#toberoundistobefree

[paralianprince]

[exmunicipalisvincit]

Round and Round

@toberoundistobefree invited you over let you invite yourself.

There were two things that Wendy missed most in lockdown: museums and friends. So when news came that the borders would reopen, she texted their group chat that she would booking her tickets soon to visit. 

... If they were okay with having her. Of course, as a princess, she was also courteous enough to extend the invitation for her own birthday celebration later in November. But, she stressed, I’ve just got to get out first!

And so she did. The flight was arduous but Wendy had a new hobby at hand: journaling. For Kugelmugel, his pages were scattered with doodles of round things, from oranges that she saw on the aircraft soda cans to buttons on passengers’ coats. Neatly cut and pasted are facts about his legacy and notes that she had saved for herself to reference later. Round is free, her handwriting says to her on one of the pages, it has no beginning or end.

Thankfully, the trip from the airport to the Prater’s hotel isn’t that long at all. After a good nap, she follows the map she’s attached to her journal. There are other things highlighted in Vienna for things to do: a chocolate and wax figure museum, a park with a ferris wheel... but she wasn’t here for the city. Rather, a small country.

Kugelmugel is easy to find, but hard to look at. She winces at the barbed-wire fence and the cold gate. What a terrible thing to do, Wendy thinks, as she hovers round and round the structure. German signs stare at her and she pauses to try and make out a handful of words that she knows. Das Kugelmugelhaus ist ein Wahrzeichen...

She looks away, deciding to settle instead near the door that says “WELCOME 2 KUGELMUGEL,” clutching the spine of her moleskin to her chest.

So much she doesn’t understand, but that she hopes to.

[vielgeliebtesosterreich]

... Mäuschen? Do you believe that mass-murder is... art?

[vielgeliebtesosterreich]

@toberoundistobefree: Guest bedroom? Who did Roderich think he was kidding? This was Heike's room, and Roderich knew it - with a closet a quarter-full of mismatched pieces of Heike's clothes, half-empty paint tubes, a hairbrush... }

Before he made his way back, though, he turned to face his brother, contemplative frown on his face. "Do you have any of the fizzy things for the water that make you smell like flowers?"

Yes, Heike, it absolutely is your room. But it sounds much better to say guest’s room. Truth be told, not many people could stand to be with Roderich and his particularities for this long anyway. I mean, come on, this is the longest that this serial husband hasn’t been tied down to someone.

Roderich’s nose wrinkled, even though something like fizzy things for the water that make you smell like flowers should have brought about a more... pleasant reaction. Don’t tell him... was his micronation behaving like this? 

“I don’t know what you mean. A bubble bath?”

[vielgeliebtesosterreich]

{ Hello, Roderich, your brother is here with a bag full of laundry and paint-dirtied hair. Not even bothering to knock, he pushes open the door, dragging his clothes bag in behind him. } Rodi? I need your washing machine!

"You also need a bath."

Roderich dragged out a very long sigh. Deep down, he is relieved that the boy is taking some measures to care for himself. And even more prideful that Kugelmugel would choose his stately abode over Prussia's. That, he could never live down.

"Laundry is two doors to your right. The bathroom is the first one, next to the guest bedroom."

[bates--boy]

😨bro i would LOVE to see this

XX

Poor Atlas.

A humble toy boat of a trawler set to drift along the crystal clear canal, the only size Roderich was willing to buy because he deemed it safe enough for the child, steered by the striped-shirt donning Gilbert. Upon it, a party, a light lunch and refreshing drinks. It’s a little too quaint and polite for Peter’s taste, but he’s delighted to be invited all the same. Even more, he’s impressed with the type of social pull the host has to be able to bring all these important guests!

There’s Alfred and Matthew, Arthur and Ludwig, Elizaveta and Toris, Yao and Natalya. Is that Ivan? How was he able to be convinced to come out of hiding? These guests and more, lining the table on either side, and at the end, the host himself, a tragically thin but beautiful and poised boy whose silence seems to ring the loudest, deigning to take sips from his teacup instead.

And why would Peter blame him? To his right, Ivan was saying, “Such a lovely weather for this party, yes?” and to his left, Arthur rocking in his chair as he replies something along the lines of, “It’s not something I’m used to, but yes, it is.” And Alfred bragging about his newly acquired Porsche to a Matthew who’s humming an nodding along.

Not the most exciting conversation all around. It makes Peter want to engage Heike in conversation, and even if distance across the long table weren’t the issue, choosing a topic was. What did he truly know about the child, besides his love of art? What can he, a man who is admittedly ignorant of art visual arts besides what is produced in pop culture? He prods at the finger sandwiches on his plate, feeling a soreness in his fingers. His eyes wander over to Arthur, still rocking in his chair, which is so out of character for the man to do, letting the back of his chair thud repeatedly against the side of the boat.

“It’s not something I’m used to, but yes--”

The chair knocks back against the side of the boat, and in that moment, a crocodile splashes out of the water. It happens so suddenly, so silently, without so much as a scream from Arthur as the reptilian predator snaps its jaws around its prey and pulls him overboard. It happens so quickly that Peter chokes on his own scream, jumping where he sits and almost tipping his chair over. 

Peter’s lips flap open and close, his finger shaking and pointing as he looks around at his fellow guests, his throat tight as he tries to get the words out. 

And yet...

And yet...

“It’s a late model, but I managed to replace some of the older parts,” Alfred says, refusing to shut up about his damn car when a guest has literally been dragged to his death underwater.

“Such a lovely weather for this party, yes?” Ivan asks his conversational partner whose blood must be painting the canal red by now! And he lifts the teacup to his waiting lips, as if there is even still a drop to take! And stares into the blank space where Arthur once sat! Did no one see what Peter just saw?! How is he the only one wanting to scream and cry? And why is he unable to? Why is Yao still scraping his fork against a plate already empty of his salad? Elizaveta buttering her roll with a knife that is just cutting into her palm at this point.

Peter wants to scream. He wants to scream--

And most blood-curdling of all, his host, Heike stares right at the empty space that Arthur once sat, but not with an unaware blankness that Ivan sports, but a resigned sadness as he holds the teacup and its coaster. 

Peter shoots out his seat, slamming his palms on the table, clattering plates and glasses, but still not snapping anyone out of it. 

“Master--!”

He pauses, staring at the child seated across the table from him, struggling to process the word that came out of his mouth. Did he just... did he just call this child...?

Heike sits the teacup on the table and sighs. He looks at Peter from the corner of his eye. “Setzen.”

Peter’s eyes widen, a flare spreading from his chest all the way up to his cheek. He feels his teeth bare. Who does this child think he is to command him--?

But his body jolts, locks, and thumps back into the chair, and the insulted rage that makes his eyes wide is now confusion, and as Heike rises from his own seat and makes his way around the table to him, it becomes a blood-chilling, heart-racing fear. 

“It looks like I’ll have to make another Arthur,” Heike murmurs to himself as he pulls a screwdriver from his breast pocket, wielding it like a dagger in his paint-covered hand. “I guess it won’t be too much trouble, since that one was slightly defective.”

Peter tries to say something, ask something, but words are hard to force out, and all it sounds like it a huffing wheeze. “M--” Heike. “Mas--” HEIKE. “M-Mast--” Why is his mouth still saying that cursed word?! “What-- what is--”

“Unter.”

Peter’s head hangs forward. He wants to throw up when Heike stands on the tip of his toes and... oh, god, he pries the screwdriver into Peter’s cranium. Worse, still, is that there is no pain. Why is there no pain? It’s just a chilly draft blowing into his head and whistling through his ears. Until Heike digs his fingers and screwdriver inside. 

“Now that I think about it, you are all due for a new coat of paint. Especially you, my most rambunctious of them all.” Peter hears the smile in Heike’s voice “You have been rough with yourself, haven’t you?”

Peter wheezes and tries again. “What...” But his eye catches something. What he thought was a bit of dry skin or a forgotten scab was paint, swaying in the gentle breeze. From there, he realizes that the balls that make up his finger joints are rusty and coated with flecks of mud. He looks up past his lashes to Ivan, who lifts his teacup with a stiff cranking, and to Yao, who has kept the same steady speed in which he shoves a forkful of air into his mouth that drops open and clacks close. Alfred, whose neck creaks when he throws his head back to laugh, and Matthew, whose miles-long stare is too jewel-like, because of the gemstone that make up his violet eyes. Even Gilbert, whose arms jerk this way and that to make up for the bolts in his elbows. 

“Don’t worry, I will find a way to perfect you all,” Heike says. 

“N-no.”

Heike’s hands pause. He tilts forward to meet Peter’s topaz eyes, raising a brow. “No? Have you not always wanted to be a work of art, dear Peter? Haven’t you always wanted to be admired forever?”

“I-I...” Peter tries to take a breath in a chest that won’t expand, doesn’t need to. It makes his chest tighter, still. “N... no! No!”

Heike grins at him too gently and turns his attention back to the work in the back of Peter’s head. “It’s alright, my child. I will make you all perfect.”

His screwdriver twists--

“NO!” Peter screeches into the darkness of his bedroom. His hand flies up to the back of his head, at first as a defense, but the haze of sleep dissipates, and he ends up feeling around it through his hair. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

@toberoundistobefree

[krypteretnetwork]

🐝🌸

🐝 - describe your aesthetic in emojis

🌃 🌌🖥🎮💾

🌸 - what is your favourite flower?

“Oh... I never really think about that... Magnus likes Marguerite dasies. I suppose those are nice...”

[gebrochener-adler]

🍏📲!!

🍏- For something they secretly wish didn’t exist

A long pause before he coughs to one side before half muttering. “Karl von Habsburg” 

📲- Talk about someone/something you dislike, but only pretend to like

This has him biting the tip of his tongue before sighing heavily. “I do not actually enjoy public Galas, balls or parties of that nature. I may enjoy a singular part of them, but in spite of my skill in navigating such situations I would far prefer to avoid them.”