deercountry | i've looked at clouds from both sides now (𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥)

Entry tags:

i've looked at clouds from both sides now (𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥)

^{Who: Peter Graham + you! Prompts will be placed here.
What: Canon update business, potential event things, tba.
When: Through the month of November.
Where: Various places in Trench / tba.

Content Warnings: This character comes with demonic possession by default. There's a gif including nudity (non-sexual, just a couple of people shown naked from behind) in one of the posts.}^{Additional warnings will be placed in individual spaces.}

^{( On Peter's birthday and Blessed Month, he will go through a canon update that's given him updated memories. For weeks 1 - 3 he will mentally be MIA, and Paimon/Charlie may be interacted with. On week 4, Peter will return. Closed starters will be placed under the appropriate posts. Please hit me up @ plot post / plurk / large bat#2354 / pm if you're interested in a starter / if you'd like to plot for the month! )}

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

weeks 1-3 / PAIMON week 4 / PETER

Edited 2022-11-04 02:01 (UTC)

^{CW: cults , rituals , sacrifices , dead bodies , mention of death by fire / immolation , mention of death by throat trauma , mention of suicide by hanging, mention of attempted suicide, associations of car accident, demonic possession , severe identity confusion , self harm , suicidal ideation}

( There are people kneeling at his feet, and the smell of rot.

There is a birdcage, and a life-sized doll, and some parts are wooden but other parts are made out of a little girl. There is a crown made of something's skin.

His eyes are impossibly wide and wet and straining. He cannot speak, or move. He cannot do anything. He has been crowned their king.

HAIL PAIMON

The memory of that final night plays out for him now; Paimon lives it, guided by those open palms and hushed whispers and wide smiles. The People have guided him here and through it. And he has torn through humans to get here, to this place, to this moment: a man is scorched alive, screaming, until he becomes curled-up fingers and black char (the shape of him is Father). A woman hangs, impossibly, from attic rafters, a piano wire wrapped around her neck. She cuts through her throat with jagged, sawing motions (the shape of her is Mother.)

He has torn through humans, but he has been ripped from them, too.

There is the squeal of tires and it hurts to breathe, and Peter is screaming and then he is torn from his body and it hurts, it's emptiness, he's too much and he isn't supposed to be here and he needs the warmth of his new host and he will break Peter apart and claw his way in—

There were others, before. Other Vulnerable Ones, other hosts, botched and ruined. They'd do anything to escape him. (They find a rope and they go to their mother's bedroom. They hang the rope around their neck and their legs are dangling, and they're dead now and the ritual isn't finished, and he can't finish being put inside them.)

There are secret things and old magic uttering truths that flutter against him in too many voices, and the lights are too bright and the languages are too loud, and he stands there with too many names and too many past lives scraping up under his skin. The skin is broken and bleeding in places, but it fits better now. His eyes fill with tears. He is afraid.

Hey hey - no no - you're all right...
Charlie. You're all right, now.

You are Paimon.

He doesn't understand. (But he does, and the rising cacophony, the swell of light and sound and power, it comes from within him. These are things that have always existed. These are paths that have always led to this outcome. These are Truths that could never have been escaped, or reshaped, or denied.)

He (she, they) is a god, and a king, and a child, and a bird with wings snapped broken.

HAIL!

He is in a strange, slimy place, and then he is breaking free of it, of that shell, that cocoon. Long limbs curl and then reach and then scrape. An insect transformed into something else, reborn.

But he is wrong, so wrong; everything is Wrong. He can't recognise the room he's in, that safe and soft place. There is a girl with pale blonde hair and round grey eyes, and he does not know her. He scrambles away, incapable of speech, throat pulsing with clicks and chirps, with a throat strained and gagging, with hands against his eyes, clawing at the bandage that isn't really there, bulky and strange and painful against the mutilated centre of his face. He can't understand how to scream, so he moans, and later, he wails.

In the days that follow, Paimon is lost and strange, sometimes not Paimon at all but Charlie, and sometimes a mix of them both and sometimes the absence of either. Sometimes he is others, names he doesn't recall and can't comprehend. He's still in ways humans are not, alien and unmoving, and then he's fitful and violent against himself, a seed buried in deep and trying to escape its pulpy wet flesh, smashing his head against walls or clawing at his chest and stomach, trying to break out of his cage.

Later in the month, he begins to remember things and to understand things (The People, he knows their faces now, he knows the sounds of their voices and the scent of their spices and the way they smiled, and he knows he would rip them piece by piece by piece by piece), and Peter is gone, and his Witch is aching, she is broken, and this is how it was always going to be.

Nightmares ravage him, in wake and in sleep. Sometimes he misses his mother and his father and his brother and his grandmother (his eyes are always leaking). Sometimes he hates them the way nothing human can hate. It transcends emotion; it is simply energy, ancient and beautiful and horrible.

There is a crown on his head, and his feathers lie in pieces on the floor. He stares at himself in a mirror in a hallway, and his neck is long and thin, and his fingertips brush the hollow of his throat. He could snap it easily, he thinks.

His tongue scrapes upwards, against the roof of his mouth. He shudders when it happens, a convulsive ghost that slithers down through him, soft and cold. Cluck. )

Edited 2022-11-06 18:09 (UTC)

[ Sleep does not come easily. There are snatches of it here and there, but in truth Luna has spend much of the month in a hazy, exhausted waking. As the days turn to weeks since the cocoon split open and Paimon was freed, fitful and frenzied — there is still no sign of Peter, and instead she is left with a demon that appears as if he once had in the early days of her relationship with him both. Some days, he isn't Paimon at all — something lost and broken and small who doesn't speak to her. Once, she whispered Charlie and it made her ache in so many strange ways. Sometimes it's not even Charlie either.

Luna feels lost, too. She doesn't know what to do, how to truly help. But she does what she can, what she has always done. To keep him (them?) safe; to be gentle and soft and careful. Tries to soothe them through fear, tries to tame back to anger directed at themselves. Sometimes it's sitting for hours, not able to reach for them, just murmuring assurances, hoping to be heard. She doesn't know if it'll be alright. Doesn't know if Peter will come back. Some days she's angry, furious at those in Peter's world who have done this to him and Paimon — and she slips into something black and cold but bright, and she doesn't know if it's her own fury or his. Some days she's hollow, mournful — some strange state of not knowing if she should truly be mourning, of if she should be waiting. Some days she hides away and weeps because it isn't fair, as much as she has long existed with the concept that nothing is ever fair with any of them.

And she doesn't sleep. Looking after Paimon takes most of her energy, her emotions take up the rest of it. Too grief-stricken, too stressed, too tired to sleep, the edges of her frayed and worn. She is fortunate enough to have help with him so she can get some sleep, at least — naps during the day to keep her going. But it's not often the case when the skies grow dark. It does come briefly one night, when the house seems still enough that she's able to relax into something shallow and dreamless. But soon enough, she's waking to the dull glow of her body, the steady thrum of blood making the light of her pulse softly... and the strange form curling and shifting slowly at the bottom of the bed beneath the covers as it tries to crawl in. Luna shifts, inhaling sharply as she blinks down at the shape. Her heart quickens, the soft glow of blood pulses faster in a brief moment of horror what is that...?

Without a word, she lifts up the covers and ducks her head under only to find two huge, swollen-black eyes staring back at her. For a long moment, Luna's frozen in her sleep-deprived, watery stare down at him — seeing but not quite registering, her lips parted in her surprise. Slowly it comes to her: yes... yes, there is a demon in her bed. Luna swallows thickly, her eyes fluttering as she tries to form words. ]

Paimon, what are you doing...? [ There's no annoyance in her voice, just a hoarse, confused whisper as she peers down at him. ] You should be in bed.

[ Peter's bed. ]

( This is how it was supposed to be (he has been told, anyway). If there is any of "Peter" left now, it's only a body. Only walls made of flesh and bone and blood, a structure, a place to keep the brightness of something Else contained. Maybe it's Wrong, what the People did and how and why, but it worked. The rules were followed (even if they were skewed), the ritual was made complete (even if it came at the cost of too much sacrifice, and too much blood).

The spellwork is binding the way it has to be, and nothing can unlock him from this host body now, except for another rigorous spell cast by those same hands that cast this one, and the death of it — the death of this body. Paimon understands that now, the way he understands things he wasn't able to before. He understands that there was a host before this one, and he understands that it (she) was killed so that he could be freed from it. He remembers what it was to be torn from that gasping body, so much smaller than Peter's. He remembers the unbearable ache of his own existence, how he was forced to exist on the wrong plane.

But it's all so much to process, and understanding comes strangely. He's just as strange, freshly lost and restless and frightened. Too many voices echo within him, and sometimes he tries to claw them out. Other times he tries to claw himself out instead, aware of his own trapped existence within this body (its ribs that feel like a cage) and wanting to be freed of it. It belongs to him now, the way they said it was always supposed to.

But it haunts him, this body. It's a haunted house, filled up with ghosts that whisper sometimes and wail others. He has nightmares now the way he never did, nightmares like Peter so often had, and Paimon just as often rode them through with the boy, felt him whimper and cry and ache, but now he experiences it himself. Torn from sleep like a human, fingers ensnared in sheets, body leaking cold sweat, wet seeping from the corners of his eyes. He doesn't know who he is; he cries out for his mother, father, grandmother. Sometimes his powers spark out of his control, living out what he sees in his dreams — catches things on fire, makes things around him float or crash. Sometimes he crumples inwards too much, limbs and spine bending, twisting, bones threatening to snap. Luna's been able to stop much incident, however it comes, and whenever he gets too bad, his mind begins to scream, and she can hear it — she can come to him, calm him before he destroys things or destroys what's left of "Peter".

But sometimes the nightmares are quiet. So quiet that his mind doesn't scream or cry out, doesn't fizzle with some static that burns too bright and loud. Sometimes, on a night like this, his spirit whimpers very softly and his wet eyes open into the darkness. And sometimes he stays alone, finding smaller places to curl up on his own — under Peter's bed or tucked deeply in his closet, or up in the attic room.

But tonight he is afraid and too small and too alone and he needs to be somewhere safer. There's some part of him still that resists it — entering Luna's room without being invited (and what he'd done once, how he'd frightened her so, a creeping crawling thing so strange). He agonises over it briefly, hands fitful against themselves, sweeping down the hall back and forth. But then he catches his own shadow down the hall and it frightens him all over again, and he wants her to hold Peter again the way she used to — in her bed, tight and warm and safe, and Paimon would be held, too.

But he can't be held that way, because Peter is gone now. The demon's tight throat flutters with soft movement, and he's slipping into Luna room in a way that isn't very human, and he won't touch her but he just needs to be close. To the foot of the bed, he starts to slowly crawl up and into the bottom of warm covers, shuddering softly, wide-eyed. Then— he freezes. The covers are moving, she's pulling them back with the soft glow that pulses up under her skin, and he stares, body tensed up, nostrils flaring.

Paimon, she says his name, catches hold of him that way, and he gives a soft wet sound, but it isn't human. For a while he can't speak, not verbally. But things flash through, wild, the shapes of words more than things intentionally uttered. )

« scary dark frighten noise eyes sharp hands pull »

( A whine breaks through in him, and his fingers dig into the sheets below. Despite having helped Luna through her own over time, he doesn't know how to convey "nightmare", what it is, what it really means, at least not when it's in himself. )

« afraid »

Edited 2022-11-10 09:01 (UTC)

from up and down, and still somehow

it's cloud's illusions i recall (𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐬 𝟏 - 𝟑)

no subject

no subject

— Usagi Tsukino / Serenity

no subject

— Sharon Da Silva (cw: cultists / blood craved zealots, violence, descriptions of mutilation)

no subject

— Willow Rosenberg (cw: identity confusion, gestures of self harm, spooky demon behaviour)

no subject

— KD6-3.7

no subject

— Pyrrha Dve (cw: dead animal)

— Sansa Stark

lmk if i can add anything

i really don't know clouds at all (𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤 𝟒)

— Fiddleford McGucket (cw: drug / marijuana use, depression... unsanitary living arrangements)

— Dito