Durry: That sounded like Mariel.
Dandin: Nah, it couldn’t be her.
Mariel, from a faraway distance: You ridiculously stupid moron!
Dandin: Yeah, that’s her.
While the other's initial query pushed the term to the extreme...the further explanation rationalised it. She agreed with a lot of her definitions. It was hard not to.
'When you put it like that...it's much of the same.' She held her hands before her, adjusting her gloves with little purpose.
'Its someone you can trust...someone you can confide in. I... don't exactly spend that much time with them due to the nature of my work...but if I can help them to any degree....I would.'
Before she was Sleep, before she was Pia, and before he was Vessel, they were friends.
Then she drowned, and things slowly change from there.
Word Count: 1.2k words
TW:
Implied character death
Brief talks about dismantling a body
Author’s Note: You know why this is gifted to you @gabe-killed-me-with-ace-cream. Need I say less?
Additionally, check out Mariel's work that inspired this. No, you don't get the Discord chats.
Disclaimer: This is me playing around with the stage characters. There’s nothing intentionally related to their real identities here, and I don’t intend for there to be. Please respect their privacy and identities of the band.
(AO3 Link below, fic underneath the cut)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
They are entwined with each other from the very beginning. Like broken branches swirling in floodwater. Like precious metal necklaces tangled up with each other. Like three matching pendants.
From water rises blood, warm and alive.
She will never feel that again.
But she knows who will, and for that, she’s thankful that they both stay.
He has nowhere else to go, so she welcomes him in her house. What else can she do? He’s her friend, and while she has no reason to be trust him when he stumbles onto her doorstep once changed (blood dripping from the open mouth, canines so sharp that they tear his lower lip when they catch on the flesh, wide eyes with a feverish look), she lets him into her house.
He never really leaves from that point onwards. Not because he can’t, but because he wants to remain with her.
She taught her everything she knows. The correct plants and steps. The proper way to preserve ingredients so they last. Things that can be substituted and things that require only the freshest of the batch. Which mixtures are like cooking and which are like baking. Which easily forgive and which easily forsake. She wouldn’t say anything to her mentor (not even now), but she cherishes the time they spent. In another time, perhaps.
She thought that he would be forced to watch them both age. Watch their hair fade away into grays and whites and their skin wrinkle. He cries when it hits him, voice breaking but his words steady when he sobs that he can’t do that to them.
He cries again when water fills her lungs.
But she screams when she awakens at long last, deathly cold with wrinkly fingertips. She knows she’s dead. She knows she will never properly feel the living again. She knows, but he refuses to let her go. She knows, and she changes herself with old magics to reawaken her.
That’s alright, she whispers to them as lights change from candles to lightning caught in wires, it’s alright if you haunt me.
He breaks her physical body up into pieces, letting her watch over his shoulder as he cracks open the joints, preserving the flesh of her hands. She weaves bits of her hair into intricate braids. They dismantle her and rebuild her until she is an alter of herself. She is not a grave.
She will live on.
He’s foolish like that, and she’s just as stubborn, but she doesn’t mind. Not when he keeps a jar of some of her smallest bones safe underneath the tablecloth of her altar. Not when she meticulously picks her favorite flowers and fruit for her, placing them in her preserved hand and watching her receive it. They’re faded, and she is not. They’re a ghost of her favorites, and she refuses to die.
Her mentor becomes a bit of a vagrant. She doesn’t know if it’s because of the old magics that seeped into her every being, or if it’s because she now has time and freedom to do so. But she wanders away from her house for days, sometimes weeks on end. Sometimes she leaves rare offerings for her to practice. Other times, she only takes her preserved hand and gently uncurls the fingers before placing a kiss on the palm, curling it closed before leaving.
It’s warm.
She tries to continue her brews and medications, seeing how despite her attempts to teach him, he could never grasp her methods. How ironic, it is then, to find out that she can control water. Liquids bend to her will, so as long as she works with damp ingredients, she will be fine. It’s a shame for her dried herbs, but she makes him pluck them out of the jars for her before smearing her tools with water.
He’s a good friend.
Maybe too good. He has a habit of adopting strays.
First, the gorgon. She doesn’t mind him, actually. He has a mean appearance, but his nature is defensive. He looks at her unguarded, and when she doesn’t freeze on him, he relaxes. He’s good for Vessel despite that. She treats him with making oils for his snakes. By then, she forgets their names from before.
Sleep. I am Sleep. My friend is Vessel. My mentor is Pia. And that one is II. Second of my house.
With the werewolf, she tries to convince Vessel to throw him out. Loud and rowdy men often lead to trouble. She looses the long fight, but not without defenestrating him multiple times, wolf or not. How delightful it is to control the living via the water inside them. She doesn’t admit it, and she’s glad that the third living creature of her house doesn’t mind it either, but she has grown comfortable with his presence. She accepts his offerings of leaves from his runs, and in exchange, she ensures the water runs warm when he dyes his hair.
Third of my house. That one is III.
There was a fourth, but he didn't fit the band (and how strange yet fitting it is, for she knows that Vessel always loved music but only after a long time is he able to pursue his dream).
Now, there’s a solid fourth. He’s annoyingly normal save for how nothing can kill him. Sleep knows: he’s been drunk from, stared at, ripped to shreds, and drowned. He’s a hearty thing, and Sleep finds herself digging into his curse (or his blessing, but she’s just a witch).
But then she’s given an offering of rich chocolate cake and she pushes that tangled mess of magic away.
Fourth of my house. IV.
There are others, of course. Fae with enchanting voices, warm fire and playful water and earthy plants. Sleep loves them on first sight, no bias at all.
(She has so much bias. She can only stand letting her house be overtaken by men living in it for so many years before she craves something different.)
Still, she adores them all. Some more than others, some with more tolerance for their shenanigans, but she adores them.
‘Love’ is too strong of a term, something foreign and strange. Something she never really understands when it came to the fragile psyche of someone who could express such thoughts and emotions back to her.
She’s different, in this modern day and age. She feels it when she lets herself drift away into dreaming, the way that her house bends to her will. She feels it when she’s gifted presents — offerings — on her altar (now two of them, thanks to IV). She feels it when Vessel stays by her altar and tells her about his day like they’re scriptures. She feels it when Pia comes home and makes things for her. She feels it when anyone thanks her like they’re prayers.
She says it quietly to herself, as if it’s a fragile thing:
You’re a god.
It makes her giddy, like a little child all over again. How much she misses it.
She never says it aloud, but she makes it clear either way: She is a god, her house is a temple, and the residents are her favorite.
Rereading tamb rn, and I'm just saying... Mariel sure seems to remind people of their mothers whenever it's her first time physically meeting them. (Chise's utterly distraught expression in the first page kills me every single time btw)
Now, if someone were to just drag fumiki- yori, I mean yori over to meet her by the scruff of his grumpy and reluctant neck, I'm just saying it'd be interesting. Maybe when forgotten memories resurface he'd connect some dots using his own ramblings about red hair and green eyes and foreign ancestry and atavism. Just saying, you know. A humble suggestion, if you will.
Also, I wonder if this effect also applies to people older than Mariel. Do you think Elias saw Mariel and thought of Rahab?
