i need you to know that i woke from a dead sleep at 4am and was so haunted by this idea that h2g tears kept slipping from my eyes and i had to stay up just to get it down. cws for vomiting, death/grief, and body horror (kinda) — find it on ao3
Alongside the forest, Eris walks.
A simple procession on a brisk, breezeless morning. His hounds he left to their kennels, having no need of their noses. He feels their absence keenly. It would have been easier with them, but then that is part of the leaving, too.
The river he follows is long, wending past the Forest House and out nearly to their southern border. He used to race along it as a youngling, goading water sprites, sparking off embers at pixies. All of his brothers after him did the same.
Lucien was clever to run it along the opposite bank. Their mother forbade them to cross it, too wide across for comfort, and his brothers had all been young enough still to heed her, glad for the short while they could play along it at all. But Lucien, like Eris, knew a secret: the river thinned where the forest grew dense around its mouth, just enough to make a youngling feel brave. When he ran it along the opposite bank, his feet were sure where those giving chase were not.
It takes Eris hours to reach the end.
His tongue chafes with thirst, and the sweat trickling down his spine brings fresh torment to the burns on either side of it. Though perhaps that is blood. He is not especially damp anywhere else, even for the weakness made of his body the eve before.
The reminder that time has continued since it all happened, and will continue on yet, nearly collapses him.
Eris keeps walking.
He will never be able to say for certain how he knows that the clearing he comes upon is the one. There is no stench of blood on the air, coppery and violent, familiar in itself as it is of their bodies. No overt trace of conflict mars the land. Any snapped branches have swept away or mended themselves, and any fallen trees are covered in lichen and moss, such that they could have been that way at the conception of the land. Even the small shrine the forest constructed seems a thing of natural order, meant always to be this way.
But of course it is not. It is not meant to be this way, and it will never be the way it was again.
Entering the clearing feels no different from stepping into a tomb. The stagnant mourning sweeps the breath from him, and he feels the rageful beast stir in its place, lip pulling back, canines glinting.
Then his gaze falls upon an oak sapling sprouting proud from a verdant, body-sized patch of ground, and that brief reprieve flees him. His lungs stutter. He swallows against them.
Marius carried Silas home. Or so Eris was told afterwards. He had not been conscious to see it for himself, the terrible way his brother clung to the body of his twin, both of them covered in gore, both of them empty of life. He wishes he had been, if only to watch Marius unleash himself on their father in his demand for a bloodprice to soften the loss of Silas, though that battle was forfeit before it began.
Too much blood had spilled here to find its match.
As he must, Eris walks beyond the sapling and over to the shrine: a bowed latticework of branches and foliage, curved around like hands. The forest parts its palms for him as he nears.
There is nothing in his stomach to expel, so he heaves only bile onto the ground. It stings the back of his throat and up into his nose. He spits, but the sensation remains.
The land tried to make Ronan presentable. It arranged him on his back so that his empty gaze could marvel always on the canopy overhead, and it drank down his lifeblood so that none remained to mar his skin, and it kept the insects away, and the animals, and the creatures so that his pallid flesh would not be eaten. There was nothing it could do for the yawning gape of his chest or the split of his jaw but to patch them over with moss.
Again, Eris feels his stomach heave, a cramp in it that refuses to ease. Nothing more comes up, so he lowers slowly beside his brother, moving with the caution of a youngling who does not wish to be caught peering wonderingly into a cradle.
Eris stares for a long while. He knows this only because of the dappling of sunlight arcing steadily across them both: time happening to them, inexorably. All else has fallen away, save for this brother of his and the gaping wound of him.
"Come," Eris says, pulling this biggest of their skulk into his arms and holding him close, "I have you now." He cannot bring his voice above a rasp, torn through still from his own screaming, choked around by something else besides. A final lie: "Everything will be alright."
It seems, as Eris smooths at Ronan's hair, that there is life in his brother yet. His body is moving in his embrace—heaving, as though with breath. There is noise between them, gasping, shuddering. Tears, too, trickling down his broken face and gathering in the moss like dewdrops. Blurry-eyed, Eris stares at him and wills it true.
But there is only so much the forest can do.
"Take him," Eris asks more yet of the wood. "I don't want him seen like this." Softly, cracked down the middle, "He will rest easier, here with you."
Their mother will loathe him for this, he knows—for even this, the closure of a last look, taken from her. But he knows, too, that it will ruin her more to see yet another of her sons damaged beyond hope.
It is better for her to remember him whole.
The forest opens its arms without expectation or urgency. It alone knows what an agony it is for Eris to lay his brother down into them, to accept, with such astounding finality, a truth that he has never been able to before: there is nothing more that can be done. It waits patiently as Eris runs his dazed fingers through Ronan's hair, the clumps of filth in it impossible to unknot; for him to recall himself from his shock and magic away the grime, the rends from the clothes, until Ronan almost looks only to be in repose; for him to plait a lock of Ronan’s cleaned hair, sever it off, pocket it away. It waits.
And when at last its heir cedes the body of his kin to its keeping, it wishes its vines might be fingers, that it could wipe the sorrow from his cheeks. The best it can give him is another oak, just beside the sappling, this one grown full and strong with the might of the offering.
Often, in the time that comes after, Eris makes the long, wending walk along the river, following the opposite bank until he reaches a clearing, where he is the closest to his fallen brothers that he will ever be again.
The forest walks alongside him, itself shrouded and grieving his pain, every time.
very important question for all the vanserra brothers, including the dead ones: ass or titties?
oh ho ho
eris – ass man ass man ass man. said it b4 i'll say it again—eris enjoys anal with females because it is inherently uncomfortable and exclusively pleasurable for him which makes him horny bc it shows their willingness to endure discomfort to please him. notably though if a female is willing to do that, he's willing to play a little dirty dj to make her feel good during. and if you were wondering . yes beron feels the same way. yes this is directly informed by beron
emile – also an ass man! also informed by beron! but he does not care at all to ease the discomfort when he indulges in anal sex. relishes in it guiltlessly in fact. somehow both thinks favorably upon a female who endures it from him and less of her at the same time. look how eager she is to please me but also females are beneath me
carmine – this one was confounding as all get out. i like . honestly don't think he cares very much either way? he cares that a female makes him feel wanted->seen->an approximation of loved. as long as she doesn't have any visible unsightliness he's down, and even then ... i mean this is Thee brother who'd absolutely fuck a human or a lesser fae no hesitation just for the adoration they'd look at him with ykwim. maybe maybe maybe i'll loosely say tit man just cuz i think we could get to a mommy kink with him
silas – just got the most divine strike from god that he's a tit man. yeah he'll linger on cleavage. even get a little bit distractable if it's a non-political situation. they're the first thing he goes for on a female. notably he of all the brothers is the one to have this preference be a make or break deal for him. if she ain't got yitties he ain't sprung. all the other brothers it's just like casual preference
marius – for purely horny threesome reasons i'm making marius an ass man pre-silas' death—but because silas likes a gal w tiddies so much, marius keeps an eye out for them foremost. silas goes straight for the tiddies while marius is palming her ass and grabbing her thighs and then kneeling to tongue between them while silas uhhhhhhh cancel twit
ronan – ass man specifically because he's looking for the development and definition of the glute and hamstring muscles and if it's there he's going boioioioioing ! baby want a muscle mommy so bad but autumn fae aesthetic standards keep him from achieving his dream :(
lucien – (starts visibly sweating) goddd i wish i knew lucien better. i'm going to say he's a thigh/ass man? he appreciates tiddies but they're just kind of a nice bonus nd he can work with anything. lucien knowers please do not stone me
Among the Vanserras who feels like laughing the most and who the least? Who always holds their laugh back and who literally can't?
i think ronan laughs pretty openly and has like a really rich, genuine, infectious laugh. trading stories around a fire type laugh. folks always chuckle or smile along despite themselves. carmine laughs freely too but it’s warmer and more inviting and a little sensuous. folks lean in when they hear it just to be closer to it. a sound like fingers grazing the thigh. in writing marius post-silas, i’ve found he tends to laugh at really inopportune times over fucked up things he thinks. the type to suddenly chuckle to himself in the middle of someone saying something not even slightly funny. bless him my little cocoa puff
silas tended to be pretty stoic, except when he was around marius. that was when he could be seen laughing and joking, but otherwise he would just kind of offer the sort of tight-lipped smile at humor that made the person making the joke feel infantile. emile’s just too paranoid that people are laughing at him to find the humor in anything and indulge in it lmfaooo—he’ll laugh at someone though, just like his daddy would
the prophetic, bendy, epicene court jester of the autumn court has finally been named !! (everyone say thank you @jon-snows-man-bun<3) ronan is the sixth-born beefcake vanserra who is largely looked down on by his brothers for being Just A Soldier and not as clever or cunning or shrewd as the rest of them. dagonet (formerly referred to as the fool) is beron's lesser-fae seer from hybern who speaks in prophetic perfect tense and as such is never really taken heed of by anyone except beron and eris. they are also ronan's illicit lover, which is the very reason ronan spooks upon seeing beron kill jesminda and thus joins silas and marius in hunting down lucien (despite him being the closest of the brothers to lucien) to prove to beron just how Staunchly Anti Lesser Fae he is. he swears! he would never fall in love with a lesser fae!!! he would certainly never dream of marrying one!!!!! in the end, he is simply not as clever or cunning or shrewd as the rest of them, and his brawn cannot compare to tamlin in his beast form. he gets got with an apology to lucien half-formed on his tongue, wishing he had never been so foolish as to try to prove himself to his father.
because an eiffel tower was mentioned for marius and silas, what positions are the rest of the bros' favorites?
hooooooo baby you are askin the right questions ! i think eris vastly prefers doggy for casual sex, as well as when he first starts catching feelings. facing away is less stressful, less intimate, and more demeaning when he wants it to be. real easy access to the ass for our anal king too. emile i’m so stuck on which means i don’t think he has a true preference—sometimes he wants positions where his partner has to do the work to please him like her being on top, sometimes he wants the degrading aspect of shoving her face down and using her. probably for him actually i would inflict reverse cowgirl on now that i’ve written this out—she has to do the work and it’s easy for him to push her forward and fuck her into the mattress if he chooses to. carmine gets the most into it in any position that keeps his partner’s eyes on his face/body, but he’s the most adventurous and down for whatever overall. marius&silas are indeed my eiffel tower kings 👅 doggy must feel so lonely for marius now:( ronan we’ve gotten into a bit but i think he likes to be ridden for Sure—likes to watch his partner put in work and likes even more to throw their weight around a bit when they start flagging. i have such a bad handle on lucien of late so i feel like there are much better folks to speak on this than me, but that man strikes me as loooving cowgirl where he’s the one holding her waist and fucking her so he can put his mouth all over her throat/neck/chest and hear all her choked noises at his ear when he hits it just right
