#moonlit-grove

[wyldblunt]

⌖ shooting the shit ⌖

i had this drafted out aaaaages ago and since then it's been collecting dust in my files waiting for me to have time to finish it, so!!!! i just decided to slap some tones on the rough sketch in the interest of getting it out into the world

@moonlit-grove once pointed out that we both have ex-nightmare pale reavers (albeit with very different temperaments), so i had to draw a little interaction. thank u for letting glyn bully ur boy 🙏🏼

[kerra-and-company]

Hmm, how about Kerra + meeting her Order leader? :oc - @moonlit-grove

Oooh, interesting choice! :D Warnings: none, I don't think The first time Kerra meets Riel, it’s a sunny day. She’s just met Tybalt, optimistic for her future in the Order, and a human in a black-and-red dress appears from the shadows. Riel introduces herself as the order’s primary spy in Lion’s Arch. She’s self-assured but not arrogant, and there’s something about her that reminds Kerra of Caithe. “The Preceptors sent me to welcome you before you begin your first mission,” she says. Kerra blinks. (Later, she’ll kick herself for speaking up. Even later, she’ll be proud of it.) “You’re lying.” Riel pauses. “Excuse me, Initiate?” “You’re lying,” Kerra repeats. “The Preceptors didn’t send you.” Riel’s brow furrows just a little, and one corner of her mouth curls. She doesn’t try to deny it, only scans Kerra up and down. “No,” she says, after a long few seconds. “The Master of Whispers did.” Truth. “The Master of Whispers?” “The leader of our order.” “To meet me?” Kerra isn’t sure how to feel about that. “Cai told us quite a bit about you.” Riel shrugs slightly, overly casual. “The Master was curious.” “I see,” Kerra replies. Her tone makes it clear that she doesn’t, but Riel doesn’t elaborate, and she doesn’t push it. “Now, Initiate,” Riel says, “let me properly welcome you. You have a right to know the dangers you will face…”

[lost-wayfinder]

Oh look, it’s a COMMISSION~! Thank you @moonlit-grove for commissioning me, it was so much fun to draw Vie and Sayeh having a moment.

Oh you like that? Consider commissioning me~.

[hedjeroo]

🌺send this to ten bloggers you think are wonderful. keep the game going🌺 - moonlit-grove <3

[cathedralofeternalradiance]

"In case we don't make it to sunrise.. I love you" - moonlit-grove

I originally had a far more angsty idea for this one... But have some angst/comfort instead because I like that one better and my babies have suffered enough

---------

Eye of the North, 1334 AE

She wakes to a weight pressing on her. It’s heavy, someone taller than her, but she can push them-

A haunted, golden eye is staring at her and Nyra loses all desire to do so. Her heart beats a little faster out of sudden fear and a slight panic that she almost hurt Trahearne again unknowingly, but there’s no time to address that when he’s whispering barely coherent words in her ear, voice thinned in terror, holding onto her for dear life and she lets him.

“Listen to me, listen to me, I need you to listen to me,” he’s saying fast, as if it’s his last chance to speak. “Before he comes, I need you to know, Lyss, please-”

“He won’t come,” she says gently, slowly wrapping her hands around him so as to not startle him. Her chest feels awfully tight, but his pain is greater, more urgent. “I won’t let him come.”

“He says this is my last sunrise,” Trahearne sobs into her hair, “and after that I’m fodder, I’m fodder-”

“You’re not fodder, I won’t let that bastard come to you,” it takes effort not to allow her voice to break, to keep it even and calming, even when she’s already crying too, “I promise you, he won’t come. You’re safe. I got you. I got you.”

“I love you,” he goes on, “I love you so much and it’s you and Mother and Riannoc that keep me not fodder and I want to see another sunrise, please-”

“I won’t let him have Riannoc or Mother too,” Nyra whispers, kissing his tears away, “As long as I have my staff he won’t be getting close, I’ll burn him down before a hair falls off your head, I got you, I got you.”

“I got you,” she repeats as he sobs louder into her hair, pinning her to her bedroll, and she lets him use her body as a place for grounding and comfort. Suddenly, his hand slides over the scar on her shoulder and she focuses all her energy on not freezing.

He isn’t supposed to know it’s there. He doesn’t know he’s there. Maybe he’s just feeling the area up.

“He won’t harm you again,” he says suddenly, still dreaming, “he won’t-”

“Trahearne!” she shouts, voice shaky, tearing them both from the moment. He stares at her, confused, with tears rushing down the side of his face, eye wide in bewilderment. “Lyssa’s pretty hands, what the fuck was that? How do you know about that scar? How!”

“Thorns,” he groans, pushing himself away and rubbing at his eyes. “Thorns. Lyss, I’m sorry I-”

“You don’t need to apologise for asking for comfort but tell me how you know about the scar! I didn’t tell you, I didn’t show you, nothing!” She sits up, grabbing her boots with shaky hands. She finally caught a night of sleep and it ends like this.

“I’ve been watching you,” he says quietly. “And I accidentally overheard you and Braham talking. The way you move your shoulder tells me something’s not right with it and after that I... filled the gaps myself.” He moves to rest his head in the crook of her neck in a loose hug.

“I’m not angry,” she whispers. “Just shocked. But you’ve been more observant than I am on occasion. I should’ve known I can’t hide something like this from you.”

She’s dreaded this conversation for the past three years. Nyra knows they have to talk about it someday, and they’ve been dutifully avoiding it like thieves in the night, but she isn’t prepared. In all honesty, she will never be and she’s had to bite the bullet more than once, except this particular bullet could end badly and open wounds she’d rather stay closed and, she imagines, him too.

She looks him in the eye. He looks tired, shaken, but there is a battle equal to hers on his mind too. A battle he seems prepared to fight.

“Can we talk about it tomorrow?” Nyra asks. “Try to, at least?”

He lets out a huff of laughter, a small, but resilient little thing. “We can try, yes. However many times it takes. Now, come back to bed. I cut your sleep short.”

“I’ll go work,” she replies, untangling herself from the hug and placing a gentle kiss on his nose. “Go sleep-”

“Not a word, Alysannyra,” he frowns. “You’re staying here and you’re going to sleep.” His fingers tingle with magic ready to be released. “Magical means or not.”

“If you say so,” Nyra says, but it sounds weary. Waking up in the middle of the night isn’t new, but this feeling of tiredness and anticipation certainly is.

But Trahearne is worth a thousand nights like this and a thousand attempts. She lays on the bedroll and curls against him, letting him run the gently draining magical fingers on her face.

There are drastically worse ways to spend the night.

-----

I hope you like it! It’s sappy and fluffy and angsty and I hope I delivered what you wanted to see! Maguuma is a sore wound for both of them but they’re troopers, they’re gonna get out of it victoriously <3 Thank you for the ask :)

[kerra-and-company]

Aengus ⭐️ Kerra :3 - @moonlit-grove

:3 :D

Kerra & Aengus

I like you // I love you // You’re one of my best friends // You’re like family // You are family // I dislike you // I hate you // I’d kill you if I got the chance // I want you to like me // I’m scared of you // I would adopt you // I’d date you // I’d sleep with you // I’d marry you // I’m worried about you // You confuse me // You’re annoying // I pity you // I respect you // I trust you // I feel protective of you // I’d invite you with me to parties // I’d lend you my money // I’d borrow your money // You’re good-looking // I’m suspicious of you // I’m hiding something from you // You’re fun // You’re boring // I’m upset with you // You’re nice // You’re mean // I’m envious of you // You’re smart // You’re stupid // I look up to you // I think you’re a better person than me // I think I’m a better person than you // I want to apologize to you // I wish I’d never met you // I never want to forget you // I want to get to know you better

Kerra would most definitely like and get along with Aengus! And he might not be commander, but he's Vie's family, so he's family-by-proxy :) She'd also be very supportive of his decision to stay in the Grove with his beloved for a multitude of reasons, and...yeah! Honestly this mainly boils down to I think they'd get along and it's very fun for me to imagine them meeting xD

[kerra-and-company]

🎟 pls use this for whichever question from the jumbo ask game seems most interesting to ask Cyp, ty <3 - moonlit-grove

Cyp ask! :D I shall do so, thanks a bunch <3 Let's see...I'll do this one: 📀 How easy is it to shock your OC? To confuse them? To lie to them, to manipulate them? How are they with feelings of trust? Can your OC be trusted? As far as Cyp's concerned, if you managed to get him to trust you? It'd actually be pretty easy to lie to or manipulate him. But the barrier for that is So High that it's very unlikely he'd be successfully manipulated. He just...doesn't really trust anyone fully, and takes pretty much anything with, at minimum, a hefty pinch of salt. As far as shock and/or confusion, there's a decent amount of the world he still doesn't fully understand. He doesn't act shocked or confused much, but he does have a lot of experience with both emotions. So if you were to set out to shock or confuse him, you'd probably have more luck there. And can Cyp be trusted? Yes. That's pretty much just a flat-out yes. He doesn't lie at all, really, so if he says he'll do something, you can trust that he'll at least give it a shot. (Bonus note: that last point is one of the big differences between main canon Cyp and Commander!Cyp in my AU. AU Cyp knows how to lie and manipulate, and though he doesn't use it as much as he could, he does in fact do it.)

[kerra-and-company]

QUESTION TIME. How do they react when they're suddenly hit with the realization that they have fallen for someone? Let's say they've been hanging out and getting along as well as they can, and BAM, while they're laying down to sleep they suddenly realize they're in love and/or want to give that person a smooch???? For.. anyone, surprise me :3 - @moonlit-grove

I'm late on responding to this because my brain really wanted to write you a five-page essay on all the thoughts on my characters' romances in my brain, aslkdjfad. The only problem with that is I have literally had no time to do so because School...so! I shall provide short blurbs instead! :D Kerra - The realization kinda snuck up on her, but she wasn't completely oblivious to it. She realized she'd gone and fully fallen in love one night in Maguuma when Nisha and Canach were trading sarcasm/one-liners back and forth. She opened her mouth to ask them to stop and realized she was about to say, "Hey, I love you, but we need to get at least a bit of rest tonight." It freaked her out for a second because loving them like that made her even more afraid to lose them, but she quickly decided that she did still want to tell them once everything calmed down. And she did. Nisha - Xe figured out that xe had crushes on Kerra and Canach relatively early, both during LWS1. Xe is a chronic overthinker and thus thought about it to hell and back, but xe also figured that Kerra, at least, would do something if she felt the same way, and thus considered xemself to be more or less stuck pining (all the way up until Kerra's confession after HoT). (And xe actually did have the "shooting straight up in bed" kinda realization-of-love moment later on in Maguuma after a conversation with Cio.) Cio - She figures out that she's in love with Ari during PoF and has no idea what to do with that information. They're most definitely friends at this point and have been since Maguuma, and more than that, they're a team--pilot and engineer, agent/keeper and archon, hand-to-hand and distance. They click, and they work well, but Cio is absolutely terrified to lose Ari like she lost Sieran, and thus keeps her mouth shut. However, she also doesn't exactly hide her feelings after the first few months, so although Ari doesn't pick up on it, her brother Pliarr definitely does. She only confesses during Icebrood, once Ari does. Ari - She's in love with Cio at least as long as Cio's in love with her, but she straight-up doesn't recognize that until Icebrood. Reuniting with Brook and Casca (her old 'bandmates) breaks down a few walls that were still stubbornly staying up, and some feelings--like the bit where she's been in love with Cio for YEARS--end up getting a lot more clear. She stays up all night after that realization, which makes for a very disheveled-looking morning confession the next day. Worth it, though. Rel - He goes to Orr with Trahearne during the period when Kerra's learning from Tybalt in the Order of Whispers, which is when he starts really crushing on the Firstborn. By LWS1, he's starting to realize that his feelings go deeper than that, which is--totally coincidentally, of course--around the time Kerra starts teasing him about it. He spends the entirety of LWS2 trying to decide if confessing is a thing he should do or not, but he hasn't done so before the Pact fleet takes off. So the closest thing he has to a big moment of realization is how terrified he is when he sees Trahearne's airship fall out of the sky--while on another falling airship himself, and completely ignoring that part of the situation. Brook and Casca - These two...I was going to say they have the most straightforward love confession thing, which is technically true, but they're also separated for a Decent Amount of Years later on, so their story definitely isn't overall straightforward. Anyways! They've been close since they were very young cubs, so they've pretty much always loved each other; it just evolved from friend-love to romantic-love as they got older. Casca was the first one to have that realization, which was pretty much just: 1) she was sitting next to Brook in the evening when they both were about 13, 2) she realized that she thought they were kinda pretty, 3) she realized that she wanted to kiss them, and 4) she asked if she could--step 4 was the part that made Brook go "oh, okay, I think I want that too." The extra step 5 is that they said yes.