chewisty's Literatures
In the lake behind the guild’s forested grounds, Näcken overbalanced. Hiraeth watched, offered a silent hand, and forced the ghost of a smile onto his face when Näcken dismissed him heartily, though the furrow between his friend’s brows did not go unnoticed.
When he fought his way to the top, drenched in the blood of victory, he believed it was worth it. It had to be worth it — his freedom, the chance to make his own name, the opportunity to become powerful. To be respected.
There are legends that speak of monsters.
They speak of shadows walking in the night, only given form in the absence of light. They tell tales of flesh stripped from bone, of skeletons picked bare beneath the full moon, and of the ones who disappear on the fateful nights, never to return. They warn of the many coated beast: he who walks in the skin of man, creature, and animal, but who is never precisely one thing.
Sometimes, he just wants to go back and forget about this whole world. He was happier in his little puddle of a home with only Kelby to talk to and his trusty lures wrapped like bracelets around his arms, shiny and pretty and good for catching fish. But there are some things that can’t be taken back and some things that can’t be forgotten, like the sunrise in Sor Solir or the deep, deep darkness of nothingness, dropping off into the blackest of pits.
Venice stands, finally meeting the eye of the one to decide their destiny. Their fate. Their place in the world. And their first thought, beyond any notions of honour or awe or even respect, is that the ruler of Elysium looks surprisingly frail and breakable. Were they a beast, Venice could cleave through them with one arc of their blade and watch them fall to the ground, blood as red as rose petals.
Lilin is standing in a halo of light, but something within him tells him not to venture into the darkness. His light, whatever it is, can easily be extinguished. When he looks down at the floor, he sees a reflection of himself, but it’s unrecognisable. All white, a spectral ghost of the beyond. Is this what it feels like to die? Is this what it feels like to say goodbye?
If they don’t think he has feelings to hurt, they’ll be more honest with him. If they don’t think he has a life outside of work, they’ll come to him when they need him, regardless of the hour. If they don’t see him as a person, then he’s part of a team.
Not that he doesn’t have Hickory. He’ll always have Hickory: in the beaded necklace around Arley’s neck, a matching bracelet looped around his friend’s wrist; in the letters he kept from childhood, each signed and runed with that familiar crest overlaying the guild’s insignia; in the little scars on his fingertips where they nicked their skin and traded blood under Arley’s shaky grasp of his aspect. Forever, he promised. Forever is what Arley will give him.
She tries not to think of her birth, immaculate conception of the earth and rot and bleeding wounds of nature. She tries not to think of what that could mean for her, whether it tethers her to this land or if she could perhaps leave someday. She tries not to even consider the fact that she might be alive and breathing through the lungs of one hundred slumbering trees.
They have something to do here and they can’t return to where they were without finishing it. It’s very irritating that Temora doesn’t pop up with a note or instructions as to precisely what needs to be done, but Jack is no idiot, and they’ll be able to figure it out if given ample time. Time that they do not have in this skeleton of a house.
Not a request, an order. One that Hiraeth rises to like any other, the compliant hero. Because if no one else does this work, then who will protect the young and the old? The vulnerable and the weak? If he isn’t vigilant day in and day out, something will slip through the cracks, and it only takes one mistake for everything to be lost.
He opens his eyes wide under the water and suddenly, he’s in the sea.
It’s their little grove — their corner of paradise, she calls it. She’s in the centre, hair billowing around her like smoke, and her palms are outstretched, awaiting his grasp.
“I’ve missed you, my love,” she says, and when he hears it, it sounds like a song.
They kind of are trying to quit, though. Not everything, but cigarettes on their own seem kind of pointless to keep up as a habit, even if they do like the scratchy tone it lends to their vocals. They go through this every year and all that happens is that they get grouchy as fuck for a few weeks before they buy their next pack.
Thousands of years ago, two souls intertwined: the scientist and the dreamer.
Astrean scholar and researcher Ozone abandoned his people, prepared to leave everything he knew behind in search of Unknown. He never could have predicted finding it in a dream, sleeping upon pillows of moth wings and the eyes of a thousand cats. He gave his dream a name — Starlit. And then he made his dream a reality.
When he looks up to meet her eyes, there’s something brewing in the depths of them, swirling and confusing. Emotion of some sort, but Gwyn was never taught to understand emotions beyond what was deemed necessary. He feels like he’s leaning in, swaying towards her, but his body is as still as a moonless night. There’s only the illusion of being drawn in, over and over.
When he thinks about that day, he thinks that maybe that’s when it all began. The rivalry on the track, the strange back and forth behind the scenes. Kachow cheating to get ahead and only sometimes succeeding, Russ always keeping him in check and pushing him to go faster every single time.
I want him to want me. At some point, one side has to give, and I fucking swear it won’t be me.
Mattias can’t say what he’s thinking. That he’s always been curious about Blue’s nature as a voidtouched, from the first time he saw that blood dripping down his arm like ink in the dingy bathroom of his shitty Neon apartment. That he saw Blue just the other day, shirtless and making almost surgical cuts across his eye markings with a razor blade. His blood bubbled up to the surface, sizzling with intention, as he fell into the rhythm of stitching them back shut.
Blue’s voice cuts into his internal monologue. “Don’t think about him.” It’s a command, clear and sharp. What goes unsaid: if you think about him, he’ll appear. Mattias isn’t clear headed enough to know that right now.
It’s fucking criminal the way Blue has Mattias wrapped around his finger. A few flyers left lying around their begrudgingly shared apartment — Blue is a subletter who just happens not to pay rent, Mattias’ thoughts clamour to clarify — and the holoscreen conveniently set to news channels covering the appearance of the lake outside of Sor Solir at all hours of the day.
She sits by the window, mug of wildflower tea in hand, and she wishes for dreams.