castle_perrault | [hallowe'en] blood and apples

The fearful mist descends on the garden in the middle of the night, on tireless pink light hidden in the depths of the water. Refracted through the myriad mist droplets the immortal cell is visible, a million brilliant pinpoints, a will-o'-the-wisp glow, stars floating over the fountains, secret no longer.

All at once there is a great inrush of air, a clap of thunder, and the light flares once, screeching static, the earth heaving beneath the mound of glass—and goes out.

= <o> =

This is the sight in the garden in the morning: a creature slumped at the foot of the glass hill. She is covered by a thick layer of downy golden feathers that trail along the ground like a great cloak, like great wings, too heavy to fly. She

is human-shaped, lying still on her side, the thick dark tresses of her hair matted and ragged around her head, her pale palms stained with mud. From her own arms, tearing through the shoulder of her garments and reaching to the ends of her little fingers, grow the feathers, rows and rows of them bursting starkly from her dark skin, so that it swells and bruises around them.

There is only one sight in the gardens, the feathers, bright and beautiful and perfect. There is only one feature of the gardens, the feathers, lovely and precious and worth anyone's fortune. There is only one odour in the gardens, the odour of the feathers, as sweet and as delicious as the best thing you have ever tasted.

This strange bird, flightless, stirs.

She opens her eyes—sclera of molten gold, beautiful, squinting narrow as she rises in the dull grey morning; her feathers are as bright as any firelight. She gasps a shuddering, difficult breath; golden teeth flash in her mouth, precious.

She struggles to her feet: first one knee then the other; first one foot and then the other; first one stumbling and giving way and then the other—she cannot bear the weight of the golden mantle—she falls hard, panting, blood dripping from the bruised pores of her arms: bright, golden, and delicious.

Golden feathers sweep across the ground as she plants her hands in the grass to support herself, and remains there for a while. Then at last she heaves back and falls, almost supine, at the base of the hill, to listlessly watch the sun rise.

ooc. || hey everyone!! here's a little explanation, in case my silly post is too confusing.

i've basically transformed Judgement into a human for the hallowe'en event, with the small change that the feathers she grows from her body (and the other golden parts of her) have magical properties.

the feathers are profoundly alluring, although not irresistibly so: just by looking at them you know that they taste delicious and can fill you up for weeks, that any clothing you sew them into will become beautiful, that if you trim them and set them to paper they will write beautiful poetry and music. they can be powdered and cure any illness, they can be cut and turn into gemstones, they can be melted and forged into magical weapons and tools, they can fletch arrows that fly true and come back, and even just having them with you will bring good luck.

that's not all—basically, they can help you in almost any way you can imagine! and best of all, there's no limit to how many there are! even if you pluck all the feathers, she'll grow more in just the blink of an eye.

so come one and come all! take what you need, what you want, and maybe some spare just in case. you know you want to!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

dunwhale

Daud, then, is one of the lucky ones. He woke up the same, if not a little more achey and grouchy than usual, but it was nothing that breakfast and a walk couldn't fix. He had his blade at his side, shoes off and held in his opposite hand. The island is quiet as the sun rises, like it is holding a breath. Daud should be alarmed. He should go somewhere safe, and he should try to get away. He's long ago learned that it is a useless endeavor, and so he does not.

By the time he gets to the gardens to practice with the blade, as is usual and habit, he's catalogued every strange difference. The smell, for one; for him, so used to Dunwall's filth, it's almost sickly-sweet but alluring all the same. He tries not to follow it. He fails. Gold flickers around the edge of his vision, only to coalesce into a limp figure at the base of the hill.

It is, of course, beautiful. Entirely opposite the darkness of the Void, which is a different type of allure he hasn't felt since being dropped here on this island. Instead of walking away-- as he should have-- he instead goes closer. He kneels. His hand brush against silky-smooth feathers, and for a moment, he feels how easy it would be to take a handful, to pull them from the swollen flesh and keep them for himself. But then he thinks of shoving a blade into Empress Jessamine's gut, and the feeling sours.
"Hey," he says. "Are you awake?"

[Note! Due to my own squeamishness about bodily autonomy and violating it, I must kindly ask that Daud not actually take any of Judgment's feathers. Luckily, he's a highly-principled assassin-guy so he's pretty darn scary without needing to be a creep like that.]

From:

lyseandpurge

She doesn't hear him coming—she doesn't hear him at all—but as Daud approaches, and his shadow falls through the sunlight, her eyes like bulbs of amber flash open, and she scrambles back, feathers flapping, fingers scrabbling at the soil, a smooth glass hill behind her that gives no purchase, the movements of her feet hindered by long funeral robes.

She doesn't hear his voice—or she hears it, but his words are nonsense to her at first; she pulls her laden arms together and replies in the esoteric language of the southern nation. "What do you want? Take a feather, take a reading, if this is a return to the old prescriptions then I will return to giving. What do you want?"

With a shaking grip, with surprising strength, she tears loose one of her golden feathers—it straightens, quivering and humming in the breeze, as she thrusts it at Daud's face.

From:

dunwhale

Daud lurches back, expecting a hit, but all that happens is wide golden eyes and a shimmering golden feather and gold, gold, gold. He puts a hand on her wrist. Gently. Too softly, like comforting someone who has recently lost a friend, and tries to guide her hand down.
"I would take it, but I do not know what you would ask of me in return."
She speaks like a witch, but not one of the Dunwall witches-- like an old-country witch, someone who's been to Pandyssia and had the land there accept them. He'd met a few of those when he was a boy, in Serkonos. Even then, it was never wise to take a gift from them without knowing the price.
She tears bits of herself off like a Weeper, but he knows she is not, and perhaps he pities her-- a disquieting thought.
"Maybe we should go inside," he suggests. He stands, framed by the head of the sun, and holds an arm out to help her up.

From:

lyseandpurge

She stiffens at his touch, her jaw locking tight, but doesn't move at all, Just barely she finds the strength to resist this gentlest of forces; until he takes his hand away, she doesn't move.

But in his words she finally recognises something, and as she stares up at him and at the sun, she answers him in a different language—stumbling over the letters of words she learned from Frisk. "I ask—I have never—what do you mean? All you have ever wanted—" the past flickers across her eyes—"all you have ever wanted is here."

She does not take his hand; still clutching the feather, she looks down at the sword he holds, and in recognition her chapped lips move silently. "You—you needed it. You killed for it. What is it? Do I have to guess? I can give you everything. I'll give you anything."

She tries to smile. "Please. Be quick. That's all I ask."

From:

dunwhale

"I'm not going to do anything to you," he says, tightness around the corners of his mouth belying tenseness. Anticipation. "I'm not that kind of man."
And he's not, he likes to think. She glows gently; she shimmers gold. It's impossibly enticing. Ever part of him urges to take what he wants, because it would be so easy and she is offering. He takes the feather. Folds it back into her palm, even though it feels like he is folding a little bit of himself into her palm as well, and offers his hand again. It was awkward, he thinks, to be on his knees for someone again. He's glad to be back on his feet.
"I could leave." It slips out unbidden. He wants to pull action from her, some sort of response or retaliation. "Or we could go inside."
This time, it's not a suggestion.

From:

lyseandpurge

"No," she answers, "that's not possible—" but she realises, in that moment, that it is. This is different—something is different.

She rips the returned feather into little flakes, nervously, furiously. As she does, a new vane springs out from the back of her hand to replace the one that she plucked, twice as long as before.

"All right," she says at last, still barely more than a whisper; and takes Daud's hand. Her grip is as light as an insect's footsteps. Then, nothing more; she watches him.

From:

dunwhale

Daud tugs her up to her feet; then, as if not trusting her to keep to them, scoops her into a carry with one arm behind her back and the other under her legs. Despite the train of feathers weighing her down, he manages to carry her successfully into the castle.
It knows where he wants to go, and leads him there; it barely takes five minutes for him to reach a sitting room. She goes down on a loveseat. He takes a chair opposite it.
"Are you alright?"

From:

lyseandpurge

The feathers prick his arms through his clothing, hard and sharp as little crystals, as she struggles—only weakly; she cannot manage much more.

When she is let down she sucks in great inhalations, like some one unused to breathing, and pulls her legs stiffly towards her, and wraps her robe tightly around her ankles. "Wha—what?" she mumbles. Then, more clearly, "This isn't right."

Her fingers find the soft skin over her throat, and she pinches at it uncomfortably. "You could kill me," she says, as if just realising this. "Wo'n't you? Or are you a thief, do you steal me?"

From:

dunwhale

Daud crosses his ankles. The movement is uncomfortable, so he returns them to the ground, looking at her. His arms prickle and tingle from where her feathers touched him, like the limb has fallen asleep. The glitzy gold still tries to enrapture him but Daud is well-used to the attempts of both man and gods to allow himself to be enraptured. Still, he looks at her, gaze measured and heavy in counterpoint to the flighty unease she radiates.
"I used to kill," he replies evenly. "And I used to be a thief. Now, I am..." the words dam up in his throat because he knows that they aren't true. His actions-- Delilah, Emily-- were as much for himself as they were for the others; he has not managed to shake the self-serving instinct of a street child from his bones, even now thirty years on.
"I am trying to be different," is what he settles on.
"And who are you?"

❤❤

From:

lyseandpurge - Date: 2018-01-08 01:02 pm (UTC) - Expand

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