#verse v.

[cagcdbird]

@eritvita​ / CONTINUED.

Sister Fleurette reviled that she lived a life of such impunity. The Healing Church did decree it so; that no fault was to fall upon their faithful clerics. It did little to quell the nausea that rocked her stomach with every life lost, and left her guilt-addled. It was nothing short of a miracle that she held a facade of calm so well, and with such poised grace. Tears would be wept later, in private.

She was ever so thankful that the old gods blessed her with a sight so sweet: Roland with her feline companion still, the owlish-eyed Blinky having refused to move from the comfort of the Blood Saint’s arms. She smiled warmly, almost forgetting the feeling of the damp, warm rag she cleansed her hands and forearms of blood with. It made her heart flutter like the wings of a bird.

❝He likes you. I can tell,❞ hummed Fleurette. ❝Consider yourself very, very lucky, monsieur Enaera. He does not cuddle up to just anyone.❞

[cagcdbird]

@secretsbeckon​

She had thought it to be perfect. A panacea, a cure-all. She had placed her faith so blindly in it, as she had her veneration in the holy order. Both had, after all, restored sight for both she and the younger Maybel child, given back a sense that so many would be beyond distraught to lose. Thus sister and brother became cleric and hunter.

But no one could have predicted that that which mended lives would unravel them with a hideous, beastly scourge. 

She remembered everything. She remembered the sheer and utter agony of bones breaking and flesh twisting, musculature deconstructed and reconstructed at speeds not possible for any other organism. She remembered claws splitting her nail-beds and fingers elongating, and flesh and bones of her feet crunching into malformed hooves. She remembered antlers tearing their way through her skull and teeth twisting into razors. She remembered blood blotting her eyes ‘till her sight went red and she was rendered blind again. Then hunters had hacked at her ‘till innards did spill and blood did stain her white fur, and her beastly form shuddered with a final exhalation of breath.

Everything went dark. And when Sister Fleurette awoke, gasping for breath, she saw her own pale and trembling fingers, not claws. Why, then, was she not a beast? Just where was she? Was this a dream? Or a nightmare? She was met with the interior of a clocktower that spiralled heavenward; it compelled her to ascend.

❝Hello...?❞ came the tentative call of the cleric as she rounded step after step after step, her soft and demure tone carried by an echo.

[cagcdbird]

@bellbeckoned / answered:  ‘  does  it  hurt?  ’

Was this, then, the existence that those who tread the Dream were doomed to suffer? A downward spiral into madness borne of pain? If so, then fate was undeniably cruel. She had devoted her life to the Healing Church with every fibre of her being, pledged herself to the care of others, as the Church had done for her so very many years ago. Her brother had walked between the two realms whilst she cared dutifully for the sick and the feeble. Why now, then, had her consciousness been snatched violently from its place in the waking world?

The albino squirmed and writhed on the floor of the workshop. Sister Fleurette felt as though her eyes were on fire, burning through conglomerates of tissue and setting optical nerves ablaze. No amount of wiping them could staunch the way that they bled, hands now slick with red. The Old Blood had gifted both sister and brother sight anew when their eyes had failed them—she feared that that sight would be ripped away. Her dependency on the tainted ichor was too great to go without, that perhaps its absence now destroyed where it had once replenished.

❝It hurts so much,❞ sobbed the cleric, bloodied hands fisting in pale hair and threatening to rip it from the roots. Rational thought had all-but been launched out the window; she wondered if it were best to be put out of her misery like the beasts that her brother had slain. ❝I can’t bear it. Please, gods, help me, let it end, please——❞

[cagcdbird]

@aurumsanguine

So oft was the line between man and beast blurred. So oft had the cleric wondered if, by some miracle, that beasts retained some human consciousness, that beasts could remember a life before their hideous and twisted transformation.

Sister Fleurette did. She remembered everything.

She remembered the sheer and utter agony of bones breaking and flesh twisting, musculature deconstructed and reconstructed at speeds not possible for any other organism. She remembered claws splitting her nail-beds and fingers elongating, and flesh and bones of her feet crunching into malformed hooves. She remembered antlers tearing their way through her skull and teeth twisting into razors. She remembered blood blotting her eyes ‘till her sight went red and she was rendered blind again. Then hunters had hacked at her ‘till innards did spill and blood stained her white fur, and her beastly form did shudder with a final, terrified gasp for breath.

And that was why she awoke violently into the Nightmare, screaming and sobbing in terror where she lay. Face down in a river of blood and corpses beneath a bridge, and insect-like creatures bloated with blood were her wary onlookers, perhaps watching in amusement, perhaps wondering if she was a fitting meal. 

Sister Fleurette scrambled to her knees and observed her hands, breath trembling with panicked exhales. Hands, not claws, as they had been in death. Strange beyond explanation. Had her consciousness willed human form into her existence here? Or was the deer-like beast she’d become lurking beneath her skin, waiting patiently to rip flesh from bone?

[dosdeux-a]

“Are you really expecting a positive outcome out of this?” (from yara)

PROMPT MEME.   accepting

          “Sure, I am. Call me an idealist, but I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t think there was a chance I could make an impact.” To say he was expecting a positive outcome wasn’t entirely accurate -- he fully expected the crime lords he went after to make things very difficult for everyone involved. It isn’t something he takes lightly, nor is he naïve about the potential consequences.

          “Besides, someone’s gotta do it. It doesn’t sit right with me, letting scum like that get away with this shit.”

[cagcdbird]

@umtplex​ - brador

She came from a humble position and humbler beginnings. Her responsibilities were simple: tend to the Good Hunters of the Church as a blood minister, mend their hurts and ills and close their wounds with needle and thread. Sister Fleurette had lost her sight some many years ago, as had her little brother——it was the sole reason that they, outsiders, had come to the hallowed city of Yharnam. Thus sister and brother became cleric and hunter. 

She had been given sight anew for this very reason, to soothe the suffering brought unto the weapon-wielding Church ilk by the Hunt.

But the night was long, and the Hunt longer still. She had watched so very many spiral into feverish madness, begging her for Blood, for answers. Her little brother had been of no exception, and had disappeared in treading the lines between the waking world and the dream. Her recollection was shrouded in a dense fog. All she remembered was acrid incense filling her nose, and sordid ritual materials placed ceremoniously afore her. All she remembered was that she had to find him.

And find him she did. Not in a dream, but a nightmare. That is what brought us to here, to now, in a realm steeped in the stench of blood and beasts.

❝Non—non, non, non, Gaston——❞ sobbed she, stooped over a corpse whose spilling blood sullied her white church garb, mangled and eviscerated and—had it not been for their shared trait of albinism—beyond recognition. 

She cradled the lifeless body as one would a child, rocking back and forth as she wept for the sorry state in which she had found her only flesh and blood, her only source of comfort in the city, in the madness, that scorned them as outsiders meddling where they ought not to. ❝Ce n’est pas vrai, non, non—what happened to you? Why? Why?❞

[cagcdbird]

@bellbeckoned​ queried: ❝ it’s safe here. ❞ -The Doll

It ought to have been so, ought to have felt so. Yet Sister Fleurette couldn’t help but feel like a stranger in a strange land. It was not unlike how she had felt upon first setting foot in Yharnam, with she and her baby brother privy to paranoid stares and hostile whispers. Yharnamites didn’t share much with outsiders; doors slammed shut in their pale faces had been all-too common. She wondered if their ill sentiment festered too in the Dream.

She handled the Saw Cleaver her brother had once wielded as though it was the most precious antiquity. It had been so long since last she had seen him with it; not since he had unashamedly pried a pair of Beast Claws from the cold corpse of another of his Hunter ilk. The cleric shook her head regrettably. ❝You say that, Madame Doll—but it does not feel it. I wish this place brought the same peace to me that it did to mon frère.❞ A pause. A twinge of guilt stifled her words. ❝Wherever he is, whatever he is doing... I only hope that he is safe.❞

[cagcdbird]

@secretsbeckon​ queried: " Happy birthday, dear one. I hope that these flowers are to your liking, I tried to pick out ones that had a pleasant fragrance to them. " And of course, Maria holds a bouquet of assorted flowers, smile ever so present on her visage.

Stories of danger, fearless attack, Spectres of plague and pain. All of these ghosts of our own delusions come back; And we’ll be haunted again, haunted again.

Sister Fleurette had resigned herself to her fate; it had come after the conclusion that, somehow, just somehow, she had deserved the dishonourable death as a beast. The efforts of her pious life of healing had culminated to that point; for the holy ichor had twisted flesh and bone riddled with beastly sickness and made of her a monster. She remembered trampling the blood-slick streets of Yharnam as her brother’s ilk had hunted her, made the job a sick and twisted sport. She remembered their serrated blades cutting into her flesh and spilling her insides, the pain, the blood gurgling in her throat as she took her last, shuddering breath.

She deserved to be enslaved by the nightmare and the anguish of others it trapped. No matter her efforts, they would suffer, always. Peace had no constancy here. Her only constant was Lady Maria.

Hidden so deep in veils of deceit, Imprisoned in twisting spells — Are we the plaything of fiends, or merely the dreams That we’re telling ourselves, telling ourselves?

❝Oh... you didn’t have to do that, chérie. How truly beautiful they are. Merci beaucoup, merci, merci.❞ The gesture meant more than words in either of her languages could hope to convey, as seen by the way she dabbed gingerly at tears forming in her eyes. ❝I will fashion a handful into a crown fit for a princess of dreams, that they may rest atop your kind head. The others I will cherish for the rest of my days.❞