ALL SMOKE AND MIRRORS, Vasiliy didn’t always remember how he got to places. Often it felt like he just appeared, sprung out of the ground like a plant with no roots. He woke up in different house or building, either from sleep or blacking out—due to drinking or otherwise, or just ARRIVED somewhere else without taking any of notice his journey there. That’s how he felt in life, really, he was just a cold, cold breeze that drifted in and out of LIFE and consciousness. Standing now in the street, he couldn’t remember if he had been there for awhile or just stopped as he saw the brunette walking this way, waiting for her to ARRIVE at his feet. It used to be frightening when he was a child, to lose time and parts of his days, but he had long grown accustomed to them, these blackouts, to the point he might have felt unease to remember every single thing he had done in a 24 hour period.
He did remember HER, though, and she had remembered him–of course she did. Lips curling lightly at the corners, much like the dreaded cat that got the CANARY, Vasiliy nodded, attempting to show amusement but only felt satisfaction that she kept them. Good, that was very good. ❝ Hello Ahna. ❞ Vasiliy greeted, head titling towards the right as his eyes dripped down her body without the protection of sunglasses to mask it. ❝ You have kept them. ❞
For the better part of the twentieth century, Berkeley had been seen as the exemplar of counter culture. That same FREE SPIRIT invoked by students and professors long before Rhiannon’s birth, lived on within her. A wild dark-haired girl named for Alice Cooper and Stevie Nicks, she had learned about city low-income medical marijuana, council seats, food collectives, and the importance of her own privilege and positionality at the dinner table before she’d seen it plastered on patronizing apple commercials. It was difficult, then, to allow herself to be stifled by classrooms and deadlines–a philosophy which her parents supported despite the fact that it instilled in their daughter legs made of WANDERLUST and a heart that was not built to bolster a career.
Still, a wanderer’s heart found it difficult to make a home within itself–something outside San Francisco had to fill the void. She’d tried boys, pot, girls, spirituality, and art. Until Antarctica, everything fell short … and after she LEFT ? No amount of wandering had filled the placed it had left behind. The frigid waters of the south pole had weathered away, freezing in the vessels and expanding. Now the void was BIGGER and harder to fill–no amount of aimless scavenging around Cheyenne had come close with small exception: Vasiliy Burlakov a man as cold and unreadable as the frozen south that had captivated her fickle heart. “Vasiliy!” The syllables resonated with nostalgia for snow and the anticipation of making a brief acquaintance into something more. “You said they looked better on me, right?” A genuine smile tugged at her lips and she slipped the glasses over her hair, forehead already beading from the summer heat. “And where have YOU been keeping yourself? Did you hear that horrible siren go off? I thought my eyes were going to melt out my ears.” Stupid, stupid Rhiannon’s brows drew together uneasily, feeling the sting of a stupid remark. She recovered quickly and flashed him a falsely confident smile, brows raised politely anticipating his response.
stormborns
yousharknotpass
jimmyeatworldofficial
amandla
2087
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