you'll get blue eyes if you stand too close to--
Who: solarpurpura, open/solo-log
What: Eden creates an eye for Miss Noah until her own has healed.
Where: The market, home, her place of solace for a while.
When: February 28th to April 2nd
Warnings: INCREDIBLE TL;DR. Eden's a creeper, she's making a new eye for Noah, so if eye stuff bugs you, scroll on!
I kind of just... wanted to write this, but if chickbro wants to have it delivered to her, I could do that in the comments. This log is pretty much open to anyone if they want to sense her hoodoo and come see what she's doing, or catch her in the market when she's gathering the stuff, or any other piece of business you might want to have with Eden. I also need to proofread this, but... my brain is tired. I can do it later, right?
She has never tried to make an eye before. The need had never arisen before, and if her family had been called upon for such a favor, her mother would have done it, only relying on her daughters to bless the final product with soft and heathen amens. She has never created a seeing eye before but, for once, Eden is eager to try. She is like all other witches, truly, the act of creation is intoxicating, the act of manipulation rapturous. She longs to hone herself, to reach just a bit deeper beneath the murky depths of depravity, corrupting this distant world with the Hill dirt on her soles and the tar in her veins. It is every Morrison's duty to taint the world around them. But this time, she will do it with her hands rather than with her blood.
And perhaps she owes Miss Noah the favor, besides. Eden had put a quest before her, and it had been completed, there was to be a reward at the end, yes?
Eden takes her time in considering her latest project. Thus far, she has amused herself with talismans and fetishes, trinkets that she quietly distributed throughout the market. She has personally clipped several protective charms around the throats of those she is interested in, but... she makes no such promises of good intent for the rest. To forge a seeing eye is so much more complicated than that. It will need to look human, form and function will both need to be perfect. She will need to study.
She goes down to the market, follows the streets as she has learned them to, making her way to the darker corners of city Promenade. There are other dreamers, like herself, demons and witches and other creatures with dark thoughts and frightening smiles. She picks her way thoughtfully through the rows of haphazard stalls, does not allow herself to be distracted by the jingle of magic coins or the scuffle of curious monstrosities kept in their cages by hexes and not by the wooden bars tied together with twine. She is focused, intent, pays no mind to the calls of special wares. She stops, finally, before a stall heavily laden with a collection of gleaming glass jars. Bones, jaws with and without teeth, ears, livers, hearts, and eyes, any human part she could possibly desire, carefully packaged there for her.
At home, on the Hill, there were such collections everywhere, the more delicate and squishy items kept fresh in the refrigerator, which overflowed with such delights. Mother was very accomplished at canning after her many years, knew to keep the bacteria out with a liberal touch of alcohol in the mixture.
The witch sitting amongst the wares tells her about each of the jars as Eden asks her. The brown eyes of six orphan sisters, the blue eyes from three generations of kings, the golden eyes of those struck heartsick with greed, and a collection of heterochromatic pairs. Eden does not need anything quite so special, she confesses, and the woman raises an eyebrow, getting up to poke her way to the back of one of the shelves, producing a small jar with blue, brown, and green eyes, not all of them neatly paired. Eden smiles faintly and accepts this, tucking her prize away into a small satchel.
Now her studies could begin, and she took her fair silver knife to each of her specimens in turn. She learned quietly through deconstruction, peeling each layer back to examine the meat of it, touching it with her magic until the flesh became nothing but rot and slime.
She returns to the market the next morning, her list prepared. She will need a pound of orfelia fultoni larvae, a quarter of bombyx mori, ten green wonambi scales, a tiny pouch containing the Arco-íris's platinum, and a package of delicate brass nails, shined almost golden. She finds all of it easily in Promenade's fantastical market, even if she must hunt a bit more carefully for some than for others.
It was good fortune that Dawn had given her the glittering evolutionary stones to work with. The darkest of the set would make a perfect base, a perfect pupil. It spared Eden the necessity to work with dirt and clay, and sped the process up admirably. She was able to begin her work as soon as she returned to her bedroom.
She spent the first part of the day very carefully carving out the center of each of the iridescent green scales, carefully filing them. She polished them and the dusk stone until they were smooth and round, catching light from every angle. With expert hands, she scratched the runes into the flesh of each, left them to soak in a bath of sweet smelling alcohol, alongside the brass fasteners, until the evening. When it is dark, only then do the little orfelia's begin their indigo glow. She crushes all of them with mortar and pestle until they are a paste, which she uses to coat her freshly rinsed stone and to glue the ten scales together. She holds her little project over the candle flame to help it dry, and then with sixteen tiny nails, she attaches scale to stone.
It is all she can do for now, the next step left to the silkworms. They, along with the incomplete eye, are placed together in a little jar and left for a few days time. When worm and stone have been encased in silk-webbing, Eden takes her workshop from her bedroom and moves it out into the woods, to her place of solace where she feels more connected to home, to the Hill and its strong dirt.
She builds a new altar in the woods, one to call up great fire from within its enclosed ring. In the center, she places a silver bowl, marks it and her face with the same charcoal warding. Do not burn, do not melt. The jagged pieces of shining platinum which she drops into the bowl, however, are another matter entirely, and it will take hellfire to see them melted down.
While waiting for the sunset to begin burning red and gold across the city, Eden carefully exposes the scales beneath the outer cocoon, tapping in a seventeenth tack to the very middle of the pupil. She takes several strands of her long hair, braiding and tying them to the protruding end of the nail so that it hangs from her hand, can easily be raised and lowered. As the sun itself lowers, she loops the thread around her fingers and begins her work, eye dangling from one hand, silver knife touted in the other as she cuts shape into the air.
"Thought I saw you in my tea leaves. I thought I saw you in a forest flame, and I will fill up the silence with the sound of your holy name."
She whispers her heathen amens, and begins to wake each of the stones in her circle, the bowls of blood in her altar and the grotesque idols which bathe in them. Each piece begins to thrum and chime at her call, as she murmurs the rites and names of the creatures of flame. When she has made several full rotations, she drops to her knee. From a tiny pouch she takes a wriggling salamander, staking it to the ground with her knife just inside the circle, the point passing cleanly through the carnelian stripe down its back. It thrashes in the leaves and Eden inhales deeply, hands held out in obeisance, palms up and empty.
When she curls her hands closed and stands, she does so with force, pulling the great heat that is building within her circle upwards, where it meets the air and bursts brilliantly into life. There is a great rush of wind and an excruciating heat. Eden closes her eyes, feels the warmth on her face and lets the monstrous bonfire burn.
The salamander is nothing but bleached bone when Eden finally reaches inside to reclaim her knife. When she pulls it from the earth, the flames begin to die down. The light is also fading and so she lights her candles while the last flickers of the inferno are put out by the angry wind. In the candlelight, the ground is blackened, but the platinum in the center of the circle is a pool of perfect white. The witch smiles to herself, pleased, and brings the eye strung from her hand near to the surface. She lets it sink into the liquid metal slowly, carefully, coating it until the cocoon and the brass nails around the edge of the viridian scale have disappeared.
Eden takes her dangling eye to the stream then, to help it cool. The larger bowl will take time, she thinks, perhaps, she will come to collect it tomorrow. It is getting dark, and she should return home, but there is one last task to complete, now that all the pieces have been combined. Light, darkness, and color, all that is left now is that her eye simply must see... She cups the orb in her hands, sitting down at the edge of the reflective water, beneath the watching moon. She removes the seventeenth nail from its center and then she raises the eye to her lips. She murmurs to it softly,
"And we look upon the world with open eyes--"
Her little creation goes wet in her hands, moist as an eye should be and it shifts with the damp sound of membrane pulling. Eden lifts her head, looks at it and it returns her gaze. She smiles, wide and white with small, needling teeth. It is, perhaps, a bit greener than Miss Noah's eyes, but it was temporary. A little bit of Miss Noah's blood dropped against the pupil and it would bond with her just fine, it would see anything she needed it to.
Delivering her gift could wait until the morning, however, and with her creation cradled lovingly in her palms, Eden heads home for the rest of the evening.
She does hope Miss Noah will be pleased.
What: Eden creates an eye for Miss Noah until her own has healed.
Where: The market, home, her place of solace for a while.
When: February 28th to April 2nd
Warnings: INCREDIBLE TL;DR. Eden's a creeper, she's making a new eye for Noah, so if eye stuff bugs you, scroll on!
I kind of just... wanted to write this, but if chickbro wants to have it delivered to her, I could do that in the comments. This log is pretty much open to anyone if they want to sense her hoodoo and come see what she's doing, or catch her in the market when she's gathering the stuff, or any other piece of business you might want to have with Eden. I also need to proofread this, but... my brain is tired. I can do it later, right?
She has never tried to make an eye before. The need had never arisen before, and if her family had been called upon for such a favor, her mother would have done it, only relying on her daughters to bless the final product with soft and heathen amens. She has never created a seeing eye before but, for once, Eden is eager to try. She is like all other witches, truly, the act of creation is intoxicating, the act of manipulation rapturous. She longs to hone herself, to reach just a bit deeper beneath the murky depths of depravity, corrupting this distant world with the Hill dirt on her soles and the tar in her veins. It is every Morrison's duty to taint the world around them. But this time, she will do it with her hands rather than with her blood.
Click to viewAnd perhaps she owes Miss Noah the favor, besides. Eden had put a quest before her, and it had been completed, there was to be a reward at the end, yes?
Eden takes her time in considering her latest project. Thus far, she has amused herself with talismans and fetishes, trinkets that she quietly distributed throughout the market. She has personally clipped several protective charms around the throats of those she is interested in, but... she makes no such promises of good intent for the rest. To forge a seeing eye is so much more complicated than that. It will need to look human, form and function will both need to be perfect. She will need to study.
She goes down to the market, follows the streets as she has learned them to, making her way to the darker corners of city Promenade. There are other dreamers, like herself, demons and witches and other creatures with dark thoughts and frightening smiles. She picks her way thoughtfully through the rows of haphazard stalls, does not allow herself to be distracted by the jingle of magic coins or the scuffle of curious monstrosities kept in their cages by hexes and not by the wooden bars tied together with twine. She is focused, intent, pays no mind to the calls of special wares. She stops, finally, before a stall heavily laden with a collection of gleaming glass jars. Bones, jaws with and without teeth, ears, livers, hearts, and eyes, any human part she could possibly desire, carefully packaged there for her.
At home, on the Hill, there were such collections everywhere, the more delicate and squishy items kept fresh in the refrigerator, which overflowed with such delights. Mother was very accomplished at canning after her many years, knew to keep the bacteria out with a liberal touch of alcohol in the mixture.
The witch sitting amongst the wares tells her about each of the jars as Eden asks her. The brown eyes of six orphan sisters, the blue eyes from three generations of kings, the golden eyes of those struck heartsick with greed, and a collection of heterochromatic pairs. Eden does not need anything quite so special, she confesses, and the woman raises an eyebrow, getting up to poke her way to the back of one of the shelves, producing a small jar with blue, brown, and green eyes, not all of them neatly paired. Eden smiles faintly and accepts this, tucking her prize away into a small satchel.
Now her studies could begin, and she took her fair silver knife to each of her specimens in turn. She learned quietly through deconstruction, peeling each layer back to examine the meat of it, touching it with her magic until the flesh became nothing but rot and slime.
She returns to the market the next morning, her list prepared. She will need a pound of orfelia fultoni larvae, a quarter of bombyx mori, ten green wonambi scales, a tiny pouch containing the Arco-íris's platinum, and a package of delicate brass nails, shined almost golden. She finds all of it easily in Promenade's fantastical market, even if she must hunt a bit more carefully for some than for others.
It was good fortune that Dawn had given her the glittering evolutionary stones to work with. The darkest of the set would make a perfect base, a perfect pupil. It spared Eden the necessity to work with dirt and clay, and sped the process up admirably. She was able to begin her work as soon as she returned to her bedroom.
She spent the first part of the day very carefully carving out the center of each of the iridescent green scales, carefully filing them. She polished them and the dusk stone until they were smooth and round, catching light from every angle. With expert hands, she scratched the runes into the flesh of each, left them to soak in a bath of sweet smelling alcohol, alongside the brass fasteners, until the evening. When it is dark, only then do the little orfelia's begin their indigo glow. She crushes all of them with mortar and pestle until they are a paste, which she uses to coat her freshly rinsed stone and to glue the ten scales together. She holds her little project over the candle flame to help it dry, and then with sixteen tiny nails, she attaches scale to stone.
It is all she can do for now, the next step left to the silkworms. They, along with the incomplete eye, are placed together in a little jar and left for a few days time. When worm and stone have been encased in silk-webbing, Eden takes her workshop from her bedroom and moves it out into the woods, to her place of solace where she feels more connected to home, to the Hill and its strong dirt.
She builds a new altar in the woods, one to call up great fire from within its enclosed ring. In the center, she places a silver bowl, marks it and her face with the same charcoal warding. Do not burn, do not melt. The jagged pieces of shining platinum which she drops into the bowl, however, are another matter entirely, and it will take hellfire to see them melted down.
While waiting for the sunset to begin burning red and gold across the city, Eden carefully exposes the scales beneath the outer cocoon, tapping in a seventeenth tack to the very middle of the pupil. She takes several strands of her long hair, braiding and tying them to the protruding end of the nail so that it hangs from her hand, can easily be raised and lowered. As the sun itself lowers, she loops the thread around her fingers and begins her work, eye dangling from one hand, silver knife touted in the other as she cuts shape into the air.
"Thought I saw you in my tea leaves. I thought I saw you in a forest flame, and I will fill up the silence with the sound of your holy name."
She whispers her heathen amens, and begins to wake each of the stones in her circle, the bowls of blood in her altar and the grotesque idols which bathe in them. Each piece begins to thrum and chime at her call, as she murmurs the rites and names of the creatures of flame. When she has made several full rotations, she drops to her knee. From a tiny pouch she takes a wriggling salamander, staking it to the ground with her knife just inside the circle, the point passing cleanly through the carnelian stripe down its back. It thrashes in the leaves and Eden inhales deeply, hands held out in obeisance, palms up and empty.
When she curls her hands closed and stands, she does so with force, pulling the great heat that is building within her circle upwards, where it meets the air and bursts brilliantly into life. There is a great rush of wind and an excruciating heat. Eden closes her eyes, feels the warmth on her face and lets the monstrous bonfire burn.
The salamander is nothing but bleached bone when Eden finally reaches inside to reclaim her knife. When she pulls it from the earth, the flames begin to die down. The light is also fading and so she lights her candles while the last flickers of the inferno are put out by the angry wind. In the candlelight, the ground is blackened, but the platinum in the center of the circle is a pool of perfect white. The witch smiles to herself, pleased, and brings the eye strung from her hand near to the surface. She lets it sink into the liquid metal slowly, carefully, coating it until the cocoon and the brass nails around the edge of the viridian scale have disappeared.
Eden takes her dangling eye to the stream then, to help it cool. The larger bowl will take time, she thinks, perhaps, she will come to collect it tomorrow. It is getting dark, and she should return home, but there is one last task to complete, now that all the pieces have been combined. Light, darkness, and color, all that is left now is that her eye simply must see... She cups the orb in her hands, sitting down at the edge of the reflective water, beneath the watching moon. She removes the seventeenth nail from its center and then she raises the eye to her lips. She murmurs to it softly,
"And we look upon the world with open eyes--"
Her little creation goes wet in her hands, moist as an eye should be and it shifts with the damp sound of membrane pulling. Eden lifts her head, looks at it and it returns her gaze. She smiles, wide and white with small, needling teeth. It is, perhaps, a bit greener than Miss Noah's eyes, but it was temporary. A little bit of Miss Noah's blood dropped against the pupil and it would bond with her just fine, it would see anything she needed it to.
Delivering her gift could wait until the morning, however, and with her creation cradled lovingly in her palms, Eden heads home for the rest of the evening.
She does hope Miss Noah will be pleased.