#cybervale

[neveraftersbye]

evie was all too excited when she was offered a tour of elfhame. she was not from there, and she had only just learned that she was a princess by birthright. not in elfhame, but another island called the isle of the lost. it still didn't feel real to her, it felt like a dream, but if it was a dream, she never wanted to wake up. especially when her new life meant getting tours of palaces from high royalty themselves. evie couldn't stop smiling as they walked through the palace.

was she blushing? there was a moment hesitation as she considered cardan's question. "no," she decided on — a little white lie. yes, she was blushing. she couldn't help it, it was an involuntary reaction of the nervous system and ... well, she need not explain that to @cybervale. "that's just my natural glow," she embellished with a little gesture toward her still smiling face. "... you were saying?"

"are you blushing?"

[wyntera]

I see what you did @arachnescurse

[neveraftersbye]

his gut reaction was to flinch away, avert his gaze, apologize. they learned manners when they were a child, and a different set were instilled into them when they got to evermore, though they weren't sure they would call those manners. they were more like rules, threats. he knew not to put his elbows on the dinner table. he knew not speak unless spoken to. and he knew that it was rude to stare. but he couldn't help himself when he saw renee walker. without even realizing it, jean started looking for @cybervale in every room.

he flexed his hand, an old habit he picked up when he was trying to regain the use of his broken fingers. they never healed properly, so it had become a nervous tick. something they did when they didn't know what else to do with their hands. when he realized what he was doing, he grabbed it with his other hand to stop the movement. "you have kind eyes. i'm not used to seeing them. je suis désolé."

"what are you staring at?" / I HATE YOU ... prompts ( accepting )

[daylighterarchived]

i know people don't like me. ( from em! )

here his eyes begin to squint, his footfalls halting like tires on asphalt. the bakery had fallen into a familiar lull beneath their floor boards, his apron a limp body thrown over his shoulder in the early hours of work; a small dusting of flour had latched onto his warm wrist, with the quick flight of morning ceaseless until the moment her words were cast against the light. something in his jaw tightened as his eyes lowered to her soft, dark head hovering above her half-knitted scarf, a familiar hatred biting the insides of his chest. ‘ … eimile, ’ a faint breath, wary of her protests rising before he had even begun to speak ( at times this was how they worked, a pendulum swing of guess-work that landed true too often ) but he is careful to tender his tongue when he does. ‘ why say that? ’

the kitchen becomes a stranded island. a brother and a sister on two opposing poles, where despite the gilded hours he can see the creepy shadows that threaten to warp time around her. she does not look up from her silent perch by the breakfast table ( that small and creaky thing, found out of a charity sale and pinned with stickers ) but he requires little proof to adopt the image of her sadness in his mind's eye and steps forward. ‘ em, it's not true at all. ’ he is not a creature of touch. like a vampire at the foot of one's door, unable to breach the gate, he stands a few inches from her chair with his uncertain hands half-floating in the air, palms flushed and fingers twitching. ‘ talk to me. ’ in the end he arrests himself to a decision, and sets a hand over her head. it falls short, and he winces, but stays close. ‘ did someone say something? ’

[blotgydja]

❛❛   hands off, she's with me ─ !!   ❜❜      one arm collided with the bouncer's chest, easily shoving him away from the girl at her side. the other settled round her shoulders. daisy pulled her close, like a sparrow under her wing, and led her through the doors and into the party. from a waiter's abandoned tray she snatched two glasses of unknown liqour, taking one reckless taste before offering one to lucy gray with a smile. ❛❛ songbirds like us── we've got to have each other's back. ❜❜

𓆩 — starter call • @cybervale

[daylighterarchived]

❛ you know what i say? cold, hysterical, unlovable bitches like us make the world go round. ❜ ( lol from alex )

he wasn't often wrong about guess-work. prediction and divination had become his field-work for a reason, but this took the cake: perhaps under the less than auspicious circumstances of yale's battleground houses, and the particular branch of hostility between lethe and manuscript, it had been a relatively easy truth to puzzle out that lethe would be an obstacle. after all, their dante-turned-virgil was the same person who had crippled the reputation of their earlier administration. it was not that kenneth disagreed, or was sorry to see the power of his own house at last leashed, but that it spelled trouble for his own plans with grey:

could they get away with it all, or would virgil come down with their hounds too soon?

but sitting by the stairway that led to yet more students and their dancing skeletons, an empty curb with the wind bitingly cold, the two were not what the other must have expected until now. ( then again, snakes weren't congratulated on their eye sight, just great self preservation and a giant maw. ) past the pleasantries and the first meetings, past the mandated inspections and a mutual disdain for manuscript … by then, between the exchange of cigarettes and bad habits, they might have sounded like sure friends now.

❛   yale wouldn't exist if we didn't,   ❜ he said, and contrary to what it might have seemed like, it made perfect and terrible sense to him: ❛   who else could have come up with it? houses of the veil.   ❜ not that he trusted the books, the history. hadn't they already come to the conclusion that lies sprawled every nook and cranny of what the magic-hungry talents took for granted here? tired more than angry, he wouldn't hide it from them and didn't bother to look sorry either — caught robbing the bonesmen archives, somehow he didn't feel he was in trouble. ❛   thanks, anyway. i don't know what you think was happening, but it's — necessary.   ❜

﹙ some legend meme i don't remember. ﹚ ALEX STERN.

[philomelia]

continued + @cybervale

cassie is visiting a grave. her little apartment was miles away, replaced tonight with a hotel (perhaps the only hotel in sunnydale, which had about fifty cheap coffee places but no real need for a hotel, not when tourism to this dusty little place was small and inconsistent). still, cassie had managed to book a place, which meant she wouldn't spend the night holed up in her van. she doesn't often visit sunnydale-- she had only spent a summer here when she was just a little kid, but her sister's blood still stained a house that she never wanted to enter again. cassie doesn't pray often, but talking to buffy felt like enough of an act of repetence: it's fitting that they meet in a graveyard. they've both been dead long before the story even started.

" what do you feel more? brave or scared? is that an unfair question? " they had stumbled into each other by accident, but cassie has been told tales of the slayer (everything supernatural and strange and beyond the green moonlight had been told to cassie-- she is the keeper of stories . . . she does not have much else to keep). they walk side by side, with cassie's fingers tucked into her jacket to fight off the shiver of ice that lives in the air. buffy looks more normal than she imagined. when her mother told her the stories, she said that slayers glowed with their power, little suns and stars trapped on this earth. cassie has always known that her mother was a liar, but she's only recently discovered just how deeply. " i think i'm a little more brave than scared. but my life doesn't honestly call for much bravery. "

[daylighterarchived]

you need to slow down. ( from a tree an olive tree )

ronan would be hard pressed to find that the sun rarely slowed down when its axis was upset, a non-stop marathon of laps around the particular subjects of his hyperawareness: a mezzanine full of injured soldiers, weapon cache's just out of reach, and eruption point of mount diablo winking unpleasantly their way. how many more questions from the former resting place of the titans before the mystery was cut like a fish, and spared their resources the nuisance of mad frenzy and fever spells? if he had not stopped to ask for opinions, then protests were out of the question to entertain, though notably kazheir had given up first.

the tattletale had reported to the back up, who now obstructed kenneth's way with equally pinched brows.

❛   move.   ❜ he exhaled, ronan didn't move. even as the sun climbed higher in the sky, his eyes felt heavier with the cast of its shadows ( days had passed in this management; he could shake off sleep for all that time and replenish under the sun, but only for so long … ) but ronan, bright - eyed, stood resolute as an enemy. and kenneth, bristling with building fury, trusted him too much and let him see it. ❛   five of these fools couldn't figure out what is going on over that mountain. let me through, i won't say it again.   ❜

[ 𐊌 ] tell the workaholics to nap, accepting. @cybervale.