August 17, Day 1
Ethereal/Calculate
Language
Tw: blood, death, self harm, mild sexual content, mental illness
Castalline woke alone, stripped of her golden party dress, covered in dried blood and hung over. The previous night at the club had smeared into a gorgeous dream in her memory where she had descended into some foul underworld, surrounded by writhing demons and beautiful fallen angels and the dying. She had seen twisted things birthed from painted canvas tear people apart around her. Castalline had seen Leonardo work the Miracle and how those who witnessed it were pierced with unseen arrow or lance. How they bled for her god then.
She was sure she had witnessed true apotheosis but had felt strange after they left the gallery show and night club burning behind them. Leonardo did not seem aware of the change within himself. Was he still sleeping after all? He should know, she thought. It was her WILL that he know. Castalline had waited too long for the purpose and reason for her gift. She had been patient.
The suite she had been left in was very fine. She lay on cool, silk sheets perfumed with blood, sweat and this scent of a far away spice market laced with something sweet and almost floral. Spun out in a sudden rapture, Castalline groaned softly and rolled around in the bed, drenching herself in indulgent pleasure. This was now how she found her ecstasies and visions. Before it had been the bite of the lash on her back or bruised flesh on spiked kneelers, but now it was writhing and sweating and coming to let the dark in.
Pain had been the language of the Light, but pleasure was its dark twin and she would learn to speak it and sing a song of both together. This was the way her god wanted to be worshipped.
It was then she wanted to feel her god. His darkness and essence beneath the flesh he wore. She would feel it because she wanted to. She willed it. And for a moment, she did feel him. The kiss of his magic, though distracted. It was a weak, fluttering tease. And without the spectacle of his presence, it felt oddly hollow. A shell over something else.
Something…greater.
Castalline wanted to find the root of his creation and being, his beginning. She wanted to run fingers over the threads of his life to see where it all began to take measure of the shape of the cradle of her god.
When she felt this source in the between, it led her to the sea. And though these were not things she could see and only things she could feel, the taste of salt was on her tongue and the rush of waves were in her ears.
It did not matter if Leonardo had been born in the castle by the sea or not. His roots were there. His beginning was there. All the threads of him were sunk into the stone down the line of his ancestors and back again through him.
Castalline’s will to manifest her wishes did not truly bring her to the castle. It didn’t set her feet on the floors. But it brought the impression of her there, thinner and paler than a ghost, but not wholly insubstantial, ethereal and as fleeting as smoke.
What was there did not call to her, but it may as well have. Why would such a thing ever consider her at all, she thought, giddy and afraid. Castalline wept and screamed and thrashed. Understanding eluded her. It didn’t speak but it was a language itself. Too complex for her. She was an insect. A speck. Not even a mote in the eye of god.
All of her was dust already in the grasp of such a thing. It did not need her devotion or worship just as she did not need the notice of an ant. Splayed out in the big bed, white-blonde hair a halo around her horrified, weeping face, Castalline prayed to Leonardo’s beginnings, the ineffable THING threaded through his being.
With a mad woman’s zeal, this became a sign and portent. A future prophecy for her. This thing, whatever this was in the castle by the sea, was meant for her. And her god was meant to deliver her to it.
@wraleo , @draconecastle
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