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i like my girls just like I like my honey, sweet a little selfish i like my women like I like my money, green a little jealous 'cause I'm a beautiful wreck a colorful mess, but I'm funny
Melete and Glitch, the duo that actually went as a date to the ball!
Melete represents the alchemical quicksilver, whereas Glitch is repping gold. Mercury attracts and binds gold in the process of amalgamation, viewed historically as the conquering of it.
“There you are, little priest,” a familiar voice drawled, and Nanako buried her face in her hands as Glitch’s voice echoed through the bathroom. (Not on purpose, she reminded herself, because Glitch didn’t know she was in here.) “Looking good enough to pray to yourself, yes?” “As you are aware, that is theologically implausible,” Melete said, and Nanako didn’t have to see her to know the expression she was making. That was the problem with exes! She didn’t have to see either of them to know exactly the scene that was outside. The scene that she’d have to walk past - with the two trolls she wanted to see here the least - if she wanted to escape the bathroom and get back to the rest of the ball.
@rebatrolls' Glitch and my Melete for the ball! Nana got dumped in pitch and flush, which does conveniently leave the pitch quadrant open for what's mostly not a spite-fuelled date.
Lore deets on outfits below:
no good (she’s up to no good)
Quick drabble to cover something that happened off-scene during a PC chat between Melete and Orivar, featuring said PC log. Because sometimes you’re just mostly doing chat rp between your schedule.
It isn't often that you and Melete get time to just laze around.
But you like the days like this, when it's the two of you in your hive. There's no demands. There's no need to focus on anything. Melete always gets anxious when the two of you haven't met for a perigee or more. Date nights always get an edge to them, like the two of you are making up for lost time. Between that, and the fact you can't acknowledge you're matesprits, it's so..
Performative.
You like Torrent girls! You can't really hold it against them when they get all.. torrent-y about things, but that doesn't mean you don't prefer things like this: just the two of you, lounging around in your bed, with Melete on her phone and the blankets tangled around your legs. Your matesprit's leaning against you, the small of her back curled into the crook of your legs. Her hair's draped across you, and so long as you're careful, she doesn't mind you playing with the ends.
You're in the process of braiding one when she sighs, loudly, and lays down her phone on her knee.
"Too rough?" You let go of the strands, but she's already shaking her head. "No," she says, "you are fine. It's.. mmm."
"What do you think of mutants?" she asks, peering down at you, and you don't know what she's thinking of.
"Ahhh. Bold move, thinking I think, mah," you say, and blow a raspberry at her.
Melete merely looks at you for a moment, her face passive. Then she lifts a hand. Delicately, with great precision, she brushes back your bangs. Then she presses her palm to the center of your forehead, long fingers curling over your skull. "The brain is the most complex organ within a troll's body," she says, soft, but firm. "It controls our consciousness. It controls every move that you make. When you breathe, you are engaging in thoughts, even if you are not programmed to notice them. When you blow a raspberry, or become glib, you are engaging in thought, and a deliberate choice with them."
"I enjoy hearing your thoughts. Your views are refreshing, and there is no need for self-deprecation."
The Etheri’s! Nomizo belongs to @rebatrolls, Melete belongs to me.
INKTOBER 6 - SHY
MELETE ETHERI | 10 SWEEPS / 22 YEARS OLD
ANGELICAN CHOIR, ARKADY | 1,402 words
Once every half-sweep, all the Torrents in active duty come together for a meeting in the streets of Arkady. This time, the place chosen was the Angelican Choir, tucked away among the canals, half-hidden in the crook of a wall between a laundry and a bath.The building was used for worship, once, and for all that it is small, it still bares marks of it in the perfect white stone of the walls, angled to catch and hush every note spoken within, and in the green symbols that slither up the walls.
But there has been no worship for centuries now in this city. The angelics were stomped out like every other false faith in the subjuggulator’s crusades, their participants throats slit and their bodies hung up with the very beasts they thought could bring them peace. The temples were left standing, though. You suppose they were too handsome to destroy, or too discreet to be worth the effort. What better display of spite is there, to declare one’s life worth too unimportant to even bother destroying?
Or perhaps the Highblood who had begun leasing it to the Torrents, so many sweeps ago, had just had a similar humour to yours. Because you can’t help the way your lips quirk as you take in the room. There’s rows of rows of Torrents, the whites of their uniforms broken only by the splashes of blood, and they fit in so neatly, they could have been hatched here. The people who destroyed their faith, in the end, are indistinguishable from those who performed it.
You don’t suppose any of the people here would appreciate the thought. Torrents like to think themselves so high and mighty, after all: you’ve heard your peers refer to you as the architects of the Empire, the ones who shape its foundations and maintain its supports. The only true power, second only to the Empress herself, and second only when she might bother hearing. But that pomposity just makes the joke all the better, and you’re in a rare bout of good cheer as you settle down amongst your fellow Saboteurs.
That’s unusual enough that others notice. Kokoro’s explaining the current attitudes of the Church, hand smudging at his facepaint idly while he does it, but he keeps sneaking glances at you, his face pleasantly mild, but a question in his eyes. And Nomizo has never been one to bother resisting an easy target. You make it two hours in before Cress breaks for questions, and he leans forward, elbow neatly creasing the knee of his slacks.
“Maybe Princess has one,” he says, blithe. He doesn’t have wine in hand, for once. A part of you is tempted to compliment him for self-restraint. “She looks keen enough, now, doesn’t she? Don’t be shy! You can speak up!”
The rest of you just wants to slap him, but that’s never been an option for the either of you. “I have no questions,” you say, brisk, and you don’t let your smile falter, or your tone break. “Continue, Cresida.”
She does.
And more of the worst family on Alternia! Expect a bunch of these in the future, sorry, trying to figure out how to draw them both. x)
Interaction was probably realistically limited until Melete was in her teens, but I like to picture Torrent kids have to attend the less important meetings to practice shorthand and taking notes.
terrible blueblood notes
Because I’m clearing out my drafts / askbox for the first time in four years. x)
Calico is a first-name, for Kuan’s brooding cavern, that’s given to wrigglers with a very specific spotting pattern. His lusus only picks up wrigglers that have that spotting pattern, which is how all of the leaders of II-J end up going by Calico: there’s probably been one or two who’s legal name didn’t match up, but they get called it regardless.
The way succession works on his rickshaw is that there is a set of five bloodlines in the area that all have the same markings, but different castes/horns/surnames. There’s usually only one or two a generation, and the guardian of I-J will only take grubs with those specific markings. As a result, all kids with those share the first name Calico, which has come to be the title of the leader, and the title gets passed down from one Calico to the next upon Ascension. The way it usually works out is that a second Calico is hatched out and retrieved by the current Calico at age thirteen or so, and then raised up, so they’re taking over the Rickshaw at eleven or twelve years old.
Kua was born in a weird cycle where he was the only Calico hatched out for nearly twenty years, and his successor only hatched when he was about ready to Ascend. As a result, he’s never really left charge of the Rickshaw, and was thoroughly inclined towards judging over what he perceived as his successors deliberate errors in being the small child leader - which is subsequently why, ic, he ended up drowning them and taking back his lusus fairly early on in his arc.
The demographics of Kua’s rickshaw is highly mixed, which’s meant to be shown in the character names: Feiyan was a Han dynasty empress, Guifei was a Tang dynasty consort, Chōmin was a Japanese politician, and Kuanfu was a famous Chinese pirate, despite the fact his particular Rickshaw only speaks Korean. This is kind of supposed to be representative of the fact the community is incredibly xenophobic and fucking weird, as seen by Kua just flat-out refusing to learn any other languages, despite the fact it’s not a monoethnic community: the language emphasis was probably set up by an early Calico to help isolate them from everyone that’s not from their particular cluster of rickshaws.
Liyiji’s legal name is Nán Hǎi! He started calling himself Liyiji at four sweeps, after he read about a famous early advisor from pre-Imperial days. He still answers to Nan Hai, occasionally, when people catch him in the right mood.
His original lusus was a sea bunny, which is to say, a cat-sized slug. He ditched her as a little kid and sought out turtledad instead, because he eyed up Myrrha, Weeds and Riccin, and decided he wanted a lusus of the same gender. Group turtlewrangling (and children attempting to sex it) was the result.
Melete spent a few sweeps near the awful (wanna-be) blueblood enfantes of Myrrha, Weeds, Riccin and Liyiji. She currently only maintains contact with Weeds, and occasionally Liyiji - Myrrha and Riccin have swung too far into their respective forms of extremism to find her tolerable, for different reasons.
And Melete's half of the card is getting there.
