Sep 19, 2019
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Prompt #6
"Who is Melissa?" A gift for @docxie cause her OCs are awesome.
Who is she?
She is-
Cold. Mist clouds in her irises, a stare living far away from the now. Somewhere stuck in the past, a silent prayer for a better future hiding in her breath. She's out of reach before you even think of getting close.
She is-
Deadly. Fast as lightning, loud as thunder. There's electricity coursing through her veins, buzzing in her movements if you listen carefully. Bent and broken, sharp edges digging into your skin when you hold her.
She is-
Lost. The world is too quiet around her, she needs the noise to go by. Her spirit has overgrown her skin, but she's confined to the prison of her self. Dazed and confused, instincts flared up, but things change constantly and keeping up is getting harder and harder with every decade on her shoulders.
She is-
Lovely. Her laugh bristles dormant ghosts in the dead of night. Messy hair and stained cheeks, she shifts and changes before your eyes. Dancing under ultraviolet lights, sways with the elegance of a blade slicing through silk. Double edged, she's everything she's ever been, and she's also so much more than that.
She is-
Harder than steel. Still, maleable under the right kind of warmth.
Prompt #4
"There was something buried out behind the old car lot. We guessed it to be a great many things, but none of us could have ever expected this. Do a serious one and a goofy one." By @docxie
Goofy one.
Adopted
His first thought when his son dragged the thing into the house had been 'hell, no'. But he had a promise to keep, and he pondered for a second just for how long would Thomas think he was an Awful Dad if he refused.
He'd already said no to enough requests from him that month.
Okay, sure, they were short on money but his son wouldn't understand that until many, many years later. He didn't want Thomas to hate him until then.
So he said yes, knowing he'd regret it, but it had been more than worth it in that moment just to see his little boy's beaming smile.
He expected the stray would run away eventually, not being used to the attention of an overly excited child. Or maybe because it yearned the freedom it had experienced in the streets. Or maybe Thomas would get tired of its endless barking at night.
No such thing happened. The stray remained on the back yard. It was tied on a leash when they left the house, but free to wander when they were around.
He was getting a little scared by now, that he'd misjudged how long the thing would stick around.
The white out eyes and dirty, bloodied fur had unnerved him at first, but at least the latter could be washed out.
Still, when Bobby's ear fell off and the pup just kept around its morning jog on the street, he did nearly shit his pants.
Prompt # 5
"Due to a spelling error, a spell that was meant to summon a great and terrible entity has summoned you instead." By @docxie
Lucero.
To some extent, you're used to this. It happens every seven decades or so, when someone finally manages to get their hands on one of the few copies of Hapbesto's Institutes on All Things Unholy, or a partial transcript of it.
It's a shame Hapbesto himself never really tried the summoning. It would have saved you a lot of trouble, if you could have met him and explain the wrongs in his invocation. It used to make you mad, but in the past couple of centuries, you just feel sorry for the poor man. He had a firm grasp on Sanskipt, but only so much could be learned properly when self-taught, and while being chased after for his peculiar beliefs. Maybe he had meant to perform the ritual himself, but he'd been captured beforehand.
You'll never really know, but you've made your peace with it already. You have bigger issues to deal with these days anyway.
The summoning usually matches the passing of Halley's Comet. Mortals seem to believe it can only work out with the presence of a rare celestial occurrence, eventhough you know from experience it's not really a necessity. Still, it does kind of make the descent to Earth a tad more smooth. Halley's tail of her dress makes for a easy glide down an otherwise rusty slide when she runs off as fast as she came around, and you do -albeit silently- thank her for it.
Sometimes it's the only thing that makes the trip somewhat pleasant.
The scene you face as your essence reaches the ground is always similar, but the context is hardly ever the same. The candles and dead flowers are a given, and the peak reaping of the harvest is a nice touch when it's there. Someone always looks like they're about to faint when you materialize, and on some rare occasion, someone is waiting for you with a confident smile.
Said smile is bound to fall and turn into a confused frown shortly after. You once used to find it offensive, though by now you simply offer whoever is sporting it as much of an understanding smile as you can muster.
A bit of everything has stood in front of you. You've met chanting crowds, cocky priests, 'unamused' generals, baffled housewives, and a quite terrified teenager one memorable night, to name a few. They always want something; something that isn't generally the same, but that does usually go along the lines of being needed with a burning passion. Something they'd be willing to give up their soul over, which is why that one ritual instead of literally any other is performed.
You can't always give them what they want. There is only so much power you withhold, and you aren't really who they're looking after. Still, more often than not, you don't really want to; even if you could.
(You did lend a hand a couple of times, though. It didn't really harm anyone that you stayed there to help Lucas pull an all nighter for his SATs. You are kinda proud of that, he scored the highest note thanks to you after all.)
So yeah, the trip isn't usually all that pleasant, but at least it tends to be over quickly.
It's not really anyone's fault. Not even if you wanna blame Hapbesto. It's not much of a spelling mistake as it is a miss interpretation of what's being asked.
Sometimes it's easier. Sometimes they understand and they let you go. Halley winks at you as she dances her way past you like every other time, and you hope this will be one of those. You hope they won't throw you into some dungeon engraved with ancient locking spells that will take you a week to break through again. That's exhausting.
Most mortals believe "the brightest star in the firmament" to be him. The one who was cast aside, the one who fell hard and fast with no regret. The one who makes deals and keeps promises but always for a price.
Mortals have painted him in an ugly portrait for ages. You can't stand listening to them talk about him. You never could. Even those who claimed to worship him never really understood. Not like you did, never like you did.
They haven't really seen him like you have. They weren't held at the tip of his fingertips with reverence, nor looked at with the adoration he held in his eyes when they grazed upon you. They never felt the fire running within him, the ablazing grasp of his affection, or the strength in his love.
They don't know about the ache that wreaks through the semblance of a body you gain when your form turns corporeal, the same that keeps your glow eternal, hoping your beams reach beneath the surface of the prision he's been trapped in. They can't comprehend your yearning for his touch, his voice, his presence. All things ripped away from you for a claim that fell on deaf ears, one that he was punished for being voiced out loud.
But perhaps no other star ever did either. You were, after all, the lightbringer's favorite one.
Prompt #2
"Opening a new box of crayons" By @docxie
Technicolor breath.
It was a statement against what she had been told her entire life. Out was the old, in came the new. Faded colors wouldn't stain her notebooks anymore. She realized she had nearly forgotten how beautiful yellow could be, when she filled the margins with sunflowers.
Prompt #1
"Tell me a story about the color red. Imagine I’d never seen red before. Describe the color." By @docxie
Dual Crimson
To some, it's just something easy to figure out. Red is just there.
It's little else than something shiny and annoying. It is a stop sign, a warning, imminent danger up ahead. "Halt, drop, and roll". Survival granted to those who walk past the stay path. Those who turn around from it and run the oposite direction, will make it out unscratched.
But Red is something else entirely for others.
It's a challenge, and a chance to prove their worth at face with said danger. It's a weary voice who advices "Abandon all hope ye who enter here"; and it's a stubborn instinct of biting a remark back. Red is crossing the gate with a smug smile on their faces, chests puffed and shoulders rolled back.
It's a split-second desicion. One that may leave them full of regret, or may have the future find them with olive branches in their hair. Red is the thrill of the chase, in search for what is not unknown but something rather well feared.
It's gravity pulling them under before their skull meets concrete. It's the one-of-a-lifetime feeling, however illusory, of diving in before catching flight.
It's blood and firelighters between their fingers, and it's their best friends' eyes shining with tears as they laugh. It's in that moment -when the night is just about over, and the sun is lazily on the rise-, when they haven't slept one bit, and they know exactly why.
It's a kiss. One that is not the first for them or the last. One too rushed and messy, and that will end up in a punch to their faces. It's a traffic light to run over, when the streets are deserted and they're going too fast to stop now.
For those, red is an invitation to feel alive.
Prompt #8
"Terrifying scenarios but having them look peaceful - Abandoned Architecture, bonus points if you include ghosts." by @docxie
House on Seventh
Something about the way the old hardwood floors creaked at odd hours into the night simply made the house feel like a home. Perhaps because it seemed like the building itself was breathing, stretching out lazily before turning back to sleep.
The torn paperwalls poured out affection, faint stains from where furniture once stood and pictures had been hanged, forever edged on it. A reminder of glory days far left behind as glue faltered and layers dropped with the passage of months, years, decades.
The ceiling was cracked, for the most part. Standing underneath it deemed a challenge to whoever dared, but once they pushed aside their wariness they'd be rewarded with lovely sights of crooked and bent up lines, imaginary rivers coursing through endless plains, dark lakes obscured in mold, and deep valleys carved upside down to reveal shifts in textures and colors.
Sleeping inside the abandoned place in Seventh wounded up being quite the experiece on that night where thunder roared loud enough to keep us speechless.
Waking up to mutered conversations, lost in memories that weren't ours was too. The spirits wandering around and about weren't quite what we expected.
The dress on Grimelda was torn up at the skirts, yet the embroidery on her back melt into the shadow of what her skin had looked like, blossoming lillies stained black and red ever so wonderful.
Roger's voice on the tattered radio was soothingly melodic and gentle when it switched to the right frecuency. His prayers reminded me of the ones I'd heard my grandma mutter for me by my bed on that evening fever never seemed to break.
Charlie's quick steps startled me as they ran around the kitchen unannounced, but they quickly became a familiar after the first couple of laps. Little kids. Always looking for an adventure even when they're stuck inside.
My friends were relieved when the sun came up.
Before we left I looked back and for a moment I thought to myself that maybe, this wouldn't be such a terrible place to spend in the afterlife.
Two kinds of people.
There are two kinds of people in this world you should never underestimate.
The first are easy enough to identify, they are the ones who have nothing to lose.
They'll latch onto any cause that catches their fancy, if only to have something to hold onto. They're usually reckless, careless and narrowminded. They hardly ever have something else that's worth anything to them, so they remain blindly loyal to their objective. They never lose sight of the endgame, and that final result fuels their spirit. It becomes their sole purpose for being, otherwise remaining themselves an empty shell. They'll do whatever it takes to reach their goal, even if it kills them, consequences be damned.
That's what makes them dangerous.
The second kind lies within the other end of the spectrum, as they're the ones who in kind, could lose everything instead.
Now maybe you think this could have them at disadvantage, as their fear will keep them from running into situations that'd threaten what they hold so dear. You are mistaken.
They don't care for sides or causes, for what may be right or wrong. Their loyalty lies only within their own. They're methodical, careful, and patient. Whatever stands upon their path won't matter, they'll run over the obstacles face first in their wake. They'll stand with the victor at the end of the day, because they've never minded the battles, there's something stronger that pushes them forward and up ahead.
They've planned on surviving all along, their true goal is making sure nothing's changed in the end.
You should be terrified of them, because that's what makes them deadly.