you felt it too. . .

. . . didn't you? something that yawns, church-wide and parting lips, just in time for the spring’s rancid deboning come visit

[velhaeil]

the sense of something giving way. the echo of a pebble falling. another tally on the chalk of your bones, another shadow left for memory to smudge to the grey beneath your eyes. something gives way, but still something else grows in its place. a matchstick lit in the dark of your belly.

profile, bio & barebones

[velhaeil]

activity check! (task 027)

thread for activity check, 12/15

[eudoravel]

"would you go ?" @velhaeil

"yes," the word passes like a breath across her lips, lightly parted. something inside her gut sinks even as she says it — an unexplainable sixth sense, the promise of fate slotting into place —but she would go, she's sure of it, if only because she knows it is what misol would do for her.

what misol deserves.

like so many others, eudora had followed the rumors to velgrove, intent on witnessing something for herself — something for certain, something she could capture between transparent layers of polyester and gelatin and hold onto.

but what she'd found here wasn't just the uncanny chill of a summer storm, or a bottomless lake, or an angry woman made of stone collecting lichen in a field. there was something intangible growing, something inside her and between others, knitting all of them closer together with mismatched threads.

when eudora had first arrived, only sumyeong and his aging mother occupied the farmhouse, and all the ghosts between them ; she'd watched graves and hansol and misol arrive like offerings, with their open hands and soft courage. she saw the way that changed the house into something living, breathing, warm. alive. the way it'd unfurled her fists, how she'd stopped flinching at everything in expectation of a blow.

one of the threads that bound her now tugs unbearably hard, a phantasmal vice around her heart that pulls from somewhere beyond her ; just past the sturdy shield of haeil's shoulders, across the bed of pine needles, past the red caution tape, across the conservatory's threshold. yes, she would go.

"if misol is inside, i'd look for her. if they asked us to." eudora swallows, her throat suddenly dry ; some voiceless, knowing part of her remembering a horror she has yet to experience.

but despite being blind to it now, she can conceptualize misol's fear — the terror of being in some place, perhaps stolen away there — had she even gone willingly ? — the darkness of confusion, the clench of panic in her chest.

she does not voice these things out loud ; can hardly hold haeil's gaze as the thoughts flicker through her mind, too reckless to slow. instead, she lifts her chin, tilts her head at the slightest angle, and poses haeil's question back to him. she waits for his answer perched and patient on her log, like a bird.

"would you go ?" and, after a beat, a little softer —

"what do you think could be inside ?"

[velhaeil]

it’s invariably sweet, how much eudora feels for misol and her important place among them. the candidness of her answer settles the growing itch underneath his skin, makes haeil feel like despite the mysterious powers at work, they might not be enough to tamper down the sheer force of unshakeable will that pervades even through the most tempered soul here.

yet, oftentimes this sort of riposte requires a heavy hand of reciprocity. haeil feels like that is how the universe works, anyway. you give and you take; someone takes from you and sometime down the line, what was taken is given back, most often not in the same shape. haeil settles to worry about that musing over dinner – it makes his stomach churn now to think on what velgrove is wanting, or expecting, out of them.

if he would go… how much empathy can a wooden heart carry? how much of that could be translated into motion, into fact, into anything that doesn’t require a harder shell, just a surplus gumption? haeil’s no more certain of his own answer than he was for the coming of tomorrow. he’s threading his fingers together and pressing his hands against his stomach without meaning to, and the thought turns. it smells – like overturned dirt, leaves decomposing. of scratches on a tree trunk.

and what’s inside… feels like an encroachment.

“i don’t know,” haeil says with all the sincerity of that unknown – for both questions, for all questions wanting to resort themselves into existence.

that i don’t know if i’d go willingly, haeil cradles the remorse beneath his palms, in his belly, in the pits of all the things that are wrong with him. that i’m terrified of what’s in there. that i don’t know if whatever is in my chest can take it.

perhaps he doesn’t need to voice all of his thoughts. but he does know plenty about setting the self aside in the name of someone you love. that, perhaps, is probably the one feeling he wholeheartedly understood. he pictures misol and all of hers, eudora in her company; thinks about what breaking bread together does to the walls around people; thinks about them in laughter, or in quiet understanding; how it feels to bask in the silence of a loss that refuses to be named.

“we should find out, shouldn’t we,” he’s not looking at eudora, avoiding her inquisitive and parsing gaze. haeil places a hand on her log-made-bench and traces a line of the bark, matching it to the heart-line on his calloused palm.  

but i’d do it for any mine without question. maybe he can spare some of that for those that are almost his. as in, his in community, in struggle. maybe at the event of the hour, the meeting, he’ll find a good reason to hold his hand and push open those blasted doors.

[velhaeil]

activity check! (task 026)

thread for activity check, 12/07

[vel-sumyeong]

“would you like to take a break?” / @velhaeil

in these rare moments that sumyeong has, where it doesn't feel as if the weight of the world has been placed on his shoulders, he simply basks in silence. more so, doesn't realize he's spaced out in the quiet that haeil has let fill between them following his intruding question. he hadn't meant much by it, at least not consciously. he's barely recognized the full extent of what he's asking haeil as he stares into the forestry that surrounds them. could there be such a world where sumyeong had family that he wouldn't treat like this? even with hansol and misol now residing in the farmhouse, sumyeong finds it a little difficult to believe what he would truly do for them and what he wouldn't / as much as sumyeong believed he'd do his best.

his mind falls apart and everything he'd tried so hard to keep tucked away / stitches sewn over and over again / it bleeds past his eyes and into his mouth. attaches itself to his tongue and holds his words and thoughts hostage as he listens to haeil. did families have to be large for them to be beautiful? his family had been large and beautiful too. had the loudness of life / the sincerity of unconditional love. only unconditional wasn't quite so. it seemed — grief — was the changing factor in what made something unconditional or not.

so when haeil tells him, words that seemed so simple to say / yet, words no one had ever graced him with / sumyeong finds himself lost. this hand that holds a solution so easily / a voice that tells him — it doesn't have to mean what sumyeong believes… sumyeong is faced with the fascinating idea that reality can shatter in more ways than one. a world can break to separate something whole / a world can break to create something new.

it's unprecedented. but perhaps, their entire conversation is and sumyeong is intrigued at how forgiving haeil is. sumyeong knows he's not an easy person to get along with. the empty stares / the hands that pull someone close to whisper something in passing / the tense smiles people give him because sumyeong suffocates the life and joy out of things, even when he doesn't mean to. he knows the circumstances change from time to time, but that tends to be when they've already been so filled with fear or desperation that any reaction is better than no reaction when it comes to sumyeong.

"untethered," sumyeong echoes haeil with a quiet voice. he can't help the small smile that spreads across his lips as the gears in his mind slowly turn. of all the things sumyeong's experienced in his life, the one that he always believed was as incredible as the ground they walked on was how one person could change everything. sumyeong dusts himself off with two pats before standing to face haeil. "i think a break would be nice. clear the mind."

he only drowned like this when he was forced to face certain truths. this was an ocean he no longer wished to swim in.

"forgive me for my earlier question," sumyeong asks as he takes a deep breath, allowing the fresh air to clear the clouds in his mind. though he speaks to haeil, his eyes drift across the raft as he lets it settle in his bones once more / rearranges it in a way that reminds him — he knows of its presence rather than letting it idle along in silence. "it seems i expected certain things to settle once my mother passed. working on this raft… had seemed like some sort of closure. rather, it's only made me realize how wrong i was in thinking… hoping, that would…" sumyeong trails off, at another loss for words, only this time, he's consciously aware he's thrown the two of them into another loop when they had just escaped one.

"how about that break? i, uh, i brought some bread and homemade jam actually. a bottle of blueberry mead too, if you'd like to try that."

[velhaeil]

haeil cannot fathom— can’t approximate, even, to understand what walks the shuttered corridors behind sumyeong’s seemingly saddened eyes. for just a moment, haeil had doubted the edge of his own tone, wondered briefly if he had been cruel, somehow; if in his intention to tamper down the possibility of a thought mulled over for way too long, heading for putrefaction, he had trampled upon a landmine. yet there’s no tension—not in a manner that felt dangerous, anyway.

something was in the air indeed, and it felt familiar. something in the way sumyeong seemed to grasp at everything, at nothing, kicked dust into the air, simultaneously mindless and aimed. in haeil’s mind, there is no further explanation to the query. he believed in the ephemeral quality of existence just as much as the solidity of everything he could touch with his bare hands. there is no question on whether an adjective could have meant something more, implied that there would be an outlier to a scenario that he cannot picture in its entirety – perhaps because he’s never been one to tally the times a maybe should have mattered to him. perhaps with his inevitable rebuttal—because that was what it was, wasn’t it? realization creeps into the sunlight— he lacerated sumyeong somewhere he couldn’t see.

it is always a strange affair to beholden grief when it wears an almost stranger’s face. haeil suddenly feels so, so sorry for everything he’s been through, and of the unmerciful journey he’s been on all this time. he feels like he could see the farmer now, all that senseless mystery and hopeless rumors clearing from the vision within the second it takes to blink.

haeil doesn’t allow his own cresting insecurity to daunt him, however, and he works on and on in the quiet, after the long look he cast about everywhere; completes what he set out to do and moving to wash his hands of his task —literally, in a bucket full of cleaning substance, diluted with fresh water, strong enough to break down the sticky residue of the tar—

until his companion chooses to speak again. until the apology is worded, confusing haeil somewhat, has him pausing the cleaning – ahh, that’s it, then. haeil doesn’t cast a glance towards sumyeong and feels the weight of a small smile on his own mouth as he considers the following little musing. the mind and heart of others are such an unending riddle. haeil allows it for as far as sumyeong willed it to: meaning, not very far at all. but it was a start. just like when they began with their original purpose, building the raft so that every big, small, and important thing could be carried offshore, elsewhere and away. to be forgotten.

“i do like a good mead.” haeil agrees, appends to the suggestion that they should move a little a-ways, so that they didn’t have to look at the raft, or remain close to the heady smell of the caulking that’s set to dry. “and i do love bread, and jam – all things edible, frankly.”

haeil gestures for the farmer to sit at the little bench he keeps snug against the side of his house. he then disappears inside to fetch a moveable little table, meant for this very purpose, snacks and such that aren’t meant to be had in the dining room. haeil taps at the surface of it as he says, “bring it here and we’ll break it together. i’ll fetch the cups for the mead."

he's happy to have the company. more than that, the veil stirs with gentle breeze of this new wind. he's wondering whether sumyeong will allow that to serve as wind for his own sails, if he's going to allow himself to find new meaning, wherever that might take him.

[velhaeil]

activity check! (task 025)it's been a restless night and your muse has struggled to get a good night's rest, whether it be due to an eerie, a sick friend/relative/neighbor in need, animals being restless, bad dreams, or simply one of those nights. when they wake in the morning, they find that a bouquet of flowers has been delivered to their doorstep.

that mayumi couldn’t quite put a finger on the changes the meager year they were kept apart should have caused her some concern, but haeil had remained the same in essence: even-tempered and good-natured, this side of quiet though ever so attentive, rarely shy enough to meet anyone’s eyes; that unplumbed depth of generosity that allowed him to shoulder on all kinds of thoughts, tasks, outlying concerns. but something kept nagging at her at the base of her skull whenever she watched her brother set to the day rather quickly, shortly after breakfast, cup still half-full and steaming, with little in the stomach.

oh, perhaps it was the—

“what happened with your appetite?” she places her tongue carefully around her drowsiness after haeil sorts through half of his breakfast, transferring the rest onto their father’s plate without a word. that was it. she remembered haeil with a very healthy appetite, which was often forgiven since he was always willing to have any leftovers or to set about cooking additional meals, and topped up the pantry with all sorts of quality goods whenever he had ambled off to the market on his own.

haeil stares back, unconcerned, and tells her that it was a low energy sort of day. that sometimes he didn’t have the space for all three meals – particularly when he was working only half days to tend to their stay. that he had slept very little the night prior, couldn’t wind down enough for deep slumber and –

“you never eat too much after a night like that,” mayumi confirms for him, the detail returning to memory and stirring her into full wakefulness. that seemed an all right excuse to her. more or less… it had been an unexceptional night, yet she might’ve recalled haeil shivering through a significant portion of it.

he tells her not to fret, so she doesn’t, and decides to let him have some space for the day so she could have a bit of her own. haeil leaves, keeps busy well until the afternoon. mayumi spends the morning rummaging around his room, tidies up a few places despite the fact that they were already clean, free of dust and mud. she spends the midday rearranging the interesting objects haeil had carved and set on display on shelves out on the front of the shop. mayumi is skimming through haeil’s personal collection of wood pieces, and finds the familiar figurine of an ox astray on the windowsill. It’s identical to the one they lost from their family shrine ages ago. she tucks in to a pocket of her skirts, continues her cursory snooping through his drawers.

when haeil returns with the sun in his back and armed with fresh bread in his left, a loud bouquet of blue in his right, mayumi has to admit that she’s not surprised, finds herself grinning wide from her position, with her hands busy with her personal tally of all he objects he keeps hidden behind the counter.

haeil asks her if she found anything of interest and she tells him no, but that the ox figurine is in her pocket – that she found it, seemed like haeil would miss if she hadn't rescued it, since that he had it with him after all those years. why the flowers?

“i’m not sure,” he leads her into the kitchen after giving her the loaf of bread, knows that she likes to eat the end of it first before anyone, “they were at the door. perhaps for you? who are you charming out here so far from home? is that the your true purpose of your visit, to find a husband?”

they trade: the loaf back into his hands and the bouquet now in hers. if the trip had started with a purpose like that, she would have told him outright. still, the thought was quite funny to ponder, and she wonders about the deep, deep blue of the petals and how they seemed more haeil’s color than hers.

dinner fares much better than breakfast, and haeil polishes a serving worth for three to rival her two, and khaen finishes the rest. when they settle for the night, mayumi tells him about her day, of all the objects she moved around to annoy him, to keep his attention sharp. he tells her about the figurine, how it came with him without his consent or knowledge, that he simply let it be, stowed away safely in any drawer available. did she know that it still preserves its original scent?

she hadn’t known, so he tells her about the particularity of the wood. they doze to sleep just like that, to the steady cadence of haeil’s voice and khaen’s low snoring' the figurine forgotten, warm, nestled in mayumi’s pillow.

no one feels the cold that night. right at the edge of slumber, mayumi remembers a specific piece of haeil's heated musing at the table, how the center of the blooms reminded him of a gibbous moon. mayumi ends the thought quieltly, saying "perhaps there are crescents sitting in your lungs, and we're all deserving a full heart."

[velhaeil]

activity check! (task 024) our maiden’s harvest: sending well wishes ( continued from task 20 )

“well, that certainly wasn’t a monumental waste of time,” mayumi's sarcasm whispers between them as she balances her little tower of borrowed books (a collection of memorization techniques, if haeil recalls correctly) against the jut of left hip, allowing haeil the space to stand near to her right. he’s staring down at an open page of a hefty tome set aside by the librarian, skimming over a particularly interesting recount of velgrove’s ways of asking (begging? demanding?) the lake to give back everything it has stolen from them.

out of all the other books they’ve sifted through during tenure on a middle table between the stuffed shelves of religion and all the rest, the librarian had brought this one forth specifically for the small section almost to the end of the book titled: The Meaning of Well-Wishes. whatever that meant. was it the unfathomable and mysterious well of wishes? or was it about kindness in the middle of a curse? haeil will get to that eventually. he closes the book, picks it up and reaches to claim a few from his sister’s stock, wanting to ease her burden.

“frankly, i disagree,” haeil starts, dividing the weight of her collection by half, “i’ve been meaning to take some time to look into the rumors about a few of our spaces, but i rarely had the time nor the energy to put substance to that intention. that being said…”

they’re still stuck firmly on square two with the satchels. fashioning them into something fairly significant had been a rather steep hill to climb for both of them. maybe they were both just too oriented towards the too logical, that in being a smidge too good at the practical they’ve found themselves lacking the overall whimsy and creativity to bolster the contents enough to begin the giving. haeil offers a long, long look to the single book left wayward on the cart meant for redistribution and rearrangement. he thinks it’s the one about the time when velgrove was first founded. he won’t consider it more; he takes that one as well, adds it to his own.

“right,” they both say, and they share a glance and an instant chuckle, which turns into an outright guffaw, all in the same breath. off to the rest, then?

the shop was as quiet as they left it hours ago. khaen, looking comically large sitting on haeil’s little personal working stool, steadily drags the sharp tool of his carving knife in favor of the grain to a small block of wood. he had taken to a shaded spot just outside the shelter of outdoor working area. “did you notice that the grain of the wood here has constant changes of direction?”

haeil did notice, knows that his father was certain that the detail hadn’t eluded him in the least. he’s been working with velgrove’s trees for a fair amount of time now. the small but crowded tree nursery going steady under his care bears testament to haeil’s particular interest in them. in addition to that, haeil’s gotten used to the constant splinters at having to work against the direction of the fiber, whenever it forced his hand.

an abrupt idea strikes haeil, at watching his father’s work eventually give way to the vague imprint of a bird.

“totems, mayumi! why didn’t i think of that?” haeil serves her some porridge and does the same for his father. he serves himself last, joins them at the table as the sun makes its slow drag down to the horizon. “we always have them at the altar at home. we could choose a variety of animals – they must mean something, yes? a lucky totem along with the ginger, the coins—”

the next day, haeil sets his sister off early morning to the task of getting them pastries for breakfast. haeil and his father spend the rest of their day puttering about the stock of chopped wood, choosing the most fragrant and lovely of the bunch, for the task haeil will eventually undertake.

[velhaeil]

activity check! (task 023) town board — week of 124DF10- on the road from town to fehyen's bridge, a set of shoe prints was found going into the fields. what was odd about the shoe prints is that they turned into footprints, with strides that seemed too far apart for a regular person, that led to a ditch on the side of the road where a pile of clothes were found abandoned. no one has been reported missing and the sheriff's department didn't identify the clothes as any of the residents.

“then i must be going insane.” it’s not that haeil wouldn’t genuinely consider that he may be experiencing a rather severe case of psychosis. upon taking into account all the available evidence presented to the sheriff and the rest of the authorities, haeil could’ve merely imagined the strangeness of the shape imprinted on the ground, could have assume incorrectly that there was an end that led absolutely nowhere. he relays the entire story, from the moment he walked by and noticed the steps up to the discarded clothing resting innocuously in an almost neat pile.

they bore no marks of distress. the grimy shirt, the soaked pants – it all looked intentionally removed rather than forced off with a bit of violence. so haeil could have imagined it, certainly. and there could be a person, someone, with an odd liking to putzing about stark naked in the wilderness. yes. it’s not that strange things don’t happen in velgrove already. this particular situation was even tame when placed into context. haeil rests only marginally easy for the fact there had been no blood in sight.

and why a person? well, it had to be. that they all could agree on, though haeil did not possess his sister’s excellent memory to recall who might have donned these before they found place near the muck. faintly, he wishes she had walked with him this morning – that perhaps in her little time and short trips around their small town, she might have been able to tell who the pile belonged to.

“what if we have a drunk tourist? we have the festivities going about…” that wouldn’t have been too great of an incentive, if this particular person liked taking up that awful habit. perhaps they could be from so far in the continent that the boasted a very particular combination of phenotypes, which could have resolved into a long, long set of legs. hadn’t there been cases genetic errors, as well, in some distant parts of the world? it could be anything. it could be anyone…

“i’m going home,” haeil gestures vaguely towards the door, lifting and dropping his shoulders, giving in, “let me know if you find anything.”

when he returns to the scene, rain had done away with the prints. a misguided thought ignorance settles instead. is it happiness what accompanies the feeling of being blissfully unaware?

[velhaeil]

activity check! (task 022) the electricity has suddenly gone out and the landline emits a silence so deep, it sounds as if something is listening in rather than your muse listening out. a look outside confirms that everything else seems to be in order as streetlights in town are still working + event 003

haeil shows up to the lumber shop tight-lipped and green-gilled, reluctant to make eye contact if he found anyone on his way, carrying a paper back overladen with miscellanea from the grocery store, with the important carton of milk that his sister had been unable to wait the next day for.

the night had too rapidly fallen over them, or over him, specifically. the sun had turned the horizon a pretty shade of pink and haeil had hoped that the light would last him at least partway on his journey back home, to the two waiting for him to tuck into supper.

“mayumi?” he calls, standing at the chest of his entrance, blinking hard against the dark, voice small. haeil’s not stupid. his only crime was hoping nothing unorthodox would happen while any of his family was there for him. the abrupt severance from the electricity sat heavy, uneasily, at the pit of his stomach. “mayumi.” he calls again, sidling around the main counter without removing freeing himself of his charge and jacket--why is the phone out of its cradle?; slips past the door and steps into the kitchen after righting the device. there’s a pot settled on low heat atop the stove, its contents yet to start spewing its fragrance into the open air.

was the dark and silence any cause for him to start the fretting? haeil’s uncertainty gathers between two halves, the one that’s all aware that his sister and his father were leagues more quick-witted than haeil, and the one that knows that velgrove’s hunger cares for none of that. his sister hadn’t expressed that she desired to visit any particular place after the library and the bakery. had she found some of entertainment outside of the house without his knowledge? she needn’t ask for permission, but she has always made it a habit to at least leave a written note of her general whereabouts.

whether to push the button for alarm… stays somewhere within haeil’s reach, pending another cursory glimpse around the areas of his home. “khaen?” haeil calls once more as he’s ticking the notch on the stove to feed more gas into the flame. that should earn him a reaction – he rarely uses his father’s name outside of a professional setting.

a gruff and drowsy yeah? carries over from his room, followed by mangled why‘sso dark, past the door left ajar by any of them.

having followed the low voice and peering into his room, haeil spots the slow going action of his father gradually settling on his feet on the ground, lumbering to sit upwards, dazed with leftover slumber. “…were you napping? ah… i’m sorry,” haeil says so out of politeness, glad for the sharp relief that’s such a reprieve from the escalating worry buzzing low at the base of his head, on the taut line of his shoulders.  “and mayumi? have you seen her?”

she’s not around, so it seems. haeil feels the weight of the frown he wears as he steps back into the front of the shop, coming to readjust the phone onto its cradle again. even after he had warned them both not to explore on their lonesome, for reasons he had vaguely alluded to and had dressed up as him just wanting to stay in their company, haeil more or less had expected mayumi to attempt a trip on her own at some point. such was her wandering spirit, brave enough to constantly desiring to wander off on her own. haeil’s not content with that now, by any means, and goddammit, he told her to stay put.

haeil fixes the phone into its cradle once again, the tension accruing angry debt in his muscles - oh, wait… hadn’t he just done that?

… was there no tone to the line while the phone was active? haeil stands there in the shadows for what must’ve been too long, considering the device and wondering if he had, in his worry, tuned out the familiar tune to it. he’s considering checking it. no, has to. yeah… but…

mayumi, abruptly, like a gust from passing storm, earth-laden boots and skirt stained by the journey, comes in from the kitchen, footsteps heavy with her blind navigation, cries, what are you doing? you look strange – stop that!,

he does look odd, doesn’t he? haeil considered that further if his heart hadn’t taken up residence up in his throat; banged his knee so hard against the base of the counter his teeth clicked painfully shut.

fuck!, so he says, where in heavens you?, opting to stay the crass vocabulary to a minimum.

and she returns, in the back garden, mucking about your saplings. what is it with this dark?

they fix themselves into the kitchen, an amused father at the task of tending to the forgotten pot as haeil sets up a collection of candles, trusting the little illumination enough to find his footing without risking a bad stumble, shows his sister the items she had requested before she had traipsed out in the mud. they have dinner.

during a dip in the conversation, there’s a shrill in haeil’s ear – the phone fell out of its cradle, placed at the edge of the counter, facing the door to the kitchen.

he promptly ignores it.

[velhaeil]

activity check! (task 021) write out the letter that your muse received or sent!

iugelere,

how is my goddaughter? hale, happy, and whole? i hope her latest gift survived transit. when you told me about her recent obsession with chickens, i had no choice but to make her that toy coop for her little small toy chicks you described to me in your last letter. i hope your wife is also in good health, and that the jewelry box is serving her well.

and how’s your eye? have you scheduled that surgery yet? once you have the date for it, please let me know posthaste. ah, now that i’m writing to you – would you please pick up the phone every once in a while? your manners are terrible, old man.

i won’t scold you much. i enjoy the letters – the slowness to them allows me to think well on what i’ll write to you. i have an actual purpose for this particular missive: do you, by any chance, still possess any rapport with the glass-worker that had labored with us on that skylight project in londai? if so, would you be so kind as to provide his address and landline number, either in reply to this letter or… a call. a phone call. which is infinitely quicker than a letter, don’t you think?

i’m in no genuine rush for it, but i have an idea for a pet project that i might be able to get off the ground by the end of this year. i'm in need for large panes of treated glass and i’m not confident enough in my skills to work the material. i’ve decided to commission them instead, and take a bit of time off of the shop to bring them in with me to velgrove.

i will not be penning any of the details. you’ll have to learn to use the landline and ask the very kind operator with the patient voice to connect you to me if you want to bore yourself with the minutiae of the project. make sure to have your daughter around so that i may converse with her as well. give her the other letter that’s enclosed along with this one.

the phone is right there. use it,

myung haeil

[velhaeil]

activity check! (task 020) our maiden's harvest: sending well wishes (freeform from the second prompt)

“from what i understand of those satchels and the entire ritual, that’s the purpose. i hadn’t participated in last year’s festivities – i hadn’t felt ready to face the colder weather and the shop was not ready to open its doors to the general public,” haeil calmly explains to the two pairs of ears facing him in the carriage. two pairs of curious gazes, both possessing identical brown irises with that splash of green in the middle, patiently wait on haeil to end his explanation of the autumn festival. a few relays here and there were interspersed with unrelated details of many other dalliances of velgrove’s day to day life, but he made it to the end just in the nick of time: they arrived to velgrove.

myung khaen is a man of considerable broad-shouldered stature and deeply-tanned skin earned from years working in his fields and hanging thousands upon thousands of yards of unprocessed silk to dry out in the blistering sun whenever the dry and hot weather allowed it. to his left, myung mayumi, his second eldest daughter, is the carbon copy of him, possessing the same high forehead and angular slant to her eyes and full mouth. unlike her father, however, she had opted to embark on a career in education rather than the silk trade. her life unraveled mostly indoors, at times having accompanied haeil on his tasks in the rearing shed or at the looms whenever the need called for it. she’s a meager two years older than haeil. shares almost the same day of birth – just one week apart. it seemed inevitable that they would become so irrefutably close to each other.

they’ve dismounted from the carriage in front of the town hall. the sunset hour fast approaches as they set to walking the rest of the way toward the mill.

“and you’ve started on a few satchels already,” mayumi says, hooking her left arm with haeil’s right, their father keeping pace at haeil’s immediate left. “but you’re not very good at that. you don’t bother with metaphysical values when it comes to objects. would you like some help? mama taught me a couple of things for the altar at home – i’m sure you don’t remember any of that. it’ll probably help us make a few helpful satchels… well, at least they’ll be significant enough to carry the point across? right, father?”

haeil’s not quite sure how to answer, but he’d appreciate the assistance. khaen lifts his shoulders and drops them, “i remember most of it, if that helps.”

it does not help. the three hunker down in haeil’s room messily but quietly, repurposing haeil’s working desk as a satchel building station for the endeavor. khaen falls into prompt dozing in haeil’s bed as haeil and mayumi, taking to sitting on the floor, pour over a preliminary listing of ‘things that might mean something good’. thus coins make the list, so does cinnamon and pieces of ginger (they make the bags smell good!, haeil thinks, gleeful with the addition); mayumi proposes the rather brilliant idea of sorting through the library’s collection regarding tradition, or of topics approaching spirituality.

“we’ll head there tomorrow after the midday meal, all right? then we’ll see to acquiring some board for you in the tavern,” haeil suggests and mayumi agrees; he then suggests the obvious: time for rest? here, push father a little to the side— no, let me, he’s heavy…yes, there we go, now we all fit. i’ll extinguish the lamp once we’re both settled.

[velhaeil]

A NOTICE ON THE BOARD:

the lumber shop will be operating under a special schedule for the next two weeks: it'll be operating for half the day from monday to wednesday, from 0600h to 1300h. from thursday to friday, it'll be open late in the afternoon, from 1600h until 1900h. however, in the case of an emergency, give the landline a ring or try the side-door located on the right.

[velhaeil]

activity check! (task 019)

thread for activity check, 10/19

[eudoravel]

the twins. eudora nods, stoically, but inside her, something twists low in her gut, sudden and painful — where was hansol in all of this ?

living in their company for so many months, sharing space and words and even breakfasts in the cozy, angular kitchen of the farmhouse, eudora had grown to know each of them separately, in their own, unique singularity.

while a vague part of her still understands that the town acknowledges the two as a pair ( that's what twins were, after all ! ) eudora is still startled in the moment by the implication — that misol should be packaged up so seamlessly with another, stripped of her magnetic charm and unexpected pragmatism, her warmth and the wild, sunlit laughter that always seemed to ripple out of her at just the right moment. it feels wrong, somehow, in this moment, to think of her flattened into half of a whole, when eudora can still picture her so vividly all on her own — the way she leans her hip against the kitchen counter, hair sticking to her temple, speaking plainly as a sunbeam cutting through fog.

the memory of her, so strong and sudden, coupled with haeil's uncertainty, the way his brows knit together as he questioned the chances of misol actually being inside of the conservatory, set a brief and wild flare of hope alight inside eudora's chest.

maybe the police could be wrong — nothing was confirmed, really —

her breath feels too loud, her heart too quick — she imagines misol, alive. misol, waiting. the thought is a sharp, merciless thing, glittering like a broken edge of glass in her mind. and still, she cannot quite push it away.

she imagines misol as she always is: hair pinned messily, wrists jingling, imagines her looking up at the sound of the front door opening, her face cracking into that well-worn smile.

but the image shatters, almost immediately. because if misol were anywhere close to home, she would have come back by now.

the thought hurts worse than the hope did.

eudora uncrosses her ankles, switches the one on top ; leans one palm into the moss-soft bark of the log, presses the knuckles of the other to her lips ; anything to ground herself back in the moment.

misol is inside. there's a horrible knot in eudora's stomach that tells her this is true. it was why she had come here ; why she had abandoned even the thought of finding hansol, had simply slung her camera around her neck and stuffed her notebook into a bag and squeezed her feet into borrowed shoes and ran.

her eyes catch haeil's, and her head shakes, slowly. the silences stretches between the two of them still, and finally, eudora realizes she has not yet spoken — that all of these reflections have been happening inside the walls of her own head, unspoken, perhaps even unreadable on her face — and she flushes, just slightly, pink at the ears in embarrassment.

"like you said...it's a terrible conclusion to come to. i'm just waiting for them to go in...i mean, someone must..." eudora is grateful for the way her voice doesn't break on her words, despite the heavy lump in her throat.

her eyes drift back to the conservatory, the sharp, shining tower of glass peaking above the tree line. if only she could will it to open its jaws and reveal something to her — proof of life, proof of death, any truth at all.

the wind snags at the loose strands of her braid, and the glass panes glint back like watchful eyes.

[velhaeil]

eudora turns inwards before him in a silence that he already anticipated. she seems to be pointedly crowding the passel of her thoughts around the spiral sprin  and moving to turn the knob that’ll push all of it forward. perhaps even outwards, but he has no expectations for it nor of her. so he waits patiently – as always is his manner with anyone. his expression resettles, means nothing by it.

he feels tired, suddenly. it’s the kind of exhaustion that he suspects could not be resolved with a few nights of proper restful slumber. distantly – that is, within the ever-stretching cavern of his mind – haeil can listening to waves crashing loud and angry. above that, there is quietness. empty space. air as thick as salt.

this is another indefinable moment for them, isn’t it? the quality of eudora’s thoughtful stillness strikes so terribly familiar to haeil – that for a breath, a bed of cropped hair and a bone structure vastly distinct supersedes the physicality of eudora before him. when the wind blows, it carries the subtle scent of sawdust to his nostrils. haeil has the particular suspicion of having something terribly sticky in the palms of his hands, between the spaces of his fingers. was the woman before him sitting on a fallen trunk or a crafted raft?

righting the distorted perception of the present requires a long and heavy sigh, but it does the job well once haeil wills himself to do it. within seconds yang eudora proves to remain right where she had originally plunked down to rest her feet. the air’s clean and crisp, the sky formidably blue, always beautiful above them. there is movement for readjustment from her and haeil watches it happen dimly. he looks up at her just in time to catch her eyes, his own prompting nothing. it doesn’t last.

now staring over at the space past eudora, he’s thinking about rafts once again. the conclusion settles in one of them and sets sail, drifting past santhe’s waters.

“they will eventually. there’s no choice.” haeil pronounces, certain, like absolution rests not in avoidance but in facing the horrid truth of what they’re due to live through. “but i’m dubious as to the method. do you think it’s really wise for any of us to barge into the unknown? although…”

what a formidable terror it is, that stately building taking up residence in the sky and over the head of the woods, simultaneously at home and out of place. whose to say that it wasn’t just a cruel turn of destiny, to have them all bear witness and testimony to the anomaly? or is it that they themselves are the incongruence to velgrove’s ever-mutating definition of tranquility? does the town turn cannibal in turns, arbitrarily?

“would you go?” haeil asks instead. if misol’s sunspot presence meant anything to anyone outside of her corner of the world, then that’s enough. even if it were just one person, that’s enough to challenge velgrove’s assertion: that nothing is ever what it seems. “willingly, i mean. if they ask for volunteers, would you go in there and look for her, even if you’re afraid of what you might find?”

[velhaeil]

activity check! (task 018) town board: community request & town notice — week of 124RF98

community requests —  missus baek is looking for help to dismantle her 8 year old's bedframe while her husband is out of town. she is looking to pay extra for assistance with assembling the new bed frame as well.

it hadn’t even taken haeil the entire morning to dismantle and assemble the new bed for the child. haeil did have to converse with him for a long while, though. the lady of the house had been unable to convince the kid to leave the carpenter to his task, not for snacks, not for sweets—not for wanting for anything, apparently, save for his overflowing interest to lob curiosities at haeil while he was on the task.

haeil hadn’t minded it. he listened intently and answered each time he was expected to. showed the child the contents in his bag of tools and patiently told them the names of each one; demonstrated what they were made of and for which task were they required to be used. at one point, as haeil slowly unscrewed and removed the metal holdings from the frame proper, and had moved to set the metal and the wood on the far side of the room, the child had disappeared for a grand total of ten minutes before returning with a dismantled birdhouse, painted clumsily in green and blue.

it had taken a steep drop from the second story balcony. the birds have been looking for it.

jury-rigging a quick fix before the begging began had been an interesting pivot. it had bought haeil an extra fifteen minutes of solitude, which he had used to put together the new bed.

“you keep that for the house, miss baek. i don’t accept any payment above the base price,” haeil had said firmly to the lady of the house, at the door, the task done and over with. “but thank you. let the little one know that they can always bring the birdhouse back to the workshop if it needs another patch.”

town notice — at this week's town meeting, it was announced that one of the local residents has gone missing. the name jo kangtae, male, aged 32, no known family, has been added to the town's records of missing people. a few of the townsfolk have coordinated a gathering at starfall field to light candles in a small ritual for jo kangtae. duskwing is looking for assistance with distributing candles, matches, and lighters for those who are looking to take part in this small ceremony.

starfall field is such a fitting name to conduct a ritual like this, haeil thought, as he’s depositing the accruements required for it into every open palm he could identify, making his rounds through the little crowd. he hadn’t known the man, not even his name, but the fact of his age had intrigued and horrified him. he had been almost haeil’s age – separated by a single circuit around the sun.

the ritual, too, seemed interesting and foreign to him, just like the ceremony for the dead out there at the sea. boats and waves for the corpses. lit candles for those who simply lost their way.

dare they hope that the light would help the man find his way back home? could it penetrate a dreamed death?

[velxgraves]

there is a disturbance. in the air. on his tongue. a tremor. felt not on the ground, not in the hands, not on the skin. but in the soul. the bones. it solidifies in the halting way haeil blinks at him, dark lashes staining his skin and accentuating the haunting something living underneath. it lives in the confusion, too. there one moment to hang between them before resolving.

in the face of this, whatever it may be, the bowed arches of his shoulders straighten as his spine adds another rod of steel to its core. sol graves would never falter when someone needed strength. to be any less than dependable was unthinkable. "of course," he answers; taking comfort in even the mere thought of purposeful movement.

his feet, however, stay rooted in place. waiting. some deep-set instinct warning as haeil looks away from him. always looking away from him to hide whatever's locked inside of his unmoving mouth. two steps as he closes the distance between himself, haeil, and the wood. and then he sees it. the glistening line on one cheek when the light hits it just so. the heart beating inside his chests twists. ah.

like a magnet to its pair, sol graves detours to where myung haeil stands. his palm makes first contact, a light brush from latimus dorsi to spine and then up until his fingers tangle gently in the hair at the base of the other man's skull. instinct would have graves draw him close, so there is a moment of choice: step away? lean into the hug? whichever decision is made, graves lets the whisper fill the silence surrounding them. "it was scary, wasn't it?" there is kindness intended in his tone, understanding, a hint of horror because — we both had to carry this man's body out. a slow exhale. "why don't we talk about it after." a considering hum. "or during." a quirk of his lips. "or drink about it once we're done."

[velhaeil]

that haeil had been floating a little above his senses was made all the more clear when the gentle, comforting hand rested in his back, on a point in the aching muscle and moved towards the base of his head. it simultaneously felt like both a balm and a brand. without meaning to, haeil’s shoulders hunch upwards, as if drawing further tension into his muscles would be of any assistance to what haeil can now tell is a growing and obliterating ache in his chest.

a vividly garish image of the officer’s prone corpse flashes through his mind. it’s gone with a blink. haeil twists his mouth, realizes that he had braced both hands on top of the wooden counter, and struggles to will himself to settle down. but there’s no true recourse for haeil other than to stand idly, his gut in shambles and his heart twisting and cowering, mildly ashamed by something stupid, that little weakness in him, that doesn’t allow him to bring up a hand and clean his face of all evidence of dismay. he very much would like to hide. if his mother saw him now, bearing up silence like arms in a war, she would give him a stern throttling.

closed mouths don’t get fed, haeil hears her voice clearly, the ghost of her touch gently pushing his hair away from covering his forehead, his eyebrows. his eyes. the tension begins to drop, slowly, one muscle fiber at a time. he’s lucky enough to have been born healthy: vocal cords intact for the communication and steady hands whole and useful to gesture when words and ideas failed to drag the point across. and lazy hands don’t break bread, haeil finishes in the privacy of his thoughts, though he sighs a long, stuttered breath, because no one ever got anything they’ve wanted without bleeding a little for it first.

it’s rarely bravery. it’s a jump into the precipice and the faith that one will hit the ground and be able to stand afterwards. “that’s a kind offer,” haeil returns finally, voice tight and hushed; makes no move whatsoever to indicate that he’s ready to keep to the task. he moves only to glance at graves, openly permits the rest of the few tears to pursue their course. it eases that terrible feeling in his heart. haeil will not compile more complications for it. “but if we do speak of it, it wouldn’t make for very joyful conversation, and i fear for myself,” at once, haeil could feel, positively feel, with such abrupt ferocity the magnanimity with which graves handles most of everything. it’s impressive. it also scares haeil, just a tad, that such disposition can exist here, in this bubble so close to gallows.

thursdays in the busy tavern. room and board with certain accommodations on the first floor, given with no fuss; music and string instruments, a voice polished with time and practice. generous company.

an important thought chases him. haeil doesn’t mean to come off as astringent when he plucks valor from the depths, turns fully to face the keeper, forgetting about his own pathetic state, the wet clump of lashes and the inevitable flush on his skin—

and instead takes the keeper’s unoccupied hand into both of his hands, cranes his neck to look at him, and says to him, “i fear for you as well, knowing the care you possess for misol—that little family in the farmhouse, sharing space with you. i’m sorry, graves. my pain is temporary and worldly,” even if buoyed by weeks of nightmares, but i have not lost anything to this town, “i’d prefer it if you don’t claim it. i’ve no doubt that the weight you carry is far heavier than mine.”

[velhaeil]

activity check! (task 017) if your muse had to choose between money, love, or wisdom, which would they choose and why? are they more easily inclined to one over the others or stuck between the choices?

when it comes to essence, haeil’s quite love oriented. thus his primary drive for most of anything will be love; love in all of its aspects, as a loving son, a loyal brother and uncle (and godfather!), and a gentle man. it comes without question for him, and he’d choose it with no competition. he believes he’s already proven himself to be lacking in prudence and judgment a fair amount of times, so much so that he very often lacks the confidence to trust himself with the decisions he has to take. but since he relies plenty on feeling: if it feels right to him, whatever that abstraction means to him at the moment, then it’s just as good as arriving to a fine and logical conclusion. if he can’t think on it then he’ll decide impulsively, then deal with the aftermath.

it could have stemmed from learning about generosity first, feeling second, then the ego, the self, last. he’s been made into a rotating door when he had to settle well into his family’s idiosyncrasies, when he seemed way too different, too other, during his rough younger years; and when his family would, at times, also seemed too different to him. he comes from a house with plenty of laughter, too many people wedged into small rooms and where beds are communal rather than private; and a surplus of butting heads and explosive disagreements. it hadn’t been the most comfortable aspect to navigate, but he surrenders to the fact that it’s a necessary discomfort.

the letters haeil has resolved into writing now that he’s living farther from home have helped immeasurably with harmonizing the plenty of ways he could show, and receive, love from his family and his friends. he would be very embarrassed to admit that he might not excel at it, but knows enough that if he fronts it with a lot of painful honesty, things will usually turn out fine for him.

haeil usually prefaces his less noble stints with an abundance of love, too. it has inevitably lured him into quite a few fun troubles when it came to lovers, of both sexes, while he was away and about the major cities prior his arrival to velgrove. even the roughest of those stories has a fond layer attached to it.

so, aspiring to be the best version of himself he can be, he usually tries to see things through that veneer of feeling. it’s how he’s usually able to accept things as they are, and how he’s able to meet another where they’re at, halfway or right up to the front door. he's always inclined and he's usually quite willing.