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 Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2016 10:48 pm
It started out as a dream about running through the woods, swift and exultant, yowling to someone near and dear. The forest floor was gnarled and knotted by roots that interwove into a complicated maze, but she was not limited to the forest floor. When she found resistance, she just climbed, and then they were leaping from bough to bow, an intricate dance, a conversation. She was home in body, in mind, in spirit, and there were no thoughts except to relish in the power of her independence, her self-agency.
But something, maybe a vine, or a hand, or the jaws of a beast, it grabbed one of her legs and dragged her down, out from the treetops, below the forest floor, down under the roots where there are animals screaming and the smell of iron and decay. Whatever held her pulled at her limbs, twisting and tearing and ripping her fur, even though she thrashed and screeched and bit and scratched--
She saw Adoelle, lifeless, rotting like in a timelapse, too fast to be real, her dress stained red and then brown and then black--
You did nothing.
Lily blinked and she was standing in the rain, her muscles aching in the chill of the air. In the normal world, the leaves were just beginning to turn, but here in Other Ashdown the mist in the air mixed with a healthy aroma of fresh-cut grass and flowers that might have been pleasant, if not for the dream preceding. She recognized the soreness in her body, like she'd pushed herself too hard at the gym, like she'd been caught trying to shift when it wasn't time. Was she trying to shift in her dreams now? She looked down at her hands, and claws sprouted shyly from her nail beds, as if they had to wait for permission. When she clenched her jaw, they receded, but in the back of her mind she still felt her raised hackles, the way her tense body would raise her tail.
She ignored the sensation and looked at her surroundings. Lily was close enough to Rider-Waite, if the roads here worked like they did in the real world, and her apartment was in theory only about half a mile away. Maybe if she found her dream apartment, she would just wake up and not be pestered by anything spooky or grabby that might interfere with her very important rest. On instinct, she looked to the street signs for direction, but everything was written in Wingdings. Lily couldn't even say she was surprised.
With a sigh, she picked a direction and began to walk, hands in her pockets. If all else failed, she could only sleep for so long.
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Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2016 10:40 pm
Thorne had not dreamed himself into Other Ashdown.
Rather, he had followed the soft lullaby sound of it.
The strangeness of his new hearing had not been lost on him. Over the past days, he had begun to hear it. A distant patter of cobblestone under a gentle assault. The sound of wind blowing when there was none. At first, Thorne had paid it little mind. But now he knew that what he was hearing was the ambient lullaby of Other Ashdown. A whispered invitation, growing louder and louder with every step until he was simply within it. Simply - there.
Now he used it when he had to make visits, had to check on Mare or Alg or any number of plant creatures he'd befriended during his time in Melany's care. Tonight he had been walking there to converse with the fetch herself on menial things - he knew she preferred the company. Her eyes told him she was lonely, even though she would never speak the words out loud.
Tonight, he decided to take her for a ride.
They flew in short bouts, from one rooftop to another, Mare gleeful against his chest. He had learned after a long time to simply look past the skeletal face, to eyes that remained the same no matter the separation of humanity. Close, Mare smelled strange - not of rot or decay, but rather the scent of a forest half caught between creation and decay.
Finally, they set down to walk, both of them simply in silence, comfortable with the rain around them. Thorne had raised his wings to create a false umbrella, and the beading droplets shifted and shimmered against the night-dark membrane, the interior glowing with remnant galaxies, a pool of stars and constellations.
Mare began to sing after awhile, her fawn-soft voice chasing the silence away with childhood rhymes and lullabies for children at night.
But Thorne drew to a halt when he saw another figure in the deluge, and Mare along with him. Her head tilted, curious, the scarf around her face concealing most of her apart from two doe-like eyes.
"Lily?" Thorne called, curiosity and concern warring together in his tone.
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Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2016 9:49 am
Lily might have heard a voice singing in the misty rain, or she might have been imagining things. She'd seen enough scary movies to know that it didn't merit investigation, that she shouldn't wander from the path, that if she focused on a safe space, then she would eventually find herself home, just like Gloom said. Instead, she focused on other things, the feeling of rain on her skin, the way it flattened her bangs against her horns and her forehead, the sturdy feeling of her boots on the ground. She hadn't been wearing them when she'd fallen asleep, she was pretty sure, but it just felt better to walk in them, more grounded and secure.
It was harder to ignore the figures further along the path, the bowed stretch of...some moving umbrella? Attached to one of their backs? Lily recognized the shape of wings from the shadows about the same time that she heard her name, and she froze, her brows furrowing as she tried to place the voice to a face.
"...Thorne?" Her mind reached for Boyfriendo, for Stitches, for Hey bro, spot me, I'm about to make bad decisions, but none of those words fit the starlit creature before her. She let her expression wash blank under the rivulets of rain, slouching her shoulders in an attempt to look casual. The last time she'd seen Thorne, it had been to the tune of breaking bones in the Court of the Sorrowful One, and he hadn't heard her voice, hadn't cared to stop whatever violence that other boy had earned. It hadn't been the Thorne she'd known, but then again, when it came down to it she hadn't known him very well.
At least this time he looked the part of predator.
"You, uhh, got a little..." Her voice trailed off as she motioned at smudging her cheeks, by far the least egregious of his changes. "Something bite you at the party?" It might have been easier to bring up the beating, the off-character behavior, but she wasn't about to out his violent escapades to whatever girl was on his arm. It wasn't her place to air his business like that, not when it looked like they were on some...weird...rain date thing.
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2016 9:50 pm
"The one and only, somehow," Thorne responded immediately, eyes flicking over Lily. His smile was splintered and regal. He wasn't sure how to act around the moonwalker, not when the last time he'd seen her... well, he wasn't sure when the last time he'd seen her was. He vaguely remembered passing her in the crowd at the ball, but he'd spent so much time with Chris or in the alcove that it was hard to say.
Mare whuffled softly at the woman, but did not seem (in a rare fit) to want to talk immediately, and only shuffled behind Thorne as the taller man moved forward, stepping closer to Lily with a slight frown creasing his brow. His wings snapped gently, rain droplets splattering down to the wet puddles at his feet.
"Surprisingly, no," Thorne murmured with a laugh, "But being forced into the servitude of the Court for three months has a similar effect, it seems." He paused, wondered, and added, "As a preemptive, I suppose I've got to ask if Corr - the man wearing my face for those three months, and the one that was at the ball..." He paused, tasted the sour tang of Corr's memory in him, his laughter and those jangling gold droplets, the rabbit mask always hiding the wolf smile beneath. "Did he do anything sinister that I should be apologizing for? I'm not sure what happened during my time with the Court. I'm not even sure what happened during most of the ball, apart from that I saw you there."
Mare snorted, indignantly, but kept her silence for now, arms crossed, watching them both with wide, doe eyes. She was waiting on an introduction.
"Oh," Thorne said, and turned to look at her, "This is Mare. She's harmless, really. Don't let her words scare you."
"My words are not meant to scare," Mare retorted, dourly.
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Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2016 7:15 pm
There was something...off-putting about Thorne, not in the wings or the horns or the girl he was with, but something less tangible, less easy to put a finger on. Lily's stare remained blank, but as he approached she dug her heels into the ground, her posture defensive.
"So you were part of the...doppleganger thing?" Lily asked carefully, her stare incredulous. "The others at the ball said that there were doubles running around...never really got to figuring out who was the double and who was the real thing." And on that point...how was she supposed to know if he was the real one now? She supposed that a copy probably wouldn't have brought up copies in the first place...but maybe that was just what the copy wanted her to think.
"I...I dunno..." She responded with a frown, shaking her head. "I mean, I saw you at the gym sometimes, but we really only talked that one time, I just figured you were doing you, y'know? And you were at the ball, beating the s**t out of that kid...was that something the court made you do?" Far be it from her to think it implausible that there were beings that could magically compel others, but it still left a bitter taste in her mouth, something like disappointment or apprehension.
Her eyes flickered over to Mare. "Well, when you put it that way, I'm quaking in my boots." She tried to smile, to make it a joke, but there was an uneasy strain to her voice and tension in the way she stood, like she was ready to bolt at any second.
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Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2016 8:00 pm
Thorne blinked at Lily and exhaled sharply, his breath clouding the air before him. He ran a hand against the side of his neck, the sharp contour of shadows and ink.
"I was stolen away and replaced by a fetch," he said, agreeing, eyes dipping to the other girl, "those were the creatures you saw in the ball. The ones with masks that wore our faces. They are meant as a trial for us. A test of will, I guess, if the Court's motives are anything to go by. Corr - my fetch - was the one who wore the rabbit mask." He cut his gaze, another sharp exhale pluming the air around him. He seemed restless at these words, as though they scratched at a part of him he did not like to remember, and his wings trembled and shifted, elegant as they were dangerous.
"That's good, at least," he said, looking back at her, "But I'm... that wasn't me. Who you saw was not me." It felt like a lie to say it out loud. Corr had been an ugly creature, cluttered with his own thoughts and emotions and feelings, rotting inside, like a bird that had never escaped its own egg. "The Court makes us do nothing, not really. It is the patrons. The nobles, that choose. Melany. Ezra."
Me, now.
He rumbled, and Mare hovered, but said only, "It is a pleasure to meet you, Lady Lily. I would rather hope to make a good impression first and foremost, without any boot quaking, particularly in this weather." She paused, guttered, and restarted again. "I do not see why you look so uneasy. As it has been made known, the Lord Alexander was not the one to commit such atrocities that you bore witness to, but rather that insufferable know-it-all Corr, who is now enjoying his peace where he deserves it, and has bothered my work for centuries - "
"Mare," Thorne said, exasperated, and she acquitted, looking peeved.
To Lily, he added wryly, "Like I said. She can get quite loud when she wants. It's an art I'm still learning just to understand everything she says on a particular day."
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Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 9:27 pm
Lily watched Thorne move, took note of his twitchings and agitations, and decided that wherever this conversation was going ultimately did more harm than good, and it wasn't her place to dredge up whatever he'd experienced at or before the ball. She let it drop, and with it her posture relaxed, forcing her body to a state of calm. She could trust Thorne. Thorne was original Team Boyfriendo, Thorne had her back if anything happened, he'd said so.
Or had that been the other-Thorne?
Lily let that train of thought drop, too.
"So the nobles were the people who ran the whole ball thing?" Lily asked, tilting her head. At the mention of Melany's name, she blinked slowly, parting her lips. "I didn't make a strong impression with any of the people who were large and in charge that night, so I'm still a little shaky on exactly what went down, or why it needed to go down that way." Most of the parties she'd been to had been equipped with shittier alcohol as well as far fewer stabbings, but then again, she hadn't been to many parties. Maybe she was just missing out.
"It's all good," she shrugged towards Mare, making a concentrated effort not to stare too much at what might have been under that scarf. "I get heebie-jeebies every time I'm here regardless, it's not really anyone's fault." She lifted a hand towards the sky to try and shield herself from the rain, glancing up with a puckered expression on her face. It had seemed so easy for Gloom to just...make it not rain...
And as she concentrated, some of the drizzle seemed to bend around her. "Huh," she muttered, and like that the spell was broken, rain dribbling down her forehead in tiny rivulets.
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Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2016 12:13 am
"To be completely honest, I'm still unsure," Thorne replied, sounding slightly put out by it. He recovered easily, however, his expression melding back to its calm mask. "They were certainly the ones instigating something, but I'd be hard pressed to say anything that happens on this side is not interconnected to every one of the factions in some way, shape, or form, or why else was the Enemy himself there?" Thorne shook his head, eyes dipping down and up again.
He wondered what he should say, do. They stood on awkward ground now, the strange missed step that they had to retrace to know where to go from here on out. Thorne had missed three months in Ashdown, and while it sounded as though Corr had not himself done anything like blow up a building or set a person on fire, Thorne still felt the anxiety of his actions in his mind. It coupled cruelly with his own nervousness on what he was, who he had become beneath Melany's searching hands. What did Lily see when she looked at him? What did anyone see?
"That is all for the better, I imagine, they are not the best crowd to make any impression with if you can avoid it," Thorne retorted, dryly, and sighed out, a soft sound. His eyes flicked to the sky above them, and back to the moonwalker in his space. "Unfortunately, none of them can throw a decent party, it seems. Perhaps now that I have some reign over a portion of that space, I can change that, if nothing else."
It was a weak tease, and Mare whuffled a bit at it, dropping a dour glance on him with a roll of her sunken eyes. She looked back at Lily, curiously, her arms gently swaying at her sides. She made the appropriate noises of appreciation when Lily concentrated and bent the world around her to her whim. Her laughter was gentle and pleased.
"You show very nice promise, Lady Lily," she said, "You should practice more. It is a far less showy way of doing things than the Lord Alexander's own practice of being lazy."
"Is that meant to be a critique of character?" Thorne retorted, mild.
Mare said, "I would never."
But it was very clear that she would.
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