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 Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 9:06 pm
Mirror-water spread wretchedly over his skin through their return. Every time he passed through the mirror, regardless of his companion, he disliked the travel method a little more. From whence it was invented or stolen or seized, he didn't know; he detested it for its dishonesty and its simple inefficiency. But he could teleport — he could do what most envied.
Kiuchi led them close enough to Faustite's mentioned church. Beyond the brick side of an eccentric boutique, they emerged, still under the cover of night, into an empty alleyway. Not even raccoons stirred the glitter and gristle of abandoned trash. Its wet shine lay undisturbed over floors and walls of dumpsters, which each waited for their morning relief. Faustite smelled garbage day on the air as a thick musk — one quite like his two-week impromptu trip to the Rift. He made no comment on it, however; he instead paced ahead his handful of exploratory steps before he turned and beckoned for Kiuchi to follow.
The trip was short — a two-minute walk with purpose, three at leisure. And with both of them sporting power beyond human wiles, they needn't fuss with the troubles of unlocking gates or chasing quietly across courtyards. Faustite took a silent lead to the rooftops first, where he chose adjoining skybridges over simple jumps, then followed the right-angled city planning toward the vast emptiness that was the church grounds. Thick terra-cotta tiles clacked underfoot when he leapt from them and landed on a grassy knoll below. Only a smattering of enormous, mature trees spread their boughs for Faustite and Kiuchi's secrecy. The rest of the journey would be made by foot where the groundskeeper could see them.
Water still sloshed uncomfortably in Faustite's back. He paid only seconds to its heed before giving Kiuchi another beckon and sprinted across the vast, plain expanse. Repeating headstones long buried under the weight of time thocked occasionally when he stepped on them, but largely his venture was muffled by grass and soft loam.
When he reached the gates to the church proper, when he ducked into one of its many stern and strong arches, Faustite rolled shoulders and back uncomfortably. "I need to get it out," he muttered to his companion. Without another word, he pressed his hands to the concrete walkway and lifted himself into a handstand. A gush of black water spilled out, catching his hands and his cuffs, staining the ground, and smelling of copper, salt, and moondust.
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Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 9:46 pm
Letting the other lead, not that he had a choice, Kiuchi followed a step or two behind the other. His pace was quick, but not running, as he made to keep pace with the other. As they moved he wrinkled his nose at the smell of trash, glad when they passed it, he continued on behind the other.
The walk was quick, as it should be given the abnormal speeds they could manage. It wasn't that they were superhero fast, though some senshi or knights might consider themselves superheros, but it certainly wasn't the speed a normal person could accomplish. The roof tops were easy to navigate for the senshi, his slippered feet allowing him to land with near silence, though it didn't offer his feet any cushion against the landings he made at the end of each jump. It was a price to pay, his slippers were thin and there was nothing he could do about it. He figured he was better than those with heels.
Landing on the grass was a bit jarring but he was glad to be walking on grass, and the occasional grave marker, as opposed to jumping from roof top to roof top where it did bother his feet a bit more.
Following behind the other, as the other continued to beckon him on - closer to the church and it's insides, he kept as close to the shadows as he could as they gave him a good amount of cover. Shivering as he moved, the wet and lack of clothing didn't help him a bit, the teen shook his head. He'd get home soon and take a hot shower. He'd be fine soon. For now though...for now he would deal with it, because he had to and because he could. Mind over matter - right? That was a thing, at least he heard it enough...and saw proof to it at times, or read about it.
Watching, in mild surprise, as the other put himself into a handstand he jumped back a bit to avoid the water which poured out from the others pipes. The smell was something he could do without, though it wasn't the worst thing he'd smelled. "Sorry about the water..." And he was sorry, why wouldn't he be? It had to have been uncomfortable for the other...a burden of the physical sort.
"You're better now?" He asked tilting his head and staring at the other.
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Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2018 6:09 pm
Faustite righted himself with a sigh. Thin bones broached by brass complained of the movement, groaning out their pains as he checked himself. A quick pace caused no shift and lurch in his back. "Fine," he said, offering Kiuchi a c**k of his head.
His pacing continued, however. Born of an innate restlessness, he paced with fingers fluttering open and shut against the opposing palms at his back. "I used to swim a lot. Back when I was human." The sea built his bones as surely as his lungs. It churned up its support, heady and sweet and serene and solitary, over the course of his benign childhood. It bade him conflict where none existed in house or harbor. "It was an interesting reminder.
"You have a strange world, Kiuchi. Blank, but volatile. Mute, but reactive." His hands slipped from their hold and flanked his sides. He raised them, each splayed, each opposite the other. "Don't be ashamed of it." It's more human than most generals I know. I wonder when it'll spit its treachery at you.
"Come on." A quick beckon was Kiuchi's only preface before Faustite walked into the church's sanctums. Between the pews he walked, heedless of any dust or grime or vermin collected into the elderly slats and splinters. The staircase, prefaced by a rounded arch of stone, loomed to the left of the podium. Faustite crossed the holy area and ascended the stone steps quickly, a hand braced on the brass rail, and awareness ever searching for the mirror senshi following him. Briefly he remembered the way Kiuchi's back arched and seized, the way he collapsed so comfortably under the thumb of stress. A natural follower.
He knew the belfry housed enough space for the pair, and enough privacy for their dallying. And while there were no easy outlets to the city proper, not without risking a great fall, his captaincy lent him an easy out. He climbed until he met the thick mustiness of storage unused, of wood soaked a dozen times over with the heavy rains of shifting seasons. Rot thickened the boards where they bounced underfoot. And in the center of it all, great bronze bells cast dozens of years ago sat unused. "We can stay here for a while."sleet tempest snape sorry, muse died for a week
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Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 11:54 pm
"Ohh...I suppose that's good...but also sad - that you can't really swim now." As he assumed the other had liked to swim, why else swim a lot? People didn't tend to do things which they didn't like to, unless they had to, and swimming was a voluntary thing...not something people had to do. "I never went to the beach..." So he really couldn't swim. He knew the basics, like most people, but that was about it. His mother, when he'd been a small child, hadn't had the time nor the money to take him to the beach which was over an hour away from here. After that, when she'd found herself a partner and they'd moved into a house, the problem hadn't been time or funds...but his mothers lack of care towards him...a bond destroyed by something unknown, at the time, to him. He was sure she would take her adopted daughter though, and create memories and pictures to capture them, his mother wasn't an unloving person...unless it came to him.
"You're still human...I mean partially - right? I don't know much about what's happened to you...nothing actually." But the other seemed human, mostly anyway, to him.
"I like it...there is something about it I like...especially about the mirrorscape. I can only describe it because I'm not sure what word to put towards it....but romantic maybe and also magical....it makes you not want to be loud and disrupt the silence...to tip toe around and just wonder and get lost in thought...and in general get lost." Even if it did at times scare him because it was unpredictable and it did turn on it's own, it had gone after it's own senshi. Mirrorspace, and mirrorscape, were many things and some of them he was sure he didn't know - that none of them knew.
Nodding his head, whether the other saw him do so or not didn't matter, as he moved to trail after the other. Long legs, and the longer stride, would have had him at the others side if not for him slowing his pace. So instead of at the others side he was a step or two behind him. Just within range of the other if the Captain wanted to reach out and grab him for some reason. Slender finger tips gently brushed over the walls as they headed up the stairs, to what he wasn't sure. He wasn't familiar with churches and the names of the various areas of them. He simply knew they were going up stairs to another area. The pews they'd passed he knew not what they were called, though could describe them. He would never be able to use the proper names for the areas of a church - to describe a church properly.
Shivering a bit the dark mirror senshi, upon reaching the small area, sat himself down and went to hoping he could summon his shirt by some magical means so he could pull on the clothing which he'd yanked off earlier.
"This is nice - confined." Which he liked. Smaller areas were safer, more comfortable, in his opinion. He didn't like large, open, areas where lots of things could happen and where lots of people could gather. He wasn't the social sort...not like that anyway.
"Since it seems I've been telling you about what's happened...what I knew about the night you got pulled into the mirror. Is there anything you want to ask? I mean...I may not know everything but I can try." Since it seemed he was being open about things, in the hopes the other wouldn't go telling others. He hoped he could trust the other...
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Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2018 9:39 pm
"I haven't told you and you haven't asked," Faustite answered simply. His gaze fell to Kiuchi for a moment, reading, preparing all the lines in the mirror senshi's face into a coherent manuscript. Strange how everyone wore themselves so purposefully, so particularly, as if the rest of the world might want to know something about them. Like they weren't just another number, just another follower, just another Twitter feed in the sea of a screaming, insensate non-reality.
Faustite paced forward, his hand lighting on the railing that cordoned off the bells. Across his nails ran a thin layer of dust older than himself. "Everyone wants me to be human." His gaze found the sheltered slats from where the moon painted its rectangles across the floor. One such stroke ran, broken, up his leg. He stopped when he reached the iron slats and peered out toward the sky. "I decided I'm not. Meeting expectations tires me like an overtaxed battery. Being human doesn't have any splendor now. Everything they do is catalogued, commodified, traded, taxed, sent and received, spent like so much tawdry currency in an oversaturated market. Everything about them is built into the grand catalogue of the internet."
There are no stars here, not where industry has its hold. Senshi can't look down at us from their space homes. From their dead civilizations.
But this conversation wasn't about his humanity or his past. He turned then, possessed with a sudden need to lean against those slats, yet he stood straight and separate from them. Leveraged on Kiuchi was his attention for all the minutiae laced like lattice into his words. The sonance of his word choice — romantic, magical, disruption, silence, wonder, thought, lost — painted more of the boy before him. The romanticism of it struck like hot iron, melting into bones with a pleasant heat. Faustite offered no comment on it, however; not while the mirror senshi spoke of his passions.
Oh, how long it had been since he heard anyone muse on their passions. Wistfulness dragged him in its current while he listened. He watched the shiver take his companion; he watched the goosebumps dance over arms and neck and back. His chill was an obvious one. "Power down." The instruction would preserve him in his normal wear.
Whetting his lips, Faustite pulled questions out of Kiuchi's parsed explanations. "I want to know how this queen died, how you took her chaos seed, and what your court expects to do about this going forward."
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Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2018 10:42 pm
"I didn't know if it was my place to ask..." Licking his bottom lip, swallowing as he spoke, he watched the other as he moved, watched how the moonlight danced across the others flesh. He always had preferred the night to the daytime. Daytime meant being up and doing things and living in reality where as at night....at night there was always an air of wonder and mystery to it - at least to him. This had been an especially strong thing as a child, when his imagination had run more wild than it did now. When he was still filled to the brim with stories told from a seemingly caring mother, all sorts of stories of magic and dragons and many more things. Night time was a time to wonder about such things and not live in reality as much...to leave some of it behind.
Now, now magic was real but reality was now more present at night...in the form of a war and fighting and trying to live. But the magic and the wonder and not knowing what else waited around a corner...it was there like it had been as a child. The feeling was here standing with the other, slender trails of moonlight filtering in and giving some silvery light to their little world.
"I-I didn't want to risk upsetting you by asking...to ruin things." To break what had befallen them, at least for him anyway. He didn't want to disrupt the feeling by potentially turning the mood in a negative way. He liked this - right here and right now.
The simple two words, a command perhaps or maybe a request, had the dark mirror senshi powering down. Comfortable, though damp and his clothing sticking to his clammy skin, he was dressed in warm clothing which would help him where his uniform had not. A soft smile and a nod of his head, a sign of his thanks, before he smiled softly.
"Ok....I can tell you." He really wished there was some way to show the other his memories, it would be easier he was sure, but he'd do his best to recall what had happened during the fight.
"I suppose I'll start from what led up to the fight..." It was, at least he thought, a good place to begin as it may be helpful...somehow?
"When we first arrived in space, in Altea's palace we'd been told there had been a plague which had swept the planet and killed nearly everyone...the survivors lived in the palace, though we never did see anyone but her and her guards. We'd been told going outside was dangerous...and there was nothing there. We also were told some parts of the palace were off limits, I thought it was perhaps to keep the survivors and us separate...her not knowing us so not wanting to trust us..." He'd accepted it and thought up a simple excuse, a reason, in his own mind...one which normally would make sense. He hadn't seen the truth....
He knew he was trusting....he knew she had walked all over him...and he'd let her. Not that it had been in the normal fashion you'd expect. She'd simply lied to them all...hidden herself away from them and let them slowly fall to what would have been their demise. He had played it all off for days...till the markings showed up.
"It was...days, maybe, into our stay when we gathered to figure out what was happening to us and to find answers. We had to hide, due to her guards, and we found the dungeons....and in them, held to the wall by crystals, was her apparent fiance. He wasn't from her planet...I can't remember where he was from. But he was alive...and untainted. We were able to speak with him before Altea showed up and threw a fit before leaving the room. She did attack us then but we handled it...it wasn't an all out attack. Unable to free her fiance we left - to find her. We found she'd been in the library and had left a mess." More than a mess, it had been like a hurricane had ripped through the area and left pages all around, scattered and ruined.
"We'd seen the books before, at least some of us, and we couldn't read them. I imagine it would have been like trying to read something from some senshi's home world - impossible." If he'd tried to read Russian, or some other language he didn't know.
"But suddenly we knew what the pages said." He could only assume it was magic but what magic and why? It hadn't been Altea, at least he didn't think so, but then what? The planets magic perhaps? Or something higher...? He'd never thought of it then but now, speaking of it as he was, he had to wonder about it. Had something been helping them at the time?
Running his fingers through his hair, before fixing his mussed up hair, he moved to settle himself on the dusty, and dirty, floor. Seating himself right in one of the slits of moonlight, his fingers moving through the silverlite dust as he continued.
"We found out what had happened. The chaos seed had offered her help...to save her people and her homeworld. She took it...wanting to help her suffering, dying, people. She didn't know what would happen...a story tragic enough for Shakespeare I think." Something sad, so sad, his voice even now showed how it had bothered him then. Had he cried then? Shed tears? He couldn't remember but he knew he had when she'd died...he was sure of that.
"We found her...up the stairs which had been previously blocked off. The room...it would have been lovely had it not been terrifying. The crystals we'd been eating, as we'd been told they were the only food on the planet, lined the walls. Perhaps soaking in the energy of darkness from the chaos seed - like spores from a plant perhaps...I don't know. But thinking on it...it's disturbing." Enough to have him shiver from the thought of it. On it's own it had been lovely, though the room would have been better before then - before the fall of her kingdom...and of her.
"I-I don't know what happens if you eat a lot of starseeds...but she was eating the crystals in the room...lots of them. The energy in the room - her energy....it was smothering and consuming....even our royals felt so small to me...." He'd been terrified but he'd had to help, to do his part. He'd had to help his family and fight against her....he couldn't do nothing and let them lose their lives - lose his own. "It was overwhelming..." And terrifying...so terrifying.
"She started to change then, maybe from what she was eating...since I assume that was the cause of us turning into crystal, but it didn't turn her skin to crystal like it was doing to us. She had crystals start to protrude from her body.,...like spikes." As he spoke he did reach up, with his right hand, to gently touch just under his eyes. It was only for a moment before his hand fell down to his lap and fingers once more were doodling in the dust.
"I remember wings...but they were black crystal..while the rest of her was like snow white in color - even her clothing. It was something from a horror movie. I remember being blown off our feet...shards of crystal flying at us. It was a bit of a jumbled mess - the fight. One of our own had become so enamored with her that they turned on us....moved to protect her and fight us..." Looking up at the other he managed a small smile and a shrug of his shoulders. "I can't ever forget what she looked like...but some of the fight...I can't remember so well - so much happened." But she had stood in it all looking like some twisted doll....and so powerful, it had seemed so hopeless.
"I didn't think we'd make it...it seemed so hopeless...we're so few in number and with so few eternals and only two royals....and her - Altea..." Biting down on his bottom lip he shook his head quickly, blinking his dark eyes a few times.
"I broke my arm...she summoned mirrors under us...and they pulled us in and dumped us out from high up....I remember hitting the ground hard." And still he'd tried to do whatever he could, they all had.
"I don't know what the final blow was...but at some point she...got a hole in her and light came out and everything was pulled towards her - like the vacuum of space...before it exploded outward - she exploded....like a broken mirror maybe? Crystal went everywhere...slicing and stabbing and hitting nothing...it was chaos in that moment. it was like the ones which hit everything else tore away at the illusion...or melted it away. The shards vanished slowly and than the room around us....like it had never been there - all an illusion. She the light Altea had let out, when she'd died, vanished we were left standing on a mirror...or some sort of surface but nothing else was around us."
Again he looked up at the other, turning to face him now, and tilted his head a bit. "I won't ever forget seeing a hovering black crystal, the chaos seed, and Altea, or her spirit maybe her ghost..or some image from the past, reaching out towards it. She looked normal...human but just...transparent." It could have been them seeing what had once been...or maybe her spirit remaining, due to some remaining energy, reaching out towards what had caused the whole problem...trying to regain her form and regain what she'd lost....to regain her homeworld.
"All that was left, when she vanished, was the chaos seed and the golden mirror. So I don't know...if we were in space ever or if it was some rabbit hole...or what. Was it a planet inside the mirror? A pocket universe of sorts or what....It's still confusing to think about...to try and figure it out. It certainly seemed like we'd been in space - that we'd been on another planet. Yet....maybe not?" Shrugging his shoulders he reached up to wipe at the few tears which had collected in his eyes. He still felt strongly for Altea...for her loss and what had become of her.
"The seed...it looked damaged but we couldn't touch it. When we touched the mirror we all vanished inside of it - so did it. I - I don't think we know what to do or have plans. I think it's up to each individual if we build an island homeworld or not....but talk of what happened, any actions, have not happened. I don't know if we even know where to begin..."
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Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2018 1:12 am
Faustite listened in quietude. Arms braced against the windowsill as the breeze filtered in irreverently. Curling hair and tugging clothes, it ushered along Xi-Wang's tale mercilessly, but the youth continued at his steadfast pace.
Of note were several aspects about Xi's story that spoke more of himself than the content. He lapsed, without fail, into generalizations at every mention of conflict. First with the library, which gave little indication of why Altea spent any measure of time there, and the latter in their final attack on the deranged queen. Peppered between were either actions taken or observations of emotional character — that Altea threw a fit, that she left a mess, that she wanted to save her people, that she didn't know — and a smattering of unsolved questions gratefully couched mild language.
Faustite set his jaw at the first quavers in clarion voice. They rippled like disturbed water through Xi-Wang's explanation, yet ever on he went. Faustite watched him hawkishly.
The explanation wound through preemptive conflicts, further traumas, and a final assault before coming to rest on the Dark Mirror's utter lack of cohesion. Faced with the collective of events that sequestered them from the rest of the world, Faustite expected enough solidarity to prompt a collective decision on the ultimatum in their hands. But it rested pleasantly unobserved as a blackened spinal crown to their false Citadel. It overlooked their field of undreamt dreams, waiting for nightmares to coalesce. And there it would remain until it carved another Altea from their collective bones.
But Xi's story begged its own questions. Faustite drew a slow breath through the scathe under his uniform. Fire licked his words unkindly. "Eat enough starseeds and an agent becomes what I am." He spread black hands in invitation to inspect. "Chaos likes its members corrupted by crystals." So came from Xi's own observations. "But that's irrelevant, isn't it?" His teeth grit against boiling ire.
When he spoke again, his tone was of tempered flame. "Shakespeare has his merits because there is no absolution in life. No excuse for the sins they commit in good conscience. Altea tragically damned herself. So did Hamlet. So did Julius Caesar. So did Othello. They absolve themselves with suicide — when they have honor.
"Altea didn't. What you fought was a deranged animal. A rabid dog." Faustite looked to Kiuchi sternly. You don't see the harbinger in your midst. When the chips fall and your court is overtaken, will you recognize your irresponsibility? Will you own your sheepish inaction? I wonder.
Faustite strode to the boy huddled in the corner, with his enviously clear tears and his false eyeliner. A hand left the captain's side in tepid invitation. "A word of advice, Xi-Wang: don't pity the losers. Don't pity the ones that undo themselves. That unravel gracelessly. The world will forget them — and that's more merciful than twenty thousand years of indelible recollection."
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Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2018 1:31 pm
Looking up, towards the others fingers, he nodded slowly. So that was how it had happened...and those starseeds brought him pain, and sickness. So they weren't good for anyone in the long run, whether it be a single one or a large amount. "I don't think there is any crystals, aside from Altea's, which could corrupt us. The one you gave me caused pain." As if the other, or himself, could forget that recent lesson. "And I don't think I'd call what Altea's did corruption...since they died in the end...till then they were silent guards made entirely of crystal...." They hadn't felt like youma or even chaos of any sort either. They'd just been guards that were no longer human...that had likely been suffering, in silence. It seemed as time passed, as he spoke now about the incident, he thought more about it and realized more things and felt more about the whole affair. None of it was really good either.
"I suppose it is...though it is something to keep in mind as well - for the future." Something to never trust. While they had crystals to use in the mirrorscape they had come at what price for other places - other planets? But at least they, to his knowledge thus far, didn't corrupt people. They were harmless in a sense...a vessel which contained the power of an element that had been taken from another planet and condensed back to it's basics...recycled to be used again. But who knew...maybe what the other said held true for them also? They just didn't see it yet...he'd hope not though.
Looking away from the other he tilted his head a bit, watching the moonlight filter into the small room, and paint strips of silver color across the floor. "Mmmm...it is still tragic...and she thought she was doing good. She didn't know what would happen." It had all been good intentions on her part and it had cost her everything...and some part of her, maybe most of her even, had believed and fallen for the illusions painted around her. That she hadn't seen the truth or known it, save but somewhere deep down. He wasn't sure if he believed that entirely, he was fairly sure he didn't, but it didn't matter did it? She was still a tragic figure who had been used and abused...taken advantage of and turned into a puppet. "I wonder...how time moves there versus here...if her world exists within this universe..or galaxy even. I-I mean if it was real and exists like we do...could she have been reborn here like all these senshi and knights have been?" Had enough time from her death there, to here, passed? Planets all moved at different times and could she have been reborn into the past but on Earth even? Or would she be reborn sometime in the future? Maybe she'd get a happy life then.
"Deranged animal....yeah...." Broken from his thoughts by the others words he found himself parroting part of them, they were true after all. "Something caused by what tainted her...or by the shock of loosing what she believed was real....of the rose tinted glasses coming off." Either way she had turned rabid against them and attacked them, tried and almost succeed in killing them all.
Turning his dark eyes onto the other, reaching up with one hand, he smiled softly. "It's hard to forget what still wakes you up at night. It's hard to forget the wonder of seeing space, or part of it, and then finding out it was a lie and seeing what can become of someone...and why they feel to such ruin." He hadn't liked it, not one bit. She hadn't deserved it but this war, chaos, it was was cruel...and so was order in it's own ways.
"And now what did that to her...we have. Thankfully no one can reach it and it hasn't done anything - so far." If it ever did anything, if someone ever reached it, he feared what could happen to the person and his own court. A repeat perhaps.
"I'm trying to forget it...or at least to move past it...to accept it and move on."
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Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2018 10:19 pm
Faustite's expression remained carefully unreadable. He simply waited through Xi-Wang's return, fitful and flitting as it was, like a dewey leaf careening unawoken through a rainstorm. Silent guards of crystal harkened to a gentler passing, preserved though they were for all eternity. The pieces left unchiseled were most important — unwritten across stoneless faces were untouched thought and feeling and being. They held the world that they left behind in crystalline eyes.
Yet that transformation was so like youma, performatively and conceptually. But the Negaverse mastered its greater demons, purposed and repurposed in manner unmet by the Dark Mirror. The Mirror left their ghosts behind where the Negaverse pulled them to heel, subjugated and dominated and resuscitated them into the hollows of their throats. Faustite felt his lip twitch.
Faustite spoke quietly. "Your eyes are only for the good in people." His mouth belied his interest in the observation — crooked, quick-tipped like a pen nib and just as sharp. How opposite we are. Experience hasn't spoiled you yet.
How long will it be until this war chews through your sensibilities?
"You come from a world of science, don't you? But science can't explain what we live each day, what I live more than not. How long a minute is here or there becomes a humanizing experience when our tools won't measure it. When we can't stare at a clock and count the seconds in both places at once. Magic defeats reason, expectation. It teaches us to marvel again." His daggered index touched the crest of Xi-Wangs adam's apple and traveled northward, across the valley into the hook-ended peak of his boyish chin. He accepted the raised hand and hoisted, with captain's strength, the thin youth to his feet.
He walked toward the window then, steps bare of formality in the moonlight. "Trauma and I are old lovers." He spoke no more to Xi-Wang's confession or the dark-laid paths of experience under his eyes. They each wore their experiences on their bodies like unbidden tattoos. Priceless they were, for how they hewed the identities of Kiuchi and Faustite ever clearer. But as those figures resolved, they lost sight of one another. You'll never know me at this rate.
So be it. "Look," he urged, and black hands opened the grates wide. Moonlight grew until shadow pinstriped through the window's outline on the ground. Beyond, the starless sky folded its black blanket over a sleeping city. Sodium globes performed the work of stars admirably as buoys through darkness.
Faustite's nails tapped their wordless tune across one of the iron slats. "Benign, isn't it? But out there are a hundred planets with their soldiers armed for blood." He breathed a sigh, its billow of smoke a wan harbinger.
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Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2018 12:45 am
"I prefer it that way most of the time. I can handle it when in a fight...but afterwards, especially with Altea, it's easier to see the good when and where i can. I don't want to let this war get to me so soon." If it did how would he survive for however long it lasted? How did people survive this for years without seeing some good...somewhere? Maybe he looked more and clung to it more but it was better for him honestly. He didn't like to focus on the bad...he didn't like stress or drama in his life, never had.
"A bit...yeah. I suppose that's why I drift a bit, like I did before, when it comes to trying to figure out how the science and magic can work together...and what that planet was or could have really been. Science uncovers truths...gives laws and reasons to things and while I love the mystery of things...the magic, which would be in conflict with science, I like both. Some things need laws....plus there are always things we'll never solve anyway." So it left some mysteries out there and some magic...some whimsy to the world. He could live with both things and embrace them both, and he did.
"No, science can't - maybe one day it'll be able to. I hope it never does though...then magic won't be magic...it'll be laws and numbers...formulas." Not that he minded those, he certainly didn't mind those, but he wanted his magic as well...he was greedy perhaps in that sense. Standing up, thanks to the others help, he moved to follow the other whom had only moments ago been ghosting finger tips across his lightly clothed flesh.
As the window opened, and the other tapped out a beat of some sort, Xi-Wang lowered his head to gently rest his chin on the others shoulder. His arms came round the other loosely. "Mmm, they look innocent enough...they always do...they also look closer than they are. It's a wonder how many of them once hosted life and now are home to ruins....and how many still host life - soldiers wanting us both dead, and those like us. But how many were reborn here? I may not wear their uniform but I'm amongst them....though I won't ever join their ranks." That was for certain, he had no desire for such. He was happy with where he was right now, and couldn't see that changing any time soon.
"Innocent things aren't always innocent....those who always seek to see the good in things aren't always going to see the good...they won't always be able to nor want to. Because they don't see beyond the good doesn't mean they aren't aware of what is beyond it." Speaking more of himself, without saying it. He wasn't clueless it was just how he dealt with it best. "Sometimes it's easier to see what one wishes to see...or what is easiest to deal with...in order to continue onward." Turning his head enough to press his nose to the others flesh he tilted his head enough to press his lips,gently, to the others flesh.
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Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2018 2:32 pm
"Science and magic. Structure and creativity." While superficially opposed, Faustite doubted that they existed on a spectrum. Science was a subservient practice, aimed at exploring the existing, where magic coined so many new and vastly striking affairs of its own accord. Magic defied science. Magic created the atmospheres of worlds untouched, of places far beneath the earth, of people who would not otherwise survive.
Xi-Wang could think what he wanted. If he dreamt of days where science met with magic in a subtle fusion, then Faustite would speak nothing against those dreams. Faustite would leave him to those benign studies where no one and nothing was hurt, touched, and molded — only explained to a milquetoast vicissitude of apathetic and wholly passionate.
But Faustite sold his soul to the sound of the ocean, the touch of poetry in his heart, the boundless creativity of men until that, too, expired.
Xi-Wang reached for him, touched him, but pipes soon dug into the boy's unseen approach. They met shirt and skin and promised to dirty otherwise perfectly clean clothes. Faustite drew breath and found resistance pained in his lungs, In a smooth motion, Faustite wrenched hands off himself and turned with a step. He faced Xi-Wang once more, impatience overbright in his black eyes. "Don't." Lips pressed tight with words unsaid — words that could not find voice. Barred as they were, they burnt up like wood into impotent ash. What reason did he have to speak to someone so enamored with their looking glass?
All the matter of innocence and innocents confirmed what he already suspected. Faustite half-turned from the youth and forged a blistering pace. "You'll have your father's search report in a week," he said in clipped tone, and soon vanished into selfsame, tortuous smoke.sleet tempest snape fin — lmk if it needs edits
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