the sense of it has hung around his shoulders so long he’s unsure if he just carries that foreboding himself, now, without his monster at all. wonders if everyone senses his inevitability as he does. it’d explain why people give him space to walk on the street. he can only drag along his fate for so long before people start to take note of the damage. )
MODERATOR : is there anything that alerts you when it’s close ?
#0237632 : it’s always close.
MODERATOR : please answer the question.
#0237632 : it smells like sea salt. or the pool. you just know when it’s here.
( there’s a specific memory of bloody summertime, some years back, a stain of gore on the poolside deck from ronan’s own recklessness— he should have been smarter. to risk something like a swimming pool, such a concentration of water for his monster to inhabit, was thoughtless on his part. he knew so. yet schoolyard taunts from the other boys were something he so easily fell for, and so he’d approached his fear with his jaw set. he’d come to the poolside and so his monster wasn’t far after him, suddenly present, dragging some other boy violently beneath the water as it scrambled to slice at ronan. as quickly as he’d appeared ronan fled, his mistake realized while it bled out on his arm, looking back at the scene before he could stop himself. the other boy the monster had grabbed must have scrabbled his palms raw on the deck trying to keep himself upright, red left on the concrete when he’d been pulled down. even if it didn’t kill the boy, ronan would never be forgiven. he could smell his monster in his hair, on his clothes, that chlorine he hadn’t otherwise touched, the seep of it from its skin. there’s still a small curve of a scar on his forearm from the contact, and he pulls at his shirt sleeve to cover it ; the sight makes him nervous. sometimes he’ll press his cuff to his nose, inhaling, reassuring himself that he now only smells of detergent, no hints of seawater or the iron bite of blood. it doesn’t comfort much. )
#0237632 : it likes water. write that down.
MODERATOR : how so ?
#0237632 : what kind of question is that ? i said what i meant. it likes the water.
MODERATOR : have you ever noticed—
#0237632 : just write it down. that’s all i have to say about it.
( the more he finds his monster among the water, the worse ronan’s hydrophobia grows. his mother had always tried to keep them as land-locked as possible, had warned him to do the same. his family monster is one born of poseidon and so it will always favor the sea, or whatever closest relative it can manage to find. form seems to matter little. it’ll stalk among the rain, camouflaging through a downpour— or shaky reflections of it can be caught, glimpses through puddles and still surfaces of a lake, a glass on his nightstand. sometimes ronan will lie on his back, arms outstretched, feel his own breathing like a tide, the ebb and flow. with his eyes closed he can weather it better, laying still enough that the blood in his veins seems less volatile, less like the salt and water and ocean his monster is so drawn to. and then he’ll move, and as a maelstrom the world will shudder and swirl around him, and he’ll remember. if he wasn’t already doomed to die torn apart, he thinks he might be made to drown. )
MODERATOR : can you tell us anything about how it hunts ?
#0237632 : what’s that supposed to mean ?
MODERATOR : surely you must have noticed some sort of pattern. we have well over a dozen interactions on record.
#0237632 : the fuck do you expect me to say ? want me to tell you how it’s gonna kill me ?
MODERATOR : i know this is a sensitive subject. we’re almost done with the interview.
#0237632 : don’t say it fucking hunts. it’s not out for food. it doesn’t eat anything. it just sort of— goes through. it attacks like a knife fight. is that fucking helpful enough for you ?
( the presence of his monster is a violence all on its own. when he’d found his mother there was no mistaking the scene for what it was, a murder ; to claim it as a predator after food would be too kind. there’s no rationality to its voraciousness, chasing after his bloodline with a single-mindedness that apparently transcends self preservation. ronan is the last of his family. he’ll be his monster’s final kill, and it won’t survive any longer than he will. the creature is barely anything on its own ; it’s a purpose, and an aftermath. once its use is fulfilled, there’ll be no need for its survival. so long as ronan’s alive, his monster is too, and as soon as he’s dead, its immortality will be spent. and yet, suicide as it is, his monster fights— and ronan can take some pride in this, at least. when his creature finally kills him, he’ll kill it right back. )
MODERATOR : is there anything else—
#0237632 : that’s all.
MODERATOR : you—
#0237632 : i’m done talking about this. can i go now ?
jude flops onto the bench next to ronan. he’s careful to leave enough room for the bouncing of ronan’s leg and the invisible force field of bad energy that is coming off him in waves, but jude always sits in a sprawl. he’s overly aware of the wide, lazy breadth of his stance when juxtaposed with the tight coil of ronan’s. tentatively, he offers up a strawberry lemonade he picked up in town. the artificially red syrup swirls in the fizzy liquid in a way that is not entirely unlike blood actually. great call, jude. he slides the drink into the no man’s land at the centre of the bench, the ice cubes rattle against each other almost musically. from the drinks tray he takes his own crushed ice coffee, slurping through the straw noisily.
“do you think they have a break room they disappear to?” he asked, with a small smile, “like do you think they act all serious and like robots out here, and then they get to the staff room and it’s all chatting shit about us and inviting each other’s family’s to barbecues for the fourth and dissecting last night’s episode of the bachelorette? i’m not getting wind of any workplace romances yet, but i’ll keep my eyes open.” he lifts the straw from the plastic cup, stirring absentmindedly as he gazed out at the campus building - all those closed doors. “i am starting to wonder if they don’t tell us things because they just don’t know either.” he used his straw to shovel up some ice, sliding it into his mouth like a spoon.
── jude often carries himself nonchalantly, a way ronan hasn’t figured out how to interact with yet. ronan has set himself like he’s poised to break and yet none of it seems to bother jude much, lounging to sit as if they do this often, a casualness that has ronan glancing to watch while he settles. he’s yet to figure out why the other makes the effort, creating conversation and offering him a drink like a peace offering against ronan’s temper--- he’s yet to find the motivation for it. even with all his easiness, jude keeps himself notably on the far end of the bench, a POINTED distance between them that ronan knows the width of well--- a measure of high danger, the both of them. there should be space, here.
“ hadn’t really thought about it. ” he admits, honestly, shrugs as he speaks. to consider the database employees as more human rarely crosses his mind, their indifference making it easy to detach ; they treat him like a number in a file, and so in return he treats them like nameless soldiers for some shared cause. it’s SIMPLER that way, though the idea of the tight-laced workers unwinding with beers and some curse rumors is at least amusing. “ bet that’d be some gossip, shit about us. interesting to be a fly on the wall of that room. ”
it takes a few moments before ronan moves to take the drink, though even as he holds it he won’t much LOOK at it. he likes red, he suits red, he just doesn’t care for the motion of water--- even as irrational as that is on these smallest of scales ---the way it shifts in imitations of his own movement when he passes the lemonade from one hand to the other. instead he keeps his eyes towards jude while he takes a sip. “ probably. rather be all mysterious than say ‘ sorry, no idea, good luck. ’ not sure if that’s better or worse, though. ” the drink is cool and bitingly sweet, and for the first time ronan realizes how tightly he’d been holding his jaw, teeth aching slightly as he relaxes the gnash of them. for a second he raises the drink at jude, slightly, in recognition or in silent thanks, or perhaps in some sort of toast to the don’t know either.
frankie feels an odd amount of satisfaction when ronan responds. she’s almost completely sure she was not the person he wanted to get a response from, but now they’re stuck with each other. she’s never garnered much attention from anyone in a meaningful way due to her curse, so even the negative reactions she gets from some of the other residents keeps things interesting. it’s like a game and, as with all things, it’s one she intends to master and win. anger wasn’t an uncommon sentiment around the database – she was even guilty of it on occasion – but ronan seemed to have an extra special younger person angst flavor to it. it was annoying and entertaining at the same time.
she shrugs. “probably. some people actually get trusted with privileged information sometimes, but i’d be surprised if any of those people were you.” frankie tries to recall the specifics of his curse, narrowing her eyes at him like the information would pop up next to his head. something about a monster. she’d have to look it up when she got home. “yes, ronan, 33 percent of something is a third. i’m so glad you at least learned your fractions.” she crosses her arms – not defensively, more out of a force of habit – and raises an eyebrow at him. “obviously. who do you think’s going to solve it, you? even if it is nothing, something fishy’s going on. that or the gods decided to upload pretty pictures into lourdes’ head for fun.”
── he considers walking away. frankie’s brand of contention is all VERBAL, and ronan has little idea of how to navigate it, her far more well-spoken than he can ever hope to be--- he’s no good at fighting back if he can’t use his hands. when she speaks it sounds knowing, certain, and it sets him on edge. it’s unfair to try and spar at someone who’s so much more fluent in all this than he is. still, turning his back on anything that feels like a challenge doesn’t come easily to him, and so instead he makes a point of looking away, scoffs as he focuses on some arbitrary spot across from him.
“ really think i’m jealous i’m not tied up with the database, like you ? ” ronan speaks incredulously--- privileged information doesn’t seem like much to brag about, here, where such things are dangerous. frankie acts as if this doesn’t touch her, though, handles him like he’s a child, so he allows his tone to get cold and clipped in reaction. “ as if everything the gods do makes sense. could just be toying--- with lourdes, thad. ALL of us. ” often does everything feel like some game for the divine, them as their chess-pieces to move and sacrifice as they see fit, whatever gets them across the board in a way that entertains them to watch. to him, frankie lording herself like she’s anything more than a pawn too is laughable. “ this make you feel better ? acting like it’s all a puzzle for you ? ”
“I’m lonely. And I’m lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out of me to be this lonely because it seems catastrophic.”
your muse is drinking with mine and has been given the chance to question my muse anything they want to know. some may be triggering, others won’t. send me a 🍻+ the question you want to ask my muse for a tipsy, drunken ( honest ) answer.
“ what’s holding you back in life ?”
“ is everything alright? ”
“ when did you choose to give up ?”
“ what’s the kinkiest thing you have ever done ?”
“ how many have you slept with ?”
“ what’s your biggest secret ?”
“ do you believe in love ?”
“ what’s the meanest thing you have done ?”
“ what scares you more than anything ?”
“ have you ever considered running away ?”
“ do you love me ?”
“ what’s your dirtiest fantasy ?”
“ who hurt you ?”
“ what made you this way ?”
“ is there anyone special in your life ?”
“ why are you always smiling ?”
“ what lie have you told that hurt someone ?”
“ if you could do anything in world, what would it be ?”
“ who are you, really ?”
“ is there anything you regret ?”
“ what’s your biggest regret ?”
“ tell me about your first kiss ?”
“ what is your deepest, darkest fear ?”
“ is there anyone you regret kissing ?”
“ have you ever cheated, or been cheated on ?”
“ what is the most embarrassing thing in your room ?”
“ who have you loved, but they didn’t love you back ?”
“ is there something you have never told anyone ?”
“ when was the last time you cried ?”
“ how come you keep running away ?”
“ have you ever made someone cry ?”
“ if anything, what makes you hate a person ?”
“ what takes for you to fall in love, trust someone ?”
“ do you believe in true love ?”
“ what have you done that people would judge you most for doing ?”
“ do you regret letting me close ?”
“ is there someone you have a crush on ?”
“ what is the strangest place you have ever had sex ?”
“Right, the classification. That’s on me,” January replied, grabbing the few items she’d requisitioned from the database. She was slipping a little, as she ran through the materials they needed. Nettle, purslane,amaranth knives, and some chalk if he didn’t feel comfortable with the knives. It would be a simple warding spell today, then he could expand and then work towards trying to gets monsters off his scent. Maybe in a few months, he could graduate, but January was a pessimist by nature—this wasn’t going to be easy.
“All I know, Ronan, is that you’ve got a high level monster classification, and I could probably guess why you need the warding,” she continued, grabbing a knife and floating the rest of the objects to him to grab. The basics were always hard to grasp for beginners, usually, but she still held out hope that he would be at least, a half-decent student. “Is this your first time—well, doing sorcery, then?”
── he watches wordlessly for a few beats, eyeing the objects as january handles them. none of it means anything to him, yet, a seemingly random collection of items which he considers to be little more that that, simply THINGS ; he doesn’t know what is expected of him, here. sorcery is abstract in a way he doesn’t know how to work through, and wonders if that distance is going to make this all difficult. ronan prefers to see things as they are--- a knife as a knife.
“ so they tell me. ” that’s what most people know of him, a number and classification and rank, and he’s grown used to that reputation on his name. though at least when she says it, the playing field is more LEVEL ; he’s looked up her id number beforehand, out of curiosity, to make things fair. january doesn’t hold anything above him as the database does, at least as far as he can recognize. the interaction is a bit more balanced between them, and so he tries to let his rigidity ease slightly. “ database gave me charms and shit sometimes. don’t think they worked. never done anything myself, though. ”
𝙰𝚃 𝚃𝙷𝙸𝚂 𝚁𝙰𝚃𝙴, cas has long since been desensitized to prophecies, vague or otherwise. when one makes itself known to him, one way or another, every few months — well, let’s just say he’s stopped being surprised by them and instead grown TIRED of them. the most recent announcement ( once he manages to hear about it, since he can’t remember his database password ) hardly makes him BLINK; the blood on someone’s hands could very well be his own, but there’s no use turning himself inside out over something he’s not even certain will ever affect him. it’s not as if blood on his hands would be anything new, anyway — that’s another on the long list of things he’s become desensitized to.
without something to do at the moment, he’s left to wander; alone with his thoughts is never somewhere he wants to be, so he takes a walk instead. it isn’t long before he finds himself near the main buildings, veering off course at the sight of a familiar face. “ that’s alright, ” he says in response, shrugging slightly at ronan’s warning. he sits himself down next to him without waiting for an invitation, assuming that since they’re FRIENDS ( in his mind ), he has an open one. “ whatever it ends up being, i’m sure we’ll… take it in stride. figure something out. ” it’s not the most concrete of solutions, but, well — cas has always been the type to be more in the moment when it comes to solving problems. if he can’t do it himself, he can’t bring himself to trust it. “ it’s only a 33% chance or whatever, right ? maybe we have nothing to worry about. ”
── cas welcomes himself to sit, and ronan says nothing to deter it--- this isn’t unusual, he’s learned. the other often seems content with filling the quiet spaces between them, even if on his own, following his tangents while ronan listens inanimately, only finding a voice when a story needs brief steering or spurring. usually such confiding would be of little concern to ronan, and in most other cases he would have shut down the habit already, though cas is of some interest ; his connection to gods and monsters is more DIRECT than most, and ronan can’t help but wonder if there’ll be something amongst his ramblings he can pick up, use for himself. besides, sometimes it’s a respite to have the silence around him tempered.
“ guess that’s a plan. ” he’s unconvinced, though that doesn’t much matter. he isn’t expecting reassurance. cas seems to brush it all off, and ronan glances to watch him, see if his expression shifts. the hero sorts are often CONFUSING to him. it’s unclear to him if he’s acting in overconfidence, is numbed to things such as these, or is adopting an indifference to gloss over any uneasiness. the distinction doesn’t mean much in this instance, however, won’t change anything, so ronan just shrugs. “ maybe. ” he pauses for a moment, considers, before picking up again to poke at the statement more than he often would otherwise. “ doubt anything here is ever ‘ nothing to worry about ’ ”
𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒂𝒃𝒂𝒔𝒆’𝒔 𝒇𝒊𝒓𝒔𝒕 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒍 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒄𝒖𝒓𝒔𝒆 𝒍𝒆𝒇𝒕 𝒍𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒅𝒆𝒔 𝒓𝒆𝒆𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈. years ago, when she’d first been cursed, the database employees she’d met at her registration had been the only people who could see her, who could hear her, who could look at her and know what kind of horrors she saw every day. she used to DREAM about a day where she could spend all of her time around these people and NEVER have to spend another day suffering in silent invisibility. of course, that was a long time ago. she’s older now, wiser, and she knows that something like that will never been in the cards for someone like her.
still, it’s a hard pill to swallow when she’s pulled into a sterile, isolated sort of room and shoved head-first into a series of trials to try and pull some sort of prophecy from her — there’s no comfort, no advice, no helping her at all. they just want her for the visions that she can see. and, well, that’s fine. it isn’t the first time, nor will it be the last. she learned a long time ago how to make herself useful where she can.
afterwards, she’s left wandering the database grounds, AIMLESS. she knows there’s nothing else that they need her for right now, they told her she was free to go but it still feels like there’s something that’s waiting for her, here. her mind is somewhere else as she makes her way towards yet another door that’s almost certainly locked, just like every other one — so much so that she doesn’t even notice she’s walking right past someone until they’re speaking to her.
she blinks, once — being spoken to still feels a little unnerving — before she finds her voice again. “ oh. well, i wasn’t really looking for anyone. i think i’ve had about enough of them for a little while, ” she shrugs, though her hand pulls away from the handle of the door and falls at her side, anyway. it feels like there’s a very DISTINCT possibility that the second half of his warning is geared towards HER, in particular. the database badge in her pocket — the one stamped with the #0276372 that identifies her as the oracle behind the notification they ALL just received — feels heavy. instead of replying to that half, she chooses to take a seat on the other side of the bench and folds her hands in her lap. “ you’re the one with the monster, right ? i keep seeing these — well, i don’t know what it is, exactly, but you do, don’t you ? ”
── “ fair enough. ” ronan retorts, dismissive, assumes that’s the end of their interaction. he recognizes lourdes, of course he does. if she wants to be alone, that’s a hope he can understand ; surely she’s spent the past few days painfully seen. besides, it’s not as if there’s much they can converse over that isn’t everything she’s likely already heard. ronan has nothing to ADD to her vision, no insight like frankie or nonchalance like mercy, so he keeps himself quiet. he prefers more tactility, realer than things like dreams and sights, that which he can touch and comprehend. there’s little good he can do with ambiguity.
lourdes’ question catches him off guard, then, both by the continuation of what he assumed was a killed-off conversation and the sheer forwardness of it. it’s better than the way most handle him, like a live wire, a topic to be danced around lest they upset something. ronan doesn’t have the time nor PATIENCE for polite evasions, waste of words as they are, so it’s a directness he’ll prefer--- though he still raises his eyebrows at it, looks away. “ that’s me. ” the vagueness she gives his monster isn’t exactly unexpected, he wouldn’t be able to describe the sight of it either, though it’s disappointing nonetheless. to have someone else know it would be refreshing. “ not alone there. can’t see it either, really. ”
she sits beside him and he glances over, tries to read her posture or tone, finds LITTLE. ronan is unsure if that’s because she’s good at keeping a front or he’s simply bad at reading people. surely everyone must know lourdes by now, he thinks, but putting a face to her name is somewhat disconcerting. the way she’s been written about, hidden behind her number, has made it easy for him to write her off as some other figment of the database he’s not meant to know. so for a moment he regards her.
ronan doesn’t envy the notoriety she’s been THROWN in--- surely that harsh spotlight must burn. there’s a dispassionate sort of way the database handles them, business-like, and their treatment of the prophecy had been no different, stark and straightforward as if reporting the weather. to be a prophet among them likely comes with the same treatment, though ronan has yet to decide if he feels sympathetic over it. at least her curse comes with some advantage. “ guess that means you’re the one with the prophecies. ”
