#theprimordium

[mindthewater]

continued from ( x ) // @theprimordium

"Why are you in this pit, James." It's less of a question and more of a rather harsh judgement cast upon his choice of London as residence, and the communal latrine that had been a river once. Three years of keeping an eye on him through shaving mirrors and shop windows. He's a hard man to pin down, despite their agreement.

Truth was he had yet to deliver his first libation, school-first and all, and her patience was running thin.

Nix emerges amongst the swans, begrudgingly swimming ashore, her frown only partially dissolved by the theatrical way in which he spooks. Evergreen entertainment. She'd been watching the evolution of his aesthetic choices with mild fascination, always the peafowl in the chicken coop, but admittedly pauses at the sight of his moustache, and squints. Had he grown that thing himself?

The lake was at least decent, and she finds no weird city smells clinging to her as she hoists herself over the edge to sit, flinging her hair over her shoulder, fat droplets spraying over the polished leather of his shoes. She looks up, behind, considering his offer, debating whether or not to find offence in it. "You think I have to rely on you to eat?"

Truly, what was this helpless man to do, go fetch an orphan on a whim?

Her temper simmers beneath the dappled shade of a willow tree, immediately irritated by a collection of distant noises she cannot avoid. Gossiping park wanderers, playing infants, some horribly scratchy accordion about two streets away – then the nightmare of indecipherable urban rattle, however muted. She rakes her fingers meticulously through her hair, working out the knots, and continues to sulk.

Suddenly, she spots a brown cart under a red umbrella not far from them, where two or three unaccompanied children queued to collect raspberry shaved ice in wafer biscuit cones from a smiling man.

She looks up at James again, eyes wide as a doe's.

[clairaudievt]

& new role, new faces, old legends.

starter for @theprimordium & @victoriautmorse // the Holmes brothers

Helen hadn't been too happy to hear that Jimmy had had enough of him flaking off in the middle of his shifts, but Guy was relieved to not have to spend another minute listening to disgusting thoughts of jobless johns on a Tuesday. The girls had been nice, though. "Where you off to, sweetheart?" When he told them about the British Library role there was a collective, unimpressed hum of acknowledgement, bubblegum deflating without a pop. It wouldn't be in the library though, which as much as it had always been a hiding spot, he was glad to have a break of it. If only he could see people without hearing their silences.

Sun high on a breezy January afternoon, third week on the job. You can find him on the corner between Euston and Midland Rd with a black cap on, handing out pamphlets highlighting the Library's events for the next half of the year to the crowd drifting to and from St Pancras. Most of them ignore him, which is fine. At least he doesn't have to shout something like sexy, sexy, secret map collections or some shit like that, more like hey how are you, come visit the Library soon. Across from his spot is a building enshrouded in scaffolding, where a white X on the safety panels would signal his next dead drop beacon. Every five minutes, his eyes nervously dart to it. Not trying to fish it out of the trash again.

Work bores him to death, but he manages to zone out enough to let his own mind wander without intrusion. It's just noise. During his lunch breaks, he's perfected the art of wolfing down a sandwich at the cafeteria and then going into the library for the remaining 50 minutes, still wiping grease from his lips, shoving the napkin in his pocket, stopping for a piss and then off into the quiet for some off-the-record research on company time. Safe to say half of the assistants know him by now: wide eyed pretty boy, conspiracy theorist, checks out anything he can find on secret societies and long-running cults.

"Have you heard of Talamasca? You know where I can find anything on it?" He sounds grave as he leans over the counter of the reading room, backpack still on, tapping his toe on the blue carpeted floor.

Janet with the polka dot button-up looks up from her stool, her glasses sliding back up an oily nose bridge as she focuses on the American's now-familiar face. "Talawhat?"

Nope, never heard of it. Yasmine will be here soon though, let's ask her. "Alright, thanks." Polka dot Janet is sweet, and she finds him cute, which he may or may not try to milk in order to get his request circulating through the staff. Someone, somewhere must have heard of it, and if any place in the world would have something written on it then surely the British government, experts at cataloguing anything and everything, even what wasn't theirs. Maybe especially what wasn't theirs.

[igneuscrvx]

&. Eden's apple.

event: garden of sin // @theprimordium

They listen to the draw from a settee in the gallery, dregs of ichor staining chalices on the floor, hearts thrumming on a sustained note of gentle euphoria. Thorne has almost entirely draped himself over his companion, claiming most of his lap, commanding his undivided attention. Mlle. Armetta's composed grace had begun to unravel. Locks of onyx hair fell loose from her crown, and her tulle scarf was now in careless loops around her wrist, leaving her throat bare to the scruff of Jormun's beard. She cares very little for what their host has to say, words and applause swirling in the irrelevant background of their private reverie. In fact, she hardly remembers the lines of verse she penned down, or the edge of emotion that drove her hand.

When silence precedes the reading of the winning wish, when the first few words strike the chord of recognition within his heart, Thorne's smile vanishes under a sobering wave of embarrassment. It didn't make sense. There were hundreds of guests in this snake pit; these weren't odds he usually beat. Suddenly indisposed, he peels himself away from his spot and approaches the rail, peering down at the stage below, catching the beady eyes of their ghoulish patron. His already climbing apprehension grows into mortification when they are informed that the wish should be granted on stage, before the incredulous mob.

No amount of wine sipped straight from a God's lips would have saved him from the intimate hell he plunges into. He feels himself a spectator of his own old circus act: the illusionist with many cards up his sleeve, pulling roses from his mouth and wishes from the crowd; the one who preys on your sorrows and doubts, and what can't he do for the right price... while an audience cheers, cries, and feeds off your stage-propped hope. Regardless, he continues to believe M. Marley works with nothing but a trick of the light. It won't be his Dahlia, but some other young face, smeared in blood for the play, while they look on, hungry for his pain.

He doesn't want to be made fool.

"Excuse me for a minute." Collecting the hem of her dress, Tomasina hurriedly abandons her perch while angling her face to conceal any worrying trace of emotion from her friend, taking to the spiral stairs in hurried gait. She aimed to catch the host himself but he had already faded back into the bowels of the stage, so she comes to a near screeching halt by the designated assistant, towering over him with a flicker of hell-forged wrath in her eye.

"We were told nothing about this being turned into a public spectacle."

[varldsormr]

"Orm, such a continued honour it is to host you here. For your indulgence, should it suit you." Marley hands the towering giant a small rectangular piece of card inked with an ornate golden border, having to lift his arm slightly more than usual to do so. "Implements for inscription can be found on any table throughout the room."

He looks up as his companion recieves her card, that almost singing, strumming hearth of her extricating itself from where it had teased against his side to warm cold bones and soul alike - their conversation, a rare chuckle, quieted and a venturous hand withdrawn from somewhere unmentionable, in sequence. Gods Blighted, he is drunk, or be it something else which is befuddling his senses. Barely a few drinks in and he'd almost forgotten where they are, acting like youth who cannot hold their liquor, fool before a room full of strangers--

The interruption sobers him swiftly without mercy, much like a frigid water bucket.

The host - Mr. Barley? - need shift nary a step to front the serpent with an offering once he's done powdering the tiefling's tail, a glint of something keenly perceptive passing from Thorne and over to him, unspoken and yet loud within those pale, appraising eyes. As though he sees something they don't. The giant straightens underneath the gaze, too inebriated or too stubborn to be quite unnerved, but just enough to be indignant, and his narrowed sights stay on the man rather than the diminutive slip of paper that he hands him, taking it only after an extended silence.

By the time the strange, weaselly creature scuttles away, so too does Thorne promptly excuse herself, disappearing off into the crowd whilst Jormun is left lingering with naught for company except a tiny blank ticket promising fortunes, or some such.

A grumbled sigh escapes his lips. He may be cursed. Haunted, by the irrevocable turning of the earth, by time, by oaken eyes and by the lick of flame - outpaced, by a world which took to running when he wasn't looking, going to places where he cannot follow-- But even drunk he's got at least a few wits still about him, rowing about in questionable liquid. That man proclaims to offer miracles, but nothing he desires can be given. Not by the gods. And certainly not by mortals high on hubris.

... At least the devil seemed more hopeful.

[victoriautmorse]

A small rectangular card with an ornate golden border is extended in the detective's direction, at the other end of which Marley regards him with a cold and hardened gaze. "With all due right, I should withhold this from you altogether." Despite his claim, there is clearly a reason he has chosen not to.

"Ah, yet here we are, making a habit of poor choices." The detective's tone plays with a snappy turn, a twitch at the corner of his lips and the faintest, most minute curvature of that straight line seeming to denote some manner of amusement. Quite the performance, all of that. Granting favors, free of consequences, free of charge? Chin tipped just a snap diagonally downwards, he looks upwards at elder man with knowing, almost as a professor might his student (if you will permit the irony) accepting the handing of his schoolwork with suspicion that the boy had been out gallivant the night before, taken to dealings far beyond any appearance of propriety.

But then again this Eden had made few attempts at pretense. Offering to commit murder before a live stage audience was perhaps the least of what he might have expected, and unlike others here, dazed by drink, denial or disillusionment, he knows better than to take the host's words for empty promises. It is merely the motive which eludes him, still. Whatever reason he might have to extend this offering to him at all.

-- It's hardly charity. Is it old habits, then, or something else which drives the man behind the masquerade? Will all be told, a grand reveal, before the curtain falls? Does he even know the twist, himself?

With each idle shift, Holmes can feel the dull constriction of the bow about his neck - the satin touch of sanguine silk a gentle balm against its chafing, a bandage of old wounds, indicative a presence in its absence. The same grey-silver gaze they share drops to the card he is reluctantly supplied with, and to the hand which holds it, lingering (briefly) on passing recollection before he rises up to meet the frigid glare which waits impatiently. In his own gaze, there is a thaw. Gravel and grain, beneath the snow.

An effort is clearly made to restrain any display of revelatory sentiment, but it is not altogether an encompassing one.

"Very well, I'll play." The detective relents at last, twirling the card between two fingers before it slips away, 'lest Mr. Marley change his mind. Lest he change his. "We always did trend towards self-destruction."

[lostsovl]

❛ do you imagine that the universe conspires to bring lost souls together? ❜ ❛ we are each wretched, but perfectly wretched for each other. ❜ ❛ my heart is so full of you I can hardly call it my own. ❜ ❛ amid an infinite reel of faces, it will always be you. ❜ /Arthur&Val

& Valentine's libations – not currently accepting

@theprimordium // Arthur source (x)

– 1831.

If she lies still long enough, she can almost hear the violins.

It is night, and the lake is still. She had walked down the bank, pushing the boat in front of her, dragging boots and skirts through the mud, the black water; the boat is rotting, wood splintered and green from disuse, but still she dislodges it from its bed of moss and aims for the lake.

The lake is important. The night is important. In the cemetery of memories that Chilham has become, cold and barren, windows bolted shut, the lake holds the entirety of their life together the way water nourishes and then announces birth. She could break into the castle and touch every wall and stone, every piece of furniture, relive it all over again, but she isn't here for punishment, she's trying to remember what life is.

After Nour, after enough was a feeling and not a word, she simply left. There was no fight with her keeper, no farewell or great announcement – she walked out of the hungry woods, out of the country, walked and walked and walked for weeks on end, empty and lost, until the hills of Kent were sighted again. The body leads the mind in a fated dance. There was no hope left, no illusion in the bones that carried her to the grounds she'd once called home. He wasn't there. He would never be anywhere again.

Ten years she had lived as death. Why here, now? Why the lake?

Valerie hoists herself up onto the boat; it creaks and groans and sways under her wet weight, and then it settles. She pries off the middle seat and lies down on the boat's belly facing a chandelier of stars above. Beneath her, the water breathes. She closes her eyes, and memory rises up to sink her.

Do you imagine that the universe conspires to bring lost souls together?

He isn't trying to charm her. Arthur reclines in the settee by the bright window, deep in the ache of contemplation. Their love is a serious, urgent thing, and she'd like to believe his primary source of concern at this point in time. A little dramatic, though he'd never admit it. Was she lost back then? Her soul might have been doomed in the eyes of God, but not hers. Was she lost or was she free?

Then there is the taste of his skin after he's been in the sun, the smell of his hands on the day roses are pruned, the laughter, hysterical, a cascade of it, the music, bare feet on polished floors, his tomes and secrets, his eyes a green river, full of promises and schemes. Inked in copious letters are his deepest sentiments, gushings of affection in cursive. His ashen voice in the early hours. Oh, that wretched temper, that pride, that fire. Nights when the animal was left uncaged. How everything had to be his way, unless his lady spoke, unless you could beat him, somehow.

Sunlight goes through him. It weaves into his hair, the lining of his mouth, the edges of his teeth. Hearts brimming; the precipice. A joy so violent it breaks out of her, her fledging heart. Sated, sated, sated, rotund and drenched in the nectar of being. How can one ever hope to bear it? How could it ever last?

Valerie focuses on the violins. She rolls to the side, arm anchored overboard, the boat tips but doesn't turn, her fingers penetrate the water. This is the pulse she'd been searching for. Viscous, steady, infallible. Where there was love once so may love be again.

They can't both be dead if they never left.

[opponentcompel]

@theprimordium 🐦

ㅤㅤSoi Cowboy is anything but inconspicuous at night, the colourful vibrancy of illuminating lights ricocheting against a faint sprinkle of moisture layered on the ground  (  reminiscent of a telltale technique imbued in movie magic from the ‘80s  ),  brief rainfall having passed which did little to dampen the debauched spirits of those who tread along these sidewalks - there used to be a time where such locales would be of interest, younger days when excitable eyes with pupils blown wide open would voraciously appraise and roam over a selection of entertainment. It’s a fun thought to consider, a counterbalancing pick-me-the-fuck-up much needed after these past few weeks, a comparable living hell for someone who was so used to much finer comforts. Hell, with some of his assets temporarily frozen with the fallout in the Valley, the disgraced sensei was having to merely fly business class with two layovers as opposed to chartering his own jet, the journey surrounded by young money that wouldn’t know the drive behind discipline and a day’s hard work.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤThere are traces of Jim Beam White on Terry’s breath, some of which having been soaked up by a healthy helping of hoi lai tom ka, the mere taste of regional clams with a cloying humidity about them dredging up memories he’d rather leave behind. Hand brushing an oversized hood from his crown, dishevelled strands of argent hair spill forth, bloodshot line of vision tracing over varied neon signage, the man steadily making his way down the long street with a tipoff from a few flyers. While some illegal cage fights were advertised as alternative events, there are symbols embossed within the cheap glossy paper, ones that seem to entice gamblers and martial artists alike - he’d like to think of himself as primarily being the latter, but that doesn’t mean that Terry isn’t in favour of calculated risks when the time called for it  (  & this certainly was such an occasion  ).  

ㅤㅤRegardless of thoughts spiralling into an embittered pit of despair, Terry’s still mindful of his surroundings, of lurking individuals who spend a little too long staring in his direction - sure, he sticks out like a sore thumb, but there are a few instances where a familiar face or two are present within his periphery, suspicions further heightened when weaving through a few meandering alleyways sees them re-emerge after a few minutes  (  curiouser & curiouser…  ).  Had he been asking too many questions, or simply the wrong ones? Only time would tell.

[vesperdenarius]

MEMORY. -- young DG :)

send "MEMORY" for a memory my muse has involving yours (accepting)

"Master Richard...?"

An inquiring knock meets naught but pointed silence from the other side of the door - a not wholly unexpected response, considering the time of night, and yet it is one that still manages to set Alfred with pause; the absence begetting an eerie sense of disquiet, lingering in the manor's spacious halls and seeping slowly into the confines of an old man's mind, like damp through a crack in the boards.

Perhaps he might've been content, to think the young lad asleep in his bed, safe and at peace from whatever troubles all too often ail the waking - but then, he has not seen this house through enough hardship over the years that he cannot tell the good silences from the bad. To believe that he ever worries for nothing.

He knocks once more, knuckle rapping courteous if superflously against the hardwood a second time before he enters, despite, having twice tried and twice failed to garner so much the slightest acknowledgement. Certainly enough, there is no sight of the boy within his dimly lit space, or indeed, any indication that he had been there at all, if not for the small light by his bed illuminating an outline of unmade sheets, a chill breeze sweeping aimlessly through curtains by the balcony door ajar.

He finds him outside, climbed onto the roof. Little but a huddled silouette in the dark.

Against the open sky, he seems almost impossibly small.

"Ah. There you are."

There is a slight shift in the boy's form when he speaks, a minute inclination of a movement that Alfred is just barely able to discern with squinted eyes from his place down below; whether Grayson turns to look towards him or away, he could not say, but as the hush grows longer between them, it becomes evident it is as much of a note for his presence that he will recieve - the muted reception a stark contrast to boy's normally talkative demeanour, the spirited presence he carries as Robin.

But he once took to the stage, himself. And he knows a little something about masks.

"I don't suppose I could convince you to come down? I'm not sure the hydrangeas would quite cushion a fall from this height." Single hand rested idly along the stone railing, he muses with a glance between the gardens and the tiles, an ease to his tone even as a light crease settles onto an already weary brow. Another quiet shuffle is all he gets in turn, the figure seeming to shrink somehow further in on itself, arms wrapped around his knees in a rather half-hearted attempt to brace against the cold. A gentle wind, touching his skin like a whisper.

He sighs, straightens, and reaches for that ledge.

The clumbered ascent appears to invite more of a reaction, if only one of surprise; It is by no means as graceful or effortless as he's sure others of the house might readily demonstrate, but Alfred is nothing if not a man determined - and steady on his feet - feeling his way carefully up the exterior wall through the dark until he is at last able to heft himself over the edge with a short grunt of effort, continuing upwards until he can triumphantly slot himself down at Grayson's side along the top. They meet eyes, then; Wide circles looking up at him, a fragment of that clear bright blue visible by the reflection of the moon - before they falter, again, and fall away.

"...It's alright, son." He speaks softly within a breath, lifting an arm with the thought to place an assuring hand to the lad's shoulder - only to be intercepted in feeling the little one fall unceremoniously against his open side, wordlessly nestled. With his turn to be taken aback, the older man lingers, raised arm hovering above for just a moment, before his expression softens with another slow sigh, and he wraps them into the embrace.

There's no telling how long he's been out here, or how long they'll yet be, like this. But there's no rush for the morning. They have time.

"When you're ready."