can't believe the state you're in; it's so far away

[behindtheskin]

Shadows fall upon thin cheeks as she sits by the fire, wondering if he's awake, thinking of her. Or dreaming, perhaps. Wonders whether or not she walks his dreams, among the flowers he's promised to buy her one day, sipping at liquor, the expensive kind that none of them can afford just yet, the kind one would find at a bar, heels lightly resting

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[noonelaughed]

He's not going anywhere in particular. It's one of those days where he's mostly just been wandering round, content to keep to himself and smoke spliff without going round to Maxxie's or Cassie's. It's fuckin' lazy days on the island sometimes, and sometimes he doesn't really mind it all that much.

"You know bonfire night was last week, right?" Chris asks when he finds Effy dancing in front of the fire, speaking around the joint set between his lips. Not that there's ever a bad time for a bonfire, but it's not exactly like people go round lighting them for no reason every day.

[behindtheskin]

"I know what fucking day it is," she replies with a sigh, slowing to a stop as her hair settles about her shoulders, her gaze turning over to the familiar voice. There's no accusation in her voice, no anger- only the slight tension in her fingers as they press against the center of her palm, tightly enough that her heart manages to hide itself in the contact, with a steady thrum, reminding her that she's alive. "Was at bonfire night. Though I don't blame you for not noticing; Cook has that effect on people on people who within three meters around him."

If anything, looking at him now, the lack of judgment in his eyes, she wonders if she ought to feel sorry for fucking around with him like that in the caves all that time ago.

"Alright?" she asks, arms neatly folded over her chest as she glances off to the side, at the casual arch of his brow.

[noonelaughed]

"Yeah, I don't really remember bonfire night, actually," Chris admits, because after he'd found Maxxie, it hadn't been long before both of them were well pissed, mostly just trying to get their minds off of shit. He doesn't kow what Maxxie's reasons had been, but for Chris, it'd all been whatever was or wasn't going on with Claire, and a bunch of other stuff.

Maybe he should just get the fuck over it already.

Chris squints down at the fire, mostly just to do it, when the sight of something familiar catches his eye.

"Wait a second... what- what the fuck's that?" he asks her, pointing at what looks like a baggie.

[behindtheskin]

She lets the question hang in the air for a few seconds, the happiness surrounding her having dissipated already, risen into the night air, beyond her grasp. There's no less of a victory in this, in the smoke that brushes hot against her skin, but Chris remains blind to it. Remains blind to most things, in fact, in a way Tony's called useless so many times, making him the target of any number of careless remarks in the past. There's no question as to why Tony's veered away from Chris, from the apathy that remains around him, occasionally shaped into ecstasy by a pill. Apathy spreads.

And her wall rises high to keep it from touching her, now.

"Drugs," she answers, plain, her voice sharp. "Pills, spliff, cocaine, all of it. I'm burning it. And you know why?"

Her arms remain crossed over her arms as she turns to face Chris fully. "Because I want to remember bonfire night. I want to remember what it's like to be scared, and I want to fix shit, okay? You know, I remember. I remember all the fucking times that people gave up on each

[endlessdel]

"Don't stand so close, you'll get burned." Del said in a sing song voice, laughing. Her toes curling into the sand as she reaches out to the fire, it burns black and burns with colours. Colours she can only see now sometimes, if she stares at something the right way. She misses octarine, she misses the taste of fire in her soul and the way it felt across her skin. "Human bodies are so fragile, they burn so easy. Too close to the sun and they fall, burn away to nothing."

[behindtheskin]

She's woven through every corridor, every passage, lingering by the side like a ghost unbidden, and from the narrowest of spaces, words pass through. Catch in the palm of her hand. Effy knows, if not by the sound of the voice, then the color of this woman's hair- knows who she is, knows what she was a lifetime ago. (Or at least, what she's professed to be.) It seems timely, poetic, that she should be found right now, while insanity tremulously tries to keep its hold with the rising flames, fanning her skin with heat. With a sweep of her hand, Effy passes her hand over the fire, quickly enough that none of it sears, none of it touches. But it doesn't even come close to the strength she felt that day, when she was capable of anything, of sharing the cold that held her arms encased in ice, or when she could build a stone wall around her heart

[endlessdel]

"No, not human of being alive. Humans, Fairies, Witches, Aliens, Gods... it's all the same, you all get the same thing. A lifetime," Delirium said. The words were familiar, a chant she told herself every day she remained human. She would get her lifetime and then she would go back to her duties, to her realm in chaos. "It feels so short though as quick as blinking. People do not think that it is fair but it is. It's not the length of your life, it's whether you've lived."

[behindtheskin]

"My mum used to... read fairy tales to me before bed," Effy remembered then, her brow furrowing in slight unease at the thought, at the times when she still missed her mother above all else. The times she'd quietly cried herself to sleep, only to find that the person who heard her, always heard her, no matter how silent, was Tony. That he would slip into her covers while they were children, just to be there as she stared around for the monsters she heard, the scraping of branches against the house with a howling wind, and wouldn't leave her until she quieted in sound sleep. "You know, I never believed they were real. I thought she was just being stupid, trying to have me believe in a better world."

Her palm pressed against the side of her neck, the skin hot to her touch. "It's better this way. Short. Life gets painful. No one can hold that forever without going mental."

[findherwayback]

If she was coming or going Thalia would never say. It was a little of both actually, coming from one mindless trek and headed into another. The only reason that she had diverted from her original path had been the smell of smoke. It was different then normal. It burned her nose. Made her eyes water, but it didn't make her heart ache in the way that burning wood did.

Stopping on the other side of the bonfire, she stared at the flames for a moment before letting her eyes drift to the girl on the far side. There was no game involved to guess which double it was. Effy was easy to spot, fairer-haired and more evasive. This Effy was different and Thalia wondered if that was better or worse when compared to the Effy that came before. It was probably a little of both.

"What's so important that only fire can get rid of it?"

[behindtheskin]

The easiest way around it was to close her eyes. Only a glow of color remained, lingering through her skin, burnt orange and shifting with the waves of heat emitted by the flames. She knew what she'd see when she opened her eyes again at last, if not why- one of the two girls, the ones who shared a face, but not a heart. Breath shallow, she reminded herself against the thudding of her heart, that these girls weren't her. That they weren't reflections reaching out from the mirror, facets shining in shards, but instead girls whole, complete, more than Effy herself could ever be.

Although at last, she felt that she could try.

Their voices varied more, hers a touch higher, more direct for the accent, and Effy's lips quirked in a hint of a smile, as though running over the new presence, noting all of the ways in which they differed. They weren't enough. But they'd have to be.

"Pills." Blinking her eyes open again, Effy's gaze rested on the other girl. "Drugs."

[findherwayback]

Thalia didn't want to be the one to push it. She already knew that this Effy thought of her as an extension of herself. It was the sort of thing that was just crazy enough to make her feel bad for the other girl, despite knowing that pity was useless and unproductive. It created a strange sadness within her that she couldn't get the other Effy back. The first one hadn't made much sense either, but at least she worried Thalia yes.

Taking a step to the left she looked at the fire, making a slightly face before looking back at Effy. "Makes sense," was what she said, because it was a good way to destroy those things without running the risk of permanently damaging the ecosystem of the island.

"Do you still think I'm you?"

[behindtheskin]

"No," Effy answered quietly, turning around to watch the flames, tempted to reach her hand and allow them to lick over her skin. She could picture it now, and knew how it felt to have such power in one's hands without a hint of pain. But perhaps being invincible wasn't the best thing in the world. Hardening one's heart until fire couldn't burn, until a blade couldn't sear, would rob one of humanity. She wished, though, that she could have it drain from her. Just a touch. Just that one percent, where she felt too much, and drowned in it by the day. Her gaze stared, unseeing, into the fire, until she could feel her eyes grow wet with the ashes.

"I thought you were a hallucination, you know. Wouldn't be the first time. The voices have always been there, even when I was a kid," Effy explained, her tone tired, sobered. "And I know that I'm mental. I'm always going to feel like when thing go wrong, it's... because of that. Because of me."

She paused.

"I'm trying to change that."

[turnedtoproust]

Scripps can see the fire burning from a good distance away, thinking that this is possibly what the poets of old must have seen, but rather than bodies being licked by the flames, he can't exactly tell what's being evaporated in the smoke. He comes closer to the girl who looks -- well, she looks almost pleased, but maybe it's a trick of the light.

"Then seemed a Heart crying: "Whosoever they be at root and bottom of this, who flung this flame between folk kin tongued even as are we," he recites, good old Hardy appropriate in all occasions.

[behindtheskin]

Fingers brushing lightly through her hair, Effy's eyes fall to a close, gentle, as she allows the words to pass over her. For all that she spent years, lips pressed shut in silence, the words of others are quick to sink into her skin. Quick to make a mark, an impression, the sort that isn't easily shaken away or bled into black and white. Somehow, tonight they come as a comfort, even as the wind weaves itself into her hair, coaxing her gaze along until it falls on the young man at last.

"Don't know that one," she confesses with a light raise of her brow, though the smile is warm. Unusually so, though a shiver passes over her shoulders regardless. "Sounds familiar."

[turnedtoproust]

"It's Hardy," he offers, not the type (not Hector's type, even though he well and truly is) to withhold an answer and make a person jump through hoops in order to seem intellectually superior. He offers a brief smile, watching the shiver through her body and worries for a moment about what sort of situation he's wandered into. "Dare I ask what we're burning, today?"

[behindtheskin]

"Madness," Effy replies first, the briefest of answers, and perhaps in that sense, the most accurate as well. Everything is rising, billowing smoke, but there's an order to the destruction of one's possessions, and a choice that she can't takes back as everything falls to cinder and ash. This is what she's trying to back away from, the energy that leads her blindly down a path not of her own choosing. And in thinking about all else that still winds around her like a threat unrealized, she smiles at home, the blue of her eyes hidden by the glow of the fire.

"I said to love, 'Thou art not young, thou art not fair. No elfin darts, no cherub air, nor swan, nor dove are thine; but features pitiless, and iron daggers of distress,' I said to Love," she recites. No one goes through college without having heard of Hardy, but to Effy, only certain words etch themselves into her skin. Only the ones she knows will last.

[willbewonderful]

Duck doesn't know what she's burning, and he doesn't know what she's humming. He didn't mean to get so close - not every islander likes to share their fire, after all - but he's walking the shore before heading home, and her skirts are just too damn near to those flames for his liking.

He only means to call her attention to it, but she twirls and all at once, he's got an armful of her. "Oops," he says, exhaling around a smile, and does the only thing he can. Duck dips her, releasing her after with a short spin.

[behindtheskin]

Suddenly, the world twirls around her, and Effy finds herself with the sky under her feet. There's a strong arm around her waist, the kind that makes it impossible to feel fear as deeply as it ought to etch itself into her skin. She should be afraid of this, of the new world opening itself to her, wide and unaltered and, for once, casting her no shadows to hide herself in. It should scare her, but it doesn't, and she smiles up at the man, brilliant, breathless, and with a laugh that shines under the light cast by the flames.

"Cheers," she grins, spinning to her feet with a slight bow of her head. Her grace has never come at the encouragement of others; for now, she pretends otherwise.

[willbewonderful]

"No problem," Duck replies with a grin, even if he feels kind of embarrassed about the whole thing. Fifty's not old, but sometimes it feels it, all these kids running around the island.

"Didn't mean to bust up the party," he adds, "just thought you were kinda close to that fire."

[behindtheskin]

"It's not a party," Effy replies, her eyes calm and tranquil, a deep blue from the eye of the storm. She takes the moment to brush her skirt down, obediently taking a step away from the flames rising high, her gaze skirting over to the man to show that she's capable of taking orders where needed, advice where given. Her fingers brush against her jaw, wondering at this man, who'd step out of his way to help a girl from getting burned. Sometimes, it feels like adults never notice, like they don't care about pain that doesn't show up in a wrinkle or a gray hair, like those only beginning to be worn down don't need the help so much as they need the experience.

Picking themselves back up.

"It's a celebration. Getting rid of shit that doesn't matter," she explains with a smile, her eyes darting from his gaze to the smoldering, curling bags at the bottom of the fire.