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owner of moribund's
walker and ears of knockturn alley
'the spider'




Flaked skin and dead dreams were all brushed under the bristled strands of the caged spider's broom. Her thinly gloves hands repelled the woods wishing to splinter into her skin as she mechanically moved, cleaning the floors to only the finest inch of being acceptable. Dust still coated much of the shelves and stools that were not often occupied and cobwebs for more than just an arachnid's food curtained over the ceiling in the corners. However if no one complained, that it was not in need of attention. As look as they drank the poisons she handed them and continued to ask for more, these few motions of cleaning were enough.
The whispers would still roll in and lines would spin on, but not without the kindness of a customer.
As the bony, crooked woman returned the broom to its bleached corner behind her bar, she began to reach for the plates that had just been cleaned by dirty hands. Rag in hand, water running, she continued these chores. Mind everywhere but in this mundane, it was present in the center of her own web. Motionless and sensitive fore the ringing of her lines.
And now one was ringing.

Her caged eyes lifted with a jerk of her head. Long-nailed hand went loose to the plate it held, the porcelain object having a short distance to fall and only chipping at the contact with the hard wood of the bar. There were wings fluttering close, and they were not those of her ravens.
"Tshk tshk," she hissed, no wand or hand rising in motion except her voice, and from outside the bar, a cry burst. Animalistic and feral, cries of pain rather than death, to Chord's pleasure. Screams of pain were living, desperate and they were sweeter in their length.
Storming out of the backdoor of her establishment - leaving the few patrons gazing after her underneath their shadows - she flew into the back alley. There a swirl of dark oppressing beige swelled in the sky. Feathers and clawing and clipping moistened the air and she momentarily watched as three of her ravens bit into a barn owl which was already pinned against the ground. Her call of arms to her birds had been no magic, at least not that of wands and charms.
With another click of her tongue the birds flew off, scraps of flesh painting their beaks. Chord's bony, callused hands scooped up the remnant of the still-living bird. Eyeing it from behind her prison and surprised by what she saw. This owl was not only a surprise snack for her pets, but a small piece to her puzzle. She grinned crookedly, dark lights playing in her eyes as she rushed back into the tavern and up the stairs to the rented rooms.

Bursting into the smallest one, its door banging against the wall of the hall, she whispered in dark tones to the boy that occupied the bed, "It seems you have a letter, darling Mongoose." her blistered tongue purred as she ripped the blood-stained letter from the struggling owl, throwing it to him.
"I am sure you recognize the God of Messangers," she mocked, holding up the bleeding barn owl, "Incredible how its blood matches so well the locks of its master," she sneered, and reaching up to snap the owl's neck. Its struggle disgusting her, but word from the boy would stop her - if he wanted her to stop.
She wondered if there was still some tainted blood in that heart of his - red as the strands of the girl's hair.


Tay,
I am not sure how this message will find you, if id does at all. If it has found you that please feed Hermes and send him back - I am sure he has been searching for you for awhile. I wonder how long it took him.
Probably not as long as some of the owls that had been following me for the past three years.
I am not sure if I hope you are well, but I definitely hope you are alive.
Because I am.
signed, Phi.

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Essy ze Ninja

owner of moribund's
walker and ears of knockturn alley
'the spider'




As her long, wrapped fingers tightened around the throat and traced the spine of the bird, another line of her web rang. It was the chipped bell above the door, however, ringing for more than just her ears. Chord sneered, yellow teeth peering from under chapped lips in the vile emotion. "This is your messenger to kill, it would seem," she growled, dropping the suffering creature on the dusty end table near the Nott's bed before quickly turning on her heel and disappearing. Door closed behind her with an easy swing and her body gliding down the steps quickly.
As she reentered the open space of her establishment, her caged eyes quickly spied the source of the bell's call.
"Good evening, miss. Do you have an order?" she asked, smile behind forced away from the corners of her cheeks. The woman before her reeked of perfume and money and self-defined suffering. However the sweetness rising from her skin was that of blood. And by the very volumes of its waves, Chord knew who the woman before her was. How interesting it was that the woman had not appeared in the Spider's home earlier.
But perhaps she was not yet aware where exactly it was she found herself; perhaps she truly only seeking food and drink for the nerves she was poorly concealing for Chord's eyes.

Slip out the back before they know you were there

and at the worst you'll see nobody cares,

you don't want to be around when it all goes down...

Sleep had never been so golden, but it was a coin he’d never hold. Ridges had carved deep and gone bone dry, an ivory valley lost to stubble on his chin. Eyes flickered in the darkness, heavy brows in convex. The tattered curtain chambered him in, refracted the shadows to speckle apart where the sun leaked through in its dingy ray. He could almost touch the light that beamed in small slices through his world, the thick dust, ash, and smoke had done well to preserve it. Disarrayed fabric scattered about; socks, shoes, coat and robes, while he sat with dangling tie like a noose around his neck, white silk shirt parted, loose and open. Thick flesh marbled in muscles, and with it, the raised and serrated scars that came. The edges split from his diaphragm to his collar bone, another diced along the side of his gut like the sweep of lust.

To be true, he didn’t know how long he sat there, eyes in a daze and transfixed on the veil where the world outside waited in all turmoil and delight. No sound had penetrated him, not her footsteps, if they were truly there at all, not the wailing cries just outside, or her voice that rattled his bones. Fingers interlaced and propped up by knees, dirty, chipped fingernails picked, and picked, tore flesh from the wound and blood poured. But he was lost, to the chaos of time and the sands that poured and rained down upon him; drowned him in a desert with rocks boiling hot under his feet. And space and matter came unaligned, ripped at the fabric of time; it was a black hole sucking him in and drained him dry.

But that letter, before he’d seen it, instinct had bid him to uncoil and snatch it in the air before it fell limp to the dirt and dust, and yet all the same, it breathed life into him, painted color to his cheeks so that the reaper didn’t linger so closely. The words lurched from the page and the ink threatened him with poisonous intent. He burst to his feet, jaw rigid and tongue lashing—but she was gone.

A very familiar owl lay in her wake as it dropped with an evanescent thud. Another glance was stolen to the letter but Chord’s words intertwined; again and again, he had to read just to be bloody sure he understood. She was alive. But the owl… It choked. His fingerprint bled into the page, just as Hermes bled into the floor, and Tay ignored them both.

The sliver of scroll that Phinelia’s handwriting had burned cracked like dry flesh under his fist as he barreled after her. Loose tie, open shirt, barefoot and all; a guest, so it seemed. The foulest inhabitant that lurked here rarely peered from beyond the conclave of their cups, but he hadn’t expected a woman to be among them. The soft pat, pat of his feet sifted purposefully down the stairway to join their game of cat and mouse. But, what role did he play?

”She can see you quite fine, I assure you.” He knew this all too well.

Megan watched as a young man stepped downstairs, a sneer on her face as she regarded him. Of course there had to be a guy addressing her. Filthy gender, in her opinion. Every male she had ever met had betrayed her in one way or form, from her brother and father with her imprisonment in her own home, to the Drages and the spawn of the oldest. She despised the notion that any male could try and do to her what she experienced. However, the boy's appearance did do one thing. It answered a question she was curious about.

With the proprietor's sudden outburst at her, Megan chuckled, wondering what she truly saw with her. A poor woman, pampered when one bad thing happened in her life, or did she sense the underlying madness that continued to swirl in her mind? She was certain the latter had to be true, though it beggared the question as to what she would do with what she knew about the madwoman. Her remarks skittered harmlessly past Megan, as the redhead no longer truly cared what people thought of her. She was forging her own destiny, after all.

She handed the woman her requested fee, a small smile cocking her lips. She reached up and grasped a piece of her own hair, playing and tugging at it for a moment before she lifted her fork. Proper etiquette, after all, required that she thank her host. "Thank you for the meal and board. I assure you that the rest of your fee shall be paid in full." Her eyes traveled back to the male. Sudden curiosity sparked in her eyes, and she wondered just how dark his soul was to be here. A pity she couldn't stain her own son's soul as much. "You seem to be quite young. Graduated from Hogwarts recently? Tell me, what news from that hallowed establishment?" The sarcasm dripped from her voice heavily, and her eyebrow cocked, waiting for a reply.





I just want to watch the world burn, such pretty shapes the flames will be...

owner of moribund's
walker and ears of knockturn alley
'the spider'




Bones crushed under her grinding, yellowed teeth yet again. The ash of their dust the seasoning of her charcoaled tongue. "Will you be needing a new owl to send that new vial of blood, dearest boy?" she purred with slim grins rising to her features slowly, with every hissed word.
"Reviving is not a job for my raven-borne. Only killing, only distributing the feathers of plague." Her thin, veined hand stole the finished plate and glass, grasping the payment in the second motion and turning on her heel to the other counter behind her to wash them, The tight seams of her aged corset crying out as her breathes became deep and tempered, filling her stomach with the breath of acid rather than her lungs, as she heard the woman address William. Soon you will sing for these walls.
Her hands moved mechanically as they always did with this variety of labor, washing away the remaining particles of food and sorrow. Cleaning the tinted lipstick off her glass and sneering silently at its taste-less colour. Listening with rising intention the the exchange of Pheasant and Mongoose.
"Trying to find a light to step into when none shone on you, sweetest? Wishing and pleading and dripping with desire for the spotlight of attention, any attention? What a picture perfect killer you make, my beige bird." she murdered, not over her shoulder thought the words traveled like bullets to the woman.
"Wishing for some new feathers? But no skin bled and ripped will every be yours no matter how tightly it fits. Skin all you want, slip it on like a dress, but you will never make proud those feathers you wish you have sprout from your throat," she chortled, never turning.
Caged eyes beginning to spin.

You Harpy.

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Essy ze Ninja

Diamond_Wales

Slip out the back before they know you were there

and at the worst you'll see nobody cares,

you don't want to be around when it all goes down...

The chemical burn sizzled into the flesh of muscle, chipped away at the bone as his gold eyes feverishly fluttered left and right, transfixed eyes on the sights of women as far wretched as he. The duel of wits and prestige had hardly sought to keep his chained mind at bay, and he found himself writhing inside. Calm façade never cracked, though, and it was a tragedy really, if he ever stopped to think of it. But the blow of smoke sauntered whimsical and free, almost a mockery to what he’d ever once stood for. Hell, he didn’t even know what he stood for anymore. And how could he? ”Chord, enough,” his low voice whipped like a frigid breath slapping in the wind. ”Where the hell has she been, why haven’t you told me about this sooner…” He cut himself off right there, a sly glance cut towards this new woman, this winged harpy with steely talons, to gauge the idle threat that may have lingered there.

Over the years, his mind had made small connections, groping in the dark for strings to be tied together. At his side, clenched fist was still tightly bound around the letter Phinelia had just sent him. Ugh, the letter, why couldn’t it have come yesterday, tomorrow, any day but today? ”Chord, tell me, where will I find her? Where do I find the girl with blood hair?” He could have followed her owl, he supposed, but the mangled thing lay in a pile of blood at his doorway… It was probably dead, by now anyway. Other than it, and stalking Storm, he had no other means to go on to even try and find her—last he heard, her parents were murdered and then she just… disappeared.