#punkcopy

[daylighter-gone]

just let me go or take me with you. ( from ronan! )

the drummer wasn’t the forgiving sort. nor was he so simply pliable, as many failed suitors and fellow duellists would attest. when the dreamer’s hand had caught his wrist, he raised his own with the unthinking urge to punish him with a strike across the face for daring to touch him at all. that angry palm however, froze in the listless air where it failed to land the intended blow, but the heat of it had gone to his face instead. he was furious for being stopped, furious even more for being seen and conflicted long enough to be pried at. it was better to leave as he’d threatened to, and that comfort had never left him since he had held on to it as a child— he might have gone the entire ordeal of venturing into the unknown alone too, had ronan not infected him with this.

❛  let me go. i won’t say it again. ❜  but ronan wouldn’t, and he saw the first few seconds that simple command might as well have been utterly unintelligible to the ridiculous thing in front of him. it was the same look he had had when he had made the mistake one night of kissing his cheek, moments before their fight had exploded. he tugged harshly at his wrist, then snapped pettishly : ❛  i despise you. why do you insist? what does any of this this get you? ❜

[lamorts]

one day, perhaps, there will be a story of boyhood with less bite to it. magic is the hungry worm sitting under the rind — sometimes, the fruit is a boy, sometimes the fruit is the thing for which a boy is a metaphor. if it vanishes, here is what is left: the house of grief bathed in the incandescent light of his human heart. the boy is an incongruous variety of parts stitched with the sun-dazed blush of a first love. & love is sometimes the father, here is the card of the emperor on his throne. & sometimes, love is the bruised blue in the eyes of another boy, here is the magician with one hand pointing upwards, the simple miracle of no longer being lonely. so the magic purrs. & love can be a nostalgic king and all the dreams of childhood behind him: draw a card, it will be the six of cups.

there is more to a story than the burning of it, beyond dreams of smoke that blend into dreams of light. he is a boy, which is to say despite the magic that eats and the violence of everything else, he is still a boy with his hands intertwined, praying to the starving saint of his guilt at ruinous altar of his anger. the heart stores what lies untold in the silence of clenched teeth, the distance between anger and grief is a closed fist. now the beast of his hunger paces around. part of grief is admitting to it or the taste for it, part of anger is just existing with it.

what stillness grasps tightly at the corners of the woods breaks at the fluttering of wings, the hush of ancient trees in ancient tongue. the green of forests leaks into the dark blue of dreams. i suppose the night forgets its name in cabeswater, there is only an immitation of it & the shadows move like water moves, which is to say the dark is not the dark here, not as it is anywhere else. cabeswater sighs — the sound of it is not a sound, but the feeling of it.

& through @punkcopy, 𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐲𝐬 : ❛ would things be easier if there was a right way ? ❜

& 𝐢 𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫 : ❛ i think you will find that right is but one more direction to choose from. you might as well go left and see what comes of it. ❜

[a-alucinore]

⋆.˚ ☁️ ⋆ ˚ @punkcopy ( 𝒃𝒆𝒕𝒉 𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒎𝒐𝒏 ) . . . ft. twilight ╰ ⟢ starter call : accepting

operation caïssa had seemed, on paper, a cakewalk considering twilight's caliber. w.i.s.e. had tasked him with infiltrating an international chess circuit where a minister's son — an arms broker out of east germany — was known to recruit proteges for his underground cabal of "intellects".   the mission?  reach the finals.   secure an invitation to the salon.   extract intel.  simple enough for an agent hailed as a savant for strategy plays, if not peerless at picking up whatever persona or craft his handler had thrown at him. unnervingly brilliant as his mind might have seemed to her though, it was that same relentless calculation that made twilight cautious. never cavalier. not when failure meant losing far more than just a game.

his current face ( ludwig fink: an austrian physicist at the university of vienna turned up-and-coming chess virtuoso ) had taken months to fabricate and implant into the european circuit. twilight had studied opening repertoires, committed grandmaster matches to memory, practiced ad nauseam with w.i.s.e.'s supercomputer,  set at the expected ELO rating of the competition. he'd even perfected the subtleties:  ludde's dispassionate precision,  his elegance,  his ticks,  and more importantly,  the occasional human slip of a man used to brilliance, but weary of its weight.   none of that,  however,  had prepared him for beth harmon. 

their match had hit the three-hour mark. the board was a tangle of controlled chaos, each move a possible trip wire. if the game left any room for honesty, he'd admit: it was infuriating as it was fascinating to play against her, the casual prodigy. every time twilight thought he saw the pattern forming, she did something unpredictable. he realized then that chess to beth wasn't just fluency, it was native, as if she were speaking a dead language while her opponents merely translated it, centuries behind.

his face remained stilled, breathing measured; he forced his mind to diffuse the trap, suppressing the tightening awareness in his gut; the one that feared this match, this mission, might already be slipping. still, he refused to crack. thirty-one seconds on the clock, ludde moved: rook to d6. aggressive, maybe even reckless, but a chameleon sitting this long across another could at least start picking up on her style.  ❛❛ can't give you the passive line.  you would dismantle me slowly just to savor the humiliation.  ❜❜

[a-alucinore]

i don't remember if i sent or not but hiii ⭐

⋆.˚ ☁️ ⋆ ˚ @punkcopy . . . send me ⭐ for plots ╰ ⟢ not accepting

twilight & zoya : ketterdam verse still needs to happen, and i may also offer him up as the royal spy / tailor with a thousand faces for zoyalai in a general grisha verse too, but we must discuss his crime verse as well !!!!! i'm thinking twilight as the undercover op who's infiltrated a crime group mayhaps ?? either directly beneath zoya or within her network !! but i think something similar to rico laws, the goal is less to go after zoya or a specific linchpin, but to climb the ranks and gather evidence of the overall system ?? because if there's clear proof of multiple heads running the underground together like the board of an enterprise ( like the hightable !!!), they can be prosecuted together as a single entity. his superiors think it's a more effective way to kill the hydra, but the rookie has no idea what he's in for or how many heads live within his own system !!

hermes & kaede : might i humbly offer a solid non-modern plot for these two to play around in and possibly inform the modern ?? because i think it's neat how hermes' grandfather fūjin technically banished him from mt. horae and, by extension, japan, but is he going to come help pookie in her fugitive era anyway ?? and possibly herald her into her journey re. finding her sacred blades?? absolutely he is !! probably can't help himself from zooming in to help them on the low whenever things get particularly dicey !! and probably says his involvement's been sanctioned by zeus who wants him to form reliable contacts in japan given his inability to openly maneuver here, but we know that's only 25% true !! and maybe by the time she finds most of the blades the inari x hermes memories start coming in ??

ariadne & koschei : hear me out !!!!!!! hear me out !!!! there has to be a thread somewhere that connects these two dots. i think too much about how dazhbog is syncretic with helios and so i was genuinely already thinking that buyan's pre-history in the bronze age could have literally seen it as the hesperides ?? and that helios could have been a name for the primordial sun who transformed himself into the tree of life there ?? which dazhbog later became something like the high priest/guardian of before koschei then took over ?? so it'd be interesting to see what helios' grandaughter thinks of this !! but i might also suggest some kind of deathless or fantasy based au for them where tsar of life koschei might fill the draconic warlord/patriarch role in ariadne's narrative just as she'd fill the (perhaps adopted) daughter who he'd cherish but she's still fated to be his downfall :)))

[a-alucinore]

⋆.˚ ☁️ ⋆ ˚ @punkcopy ( 𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒅𝒏𝒆 ) . . . ft. dionysus NON-VERBAL ACTIONS : running their thumb over the other's bottom lip

in the sacred grove of naxos, a bonfire sputtered and surged like a heart caught in ecstatic fever. bacchants howled and spun around its glow, their limbs guided by the wild music of horned creatures and the wine that sloshed over goblets and wrists. by contrast, an eternal host lounged upon their cushioned dais, canopied in vines and tapestries, and flanked by spotted beasts. they were lazily aware of the more feverish celebrants who approached — most to refill their cups, some to pluck at the grape clusters that hung as offerings, and more still to anoint the god with fragrant oils or play at braiding his hair with ivy. these touches held little reverence. seeking not so much to worship as to seduce and prime dionysus into revealing their most elusive mystery : one that might offer up a beating pound of flesh when the wine no longer satisfies.

once, he might have indulged them. but tonight, his attention and affections were elsewhere fixed. singular. riveted by none but the princess of krete. the naxians who surrounded her were equally enthralled by her finally joining the revel, and their lord looked on in favor as they conspired, with dance and drink, to loosen her grievances and sorrow into song. the satyrs played old kretan melodies on reed pipes, and maenads linked arms with the princess, leading her into their spirals of laughter and step. watching her dance then was like watching sunlight glittering over dark waters; a flicker of joy breaking through the mourning. and like the moon, pining for its counterpart across the firmament, dionysus couldn't help but smile when she did, nor from beaming — fully and utterly brimming with loveliness — whenever her gaze swept his way.

only after her limbs tired and drifted to rest at the grove’s edge did the god at last rise to meet her. their approach was fluid, unhurried ; their greeting amiably warm, without presumption. a god of desire knew too well the nuisance of overzealous pursuit, and did not wish to drive off or weigh down a spurned heart in its mending. ❛❛ all these lovely tributes, ❜❜ he says, canting an ivy-crowned head, ❛❛ and not one thought to bring you a drink ? ❜❜ the indignance is playful but not entirely without edge. ❛❛ hmm, we must be breaking cups faster than we can replenish them. you wouldn't mind sharing, would you ? ❜❜

dionysus offers his wine then, spiced and warmed from his grip, but ariadne doesn't reach for the cup. instead, her thumb brushes off the thin coat from across his lower lip — slow as incense rising, charged with an ancient tension. his mouth parts. too stunned for speech, yet wholly aware of where the other half of his breath might be found. it must be forgiven then, when his axis tilts to a maddening degree and his lips lean instinctively towards her own. ❛❛ outshining a god in his own rites. . . that seemed labor enough to leave one parched.  is that all you'll take from me then ? a drop ? ❜❜ he knows a kiss might ruin him if taken too soon, but from the chest purrs a sultry pitch that might have passed for prayer. for her blessing, for kindling, for more. ❛❛  you must know . . . the whole well is yours, if you want it. ❜❜

[d-eadeye]

Holster sits weightily at his denim hip, hand haplessly held in the air by his russet, gold-tinged side; his other arm is limp as can be, unmoving. His hat's fallen some few paces back and his hair's as messy as ever. Between an unkempt beard and wry lips, he boasts a sinner's grin (guilty as sin), @punkcopy.

"Easy now before you get yer dander up, I ain't here for no brush. Canister's in the holster, jus' me." Flirtations with a rattlesnake, coyly-quipped and loose-tongued. He exchanges the sharp pain for a bitter tinge of woeful sarcasm, churlish as can be.

"Got into a bit of a fuss and my arm's gone lame." Shoulders shimmy and his arm swings languidly side-to-side with the weight of its metal construction. A faintest gleam of pain in that coyote's smile. "Needed a place to hide an' figured I'd look at somethin' nice while I suffered."

[daylighter-gone]

[ DOGWOOD ] sender gifts receiver a token of good luck / protection. ( from em! )

he tried to keep his mouth flat, keep it from twitching up in amusement, and partially succeeded. eimile was worrying over the threads of a bracelet she had made for him, and was attempting to wind around his wrist for good luck before the race started. the sun was cold today, and winds were stronger : it meant people were slower to fill up the bleachers, and there were a couple dozen hats that had gone fluttering away from their keepers. his sister's task was difficult in part due to this, dark hair flying every which way it wanted to. had they had more time he would have braided it, but he had been out the house before she had even woken up this morning. he was dressed too of course, warmed up, right where coach needed him to be before one more thing out of place made his head pop.

❛❛  done?  ❜❜  the bracelet settled. she had managed to tie it without the threads slipping out of her fingers. he had to win of course, so he had entertained it for luck when an entire scholarship rested on it too. but he was less tense over it now, knowing she had showed up when she hadn't needed to. ❛❛  if i don't win, i'll think you cursed me instead.  ❜❜  he reached for her arm, helped her to the bleachers away from the field, and discarded his running jacket into her arms. ❛❛  matthew's here, isn't he? i'll find you after.  ❜❜