sending message which only we can understand.
Who: solarpurpura, solo-log that can technically be open to dirt-heart
What: Eden makes a heartless
Where: All over Promenade.
When: May 25th - June 7th
Warnings: Various squicks, torture, tl;dr.
There are images and music... because I like decorating 8'( it's a weakness of mine, I apologize.
She has been watching the city with her black eyes, contemplating the scurry of the ants before her. She wonders about them. She wonders about their lives, their actions, their desires and who they are wronging in them. It is so difficult to have desires without some slight. For Eden, she has always been taught such costs are entirely negligible in the face of her wishes. She is Morrison, she answers to no one but blood. The may mock her, if it pleases him, but his father remains an impotent force in her life, his teachings remain naive, his children remain alone. She offers no repentance.
Her Hill has no use for penance. It breathes, it lives, it flourishes on her sins and it has been far too long since she last laid out an offering. The blood of thrashing, screaming rabbits quenches no thirst, none at all.
The trouble, however, has been to what extent she is willing to dirty her own hands. She is Bethlehem's daughter, there should be pigs awaiting their slaughter, bowing down at her feet because it has always been her family's hand which provides protection and prosperity to their unworthy ventures in kind. Morrisons are rulers, and their people ring them on all sides, hidden in the mist: dull-eyed, and waiting.
But this is not her Hill. There are no pigs to offer themselves up, and no brothers here in Promenade City to do her hunting for her. She misses them, misses Lehi and Ram, taking after their mother and standing tall, brandishing strong hands and quick knives. If they were here, the belligerent hunters would already have met an unpleasant fate. Perhaps caged like the irritating little animals they are, since Death suffers such insult at Genero's hand.
There is only Kelly here. She could ask him, he would refuse her, surely, and she could take hold of his strings and force him to it. She could even force him to forgive her for it, haunt him with her wishes until he was poisoned sick with it and compliant. Perhaps, if she became desperate enough, she may have.
May still, but first a new seed has been planted in the rot of her heart. Another Nobody in her city, she recognizes that stagnant aura now; suffocating on its own uselessness.
And in hearing Xigbar detail the loss of these hearts, she is curious (she is arrogant.) She could improve such a flawed process. She can manipulate, she can control, darkness is hers, for fifteen generations her Hill has grown fat and her blood has turned to blight and to tar.
And so she watches, and when she has made her decision, she rises, smoothing out her tattered skirts, and she follows; just another masked face, unnoticed in a city crowded with their many shapes and their hidden features.
Felipé gasps. His lungs claw the air for oxygen, but he realizes quickly that he is choking.
There is a long rope of hair in throat, he feels it slip down as he inhales it, the soft strands against his lips. He coughs, and he sputters and he tries to lift his hands to pull it free, but realizes as he does that there are small, cold hands encircling his wrists. He realizes there is a weight across his chest. His throat spasms, lungs sucking at the air again, pulling her hair deeper.
Her. He can see her dark eyes through the wild nesting of her hair, pools of ebony set into pale skin; bright beneath dark hair, like the dappling of sunlight through the trees.
"Shh," she soothes, her sees her rosy lips moving within the web, hears her begin to hum gently. Her tones are musical and girlish. Is she young then? She hardly weighs a thing.
He gags and tries to sit up, but one of her hands leaves his wrist to push at his forehead. He falls back with a groan.
"Hush, Felipé." She strokes his face and he trembles. "Hush," she repeats sweetly, and then the pain begins, and he whimpers.
(He is dreaming of dirt. He is dreaming of the night, of the menace of tall trees all around him. All is wet, and their trunks gleam black. All is wet, and all is fragrant with must and decay; mud, standing water, earthen but rotting, unclean. And he sinking.
His heart clenches with panic, and he cries out with pain at the ferocious sensation which follows, hands clutching his chest. He shuts his eyes and breathes as the mud sucks him downward, already well past his knees and too heavy to lift his feet.
He hears her, humming. In full and glad surrender, I give myself to Thee, Thine utterly and only and evermore to be.
He feels her hair and her breath against the back of his neck.
"Help me."
O Son of God, who lov'st me, I will be Thine alone; And all I have and am, Lord, shall henceforth be Thine own.
"Please." Sunk up to his waist, his heart is beating furiously with fear and every every palpitation burns and it aches and each wave of it sends dark, amorphous stains before his eyes. "Help me, please."
Her arms appear, forearms cold on either side of his neck as she wraps them around him, her voice in his ear.
Reign over me, Lord Savior; Oh, make my heart Thy throne; It shall be Thine, dear Savior, it shall be Thine alone.
Muddied up to his elbows, he lifts his dirty hands to grasp at hers.
"Please, it hurts."
Her singing stops, he can hear her smiling. "I know, Felipé, I know."
"Please," he sobs, and her arms tighten around him gently. He watches her fingers move, just beneath his eye line, fiddling like spiders with invisible strings.
His heart is weeping with pain, shuddering and wounded, and his screams taper off wetly as the muck crests over his head.)
He is drowning in red water, grit between his teeth, and then he wakes.
His heart pulses weakly. Phantoms flit through his mind; wisps of smoke that smell of blackened ginger, mold-flecked dirt, leather, and dried blood (like her.)
Her. Black eyes, elegant eyelashes set feminine in a moonlit face. Soft hair. Memories of pain.
Oh, come and reign, Lord Savior, rule over everything. And keep me always loyal, and true to Thee, my King.
He shudders, rolling out of bed, trying to banish such dark dreams, but even in the sunlight, in the street, it hangs heavy upon him.
"Felipé!" A friend is calling to him. "Felipé, where have you been?!"
He does not know. Where have the days gone?
How disappointing.
Too weak for her needs.
Eden turns her eyes back to the city.
Arjuna comes to herself at the sensation of a faint tugging on her scalp, of fingers in her hair. She realizes quickly that she cannot see, that her mask is in place but that a soft black cloth has been placed into its eyes.
"What is this? Who are you?"
There are nimble fingers braiding her hair.
Incensed, Arjuna tries to toss her head. She soon gasps in pain as she is jerked sharply back into place. Adrenaline fills her, and all she can hear is the thunder of blood in her ears as her hair is touched, and is finally tied off. She jumps when cold hands touch her neck.
"Don't be afraid, Arjuna." a girl's voice, fingertips on her pulse.
"Fuck yourself! Get off me!"
Her voice cuts off with a snarl as her plaited hair is pulled again, her head tilted back. She not released, and she turns her head back and forth looking for freedom, but something has fastened her down. She can hear the girl circling around in front of her, feels it when her fingers push down the collar of her shirt.
"Fuck you! Fuck you!"
A palm smooths up her throat, and suddenly she finds she can speak no more.
And when the pain truly begins, she does not have the satisfaction of a scream.
(There is a heavy weight around her neck, with hands lifted, she feels cold steel, and she feels rust. She swallows raggedly, and in doing so disturbs the barbs sunk deep into her neck.
Her pulse quickens, and in echo of the first, a second cloud of pain overtakes her every thought, her every sense. Her chest is on fire and the she drops to the ground, does not notice the hay under her palms, nor her bare feet, but her mind does distantly register the heavy smell of animals.
She swallows again, and her first instinct is to shriek. Tensing her throat to do so, however, is agony, and she can feel blood running down her collarbones.
Her chest aches. She curls up into a quiet ball and waits.
Wherever she is, it is always dark, and the breathing from the shadows fills her with dread, but truly nothing can overwhelm her awareness of the steel sunk into her flesh. She can feel it, always, carving out its place inside her body. She holds her breath, often, until she is dizzy with it, and sick with hunger and pain. She almost does not hear the shifting in the darkness, the hissing and the clatter of talons.
But then there is a hand reaching down to her, unfastening her collar of knives with a click. The slick sensation as it slides free, clattering to the floor, is nauseating. Her wounds feel empty, so empty.
She whimpers miserably, hands clenched over her heart, which still weeps, as if ribboned in knives of its own.
"What is it, Arjuna."
The girl's voice, soft and kindly. Arjuna curls up tighter, face pressed to the floor, her nose filled with the stink of animals. She whimpers, and from the darkness comes an answering scream, a bird's shriek.
"Tell me," the girl coaxes, stroking the plait of hair that runs down her back. She shudders.
"Please," Arjuna gasps, feels blood seeping from her with the word.
"Please?" the girl repeats gently, expectantly, "Please, what?"
"Please." Arjuna begs desperately.
She can hear the girl smile in reply, and thuogh she does not lift her head, she can feel her fingers begin to work, toying with the long strands of hair that have come loose from her braid.
Something is slicing into her heart.
And she screams.
She screams herself ragged, until all she can do is moan.)
She is quietly, ecstatically, fastening her collar back into place when she wakes.
She stares at the ceiling numbly until the sound of a shattering cup rouses her. She turns her head slowly. Her husband stands in the doorway of their bedroom, staring at her in shock.
"Where have you been?" He asks, stepping in porcelain shards to reach her, to take her into his arms and stroke the heavy braid down her back.
"I don't know," she says.
But in her mind's eye, she sees black eyes, hears soft music (If sights could be reversed...), smells something strange and floral and decaying (Ginger. Cinnamon. Dirt. Leather. Dried blood.)
An improvement.
How heartening.
(His cage is too small, and he is hungry. His is numb to the cold, and has forgotten the tacky blood on skin.
She is tugging on his strings for him (it feels so--) and he lifts his head, peering up awkwardly with the way his limbs are crammed in around him. He looks for her, but the sunlight streaming in through the open window is blinding.
He hears the trees sighing in the wind, he sees her feet approaching across the dusty floor of his empty little room.
She is singing for him.
From the sign would be created our new realities...
He listens, silent and happy, opens his mouth when her hand appears and she feeds him his little rabbit heart dinner.
She goes to the window then, looking out over the dark forest, clouded in grey mist.
My voice is only sounds...
Her dark eyes shine on endlessly and he watches her. Watches her lift her hands in the sunlight, as if in prayer.
He jerks inside his cage as the pain begins, his half-starved bones rattling against the bars. His heart is beating so quickly. A million beats a second, like the fury of a hummingbird.
He sings her song back to her breathlessly in a hoarse voice,
From my fingers and, from my fingers and yours.
She spreads her fingers elegantly, pulling her hands in opposite directions along invisible threads. He strains against the bars, bruising his skin, cracking bones.
From my fingers and--
Eden turns to look as his rasping song stops. She watches with satisfaction as his mouth jerks uselessly, eyes blank, and body contorted.
She holds out her hand, reeling her threads in, hand over hand.
His heart shudders free of him, glistening red in the sunlight for an ephemeral moment before it is gone. She had not asked Xigbar where they went... perhaps she will, when she goes to show him her new pet.)
When it wakes, the husk in the cage stirs lazily, learning its strange, broken body slowly. It does not recognize the bedroom it sits in, it is cluttered with strange little knickknacks, a mobile of feather and bones turning overhead, stirred by the wind from an open window.
But the girl... the girl it recognizes and it fixes its golden eyes on her from beneath its mask.
"We are both hungry, I think," she thinks.
It nods, and she rises from the bed, smoothing out her tattered skirts as she approaches. She crouches down outside the cage. She meets its eyes quietly for a moment before she opens the door.
"Just one, and bring back the rest to me. Don't be seen."
It leaves the cage on spindly legs, lifting itself into the window on boney arms. It glances back her for a moment before nodding, and then heading out into the silence of Promenade's night.
What: Eden makes a heartless
Where: All over Promenade.
When: May 25th - June 7th
Warnings: Various squicks, torture, tl;dr.
There are images and music... because I like decorating 8'( it's a weakness of mine, I apologize.
She has been watching the city with her black eyes, contemplating the scurry of the ants before her. She wonders about them. She wonders about their lives, their actions, their desires and who they are wronging in them. It is so difficult to have desires without some slight. For Eden, she has always been taught such costs are entirely negligible in the face of her wishes. She is Morrison, she answers to no one but blood. The may mock her, if it pleases him, but his father remains an impotent force in her life, his teachings remain naive, his children remain alone. She offers no repentance.
Her Hill has no use for penance. It breathes, it lives, it flourishes on her sins and it has been far too long since she last laid out an offering. The blood of thrashing, screaming rabbits quenches no thirst, none at all.
The trouble, however, has been to what extent she is willing to dirty her own hands. She is Bethlehem's daughter, there should be pigs awaiting their slaughter, bowing down at her feet because it has always been her family's hand which provides protection and prosperity to their unworthy ventures in kind. Morrisons are rulers, and their people ring them on all sides, hidden in the mist: dull-eyed, and waiting.
But this is not her Hill. There are no pigs to offer themselves up, and no brothers here in Promenade City to do her hunting for her. She misses them, misses Lehi and Ram, taking after their mother and standing tall, brandishing strong hands and quick knives. If they were here, the belligerent hunters would already have met an unpleasant fate. Perhaps caged like the irritating little animals they are, since Death suffers such insult at Genero's hand.
There is only Kelly here. She could ask him, he would refuse her, surely, and she could take hold of his strings and force him to it. She could even force him to forgive her for it, haunt him with her wishes until he was poisoned sick with it and compliant. Perhaps, if she became desperate enough, she may have.
May still, but first a new seed has been planted in the rot of her heart. Another Nobody in her city, she recognizes that stagnant aura now; suffocating on its own uselessness.
And in hearing Xigbar detail the loss of these hearts, she is curious (she is arrogant.) She could improve such a flawed process. She can manipulate, she can control, darkness is hers, for fifteen generations her Hill has grown fat and her blood has turned to blight and to tar.
And so she watches, and when she has made her decision, she rises, smoothing out her tattered skirts, and she follows; just another masked face, unnoticed in a city crowded with their many shapes and their hidden features.
Felipé gasps. His lungs claw the air for oxygen, but he realizes quickly that he is choking.
There is a long rope of hair in throat, he feels it slip down as he inhales it, the soft strands against his lips. He coughs, and he sputters and he tries to lift his hands to pull it free, but realizes as he does that there are small, cold hands encircling his wrists. He realizes there is a weight across his chest. His throat spasms, lungs sucking at the air again, pulling her hair deeper.
Her. He can see her dark eyes through the wild nesting of her hair, pools of ebony set into pale skin; bright beneath dark hair, like the dappling of sunlight through the trees.
"Shh," she soothes, her sees her rosy lips moving within the web, hears her begin to hum gently. Her tones are musical and girlish. Is she young then? She hardly weighs a thing.
He gags and tries to sit up, but one of her hands leaves his wrist to push at his forehead. He falls back with a groan.
"Hush, Felipé." She strokes his face and he trembles. "Hush," she repeats sweetly, and then the pain begins, and he whimpers.
(He is dreaming of dirt. He is dreaming of the night, of the menace of tall trees all around him. All is wet, and their trunks gleam black. All is wet, and all is fragrant with must and decay; mud, standing water, earthen but rotting, unclean. And he sinking.
His heart clenches with panic, and he cries out with pain at the ferocious sensation which follows, hands clutching his chest. He shuts his eyes and breathes as the mud sucks him downward, already well past his knees and too heavy to lift his feet.
He hears her, humming. In full and glad surrender, I give myself to Thee, Thine utterly and only and evermore to be.
He feels her hair and her breath against the back of his neck.
"Help me."
O Son of God, who lov'st me, I will be Thine alone; And all I have and am, Lord, shall henceforth be Thine own.
"Please." Sunk up to his waist, his heart is beating furiously with fear and every every palpitation burns and it aches and each wave of it sends dark, amorphous stains before his eyes. "Help me, please."
Her arms appear, forearms cold on either side of his neck as she wraps them around him, her voice in his ear.
Reign over me, Lord Savior; Oh, make my heart Thy throne; It shall be Thine, dear Savior, it shall be Thine alone.
Muddied up to his elbows, he lifts his dirty hands to grasp at hers.
"Please, it hurts."
Her singing stops, he can hear her smiling. "I know, Felipé, I know."
"Please," he sobs, and her arms tighten around him gently. He watches her fingers move, just beneath his eye line, fiddling like spiders with invisible strings.
His heart is weeping with pain, shuddering and wounded, and his screams taper off wetly as the muck crests over his head.)
He is drowning in red water, grit between his teeth, and then he wakes.
His heart pulses weakly. Phantoms flit through his mind; wisps of smoke that smell of blackened ginger, mold-flecked dirt, leather, and dried blood (like her.)
Her. Black eyes, elegant eyelashes set feminine in a moonlit face. Soft hair. Memories of pain.
Oh, come and reign, Lord Savior, rule over everything. And keep me always loyal, and true to Thee, my King.
He shudders, rolling out of bed, trying to banish such dark dreams, but even in the sunlight, in the street, it hangs heavy upon him.
"Felipé!" A friend is calling to him. "Felipé, where have you been?!"
He does not know. Where have the days gone?
Click to view
How disappointing.
Too weak for her needs.
Eden turns her eyes back to the city.
Arjuna comes to herself at the sensation of a faint tugging on her scalp, of fingers in her hair. She realizes quickly that she cannot see, that her mask is in place but that a soft black cloth has been placed into its eyes.
"What is this? Who are you?"
There are nimble fingers braiding her hair.
Incensed, Arjuna tries to toss her head. She soon gasps in pain as she is jerked sharply back into place. Adrenaline fills her, and all she can hear is the thunder of blood in her ears as her hair is touched, and is finally tied off. She jumps when cold hands touch her neck.
"Don't be afraid, Arjuna." a girl's voice, fingertips on her pulse.
"Fuck yourself! Get off me!"
Her voice cuts off with a snarl as her plaited hair is pulled again, her head tilted back. She not released, and she turns her head back and forth looking for freedom, but something has fastened her down. She can hear the girl circling around in front of her, feels it when her fingers push down the collar of her shirt.
"Fuck you! Fuck you!"
A palm smooths up her throat, and suddenly she finds she can speak no more.
And when the pain truly begins, she does not have the satisfaction of a scream.
(There is a heavy weight around her neck, with hands lifted, she feels cold steel, and she feels rust. She swallows raggedly, and in doing so disturbs the barbs sunk deep into her neck.
Her pulse quickens, and in echo of the first, a second cloud of pain overtakes her every thought, her every sense. Her chest is on fire and the she drops to the ground, does not notice the hay under her palms, nor her bare feet, but her mind does distantly register the heavy smell of animals.
She swallows again, and her first instinct is to shriek. Tensing her throat to do so, however, is agony, and she can feel blood running down her collarbones.
Her chest aches. She curls up into a quiet ball and waits.
Wherever she is, it is always dark, and the breathing from the shadows fills her with dread, but truly nothing can overwhelm her awareness of the steel sunk into her flesh. She can feel it, always, carving out its place inside her body. She holds her breath, often, until she is dizzy with it, and sick with hunger and pain. She almost does not hear the shifting in the darkness, the hissing and the clatter of talons.
But then there is a hand reaching down to her, unfastening her collar of knives with a click. The slick sensation as it slides free, clattering to the floor, is nauseating. Her wounds feel empty, so empty.
She whimpers miserably, hands clenched over her heart, which still weeps, as if ribboned in knives of its own.
"What is it, Arjuna."
The girl's voice, soft and kindly. Arjuna curls up tighter, face pressed to the floor, her nose filled with the stink of animals. She whimpers, and from the darkness comes an answering scream, a bird's shriek.
"Tell me," the girl coaxes, stroking the plait of hair that runs down her back. She shudders.
"Please," Arjuna gasps, feels blood seeping from her with the word.
"Please?" the girl repeats gently, expectantly, "Please, what?"
"Please." Arjuna begs desperately.
She can hear the girl smile in reply, and thuogh she does not lift her head, she can feel her fingers begin to work, toying with the long strands of hair that have come loose from her braid.
Something is slicing into her heart.
And she screams.
She screams herself ragged, until all she can do is moan.)
She is quietly, ecstatically, fastening her collar back into place when she wakes.
She stares at the ceiling numbly until the sound of a shattering cup rouses her. She turns her head slowly. Her husband stands in the doorway of their bedroom, staring at her in shock.
"Where have you been?" He asks, stepping in porcelain shards to reach her, to take her into his arms and stroke the heavy braid down her back.
"I don't know," she says.
But in her mind's eye, she sees black eyes, hears soft music (If sights could be reversed...), smells something strange and floral and decaying (Ginger. Cinnamon. Dirt. Leather. Dried blood.)
An improvement.
How heartening.
(His cage is too small, and he is hungry. His is numb to the cold, and has forgotten the tacky blood on skin.
She is tugging on his strings for him (it feels so--) and he lifts his head, peering up awkwardly with the way his limbs are crammed in around him. He looks for her, but the sunlight streaming in through the open window is blinding.
He hears the trees sighing in the wind, he sees her feet approaching across the dusty floor of his empty little room.
She is singing for him.
From the sign would be created our new realities...
He listens, silent and happy, opens his mouth when her hand appears and she feeds him his little rabbit heart dinner.
She goes to the window then, looking out over the dark forest, clouded in grey mist.
My voice is only sounds...
Her dark eyes shine on endlessly and he watches her. Watches her lift her hands in the sunlight, as if in prayer.
He jerks inside his cage as the pain begins, his half-starved bones rattling against the bars. His heart is beating so quickly. A million beats a second, like the fury of a hummingbird.
He sings her song back to her breathlessly in a hoarse voice,
From my fingers and, from my fingers and yours.
She spreads her fingers elegantly, pulling her hands in opposite directions along invisible threads. He strains against the bars, bruising his skin, cracking bones.
From my fingers and--
Eden turns to look as his rasping song stops. She watches with satisfaction as his mouth jerks uselessly, eyes blank, and body contorted.
She holds out her hand, reeling her threads in, hand over hand.
His heart shudders free of him, glistening red in the sunlight for an ephemeral moment before it is gone. She had not asked Xigbar where they went... perhaps she will, when she goes to show him her new pet.)
When it wakes, the husk in the cage stirs lazily, learning its strange, broken body slowly. It does not recognize the bedroom it sits in, it is cluttered with strange little knickknacks, a mobile of feather and bones turning overhead, stirred by the wind from an open window.
But the girl... the girl it recognizes and it fixes its golden eyes on her from beneath its mask.
"We are both hungry, I think," she thinks.
It nods, and she rises from the bed, smoothing out her tattered skirts as she approaches. She crouches down outside the cage. She meets its eyes quietly for a moment before she opens the door.
"Just one, and bring back the rest to me. Don't be seen."
It leaves the cage on spindly legs, lifting itself into the window on boney arms. It glances back her for a moment before nodding, and then heading out into the silence of Promenade's night.