Silence is a blessing
The perfect emptiness that binds you to the void
Embrace it
Raise up your arms and give thanks for silence
Give thanks for the vast emptiness of the void
if you’re still taking prompt requests for jurdan, could you do number 25 from the hurt/comfort list you posted? thank you ♥️
I know who I am when I'm alone
Read it on AO3!
Word Count: 1,281
The moon was full of secrets. Scandalous and forbidden, everything desirable happened at night. Shadows dipped between each other along the ground, dancing as if made from candlelight as the moon cast her gaze to the Earth. Praying, believing, sacred gaze pressed to the soil so surely she need not worry about what became of her confidences when her lover vibrantly lit the sky.
Cardan slipped from his bed sheets, careful not to wake his wife, who must have snuck beneath the covers sometime after he’d fallen asleep, waiting on her to retire. He tugged the hem of his shirt tight around his waist, willing the crown of sweat on his brow to disappear.
He stood, overly aware of the cold floor beneath his bare feet as he made his way to the window, leaning against the stained glass. It cast beautifully when the curtains had been pulled back to let in the late afternoon light, bringing warm, colourful shapes to the ceilings, the walls, decorating the whole room. Now, they were drawn shut and tight so they might sleep. He leaned against a column where the curtains were parted, peeking around the fabric to look at the coloured glass. And then, out.
The sun crested over the horizon ahead, and the moon made way for his arrival. Cardan glanced back at his wife, at her braid dripping down the side of the bed, now long enough to nearly touch the floor. At the way she curled into the empty space beside her where he had been. One of her hands stretched into the expanse, searching. She didn’t wake.
He pushed open their bedroom doors and crept to the sitting room, stealing a book from an end table he’d left it on haphazardly hours ago, when he had inevitably become distracted by his wife’s curious hands. She’d felt her way down his spine, lower, and they’d whispered promises to each other in the darkness before she’d kissed his cheek and assured him that she’d come back after a meeting with her spies.
He’d waited for her return as the moonlight softened, making room for morning, even as his eyelids grew heavy and he could no longer keep them open.
Cardan crossed the sitting room to the bay window, cushioned with ornately embroidered pillows, overstuffed with fluff and feather. He tossed them aside and rest his head against the window, squinting into the sky and searching.
He opened his book, page marked by a lace from one of Jude’s dresses. He’d tugged it once, and she’d pulled it free, tossing it at him and laughing. He tucked it into his pocket when he was sure she’d forgotten about it.
He thumbed through the deckled pages, breathing in the cool air that pressed against the window. It ran its fingers down his skin, raising gooseflesh along his arms, and he welcomed it.
His tail thrashed against the side of the lounge seat, coming to curl up around his ankle when he could not blink away a memory. There, and then gone. The very thing that had woken him, and he could not even remember it. Could not will it back into existence, though it haunted him like any true spectre.
The morning would not vanish his penchant for nightmares, but it could not summon them, either. It was a secret’s job to be kept, to remain, drinking in the moonlight in all their debauchery. But there were bad secrets, too. Nasty ones, that ought to remain in the foulest places, so you might never look for them. Secrets to be buried, and forgotten. Perhaps that was what the moon had been praying for.
Jude padded across the floor quietly and came to rest upon the opposite end of the window seat. She frowned, blinking away her exhaustion as Cardan gave her a soft smile, and opened his arms. She twisted, laying against his chest and looked out the window. He wrapped his arms around her, one hand resting across her center to hold up the book, the other going to her hair.
She was nearly asleep again by the time she remembered what she’d come out to find him for. “What’s wrong?” She asked, voice thick with sleep.
He rest his chin on the top of her head. “What makes you think something’s wrong?” He was grateful, for once, that she was not, could not, look at him.
“You’re reading,” she said, blinking hard as if to wake herself.
He huffed a soft laugh. “I assure you,” he said. “This is no new habit of mine.” He swallowed thickly and hoped she hadn’t heard it.
She inhaled deeply and sat up, turning back to face him again. Yawned. “I’m going to ask you how you are,” she whispered. The hair on Cardan’s arm stood on end again. “And I would like you to answer me honestly.”
He nearly huffed at the last amendment. As though he could do anything else. Instead, she had meant the fullness of the truth, the lack of evasion. For better or for worse, she would get it out of him at some point. At least he’d stopped sweating.
He let the book fall open on his lap and spoke before she could ask again. “I had a nightmare,” he said. “I’m fine, now.” It could not have been a lie. Jude raised a brow, assessing. Surely, she’d rooted out how fickle of a word fine could be.
“Do you always read at the break of dawn?” She asked instead.
The corner of his mouth twitched. “No, but sometimes I would read through it, and into the late afternoon hours.” She looked at him incredulously. “I seem to make a habit of willingly forgetting.”
She leaned against the window. “Come back to bed,” she whispered. “It’s late.” Maybe this was a promise, too.
Cardan looked down to the book in his lap, at the passage highlighted that he’d reread so many times he wondered if the words were engrained in his eyes. When she said nothing, he read aloud. “Ah, love may be strong,” he whispered to her. “But a habit is stronger.”
She took the book from his hands and set it aside as she stood. Pulled him to his feet and wrapped her arms around his waist. Pushed his damp curls back from his face. Pressed a kiss to his temple.
“What was it about?” She asked. A line appeared between her brows, and it took him great restraint to not reach down and smooth it away with his thumb.
“I don’t remember,” he said. “Only that it was terrible.” She said nothing, so he continued into the silence. “For a moment, I revisited every time I closed my eyes as if a memory. Some integral part of me. And now, I know not what it was, only that it may never leave.”
She shook her head and pulled him close. “We get to decide the parts of us that we keep.” Her hands came to rest gently on his stomach, reached for his hand, and pulled him to their room. “What we do not like, we cast aside. We are stronger when we reforge ourselves, I think.”
Jude tugged him onto the bed, and curled him gently into her chest. His ear came to rest against her heartbeat, and he made no secret of listening intently to it for a moment. “A habit is stronger,” he continued from the passage, “and I knew when I loved by the way I behaved.”
She pressed a kiss to the top of his head, stroking loving shapes along his spine.
“You’re my favourite habit,” he said into the darkness.
“Human relationships are strange. I mean, you are with one person a while, eating and sleeping and living with them, loving them, talking to them, going places together, and then it stops”
“I can’t tell you exactly what I’m looking for, but I’ll know it when it happens. I want to be breathless and weak, crumpled by the entrance of another person inside my soul.”
If you could pick one of your works that doesnt have a lot of swears in it and you could add one really high quality swear to one of them, which one would it be?
Stardust. Perhaps someone could say "fuck" in it. But in a very small font.
discoholicmusic
origamiaround
jimmyeatworldofficial
stormborns
vaporwave
