[X] Flip your phone open, it's a cheap thing and you kinda hate it but the keyboard lights up and the screen seems to work. The Winter Court saved all the numbers you'd need on it. Dial one. Call someone for help.
It's that 3:00 AM light, that kind of ambient glow you get in the guts of your home in those small hours. When you're crossing the living room to get a glass of water, the lamps turned off, the ceiling clustered with shadows, but the scorched sky outside is just barely enough to get you by. The city dying the clouds orange, charring the night in an electric blaze. The embers and ash drifting in through your drawn windows and settling across the carpet.
It's that 3:00 AM feeling, standing there in your sweats or your underwear, your baggy shirt or nothing at all, hearing the creak and groan of the pipes beneath the sink. The rushing tap, the splash in your glass. Radioactive green numbers in your microwave clock silently ticking over behind you. The buttons on the side of the TV and the front of your game console and everything else in that octopus of wire and cords flickering and flashing with blues and greens.
The whole world just...waiting, holding its breath, and you holding yours without knowing why.
The counters of Sebastian's kitchen, the edges of his couch, they're just dim impressions that bleed away into the darkness. Definitions giving way to suggestions giving way to gloom. You stand up, slowly, slowly now. And the half-light comes with you, clinging to the bare skin of your chest, your stomach; collecting in the lines and hollows of your tanned body and staining your robe. Lighting flashes, a flicker of searing white throwing the living room into stark relief before the black washes back. Drowning the room and pooling around your waist.
Take a step, hesitant and uncertain. Stop.
Scales rasp against skin. The serpents that sprout between your shoulders rising up in the air, fanning out around you. Framing you. Long muscular ribbons, black and green glistening, gleaming; their bellies bulging, snub-snouted heads weaving as they curve back upon themselves. Bright eyes shining as they probe the nothing, pink tongues tasting the air.
You just there in the quiet with your tail still draped over couch cushions. Cock your head, hold your breath and listen. Listen in that hollow space between rolling thunder. That aching, echoing emptiness between rolling, rumbling, booms. There are...footsteps. Muffled, muttering voices coming from all around you. Behind the neighboring walls, on the floor above, and the room below; the landing outside. Furtive movement, betrayed by creaks and little squeaks and muffled footfalls. Activity on the very edge of sensation: like nails gently scraping down your spine. Like your name overheard in a stranger's conversation. Like a rustle, a skitter across the ear. Something unseen with too many legs crawling over the cartilage. Exploring, pressing on, until its tap-tap-tapping antennae against your eardrum.
There's light coming from somewhere down the hallway. You feel it hooking you, drawing your eye and just like that the front door and your phone are a million miles away. On the other side of the moon for all that it matters. Everything is in a haze. It's so hard to breathe (are you breathing?). The curtains around the window have been drawn back. The world outside is gone but you can still see the stars, burning just beyond the grey-black clouds. Points of light in every color. Pinch yourself and feel it. This isn't a dream right? You're not supposed to feel pain in a dream but you feel something, some sharpness to the pressure.
You're walking down the hall. You're walking past empty frames and empty shelves. The doors on either side are cracked open, the barriers broken. It's just the disturbance in the air that makes them creak a little wider as you pass. It's just the motion of a passing body that makes them squeak on those bright brassy hinges. Trail your finger against a mirror, the surface cracking at your touch. Shards of solid mercury breaking, peeling up like scabs over an open wound, an icy caul over churning black water. The hilt of the sword slides into your palm as you draw the sleek, silvery thing free with one smooth motion. Another Levi standing as the mirror reseals, watching your back with acid green eyes. Do you still remember how to use this?
i love you they say when they're on you, in you and you love them too
even if it's only for a second if it's only then
it lets you forget what you are
lets you forget your insides are all broken glass
Don't be silly. You never forgot.
The door at the end of the hall stands closed. Light spills under the frame around the edges, warm and gold. Sweet and solid and you feel your body shiver where it caresses you, where it kisses. There's a party roaring along just on the other side, you can hear it so clearly. The babble of a dozen different voices, music weaving through the conversations. It's loud, jazzy and fun. Glasses clink, someone laughs. This place it- it was waiting for you. It was always waiting for you. It was always here. Touch the knob and the door swings open.
Step into the silence.
The penthouse is empty. Hooded bulbs glaring down on a desolate bar, glasses of melting ice and mixed drinks sitting on counter tops and cocktail tables. A suit jacket draped over a low-slung leather couch. There's lots of wood and cow-skin and dark, earthy tones; a cream shag rug. All very handsome and...dated. Not by much, oh no, nothing here's an antique. But it has that 80's chic feel: like if a room could have sharp shoulder-pads and big hair. You pass a razorblade sitting on a mirror, three and a half white lines and some spilled flecks. You pass an alligator skin purse sitting by a stool, lacy lingerie carelessly crammed in. An entire wall is made up of floor to ceiling windows, you can see the storm clouds billowing across the rain-shrouded skyline. Drowning the whole world in fog, rooftops and office blocks breaking through the soupy skin like stone karsts rising from the ocean. In the distance a massive building rises higher than all the others: monolithic black blocks pressed together, soaring up into the black sky. The stars shining down, brighter now.
The footsteps are a little louder now. You hear soft knocking against the wall of another room. Someone's voice rising up above you in loud, desperate tones. A door on the other side of the room slowly swings open. Tap your blade to the carpet, your half-belted robe hanging open as you pace towards it. Stalk towards it. As you step over the threshold and a warm body slams into yours.
His face is soft and round, flushed with booze. He claps your shoulder and shouts something in a language you don't understand before staggering off. Chasing after a pack of departing men in matching suits, their ties loosened and their collars undone. The restaurant is packed, wall to wall with dinner parties. Men having to half-shout just to be heard over the sea of noise. People pressed in so close that some are all but spilling off their seats, everyone eating shoulder to shoulder. Elbow to elbow. Neon kanji shining on the walls beside plastic-framed pictures as harried waiters dash from table to table. You smell sizzling meat. You smell vomit. You smell booze. Someone else slams into you and you spin around, sword flashing up into a clumsy guard.
The room is empty. Fog streams past the front windows. The force of their passage rattling the glass even as the street floods, black waters pockmarked by the rain. Reflecting the rainbow gleam of the stars above, their colors captured in the black. Are you breathing hard? Are you shaking? There's a thump.
Dust trickles down one of the wood-paneled walls.
A door swings open in the corner of the room, an emergency exit and water starts spilling in. Soaking the carpet, plastering it to the concrete beneath. The light of the sign you can't read staining it a bloody red. The hem of your robes clings to your calves as you splash through it. As you walk into the windowless white room.
The walls are naked plaster. The floor is coated in dust. Drop-cloths hang over still statues and scattered benches, weighed down by the white powder that falls from the ceiling. Flakes floating, fluttering through the still, dead air. Collecting on your shoulders like fresh snow. Clinging to your shivering body. You leave sopping, clotted footprints as you walk on. There's a hole on the far side, can you see it? The pale flesh of the room ripped up, torn back. A rough, ragged wound, exposing the wooden hollow within the wall. The spars and studs and puffy pink insulation. The naked bones of the building.
He stands there in front of you. Back to you. Stripped to the skin and quiet.
"...Sebastian?" You say, softly.
He turns, slowly, oh so slowly.
Plaster is caked in his pelt. Plaster hardens across his belly, between his legs. Plaster drips down his lipless mouth. Congealing, hardening into the cast. Can you hear the creak? The pop of dry, dusty limbs. Bone white hands are reaching out from the hole. Long limbs with too many joints, shedding more flakes as they bend and crack. Fingers tenderly, lovingly, settling on his shoulders. On his hips. On his legs. His arms. His throat. Long limbs curling around him, drawing him back step by step as the mask cracks and you can see the grey-white mess that coats his tongue. Dripping in thick strands from his lips. As you see the hole start to close, irising down, the wooden slats clattering as they rattle into place. Framing him. Embracing him. Welcoming him home.
"Help me," he says.
Can you see them? Can you see all their faces, drawn so tight against the skull. Sealed in the milky grey. Their bodies pushing against the surface tension, pressing out against the flesh of the walls. Long arms reaching out for you.
welcome home
levi
You wake up in a thrashing tangle of limbs and distressed, spitting snakes. Shouting, squirming, reaching for your fucking sword. Heart hammering away in your throat. Scrabbling, scrambling when you fingers close around nothing. Blindly lashing out out as heavy arms encircle you and pin your arms across your torso.
"E-Easy! Easy! It was a dream, it was just," one of your serpents bonks its head against something solid, "ow. A dream. You're here now okay? You're here."
His voice is a nightmare, wet and rending and it has all the loveliness of a knife racking against ribs. But you know it. You stop struggling.
You're soaked to the skin in sweat. Hair against your scalp, your bathrobe glued against your body. You blink the stinging salt from your eyes and stare up at the eyeless face looking down at you in concern. Force yourself to relax. Force your hands to unclench, release his biceps. Peeling the claws back, one by one. Dark blood welling up from the deeper indentions after a second, staining his ashen pelt.
"I-"
It's as much as you get out before you're crushed against his densely muscled chest. All but buried beneath his bulk. You resist for a second on general principle but your snakes are already way ahead of you. They were looping around him, clinging to him, the second he grabbed you. The filthy little traitors.
A second passes. The panic fades.
You gingerly wrap your arms around him too, sliding your hands beneath his robe. Pressing your palms to the bare shoulder blades.
"(I'm sorry)," it's all you can say. He hugs you tighter, pressing your head into his chest with one broad hand, and you just... stay like that for a few long, long minutes. Where you pretend you aren't sniffling and he pretends he can't feel the hot, furious, shameful tears dripping down. Or the snot. Eventually you tap his back, tap out, and he loosens his grip. Letting you go.
"(Fucking idiot, could've hurt you)," you mumble. You can't quite look at him, even after, even now. He cuffs you over the head by way of reply and you flinch in mock agony, hand flying to your horns.
"Your clothes are in the dryer. I texted the Winter Court for you when you didn't wake up in time for your check in. They're not angry but they're sending someone around to pick you up and walk you back."
Sigh. Growl something inarticulate under your breath. S'fine. Your fault anyway, shouldn't have dozed off. You thank him and leave to go clean up and get dressed. Don't need to further impress your fucking handler by flashing them the second they walk through the door.
You sit with Sebastian on the couch while you wait. One heavy arm draped over your shoulders, long curved claws resting on your arm. Your shapeless borrowed sweats hang off of you, the back of your shirt hiked up where the snakes have slithered out. They've done their best to wrap themselves around the older Lost and don't seem to plan on letting him go.
There's a knock on the door and Clarion-Roar looks to you, his Mask tentatively smiling, the shyness, the self-conscious hope, making him look almost as young as he does in that photograph on the wall.
"Will I see you tomorrow?"
Press your knuckles to his sternum, rumpling his shirt a bit. Grab a handful and tug him (or, well, he's a hell of a lot heavier so it's more like "pull until he gives in") into a kiss.
" "Course. Dumbass."
Your escort is the Crow from the lobby, the weird half-flayed fucker who was standing by the stairs the night you arrived. He doesn't really say anything when Sebastian finally opens the door, politely stepping aside to let him in. He just runs an eye over you, an eye over your companion, and you see it click in his head. But if he judges you, hell if he even cares you can't tell. In the end the two of you walk in silence, down the bare cement steps of the apartment building. Out of the lobby and into the misty evening.
You last maybe ten steps past that before the hush scrapes just a little too hard on already brittle nerves and you need to say something. Have to say something.
"So-"
[ ] Ask him why his Mien is so goddamn weird. Even for a Changeling it's weird.
[ ] Ask him what an Autumn(?) courtier is doing crashing on Winter's couch.
[ ] Ask him why he has nothing better to do than babysit your sorry ass.
[ ] Ask him why he hasn't moved out of this shithold of a city like everyone else.
[ ] Ask him what he thinks of you. Not that you care. At all. You're just curious.
Adhoc vote count started by TenfoldShields on Feb 5, 2018 at 5:28 PM, finished with 57 posts and 20 votes.
[X] Ask him why his Mein is so goddamn weird. Even for a Changeling its weird.
[X] Flip your phone open, it's a cheap thing and you kinda hate it but the keyboard lights up and the screen seems to work. The Winter Court saved all the numbers you'd need on it. Dial one. Call someone for help.
[X] Go bother the guy in the shower. You're bored and you want to talk, and it's not like either of you have any reason to be super shy at this point. Besides, you did tell him not to.
[x] Check out some of the framed pictures he's got around. You've been meaning to give them more than a glance but you somehow never got around to it the last three visits.
[X] A light is shining under the door at the end of the hall, you can hear people talking, people laughing, the clink of glasses and the sound of...music? Walk past the silent, half-cracked doors. Go to the party.
Trail your finger against a mirror, the surface cracking at your touch. Shards of solid mercury breaking, peeling up like scabs over an open wound, an icy caul over churning black water. The hilt of the sword slides into your palm as you draw the sleek, silvery thing free with one smooth motion. Another Levi standing as the mirror reseals, watching your back with acid green eyes. Do you still remember how to use this?
i love you they say when they're on you, in you and you love them too
even if it's only for a second if it's only then
it lets you forget what you are
lets you forget your insides are all broken glass
Levi honey these are the kinds of things you bring up with your birb therapist. And also yeesh. I guess we uh... got a little extra hint behind the seacucumbus Mein. But then like, it refers to them which isn't just his one singular Keeper and there's the stuff I mentioned much earlier with everyone else that came across the Hedge with Levi having aesthetically similar and almost uniform Meins and pretty heavily implicitly being some kind of retinue and he was instinctively taking charge and got really venomously angry when his authority was usurped so I strongly doubt Levi was just LOL SEX SLAVE
The door at the end of the hall stands closed. Light spills under the frame around the edges, warm and gold. Sweet and solid and you feel your body shiver where it caresses you, where it kisses. There's a party roaring along just on the other side, you can hear it so clearly. The babble of a dozen different voices, music weaving through the conversations. It's loud, jazzy and fun. Glasses clink, someone laughs. This place it- it was waiting for you. It was always waiting for you. It was always here. Touch the knob and the door swings open.
Step into the silence.
The penthouse is empty. Hooded bulbs glaring down on a desolate bar, glasses of melting ice and mixed drinks sitting on counter tops and cocktail tables. A suit jacket draped over a low-slung leather couch. There's lots of wood and cow-skin and dark, earthy tones; a cream shag rug. All very handsome and...dated. Not by much, oh no, nothing here's an antique. But it has that 80's chic feel: like if a room could have sharp shoulder-pads and big hair. You pass a razorblade sitting on a mirror, three and a half white lines and some spilled flecks. You pass an alligator skin purse sitting by a stool, lacy lingerie carelessly crammed in. An entire wall is made up of floor to ceiling windows, you can see the storm clouds billowing across the rain-shrouded skyline. Drowning the whole world in fog, rooftops and office blocks breaking through the soupy skin like stone karsts rising from the ocean. In the distance a massive building rises higher than all the others: monolithic black blocks pressed together, soaring up into the black sky. The stars shining down, brighter now.
The footsteps are a little louder now. You hear soft knocking against the wall of another room. Someone's voice rising up above you in loud, desperate tones. A door on the other side of the room slowly swings open. Tap your blade to the carpet, your half-belted robe hanging open as you pace towards it. Stalk towards it. As you step over the threshold and a warm body slams into yours.
His face is soft and round, flushed with booze. He claps your shoulder and shouts something in a language you don't understand before staggering off. Chasing after a pack of departing men in matching suits, their ties loosened and their collars undone. The restaurant is packed, wall to wall with dinner parties. Men having to half-shout just to be heard over the sea of noise. People pressed in so close that some are all but spilling off their seats, everyone eating shoulder to shoulder. Elbow to elbow. Neon kanji shining on the walls beside plastic-framed pictures as harried waiters dash from table to table. You smell sizzling meat. You smell vomit. You smell booze. Someone else slams into you and you spin around, sword flashing up into a clumsy guard.
The room is empty. Fog streams past the front windows. The force of their passage rattling the glass even as the street floods, black waters pockmarked by the rain. Reflecting the rainbow gleam of the stars above, their colors captured in the black. Are you breathing hard? Are you shaking? There's a thump.
Are these memories? Like based on the invisitext I was certain that Levi would start dreaming of his lost memories of Arcadia and they'd involve sexy sex-and-cocaine parties fit to wind up in Caligula but these sure as shit don't sound like Arcadian memories. But then what are they? Memories of the people that used to live here? Captured in the building itself?
There's a hole on the far side, can you see it? The pale flesh of the room ripped up, torn back. A rough, ragged wound, exposing the wooden hollow within the wall. The spars and studs and puffy pink insulation. The naked bones of the building.
He stands there in front of you. Back to you. Stripped to the skin and quiet.
"...Sebastian?" You say, softly.
He turns, slowly, oh so slowly.
Plaster is caked in his pelt. Plaster hardens across his belly, between his legs. Plaster drips down his lipless mouth. Congealing, hardening into the cast. Can you hear the creak? The pop of dry, dusty limbs. Bone white hands are reaching out from the hole. Long limbs with too many joints, shedding more flakes as they bend and crack. Fingers tenderly, lovingly, settling on his shoulders. On his hips. On his legs. His arms. His throat. Long limbs curling around him, drawing him back step by step as the mask cracks and you can see the grey-white mess that coats his tongue. Dripping in thick strands from his lips. As you see the hole start to close, irising down, the wooden slats clattering as they rattle into place. Framing him. Embracing him. Welcoming him home.
"Help me," he says.
Can you see them? Can you see all their faces, drawn so tight against the skull. Sealed in the milky grey. Their bodies pushing against the surface tension, pressing out against the flesh of the walls. Long arms reaching out for you.
You wake up in a thrashing tangle of limbs and distressed, spitting snakes. Shouting, squirming, reaching for your fucking sword. Heart hammering away in your throat. Scrabbling, scrambling when you fingers close around nothing. Blindly lashing out out as heavy arms encircle you and pin your arms across your torso.
"E-Easy! Easy! It was a dream, it was just," one of your serpents bonks its head against something solid, "ow. A dream. You're here now okay? You're here."
His voice is a nightmare, wet and rending and it has all the loveliness of a knife racking against ribs. But you know it. You stop struggling.
You're soaked to the skin sweat. Hair against your scalp, your bathrobe glued against your body. You blink the stinging salt from your eyes and stare up at the eyeless face looking down at you in concern. Force yourself to relax. Force your hands to unclench, release his biceps. Peeling the claws back, one by one. Dark blood welling up from the deeper indentions after a second, staining his ashen pelt.
"I-"
It's as much as you get out before you're crushed against his densely muscled chest. All but buried beneath his bulk. You resist for a second on general principle but your snakes are already way ahead of you. They were looping around him, clinging to him, the second he grabbed you. The filthy little traitors.
A second passes. The panic fades.
You gingerly wrap your arms around him too, sliding your hands beneath his robe. Pressing your palms to the bare shoulder blades.
"(I'm sorry)," it's all you can say. He hugs you tighter, pressing your head into his chest with one broad hand, and you just... stay like that for a few long, long minutes. Where you pretend you aren't sniffling and he pretends he can't feel the hot, furious, shameful tears dripping down. Or the snot. Eventually you tap his back, tap out, and he loosens his grip. Letting you go.
"(Fucking idiot, could've hurt you)," you mumble. You can't quite look at him, even after, even now. He cuffs you over the head by way of reply and you flinch in mock agony, hand flying to your horns.
[...]
You sit with Sebastian on the couch while you wait. One heavy arm draped over your shoulders, long curved claws resting on your arm. Your shapeless borrowed sweats hang off of you, the back of your shirt hiked up where the snakes have slithered out. They've done their best to wrap themselves around the older Lost and don't seem to plan on letting him go.
There's a knock on the door and Clarion-Roar looks to you, his Mask tentatively smiling, the shyness, the self-conscious hope, making him look almost as young as he does in that photograph on the wall.
"Will I see you tomorrow?"
Press your knuckles to his sternum, rumpling his shirt a bit. Grab a handful and tug him (or, well, he's a hell of a lot heavier so it's more like "pull until he gives in") into a kiss.
Your escort is the Crow from the lobby, the weird half-flayed fucker who was standing by the stairs the night you arrived. He doesn't really say anything when Sebastian finally opens the door, politely stepping aside to let him in. He just runs an eye over you, an eye over your companion, and you see it click in his head. But if he judges you, hell if he even cares you can't tell. In the end the two of you walk in silence, down the bare cement steps of the apartment building. Out of the lobby and into the misty evening night.
You last maybe ten steps past that before the hush scrapes just a little too hard on already brittle nerves and you need to say something. Have to say something.
"I think Sebastian is living in Steve Buscemi's Monster House."
But seriously though hopefully Levi manages to get his ass into gear and figure out that wasn't just a dream very soon because I do not want this goodboy to be vored by an apartment. In any case we've got other things to worry about right now.
[X] Ask him why his Mein is so goddamn weird. Even for a Changeling its weird.
The two of you stand on the sidewalk outside Sebastian's apartment complex, the blocky brick of a building standing stark against the darkening sky. Shadows cluster in the hollows and sunken portions of the structure, a few scattered windows glowing through the thickening mist. A smudged silhouette moves behind drawn curtains. The air out here is clammy, the last of the humidity matched with the dropping temperature. Still water pools around your untied shoes; your laces floating on the surface, sodden and limp. The cold bleeds through mesh and fabric and foam to soak your feet. All up and down the sidewalk the street lights flicker on. Bulbs buzzing, one struggling before it bursts with a soft blue pulse that leaves an imprint on your retinas.
Why are you like this?
The Crow stands a few feet ahead, a cigarette dangling from his lips. One hand half cupped around the end, a metal lighter in the other. Just kind of staring at you blankly as the flame wavers an inch away from the tip.
"...Eh?"
Oh this is worse. This is so much worse than the silence this is- no. No you're just going to take it. Own it. You're just going to ride this conversation down to the goddamn ground, Strangelove style. Hands in your pockets, head cocked and jaw lifted up like you're looking down on him just a little. There's a hard edge to your smile, challenging and almost contemptuous.
"You heard me."
He blinks.
In your defense he does look really weird. In Arcadia form is… function. What you are is what you do. Your body molded like clay, by narrative convention and dream logic, until you fit the part and the part fits you. For some it's clear: look at the long, razor-edged limbs sprouting from the back of those chitin-masked Wizened who came with you, watch as they practice cutting runes into cow bone in a hotel conference room. Look at the crocodilian Ogres, the heavy pincers bracing their backs and their limbs rippling with muscle. Look at the collared Beasts, bodies wrapped in living armor that flexes and folds. Everyone there is some flavor of fighter, some sort of soldier. You? It's obvious what you are, what you're for.
Him?
Shit where to start? His face is human, sure there's a few coal colored feathers mixed in with his mussed up, shaggy hair. Sure his sclera are a toxic, jaundiced yellow and his irises are either jet black or don't exist. And sure he's got the lean, unhealthy look of someone who shed too much weight way too fast. But it's basically all there: nose, ears, mouth, everything about where it should be. He finally touches the flame to his cigarette and takes a bemused drag.
"Man I think you're the first person to ever ask me like that. Mostly people just stare."
He wears a battered jacket unzipped over a bare chest. Fur that looks like it came fresh from an oil slick on the inside, deep pockets on the outside. Belt and tattered jeans; his Mask has shoes but he doesn't. And beneath it all you can just see...him. The naked mechanics of his body.
He has no skin. It's all red, flayed muscle; the inner workings all on display. You can see the glassy tendons, the glossy ligaments. The slow stretching, rising and falling of his ribs as he breathes. His bones are black, like obsidian and onyx; the connective tissue glistens like fresh, wet ink. His hands are crooked talons, feathers spill over his shoulders and run beneath the coat. There's metal embedded in him, implanted or grown into his body, sharp shards of an almost greasy grey seamlessly integrated into the underlying anatomy. A cluster framing his collarbone, more down his flanks. More you probably can't see.
"Dunno, my Keeper had some questionable aesthetics. What about you? Why do you look so fucking weird?"
You bristle, snakes curling protectively around your shoulders, a softly hissing halo of scaled snouts and hypodermic fangs. With a shrug he turns, beckoning you on; feet splashing in puddles, the skeletal spars that feed into his taloned toes standing out like struts. Already starting to vanish in the milky fog. You follow a second later, silvery smoke drifting over his shoulder as the two of you walk. A shiver works its way up your spine as the last traces of the sun slip below the horizon. You huff a bit as you hunch down, doing your best to hide within your shapeless clothing, grimacing as the coarse material rubs against your sensitive skin. Funny huh? It's terrible and you are just not wearing enough of it. Probe the coil of clauses etched in your (Brain? Soul? Body?) self looking for something to fix this and find nothing. There's a slow sinking in your stomach as you realise keeping warm in all weather probably keyed to an entirely different aspect of Summer. Grit your teeth and do your best to keep the pace. The last lingering adrenaline from your nightmare won't do much to make you comfortable but it'll keep you from slowing down.
"So do you drip blood everywhere or what?" You call out.
"Nah it's pretty dry to the touch," he replies and his voice is...different. You were expecting something rougher, something raw, something guttural and soft but it's bright and kinda cheerful instead. Light and a little lyrical, like there's a beat you can't quite hear but he's following along just fine. If he's bothered by the line of questioning he doesn't show it and you can't pick it out. Normally you're pretty good at that. You try again, another half-hearted barb.
"What's it all even for?"
"No idea! But I'm a singer. Pretty good one actually. Play some guitar too."
"Yeah well (s'pretty sad)," is that really the best you can do? If you focus you could probably find a nerve. You know how to do it, how to peel someone apart like you did on the beach. Finding the soft parts, the tender parts, the parts that hurt. You let yourself forget about it while you were with Clarion-Roar, let it fade into the background static, but it's there. It's always there if you want it. All you have to do is reach out and take it. You're venomous, you're a killer, you're-
Cold. You're cold and miserable and the dream clings to you like a film of grease and you just want to be inside. Want to take a hot shower and get a cup of coffee and just sit on something soft for awhile. Lengthen your stride, catch up until you're parallel to him. Your tail sweeps back and forth behind you; your serpents hang a little limp around your legs, lazy and sluggish in the chill. The Crow side-eyes you, the tip of his cigarette glowing like an ember in the gathering gloom. Metropole rises up on either side, this echo of the interwar shrouded in mist. Frozen, trapped in time just before the fall, just before the crash. Holiday wreaths and red and green decor posted in windows, warm and dry behind the glass. Curves and scallop shells and a sleek, almost automotive aesthetic, mixed in with green spaces and parks. It all does nothing to keep out the wind, contain the damp. You find yourself drumming your fingers against your thigh, you're only a mile or two out from the hotel. Most of the roads curve that way anyway.
"So you got back up in the saddle pretty fast huh?" The Crow says after a while.
"What?" You don't- oh. Oh. You give him a dirty look and he holds up his palms in mock defense.
"Nah nah I'm not judging. God knows it's nice to know you're still wanted when you get back. I've talked to the guy a few times before actually, seems nice enough. Glad someone's checking in on him. Holidays can get pretty grim when you're by yourself."
"(Not any of your fucking business)." There's no real heat to it. It's not like you care who knows what you're doing. And you're pretty sure if someone suggested you be ashamed you'd hit them in the gut on pure reflex. He just laughs, harsh and raucous edging up into something like a caw before it trails off.
"They're letting you get some air, doesn't mean you've got the run of the place. You'd be surprised how many Changelings get a bit of slack and then try to hang themselves with it."
"S'pretty… morbid."
"Not wrong though!"
"Why'd they even send you?"
"I was in the lobby not doing shit."
"I can walk back by myself."
"That so huh?"
The road stretches ahead, a boulevard of black asphalt curving away into the East, dripping wet holiday decorations hanging from metal light poles. The cased lamps surrounded by clouds of fluttering moths. A few hundred feet down the buildings and storefronts and deserted parking lots just end and it's open parkland. Rolling green and stands of trees barely visible through the veil. Empty space on all sides. Stretching on and on.
"...(Mean I don't want to)."
"C'mon just a bit of dark man. Nothing to worry about. Most anything in this city that can get you in the dark can get you in the day too. I mean not the ticks which is, like, the one blessing. They mostly keep out of here though. Last big push was...six months back?" He plucks the cigarette from his lips, exhaling streamers of blue-grey as he points at a fountain sitting in the center of a carefully tended garden. It's set a bit back from the street, nestled at a junction of footpaths atop a hill, walking trails stretching away the mist. Blue and purple flowers bloom all around the base. Scalloped waves frame a stone giant, a nude powerfully built man reclining, surrounded by foaming jets. A curtain of water dripping behind him in imitation of the rain. He's framed in burnished snakes, flanked by lions and wolves; his features a mix of eagle beak and boar tusks and something reptilian, saurian, draconic.
"It's all just overflow. The young ones, the ones that get dumped here from Portland or Seattle or whatever on the midnight meat trucks? They end up at the bottom of the pecking order in the Ramparts so they start looking for someplace else. So once or twice a year we do the 'hey, I wonder why nobody's ever moved in by that fairy hotel' routine." He shrugs, "whichever ones live -'live' y'know?- we stake out on the rooftops or by the fountain for the sun. We push out warnings to the district before it gets that bad though."
You turn the thought over in your head.
"That's pretty grisly."
"That's the Bay," another long pull, "It's funny honestly. Typhon grew this place, from the little lumber town it used to be way back when. Our fingerprints are on its bones. Thirty years ago we didn't even have to share like this. Now look at us heh. But nah, things aren't so bad that you need to worry about being hurt around here, or even in Angler's Light or downtown when the sun's out, or even at the forest's edge. Just worry about figuring out what you want."
You're quiet for a few seconds, just listening to the squish of your sodden shoes. "What if I don't know what I want yet?"
"Yyyeaaah you do. Nobody told you to fuck the big guy and you did anyway~. Why was that?"
"It, uh, made me happy? Made him happy?"
"There ya go!"
"I mean maybe I'm lying, might've done it just to see if I could."
He shakes his head, corner of his mouth quirked up in a sly little smile. Ruby red sinews shift over his chest. You can see the muscle slackening, tensing as he shakes his head. "Bishop Lai's been doing this for awhile man. If you were the sort of person who goes out just to smash someone's heart for shits and giggles you'd still be cooling your heels in the hotel."
"Yeah but...shouldn't you be at least a little afraid?" You're close now, close to the hotel. Close enough to see the lobby through those high windows, black blisters glittering in the eaves. The parking lot is a nearly empty, glistening expanse of stone but well lit for all that. Time flies huh? When you aren't glued to the clock, feeling every single fucking second as it passes.
"Autumn Court. Fear's what we do."
"Heh...what's your name?"
"Nathaniel, Nathaniel Cook."
"I'm Levi."
He turns at the door, takes your hand in yours. Eyes bleary, smile half-sardonic as he pumps it once, cruel curved claws matched against your delicate nails. A hand like so much shredded meat in your soft palm. He was right though, it isn't bloody at all. Just dry to the touch.
"Nice to meet you Levi."
You take a shower with one of the knights standing just within the doorframe. He's a bit away, you've got some privacy now. They trust you at least a little bit. Enough that they don't think you're going to try and drown yourself in the locker-room. Enough that you can set your own schedule, at least a bit. Change into the bathrobe and boxer-briefs, loosely draw the belt across your belly. Feel the full body shudder as your snakes cuddle up beneath the warm fabric. Terrycloth bunching and bulging over their bodies.
Dinner's happening but you're not really hungry. Afterwards everyone has a few hours in one of the common-rooms and you're at least down for that. You'll -hrm- you'll meet back up with the main group them. For now you're going to…
[ ] Go to the library. The classes you've been getting have focused more on how to groom yourself, how to dress yourself, how to drive than any specific history of the Bay. You're curious. Even if you're not likely to figure out more than the general shape in an hour it's still a start.
[ ] Go to the gardens. Practice with your two main Contracts. Your first attempts at Reflections have been clumsy, the most bare bones utility and Communion's been even worse. You're not likely to make massive gains but it'll help take the edge off when you're practicing in class.
[ ] Go to the pool. Okay sure you just took a shower and it'd feel a little silly but swimming helps you in a way that's hard to describe. And there's an indoor heated pool just for Lost that doesn't even use chlorine. At the very worst you'll feel better, at best you might clear your head.
Adhoc vote count started by TenfoldShields on Mar 3, 2018 at 8:57 PM, finished with 69 posts and 21 votes.
[X] Go to the gardens. Practice with your two main Contracts. Your first attempts at Reflections have been clumsy, the most bare bones utility and Communion's been even worse. You're not likely to make massive gains but it'll help take the edge off when you're practicing in class.
[X] Go to the pool. Okay sure you just took a shower and it'd feel a little silly but swimming helps you in a way that's hard to describe. And there's an indoor heated pool just for Lost that doesn't even use chlorine. At the very worst you'll feel better, at best you might clear your head.
[X] Flip your phone open, it's a cheap thing and you kinda hate it but the keyboard lights up and the screen seems to work. The Winter Court saved all the numbers you'd need on it. Dial one. Call someone for help.
[x] Check out some of the framed pictures he's got around. You've been meaning to give them more than a glance but you somehow never got around to it the last three visits.
[X] A light is shining under the door at the end of the hall, you can hear people talking, people laughing, the clink of glasses and the sound of...music? Walk past the silent, half-cracked doors. Go to the party.
[X] Go to the library. The classes you've been getting have focused more one how to groom yourself, how to dress yourself, how to drive than any specific history of the Bay. You're curious. Even if you're not likely to figure out more than the general shape in an hour it's still a start.
[X] Go to the library. The classes you've been getting have focused more one how to groom yourself, how to dress yourself, how to drive than any specific history of the Bay. You're curious. Even if you're not likely to figure out more than the general shape in an hour it's still a start.
He has no skin. It's all red, flayed muscle; the inner workings all on display. You can see the glassy tendons, the glossy ligaments. The slow stretching, rising and falling of his ribs as he breathes. His bones are black, like obsidian and onyx; the connective tissue glistens like fresh, wet ink. His hands are crooked talons, feathers spill over his shoulders and run beneath the coat. There's metal embedded in him, implanted or grown into his body, sharp shards of an almost greasy grey seamlessly integrated into the underlying anatomy. A cluster framing his collarbone, more down his flanks. More you probably can't see.
"That's the Bay," another long pull, "It's funny honestly. Typhon grew this place, from the little lumber town it used to be way back when. Our fingerprints are on its bones. Thirty years ago we didn't even have to share like this. Now look at us heh. But nah, things aren't so bad that you need to worry about being hurt around here, or even in Angler's Light or downtown when the sun's out, or even at the forest's edge. Just worry about figuring out what you want."
You're quiet for a few seconds, just listening to the squish of your sodden shoes. "What if I don't know what I want yet?"
"Yyyeaaah you do. Nobody told you to fuck the big guy and you did anyway~. Why was that?"
Look, he sees right through us and seems genuinely genuinely nice to boot. Definitely a shipping threat!
[ ] Go to the gardens. Practice with your two main Contracts. Your first attempts at Reflections have been clumsy, the most bare bones utility and Communion's been even worse. You're not likely to make massive gains but it'll help take the edge off when you're practicing in class.
[ ] Go to the pool. Okay sure you just took a shower and it'd feel a little silly but swimming helps you in a way that's hard to describe. And there's an indoor heated pool just for Lost that doesn't even use chlorine. At the very worst you'll feel better, at best you might clear your head.
Not sure which of these two votes I prefer the most...
There's something about a conversation in the dark that makes it feel so different. Strange.
[X] Go to the pool. Okay sure you just took a shower and it'd feel a little silly but swimming helps you in a way that's hard to describe. And there's an indoor heated pool just for Lost that doesn't even use chlorine. At the very worst you'll feel better, at best you might clear your head.
[X] Go to the pool. Okay sure you just took a shower and it'd feel a little silly but swimming helps you in a way that's hard to describe. And there's an indoor heated pool just for Lost that doesn't even use chlorine. At the very worst you'll feel better, at best you might clear your head.
Oh this is worse. This is so much worse than the silence this is- no. No you're just going to take it. Own it. You're just going to ride this conversation down to the goddamn ground, Strangelove style.
Shit where to start? His face is human, sure there's a few coal colored feathers mixed in with his mussed up, shaggy hair. Sure his sclera are a toxic, jaundiced yellow and his irises are either jet black or don't exist. And sure he's got the lean, unhealthy look of someone who shed too much weight way too fast. But it's basically all there: nose, ears, mouth, everything about where it should be. He finally touches the flame to his cigarette and takes a bemused drag.
"Man I think you're the first person to ever ask me like that. Mostly people just stare."
He wears a battered jacket unzipped over a bare chest. Fur that looks like it came fresh from an oil slick on the inside, deep pockets on the outside. Belt and tattered jeans; his Mask has shoes but he doesn't. And beneath it all you can just see...him. The naked mechanics of his body.
He has no skin. It's all red, flayed muscle; the inner workings all on display. You can see the glassy tendons, the glossy ligaments. The slow stretching, rising and falling of his ribs as he breathes. His bones are black, like obsidian and onyx; the connective tissue glistens like fresh, wet ink. His hands are crooked talons, feathers spill over his shoulders and run beneath the coat. There's metal embedded in him, implanted or grown into his body, sharp shards of an almost greasy grey seamlessly integrated into the underlying anatomy. A cluster framing his collarbone, more down his flanks. More you probably can't see.
"So do you drip blood everywhere or what?" You call out.
"Nah it's pretty dry to the touch," he replies and his voice is...different. You were expecting something rougher, something raw, something guttural and soft but it's bright and kinda cheerful instead. Light and a little lyrical, like there's a beat you can't quite hear but he's following along just fine. If he's bothered by the line of questioning he doesn't show it and you can't pick it out. Normally you're pretty good at that. You try again, another half-hearted barb.
"What's it all even for?"
"No idea! But I'm a singer. Pretty good one actually. Play some guitar too."
"Yeah well (s'pretty sad)," is that really the best you can do? If you focus you could probably find a nerve. You know how to do it, how to peel someone apart like you did on the beach. Finding the soft parts, the tender parts, the parts that hurt. You let yourself forget about it while you were with Clarion-Roar, let it fade into the background static, but it's there. It's always there if you want it. All you have to do is reach out and take it. You're venomous, you're a killer, you're-
Cold. You're cold and miserable and the dream clings to you like a film of grease and you just want to be inside. Want to take a hot shower and get a cup of coffee and just sit on something soft for awhile.
Both amazing and an extreme mood. Poor Levi, you really just need a nice hot shower and a lie down to chase off that COMPLETELY UNRELATED DREAM of yours. And it's adorable how he's half-trying to needle Nate and crowboy is just like "lol nah".
"So you got back up in the saddle pretty fast huh?" The Crow says after a while.
"They're letting you get some air, doesn't mean you've got the run of the place. You'd be surprised how many Changelings get a bit of slack and then try to hang themselves with it."
The road stretches ahead, a boulevard of black asphalt curving away into the East, dripping wet holiday decorations hanging from metal light poles. The cased lamps surrounded by clouds of fluttering moths. A few hundred feet down the buildings and storefronts and deserted parking lots just end and it's open parkland. Rolling green and stands of trees barely visible through the veil. Empty space on all sides. Stretching on and on.
I bet the Court is really butthurt that their efforts to rehabilitate new Lost back into some semblance of society are constantly threatened by the fact that Sparker's is creepy as fuck.
Blue and purple flowers bloom all around the base. Scalloped waves frame a stone giant, a nude powerfully built man reclining, surrounded by foaming jets. A curtain of water dripping behind him in imitation of the rain. He's framed in burnished snakes, flanked by lions and wolves; his features a mix of eagle beak and boar tusks and something reptilian, saurian, draconic.
"It's all just overflow. The young ones, the ones that get dumped here from Portland or Seattle or whatever on the midnight meat trucks? They end up at the bottom of the pecking order in the Ramparts so they start looking for someplace else. So once or twice a year we do the 'hey, I wonder why nobody's ever moved in by that fairy hotel' routine." He shrugs, "whichever ones live -'live' y'know?- we stake out on the rooftops or by the fountain for the sun. We push out warnings to the district before it gets that bad though."
"When vampires get uppity we hammer nails into their dicks and leave them to burn to death by this fountain. It's pretty rad."
(Wait can vampires be killed by just shooting them in the face a bunch or was that another edition I'm confused now.)
He shakes his head, corner of his mouth quirked up in a sly little smile. Ruby red sinews shift over his chest. You can see the muscle slackening, tensing as he shakes his head. "Bishop Lai's been doing this for awhile man. If you were the sort of person who goes out just to smash someone's heart for shits and giggles you'd still be cooling your heels in the hotel."
"Yeah but...shouldn't you be at least a little afraid?" You're close now, close to the hotel. Close enough to see the lobby through those high windows, black blisters glittering in the eaves. The parking lot is a nearly empty, glistening expanse of stone but well lit for all that. Time flies huh? When you aren't glued to the clock, feeling every single fucking second as it passes.
He turns at the door, takes your hand in yours. Eyes bleary, smile half-sardonic as he pumps it once, cruel curved claws matched against your delicate nails. A hand like so much shredded meat in your soft palm. He was right though, it isn't bloody at all. Just dry to the touch.
Welp, least we got someone to smash once the walls eat Sebastian.
Change into the bathrobe and boxer-briefs, loosely draw the belt across your belly. Feel the full body shudder as your snakes cuddle up beneath the warm fabric. Terrycloth bunching and bulging over their bodies.
Anyway hmmmmm what to do what to do. None of the options allow broader socialisation which is unfortunate but seems very much deliberate. Levi's not looking to make more friends, he just wants to chillax. In thaaat caaaaase.
[X] Go to the gardens. Practice with your two main Contracts. Your first attempts at Reflections have been clumsy, the most bare bones utility and Communion's been even worse. You're not likely to make massive gains but it'll help take the edge off when you're practicing in class.
[X] Go to the gardens. Practice with your two main Contracts. Your first attempts at Reflections have been clumsy, the most bare bones utility and Communion's been even worse. You're not likely to make massive gains but it'll help take the edge off when you're practicing in class.
[X] Go to the gardens. Practice with your two main Contracts. Your first attempts at Reflections have been clumsy, the most bare bones utility and Communion's been even worse. You're not likely to make massive gains but it'll help take the edge off when you're practicing in class.
