soft giggles under a warm blanket, the moonbeams that kiss your pillow, a candle's light in a dark forest. a source of comfort. fingers twining slowly with yours until you can't tell where yours end and his begin. the scent of lavender and cedarwood or of campfire and a cool autumn night. starlight in a sky that's otherwise dark, the full moon to light your path or the gentle and placid way waves will ripple a pond. soothing. a savior. complete
Zahair is:
a million brittle pieces wrapped tightly in blurred edges, the broken glass underfoot in an alley, a razor edged slash of moon in a sky that is otherwise empty of color. the stain of coffee on a dress shirt, a drip of red wine on an otherwise white carpet - a million little annoyances that can prick the way a thorn might from a rose. deception - soft, boyish freckles and a quick, disarming grin, neither of which pay heed to the storms that might pour out of him (or the razorblades that might drip off of his tongue). the stark edge of a tree in the center of the smallest island. petrichor - a warning of rain on a cloudless day. complicated. rude. insular. the taste of bitter dark chocolate on your tongue when you were hoping for sweeter.
Needs:
Coven members (and the aunt that leads it who will be requested), coworkers, fellow hoodrats, good influences, a future love interest (potentially a request but all plots are welcome), past things, present things pretty much everything!
So... remember when I said I wanted to make playlists for my characters while stuck at work? WELL... today is the day of results, staring with Cora. See cut below for playlist and a few drabbles that are inspired but may yet change as more info about the world comes out.
TW: Language... both in the playlist and out of it. I'm not kidding when I said Cora needs a swear jar, and some of her song choices definitely uh... reflect that.
DRABBLES:
Cora might not have been a proper witch or warlock, but she knew full and well what storms were, because she saw them in people. She saw it in her mother’s eyes when her parents thought she had been asleep -- the woman’s lips turning to a snarl as she deftly dodged another bottle thrown at her head and the sloppy slur of a yell to get out.
Cora knew that sometimes storms collided and one usually gave way to another. Her mother gave way to her father and fled into the night, leaving her alone with a bitter man festering in all of his losses and resentful of what he felt he deserved but could not have.
Had it not been for her grandmother, Cora knew she would have felt that wrath turned on herself more severely than sour glances and whiskey touched words.
Lavinia Carrington was a storm of her own. She lacked the wild snarl and harsh words that her daughter used so frequently, but her eyes were fixed and focused like the rumble of thunder on the horizon.
Steven Mills could barely look up from his kingdom of half-drunken bottles to acknowledge the woman on his doorstep. He did blink lamely at the statuesque woman in his living room who deigned to stand above his recliner like some sort of fairytale queen. She wore a tailored dress, but no crown, although her fading red hair was enough to tell him exactly who she was.
“Fuck you want?” Steven managed, but he knew, and although she didn’t know what exactly, Cora knew too.
Later, she would ruefully recall that nobody had asked her, but why would they? She was just a slip of a thing hiding against a door frame back then -- eager for a peak of something strange but terrified of being caught.
“I refuse to let my legacy nourish itself on whiskey and regrets. That child is mine and she will be great, or she will be nothing at all.”
There was no room for argument.
---
Cora had always been a girl who liked to know things. Her mother was a faint shadow in her memories, but sometimes she would recall her mother telling her stories at night -- stories of little girls and the wolves that gobbled them up for their curiosity.
Curiosity, her grandmother said, was a useful tool. Curiosity was usually the first step towards folly and the lesson of hurting, which would give away to the much more useful trait of ambition.
Cora no longer spent nights being lulled to sleep by scary stories of wolves gobbling up girls. Those weren’t useful tales anymore, especially since nobody was coming to save her. Cora hadn’t exactly shaken curiosity, but she tempered it with caution, and her only ambition was to stay one step ahead of her grandmother -- to learn to be more powerful if only to save herself and others who might be in the bitter hag’s way.
But the lesson of hurting had turned to a lesson of haunting, and the most haunting thing Cora learned was that she would never stop looking over her shoulder, even in the crowds of New York.
---
If there was one thing Cora learned since running away, it was that she was always going to be underestimated by people who didn’t know what the hell she was.
That was fine on most days. It was easier to traipse around on the sly and have a semblance of a life if people just saw her at face value: small, petite, porcelain skin, a light dusting of freckles, doll eyes, clothes that barely fit.
A fragile thing with such a foul mouth.
And sometimes it was that mouth that got her into trouble, and the invitation to “fuck around and find out” resulted in a right hook that was far meaner than it had any right to be.
Sometimes meanness wasn’t enough, though. There were times Cora limped along home, ribs aching, teeth stained with blood and eyes bruised purple, but she’d be damned if she saw something that bothered her without speaking up.
She didn’t run away to hold anything in anymore.
---
It didn’t matter how well she hid: eventually one of her grandmother’s followers would find her. It didn’t matter if she washed her hair out so that it lost its coppery sheen or crafted an identity that was the greatest great or the lowest of the low.
Someone always found her, and how could they not? She was an unbound Ephemeral, and a grasping threat to boot, even if she claimed to just want to live.
She ran first. Cora ran from jobs. She left homes with nothing but the clothes on her back. She lost her pursuers in subway trains or by dodging into an Uber and -- once -- jumping off a bridge into a freezing river that had her shivering for what felt like weeks.
She finally dug her heels in and fought back in Arizona, and when her pursuer was flat on his back in the sand, Cora stood over him while a dust devil raged through the desert.
She thought of her grandmother. She thought of those sharp blue eyes, the steel in the woman’s demeanor, and everything she had taken and would continue to take.
It would have been easy to kill the man in the dirt. It would have been easy to kill him and leave him to rot in the desert for the coyotes to pick his bones clean. It would have sent a clear message, and it would have been a warning for those who would come after.
But it would have been something she would have done, and more than anything, Cora did not want to be her.
So she knocked the man out and left him in the desert to make his way to safety once he woke up. By then, she’d be on the way to elsewhere to try and make her way on her own terms.
Despite how she had been raised, and despite all of her grooming, Cora was not her, and she never would be. Not if she had anything to say about it.
---
It could not be said that Cora was skilled in Origami as she only knew how to make one shape. She tried to learn others over the years -- the owl, the fan, the boat, the flower -- but her fingers fell into the familiar habits of the crane as if she were being guided along on a string right on back to home.
Cora had so few memories of her mother. She had no pictures -- they had been burned at her grandmother’s behest -- and no mementos or trinkets to remind her of the woman who had given her life and then had abandoned her. She remembered stories told in the dark, but the years had distorted the voice that told them. The memories of a face -- the cut of a nose, and the curl of a lip -- had blurred to a void that could have been everything and nothing all at once.
What Cora couldn’t forget was muscle memory, and her fingers gracefully folded smooth paper to form a head and wings until another colorful paper crane joined the small army threatening to burst out of her shoebox apartment.
“One thousand gets a wish,” the woman murmured as she set the newest crane atop the bundle of blankets that comprised her bed and looked out the window towards the looming city and all its lights.
She doubted she would ever get what she wanted.
After all, other people wanted, and when it came to her, they only wanted what she could do and who she could be.
They never really wanted her for her.
It didn’t stop her from reaching for another sheaf of paper and trying again.
TLDR: Pretty sure Cora's grandma (who in my head is super old and reeks of sandalwood and dismissiveness) is the head of a Gramarye coven elsewhere. Cora was meant to take up the mantle or... something else more nefarious but yeeted instead and is hiding out in New York until she can figure out wtf to do. AGAIN, this could change depending on revealed site lore and also the fact that I might see another bright and shiny idea and go crow.
Alias: Squid. There have been many more, but let’s just use this one.
Timezone: PST for now.
Pronouns: She/Her, but I’m also okay with they/them.
Favorite Face Claims: I don’t really reuse face claims except for a rare blue moon, but a few favorites are Iwan Rheon, Jason Momoa, Eiza Gonzalez, and Sarah Gadon.
Top 3 Tropes: Fire-forged Friends, Sibling Rivalries, Happily Married (LISTEN, DO NOT JUDGE ME I LOVE AN OCCASIONAL FORAY INTO FLUFF OKAY?)
What about BMT caught your attention? I feel like this roleplay is taking things that we all know and love and is presenting them in a way that feels fresh and unique rather than tired out.
What do you most look forward to on BMT, so far? MORE CONTENT, and also meeting all the lovely people.
What are your hopes for the community as a whole? I’m going to be honest and just say I’m looking forward to all the plots.
Your Favorite Gif:
AAAAAND Have another playlist and just one drabble for Casey. The one drabble is because her ideas are aerating when I want them to be jello...
It's also 12AM and I really need to go to sleep. SEE UNDER THE CUT FOR PLAYLIST.
I'm sorry in advance for this one.
There was something about a nightclub that reminded Case of living more than blood and bone and pulse. Perhaps it was the colors that did it -- the soft halo of lights mixing with the strobes -- or maybe it was the diverse music choices -- Bauhaus one night to trap the next to a leftover night smattering of whatever the hell the DJ figured was good -- or the silly little humans or otherwise finding dark corners to feed their more primal desires in gasps and moans washed out by the heavy bass.
There had been a time when she was one of those people, but now Casey stood high above it all in a section far more exclusive than VIP, given that she was the only person in the lounge. There were countless plush velvet chairs for her to recline in, but she chose to stand tall in her heels and lean over the balcony to survey the goings on below.
Loose lips, after all, sank ships, and while New York was far too big for her to know the entire community’s secrets, Casey knew that she knew enough to level the playing field in her favor if and when it ever came to shaking things up a bit.
And oh, did she yearn to shake things up a bit.
After all, she was a child of the 80’s, and the status quo was so dull.
TLDR;; Literal embodiment of Noctii Eris who wants to charm your secrets out of you and then use them against you... for fun and power.... probably in that order. Also hinted that she was turned in the 80's, so make of that what you will. She is a QUASI BABY VAMP DO DO DO DO DO DO who definitely might be overreaching... or not. AGAIN, I might see a shinier idea and just be like "YEAH GOING TO CHANGE EVERYTHIGN ABOUT THIS."
