#romantiisme

[sweetsunflora]

Emma & Elias: A Study in Platonic Soulmates

You do not complete me. I do not desire you like a lover, that possessive romantic want. And yet, I need you all the same. I need you like the air in my lungs, like plants need the sun. For without your friendship, my soul would wilt and wither. Without you, I cannot be the best I can truly be.

(for @romantiisme) unknown // unknown // lynette simeone // a.r. asher // emily bronte - wuthering heights // faraway

[riversoaked]

location: the dowling residence.  time: july 15, 1843. pre-celebration.  with: @romantiisme​ + @aylumin​

it began in the worst of ways --- jules, walking into the dowling residence, and ayla rushing toward her with one word. emergency. immediately, jules’ demeanor shifted. “show me,” came the quick response. land was always a different beast than sea; she was less graceful here, less accustomed to the turns and twists of a house than she was the secret belly of a ship. it did not matter. she pulled her knife out as she followed ayla, ready to the thrust the girl behind her at the nearing threat. and then they turned the corner to ayla’s room. and there was a boy on her bed. he looked as threatening as a soggy piece of bread. she still brandished her weapon. “ --- what happened?”

[mauraudmore]

July 29, 1845 : an account of incipient loss

Elias Shaw & Violet Bell (after the rescue mission announcement)

[dawndusted]

!!☺♣ (katja!)

send me !! for a threatening text

TO: KATJA ( 11:37PM )   —  i KNOW you aren’t at home right now.     

TO: KATJA ( 11:38PM )  —  where are you? getting into trouble again? after all i said to you last time, still you won’t listen to me? 

TO: KATJA ( 11:39PM )  —    katja i’m trying to hard not to helicopter. i don’t want to be a mother, i want to be a friend. 

TO: KATJA ( 11:39PM )  —  but i swear to god if you don’t pick up your phone in the next two minutes i WILL be grounding you. i am so disappointed.

TO: KATJA ( 11:40PM )  — god i do sound like a mother. seriously, please just be safe.   

send me ☺ for a loving/affectionate text

TO: KATJA ( 10:09AM )  —  you drive me crazy, you know

TO: KATJA ( 10:10AM )  —  it reminds me of myself when i was your age.  or who i wanted to be when i was your age

TO: KATJA ( 10:10AM )  —  you’ve got such a wonderful spark in you and it never fails to amaze me. i think it’s the closest thing to magic that i can believe in

TO: KATJA ( 10:11AM )  —  it’s so refreshing to see. you’ve just whirlwinded a place in my life and now i can’t imagine one without you in it. 

send me ♣ for a drunk text

TO: KATJA ( 1:38AM )  —  i worry sso mutch about you aund pi zknow it's bothersome but 

TO: KATJA ( 1:40AM )  —  you nkow it just cosme ufrom a apecl of loev rgtih? i just don't waunt anything two happen tho yeou

TO: KATJA ( 1:42AM )  —  i wouln'jdt knjow what teo do if something ydid happen. i don't kyonw how vcmuh morre loss i can pretend to handle

send a symbol for a text

[sweetsunflora]

when: the day after the boatswain is found. afternoon. where: the common mess whom: closed to @romantiisme​

for emma-rose, the mental drive that facilitates survival is a delicate machine. it does the important job of providing hope, an essential idea for life. and the gears turn to manufacture purpose and keep despair at bay. it pushes and pushes, urging her to flee from death and her memories of dark evil tendrils.

but it does not take much to disrupt the machine and the boatswain’s body with its unnatural and unknown cause of death is more than enough to do so. with its malfunction, despair creeps and becomes emboldened by the opportunity that weakness provides. her memories return and sink its claws into the tenderness of her mind. tendrils made of pure night, emerging from the depths. she cannot stop it. she cannot protect the little found family she has forged from the tragedy. she cannot preserve the love or the life she has worked so hard to keep.

she takes a deep and shaky breath to steady herself, to prevent from becoming a puddle of insanity. she is thankful that the common mess is relatively empty at the moment and that alcohol has the ability to numb haunting thoughts. even if the price of desensitizing is a disgusting taste and an awful burn in her throat. she pours herself another drink from a bottle she bartered for ( portraits in exchange for liberation of hauntings ) and takes it down with a hiss and a less than stoic face. 

when she sees elias, now a more familiar face, she feels a burn of embarrassment in her cheeks. drinking so early in the day must incur some sort of judgement, she thinks. but then again, perhaps the warmth on her cheeks is simply from the whiskey.

“ hello there, poet. any new works to bless me with? “ 

[mauraudmore]

Licorice and Sunshine || part i

England, 1834. @romantiisme​

The first thing you ever stole was for a boy who lived next door to your aunt: Elias Shaw.

The tin of dark roped licorice calls to you like a sweet sugary siren. You don’t dare ask your father for the money to purchase such a frivolous thing. And you know that if you raise the inquiry to your mother, she would just redirect it to the rotten patriarch.

So, you take matters into your own small hands. Determined and crafty, you wait for the busiest day of the candy store to make your move. You feel so out of place among the plump faces and pretty dresses of those disgustingly wealthy children. But you are a short kid and it blesses you with the ability to be lost in the shuffle. Invisible.

The metal tin, with its pretty red lettering, is cool under your touch. Your heart is beating so fast you think you might explode right then and there. But you don’t explode into little Violet pieces all over the place. Instead, you snatch it off the shelf—too quick for second thoughts—and tuck it into the pocket of your dress. You think to yourself: stay calm, stay calm, stay calm.

You walk out of the candy store with your blood drumming in your ears, so loud you worry that everyone else can hear it. Even with your back turned to the store, your ears are alert—anticipating the moment when someone will call out and you will have to start running. But it never comes and when you are far enough away, you run as fast as you can to your aunt’s home. Your residence for the summer. Just as it had been every summer since your mother decided to make it an annual trip.

You hide the candy where your devious brother cannot reach it, in a loose floorboard underneath your bed. But not before wrapping it in a cloth like a swaddled baby and sending a silent prayer for its safety from rats and ants.

The day after the heist, you present it with a radiant smile tinged with buzzed nervousness. Under the sacred spot beneath the willow tree’s branches you ask him to trust you, to hold out his hand. And you place the tin of stolen sweets in his excited palms.

“Happy Birthday, Eli!” 

His face makes up for any strife you experienced to get his present to him. Makes it worth it.

You both stay under the willow’s embrace for hours—sharing the licorice like a secret.

If you had known this was the last time you were ever going to see him, you would have stalled the inevitable any way you could. You would have asked him to rant about Paris, and what they would do when they arrived in the beautiful city. Would he try the pastries? Would they dance as the street musicians serenade them? Would they purchase the finest clothes to walk down the parisian streets in? ( What did it matter if they were just two poor kids from the slums of England? Dreaming was free, after all. ) 

If you had known your whole life was going to change after this summer, you would have begged him to make a home with you under that willow tree. For here you were safe, and happy, and the sweet taste of licorice lingered on your tongue like the warmth of a loving, untainted, sunshine memory.

[fatherfoxhound]

❝ sprezzatura. i have heard it means ‘ the effortless display of grace ’. ❞

IN THE CARTOGRAPHY ROOM

The chaplain is giving lessons to the wardroom steward. Not musical nor literary-- their routine poetic collaboration has already wrapped up-- but the sort one does on their feet. Or, in this case, on their arse. In his efforts to tutor the lad in the ways of a proper dip, he’d consigned himself to the Follow’s part of dipped. 

Though it wasn’t quite a dip Elias had accomplished, so much as the Fall of bloody Lucifer. The chaplain hits the ground tailbone first with a resounding thunk. And yet, it’s the insult that hurts more than the injury.

Sprezzatura, he says, and wins himself Laurents’ most impassioned eye roll yet. “Right,” He snorts, propping himself up on his elbows and blowing a strand of hair from his eyes. Teasing glint in them. “Have the Italians come up with a term for ‘ the laborious display of buffoonery, ’ yet?”

ballroom dialogue prompts

[mauraudmore]

❝ i found you. and you’ve found me. we’ll help each other. ❞ - eli

@romantiisme

He is good at this. Turning simple words like ‘you’ and ‘i’ and ‘we’ into dreams so real you can almost touch them. Lawrence was––is––good at it too. The dangerous difference is that Elias actually believes in what he’s saying.

The truth is…she thinks he is too soft. He has all the charm but none of the tenaciousness of her brother, none of the sharpness needed to endure her. If she were to allow him into her realm, it would eat him until there was nothing left but bones. What would Elias Shaw do? With all the bodies she has on her back weighing her down? With all the blood on her hands? Nothing but drown; but her loneliness calls louder than logic. She takes his hand over the table. “And how would we help each other, broccoli brain?” she asks. All the while thinking, you can’t help me. I’m too far gone.