KIROKAZE
almost home
Origami Around
No title available
dirt enthusiast
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
Janaina Medeiros
styofa doing anything
Sweet Seals For You, Always
Kaledo Art
roma★
hello vonnie
occasionally subtle
Cosimo Galluzzi
NASA
One Nice Bug Per Day
taylor price
Three Goblin Art
d e v o n
Game of Thrones Daily
seen from United Kingdom
seen from France
seen from Sweden
seen from Australia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from India
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Japan
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
@vuulpecula
#VUULPECULA .
✖ a private & semi-selective account for the independent original character FOX ALKAEV . cherished by starbuck ! ( 31, she / her ) . est. july 2013 .
CARRD | INTEREST TRACKER | PROMPTS | STARTER CALL | WISHLIST | PROMO
✖ MATURE topics and themes may apply. proceed with caution. ✖ small disclaimer, mobile friendly rules, verse info, & owed tracker beneath the cut . ✖ soft semi-hiatus notice until august 1st . ( low on-dash activity & slow message response until then ).
✖ alright alright alright . small update (brain dump) / semi-hiatus refresh .
✖ alright alright alright . small update (brain dump) / semi-hiatus refresh .
@vallorouslly
She could have lied.
Nastka had vanished one morning after her Father found her bruises. No announcement, no reassignment; only a slip of silence, as if her presence— unyielding, iron-fisted, smelling faintly of peaches and sweat— had been a brief hallucination. Rumor took less than an hour to make the rounds in the sublevels: the most persistent, repeated behind fervid hands, insisted that the then-na-Baron's favorite creatures had been made to fight for their meal. Vera had never wanted to know whether that mercy had been real.
"My father disposed of Nastka." She studied the way the light laced itself through the tea in Fox’s hands, turning the thin porcelain cup jaundiced and delicate. "After he realized what she did to me, she disappeared.”
Then, and then another opportunity, she could have lied. Vera had, naturally, perfected the skill in the years since, though something about the question, sharp and near-breaking, made her reach instead for the exposed nerve underneath.
“And my friend, Odetta, she died. When I was twelve.” Vera stared at the steam that curled up from her cup, and it smelled like old sympathy and spent resin. It would have been so elegant to frame it as disease, or oxygen deprivation, or simply the logic of attrition, as if children starved quietly and obediently in the vast bowels of Harko’s keeping. But the truth had teeth, as bright and fine as the ones that gnawed Natska’s bones in the other wing.
"She was killed," calmly, as if the admission were a dress she now wore, ill-fitting and prone to itch, "I named her Odetta. She never had a name. So I gave her one. The former Baron— my great-uncle— took her from me. I think it was because he knew how much I loved her.”
She set her own cup down, the clink brittle against silence. "He did it himself. His lessons were never subtle.”
The harsh, polished ice in Vera’s eyes warped then, softened at the edges. She let the story lay unfinished, the particulars well-known to every Harkonnen like a canticle of cruelty, yet it was the act of saying it, aloud and to someone else— someone who cared, at least a fraction— that uncoiled something twisted in her spine.
“Though not long after, Isä— Father, discovered dear great uncle dead in his sleep.” A thinly veiled lie. Feyd had called it her retribution, though it was for Ilya too. “So I suppose it was a kind of symmetry.”
"Oh." Fox wasn't certain of what else she could say. If Nastka had harmed Vera, then perhaps she had deserved to disappear. But Odetta? All she had done was offer friendship. She hadn't even had a real name. Or maybe, more likely, she had, and she hadn't been allowed to share it. Fox had a name she wasn't allowed to share too. What kind of symmetry was that?
"What did your great uncle have to gain from taking something from you?" A man taking from a child. There was only cruelty in that action and so, Fox decided it was a very good thing he was gone now. Dead. If he wasn't, would he still be taking things from his great niece? Certainly their friendship would be far more tenuous if he did. "That is not a lesson, it is a pathetic action committed by a pathetic man." She wasn't afraid of the Harkonnen the way her mother was and she certainly wasn't afraid of ghosts. Not anymore.
"Where I am from we have a saying," she paused to sip at her tea. Wishing again she had only a few grains more of sugar to sweeten it. "Some things are meant to be dead." Her father said it constantly enough that it could have been their House words. It was an easy excuse for any of his actions. A life taking for political reasons? Some things are meant to be dead. A life taken out of anger or jealous? Some things are meant to be dead. A life taken for no reason? Some things are meant to be dead.
"Regardless, I am sorry that that happened to you Vera. It must not have been an easy thing for a child to bear."
The sight of her in that 'dress' was enough to send his stomach turning even more, tying itself in knots more discombobulated than any manner his boots would ever be tied. Running a hand over his face does little to settle his nerves, but at least the stylists have stopped incessantly yelling at one another for a moment to spare the tension and frustration from boiling over. Nobody really wants to be here, he can tell that just by reading the body language of the other victors drawn in this damn Quell. The stylists simply added to the heat of the boiling pot.
She stands and he has the insistent urge to take off his jacket and drape it over her shoulders. Something about her being so openly objectified, even if that's not quite the right word, it makes him angry and rather possessive. He has no right to be, of course, but it just bubbles up his throat like an unwelcome guest.
"You do well to watch over me." He muses with a smile, returning the squeeze of her hand with his own. The warmth there helps him focus on something other than the world around them, full of glittering lights and the echo of Caesar speaking to another tribute on stage, laughing and then the roar of the audience breaks in like a battering ram.
"No, I suppose I'm not. Especially when I know you have to go out there looking like that." He doesn't mean it maliciously of course, but protectively. "If I could get away with it, I'd give you my jacket to drape over you before you go out there. Give the damn vultures something to speculate about this Quell, something juicy to bet over." He smiles idly and shakes his head. "Who is Fox's secret admirer?" He imitates in Caesar's announcer voice.
Pulling her own hand gently back, Fox crossed her arms. Trying not to allow the way all the threads hanging loosely from the 'bracelets' at her wrist twisted into those making up the bodice of her dress, add to her irritation. It was like a head of hair full of knots that wouldn't brush out. Or a jacket catching on a doorknob when you're already late. Over-stimulating and incredibly inconvenient.
"I'm just thankful it's warm in here." She shrugged. It was more than warm, actually, it was relatively hot. Which had likely also added to the way the stylists snapped over the smallest thing. They too were over-stimulated. "And most of the important pieces are covered." She winked. It was a distraction tactic, a little flirting. From both the interviews and the way his protectiveness made her stomach fill with butterflies.
"Oh? Secret admirer, you say?" Fox grinned, unable to stop herself when she heard his imitation of Caesar. It wasn't far off by any means. He should use it on stage, she thought. "I don't think it'd be too secret if you come out missing a jacket."
Was he only jesting about being an admirer? The crowd absolute would speculate, but the fact he wanted to offer his jacket in the first place... No, it surely was only to spare her from further humiliation and give her back the dignity the designer forgot to add. "If you make it on stage, that is. I'd image the stylists would claw you to shreds for ruining your outfit and mine." She laughed quietly. Still a strange, out of place sensation, in this place.
"Anyway, I figured I could use it to my advantage. Show a little too much and they'll have to cut the footage or at least scramble like ants to edit it. Will be nice to make them sweat for once." Who knew, maybe it'd keep any future mentors-turned- tributes from being put through the same humiliation ritual.
AJ let out a slow whistle, low and full of something like admiration, though he masked it with a twitch of his smirk, that familiar tug at one corner of his mouth, as if trouble were just one word away from showing up on his doorstep.
“Well, damn. You come out swingin’ and you come with receipts.”
His hand finally stilled on the dog tags, like her words had cut clean through the motion. His gaze dragged from her tucked-in knees to her face, studying the space she took up, and maybe more importantly, the space she didn’t. There was something about the way she folded herself.
Neat, compact, like she was used to making herself smaller just to keep from setting off landmines no one else could see. And maybe he recognized it because he used to do the same.
He leaned forward again, slower this time, forearms bracing against his knees. He didn’t crowd her, didn’t press in, just let the shift carry weight- like he was meeting her halfway.
“Nah,” he said, voice quieting, the usual bark behind his words softened to something worn-in and real. “No dotted lines. No tests. Hell, no sponsors either. Only thing I care about is that you showed up. Brought your paperwork? Good. Means you’re already ahead of half the bastards who wander in here lookin’ for a cause but not ready to bleed for it.”
He paused, gave her a look that was part grin, part something steadier: something almost reverent. As if he were seeing not just who she was now, but the fight it took to become her.
“You don’t need someone to vouch for you,” he added, voice like gravel under boot. “You already did that, with every goddamn word you said.”
He sat back, one boot sliding forward as if he was settling into the idea of her being here. Really here. Then, with the slightest shrug and a gleam of challenge in his eyes, he added: “Besides, I got a feeling you’d shoot your own damn foot before lettin’ someone speak for you. Am I wrong?”
His grin widened, crooked and rough-edged, but honest.
“Tell you what. You’re here, you’re ready, and if you’re half as good as your prep work? You’ll fit in just fine. Might even teach some of these hardasses a thing or two about what it really means to come prepared.”
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper; a form, probably blank, probably unnecessary, but the gesture was ceremonial. Old habits and old systems wrapped in new beginnings. He slid it across the table like it meant something.
“No dotted lines,” he repeated. “But if you wanna make it official? Sign your name anyway. Just for the hell of it.”
A moment of silence passed between them before he spoke again, somehow even quieter than the words left unsaid:
“Sometimes writin’ it down helps you believe it’s real.”
He moved, leaning closer, but she remained still. Spine straight and solid against the back of the chair. At another time, she might've leaned back, away, anything to put distance between herself and, well, anyone. Bracing for the run. Still, she couldn't break the old habit of taking mental stock of what she was seeing. Elbows braced on his knees, dog tags swinging slightly from where they hung around his neck. The grin and expression that seemed to say he genuinely believed what he was saying.
A shrug raised one of her shoulders. "Depends on the person." There weren't many she'd allow to vouch for her. Certainly not her family, perhaps a few friends, but she was far too worried that even they would bring up the negative traits she did her best to hide or heal from. No, she trusted herself better. Maybe she wouldn't shoot herself in the foot, but by picking the wrong person, she might've well have.
"Thought teaching the hard-asses was your job." Fox dared, offering a small smile of her own to his grin. It was always best to lead by example, of course, so maybe he was right and she would be teaching some of the others how to be more prepared. She only hoped that they weren't the kind to balk against it or grow angry when they were shown up. Still, she'd prepare for that too.
For a long moment, Fox looked at the paper laying on the desk between them. Even if it was purely ceremonial, writing her name down would make it real. There would be no going back. No more running away, only toward. With a steadying breath, she pulled the paper closer, taking a pen as she looked over the creases from how he'd had it folded. In another breath, she was signing her name. Not her birth name, at least, not the one on the original documents, but the one that was there now. It still looked small in the black inked letters. The A of her last name peaking like the start of a star.
"I suppose that's it then." Fox swallowed. It wasn't that she thought making this decision was going to change things immediately, but she didn't expect to feel exactly the same as she had when she'd first sat in the chair. Though maybe it wasn't nervousness anymore, but anticipation. "What now?"
@vuulpecula ❤'d for a starter from Lucan!
"So many people think they know what pain is, how it feels, but that's only an idea."
She speaks prettily of the ornate box between them, the lack of a gom jabbar. Each house holds one, and she's certain that Alexei has employed it many a time, long before the sisterhood swept Kyla into their folds. Though that had been planned too-- all is, all can be.
Even Alexei.
Something like sympathy sits deep in her belly, in the dark of her eyes. It's swept away with a blink and a sigh. Fingers drawn over the box, its simple design deviously glinting in the sunlight filtering in from the window. Lucan smiles at Fox.
"It's a very different thing when it becomes concrete."
Fox didn't understand. What could be held within the small box that carried so much pain? She swallowed, shifting in her chair. So many people thought they knew what pain was, that was true, but what if she had already felt how concrete it could be? What if all the rest paled or, what if there could be worse? No, certainly there could be and there could not be. Her father was very skilled.
"Have you placed your hand inside it? That is what you do, is it not? Put a hand inside and...I don't know the rest, I could never hear." It was a nasty habit, spying, eavesdropping, but she was too curious for her own good.
"Why would anyone choose to feel pain, life offers more than enough."
✖ @xchxsingcxrsx cont.
"I'll fill you in when we have a moment, but right now, we don't." Fox answered quickly as she glanced around the corner. "I've been looking for you, things...things have changed. I need to keep you safe, Rose." After a moment, she waved Rose closer. "This way."
“Oh—yes, that’s right! Word War Two, 1939 to 1945. And the third one isn’t for another--” Zoe glanced at the stranger, and decided not to complete the thought.
“Well, anyway, that hardly matters. I’m alright, thank you. The post-transport nausea seems to only act intermittently. I really ought to start recording the conditions where it manifests.” She’d started talking to herself, more than Fox, gaze lifting as she followed her meandering thoughts. “Where did you say we were?”
The third one? What could the stranger mean by that? Fox continued to watch her warily, brows drawn in.
"P-Post-transport nausea?" Did she mean from traveling? Maybe she'd been on a boat or a plane? She hadn't said travel, though, she'd said transport. "I-I hadn't. You're in the offices of ECL, Ecological Conservation Laboratories." ConLab for short, because that was far more fitting for what they did with the money that funneled through the company. Though that wasn't to say they didn't do good things too. "Do you need something for nausea?"
✖ @jcxnnalxnnister cont.
The fact there had been both no visitors and the lady had expected none, made her tender heart ache. "I thought you might enjoy some company," Fox smiled. "I would have come sooner had I known. How are you, my lady?"
@vuulpecula asked: You've been a lot of places, haven't you? [ for connor/casket ! ]
"guilty as chahged," he chuckled. "I like ta look at pretty things, can ya blame me?" He grinned from ear to ear.
"what about you? You been to a lotta places or only a few?" Connor asked, studying her face reverently.
"Got a favorite?" Fox asked, twisting her straw around her glass. "I've...been around. Seen a few places, not a lot, but enough." She didn't quite understand the people who vacationed everywhere, all the time. What was so wrong about home?
✖ @xharryharperx cont.
She hadn't been certain that he was crying when she'd seen him, but she had suspected. Tucked away out of sight of most people passing by, Fox couldn't help but stop. She didn't wait for permission as she sat down beside him, offering out a crinkled package of tissues from her purse. "It's alright, you don't have to say anything." Sometimes talking made things worse when someone wasn't yet ready. "I don't mind sitting here with you for a while. Better to not be alone." There had been police and an ambulance, she'd seen it drive slowly away from the building--never a good sign--but there was no telling if that was the cause of his distress or if it was unrelated. Either way, it was important to her that he know, if he was feeling alone, that he wasn't.
The question lands somewhere inside his chest, not soft but blunt, like a fist finding the space between ribs. He turns it over. Studies her profile in the torch-light: the frost caught in her lashes, the way her jaw is set against the cold or against him, he cannot always tell the difference. The wind leans into them from the north, not yet the west, not yet Ulvírad, and it smells of iron and whale fat and the particular emptiness of a sky that holds no stars tonight.
He does not answer immediately. That is its own kind of answer; because there is a name, there is always a name. He cannot fathom not having one.
It surfaces the way it always does at this part of the walk, before Ulvírad, before the west wind opens its throat. Emmi. Two syllables that have worn grooves into him he cannot see but can feel, the way a blade feels a whetstone over years. He has said it every Iskaldr since the first one that mattered. He will say it again tonight, alone, when Fox is not watching, when the torch is low. He will say it to the dark and the dark will take it or it won’t and neither outcome changes what it costs him.
“The point,” he says, and his voice comes out level, stripped of the thing coiling underneath it, “Is that you still walked. If you have nothing to give, then you’ll take. Whatever Iskaldr offers.”
Perhaps there was a name. One of a girl who had lived briefly and never grew. Left behind on the barren waste of the tundra. Oh, but it wasn't barren, there was still life on the snow and beneath it. Beneath the hard packed earth and the ice. Perhaps that girl had survived, but what if she said the name and it was not brought back to her? Fox was not sure she wanted Feyd, nor Iskaldr, to know that name. To know if it was not returned.
"And if I have nothing to give and want nothing in return?" She posed, angling her face just so, to watch him from the edge of her vision. Blurry beneath the laden layer of frost on her lashes. Must it always be give and take? As she was given, as she was taken. What was it to him? Feyd-Rautha. Did he speak a name or was he only taking what was now offered to him? Would the answer change anything?
Fox continued to observe him in her tilted way, against the wind. The paleness of his skin reminding her of whale bones and the brittle pages of books scratched with scripture. They had names too, once. "You know the name you will say, don't you?"
✖ @anaxmccarthy cont.
"Hi," Fox answered, glancing first in the direction of the car that had honked, then Ana. "You looked pretty deep in thought, I didn't want to interrupt." She paused, chewing her cheek. "Everything alright in there?"
You slept in my bed, and if I kept quiet I could hear all the voices in your head
Whatever Alexei saw was dead, rotting, long ago left for the maggots. In either the Baron or his favored nephew-- but Feyd-Rautha might claim his heart was still beating. A war drum in caged bone, pulsating in Fox's frequency. Giedi Prime couldn't sustain the thing that lived in him, and so he'd given it to her in an unwrapped gift.
Permanence.
Only in the arena and only in bed did he appreciate a turned back, all vertebral vulnerability, an osteon effervescence. Duke Alkaev would be more tolerable with a blade unlocking his gut; he'd imagined it many times. Perhaps he'd present to her a painting of the smatterings of his thoughts as a wedding favor.
In the wake of the Reverend Mother's bitter acquiescence, the Baron's strident chuckle echoed. Something ground out to Alexei, shredded, "Good doing business with you, Duke."
Feyd ignored his peripheral as the bastard floated after the witches, as the Alkaevs vanished into the bowels of the Keep. If the promise of carnage had electrically caressed his cranial nerve, nothing remained to speak of it. Tongue pressed against the back of his teeth, tasting iron.
Salt.
"Betrothed," seeped from lips-turned-devil. The tip of the blade beneath her chin, piercing the veil, a caress of Lankiveil steel. Tut-tut, look him in the eye. Tongue dragged over the fabric to collect her tears. "Come with me."
His fingers entwined with hers. Permanence.
The altar offered no clemency, no honeysweet vow of respite. No-- only Harkonnen shadow, bubbling bile of fate; na-Baron teeth.
Business. That was all this was. A trade of goods. If only she were spice, able to catch on one of the cold drafts sweeping across the floor. Crumbling into a million tiny particles. Getting lost somewhere between the dust and snow. No, if she were spice, they would've only wanted more.
Instead, she was left. A good, bought. A trade complete. One name for another. Two lines intertwined. There was never a lock on the door. Never a need to keep anyone else out. She wondered now, how long the Duke would sit outside that closed bedroom, staring at the empty hole no key would fit. Ruminating on the consequences of his own actions. Sharpening the blade that would release whatever dark sludge pulsed within Harkonnen veins.
She would need to be a good wife as she had been a good daughter.
Raising her chin, balanced on the tip of his knife, just as her life was, Fox met the gaze that demanded it. Then past it. Through the pupils, dilated in the dim candle-lit hall, as if she might see through him. Even when her vision blurred beneath the movement of the veil. Satin-soft fabric clinging to her cheek with his spit and the now absence of her tears. They would do nothing, the tears, save salt the meat. Otherwise, they were a waste. Her mother always reminded her of that...she would remind her no more after tonight.
Numbly, she curled her fingers around his. Knees growing weak beneath the heavy fabric of her gown. She was wholly alone now ( no, not wholly ), before an alter, surrounded by strangers. Forsaken even by those who masked their faces beneath elaborate head-dresses--she knew the color of their eyes and how they likely looked away. Unable to watch now that the deed had been decided.
"I--I do not think I can." Fox whispered, allowing her arm to be moved, but unable to will her feet to follow. Rooted to the spot. No, not rooted. Frozen. As all the women before her that held the Alkaev name had once been frozen too.
