in the ghoul-haunted woodland [catch-all]

[necrosaint]

Who: Harrow Nonagesimus; Sarah King; CR new and old~
What: Blended February/March catch-all, kept together because the first quarter of the year is the nuttiest. Prompts will mostly be open!
When: Note individual starters; probably all February and March.
Where: Around Trench.

Content Warnings: Note individual starters.

Comments

Speed Dating with Sarah [open]

[auferstanden]

[ theeee latest speed dating start ever at popular request! ]

Believe it or not—and Sarah herself often finds it hard to believe—this is not the first time that Sarah Helena King has been forced into speed dating. It is, however, the first time that she has been in the midst of farm work and then suddenly transported into speed dating. That most certainly had not happened before; even when she'd closed her eyes and woken up somewhere else which was largely due to blows to the head there had been no speed dating on the other side.

There's dirt smudged on her face, which isn't the case in her Omni profile. There's also a Mallen streak of white hair on the left side of her head, which was carefully hidden somehow in the shared photo. She hasn't noticed the profile, technology not being her thing, though she will as soon as she's prompted to acknowledge her "date"s. Her hands are also a little dirty, soil under her nails.

Otherwise, the photo is as accurate as the details, which is to say: good if not very precise.

And she is, at least, cheerful.

"Hi," is delivered sociably, if not too brightly, to her companion in friendly duress. "Sorry about the—dirt—"

there's just no way at all this is the first encounter

[butnotyet]

In all the time Sarah's been sitting here, has anyone provided her with the means of removing all that dirt, from her face or nails either one?

The person suddenly-enough sitting opposite her — after more than a few of these others have been given their chances to connect, or fail to connect, with the crime-fighting capoeira-crackerjack ghost therapist — is a familiar one, at least. He looks like he, too, has been having a hell of a night, from the black eye (presumably more affectation or Pthumerian interference than anything straightforward) to the three different shades of lipstick brushed against his shirtcollar, to the jaded ennui that gets cracked around the edges with genuine surprise at seeing her.

"You, too, huh?" he asks, dryly, fingers itching to roll a cigarette he doesn't have.

oh it totally isn't she has other speed dating threads even

[auferstanden]

Why would she have wanted to, is really the question.

So: if anyone has, she hasn't removed them.

"I see you've been popular," she gives a teasing nod toward—can he tell it's toward his neck? "And, uh. Unpopular as well? What happened to your face?"

[butnotyet]

"Which time?" he asks, as dryly as he can possibly manage.

(With ten thousand-plus years' practice, it's possible that it was dry enough now she needs a drink.)

[auferstanden]

"The current state of your eye, Lustmolch."

Sarah's rolling her own eyes, while she says that, but at least neither of her eyes appear to have been hit by any objects or punched.

"But if you prefer to explain some other aspect of it, by all means, do go ahead."

[butnotyet]

"Both of my eyes are functioning perfectly, as it happens," which is more bland than dry — which is to say, shading into the slightest hint of puzzlement, actually.

(Okay, so, it is not in fact a cosmetic choice made by Augustine himself.)

"What did you just call me?"

[auferstanden]

"A nickname." Sarah's not lying, exactly. But if Lustmolch ends up sticking as a nickname for Augustine, she is going to both be surprised and absolutely not apologize. "You do—um—you're aware that one of your eyes is the kind of black where it looks like you've been punched or gotten a concussion somehow only on one side, yeah?"

Maybe he actually doesn't know.

Somehow.

this is the worst way to spend an afternoon ever

[necrosaint]

It's not even the same day—it's not even the same week, and Harrowhark (or is it Devyata Cor Hydrae? Or perhaps both?) had honestly expected the dramatic turn of events known as "speed dating" would be over. That amusement must have run dry for the Pthumerians, surely?

She was starting to understand why some people didn't like them.

Not just because of her profile, which all things considered wasn't really too bad.

Even if she was always going to love Never Mind, and it was for him that she traced the edge of her question card with her finger, and near as soon as she was matched with someone else, tried to wipe the scowl into a simple resting bitch face and blurt out, "I was busy in the Archives and I should get back to my work but this question is not actually horrific or scandalous in any way, so I will just ask it: what is the first non-bodily thought," it probably didn't say that part, "you have when you wake up most mornings?"

[distant_one]

D's own information isn't quite so terrible, but he would prefer not to have to deal with this again.

The best dressed creature of the night, just don't expect any flowers.

"That it's nice to feel that the sun is up," D answers easily. It's always his first thought, because waking up during a morning where the sun is up is made difficult by his nature.

"You're one of the necromancers from a reality where energy is split into life energy and death energy rather than using the same source for both, aren't you?"

[necrosaint]

"... Yes."

If Harrow's expressions are at all readable, because they are very small—but he's smart, and she can tell—this one is giving away a modicum of being impressed. It's just a smidgen, but it's far more than most people get from her.

"The sun is still a new concept to me, I will admit."

[distant_one]

"It has a lot of mystical influence and a large impact on magic in my reality. Not as much as the moon does here. Underground, in space, or just too far out in orbit for day and night to matter?"

Much better to keep the conversation on other topics than risk it wandering towards anything he doesn't want to talk about. This is still adjacent to unpleasant things but it's not in as much danger of wandering there.

[necrosaint]

"That last one," Harrow says with a light tone, lifting her head up a little. It's rare and appreciated when someone gets it when all she's said is that she isn't really used to the sun. "The House of the Ninth has day and night cycles, but they're very minimally if at all actually different."

She doesn't want to talk about the Necrolord Prime and his Dominicus, but she can definitely talk about the bright, hot star aspects of it.

"We don't have any moons, either, but I have been more used to the concept of moons." The question cards she's holding have become something of a nervous tic; she keeps shuffling them about in one hand. She should probably just use one, but that'd apparently make too much sense.

[distant_one]

Space travel is no longer as common as it once was if there are even any functioning ships left, but for a while going to planets with endless the twilight of distant suns was popular among the Nobility.

"That must make living here very strange, having so much dictated by the turn towards and away from the sun. Do you enjoy seeing it, or feeling it on your skin?"

D hasn't met humans who are completely separated from the day/night cycle.

[necrosaint]

"I am ... more used to it now?" It's a cautious sort of guess at what she thinks of it more than anything, because sometimes it does actually feel kind of nice on her skin. Other times her skin flakes and falls off because of too much exposure to light, and what kind of treatment of a Lyctor is that, really?

"Whether or not the sun actually likes me is apparently not a fair question, as it does not perceive us, but it—is understandable, as our calendars were based on the First House and Dominicus," She chews at her lip for a second, risking messing up the makeup. She must be tired. "That the calendar works so, and time, and yet the moon is even odder and—and I possibly do like the warmth best if it is through a window."

a February-March vigil over a shrike cocoon [open]

[necrosaint]

Illarion cocooning has concerned Harrowhark in more ways than she wishes to admit, and yet it has in other ways given her great peace.

It's not that she thinks that the act itself is a problem; it's a natural thing that happens in Trench and she knows that even as far as she herself goes, it's been very random and not triggered by anything in particular. It's not a choice--people don't mean to leave, they haven't ever meant to leave her behind. It's the job of those around them to take care of the cocoon, too. Ortus and Gideon cared for her, and she--tried--to care for Gideon. What happened after ... maybe that wasn't anyone's fault either. Harrowhark never had the whole story and she wouldn't push for it. If Kiriona wanted nothing to do with her,and would not believe her--

Illarion won't do that to her, she knows it. She won't lose a third cavalier. This one is her brother. They are bonded closely enough, between behavior and their true Trench bond, that she knows it. Even if the lack of feeling from the bond is a little concerning, and sent her straight to where Illarion normally rested, when someone managed to convince him to, to figure out what was causing the double-void. And when she found it was this, she set to making it nicer.

Now she waits in their home, whenever she isn't doing work healing or researching or simply entertaining her Omen. She keeps the cocoon company. It is surrounded by various scrimshaw works and garlands made of thin ligament and ossicle; it is decorated in elegant dead leaves as a canopy along with a few carefully placed bird skulls. For some reason inexplicable besides that it just felt right, Harrowhark-Devyata has kept a hot cup of tea nearby, one that has a far stronger scent than it does necessarily any good taste.

If anyone comes by to find Illarion, they are likely to find this scene: the cocoon with its decorations, Harrow in a nearby nest of blankets, black feathers and bone. She is reading it poetry at least half the time, but maybe company arrived in a moment of silence.

Maybe company has brought a decoration, or a new smell to permeate through the membrane. Maybe they know Harrow and aren't at all confused by this, and maybe they've got no clue who or what this thin, skull-faced girl with black feathers amongst black hair is. She is the host in lieu of her brother-cavalier-bondmate, and she will do her best to be nice for once. She seems more relaxed than she has in some time: this is a ritual she knows well, and a role she understands how to play.

The door is open.

[hearthebell]

L has come to look for Illarion. Like Harrow, his friends are few and far between. Unlike Harrow, he is not a necromancer. His relationship with physicality seems chaotic and full of blind spots, his own emaciated body riddled with concerns and issues that typically don't create difficulties for people until their thirties.

He's approaching that age, now. He's still living like a bratty teenager who can afford to live on sugar, alone. It's starting to catch up to him, even as a Sleeper, and he still goes through the paces of every day, still tries to meet the morning like an insolent youth.

It's getting harder. He buries it, in his mid-twenties now. He looks younger, and believes that that helps.

Seeking out the undead also seems to help. He clears his throat, knowing who Harrow is, though they have never properly spoken.]

This is him, then?

[necrosaint]

[ Harrow gets that; Harrow's relationship with reality is similar, and while she is highly judgmental in general? Debates with one's body will not be likely to garner her judgment.

Also, her time as a shrike helped. ]

Yes, unless he has moved his soul entirely to another body and put someone else's in there, but I—think I would have noticed.

[ that emotional bond, thing. ]

[hearthebell]

He nods, accepting that assessment. When it comes to necromancy, on the receiving or the giving end, he tends to acquiesce his own desire to be the expert in the situation.

He's graceful, that way. Perhaps he always has been.]

How would you have noticed?

[necrosaint]

I can ... usually feel what he feels enough I would like to think I should be aware of where his soul is located.

[ She probably isn't actually aware, and that smarts, but she is being polite here, not open. Dropping her haughty exterior entirely? Not likely. Not yet. ]

At the moment he does not feel much, however. In a way that is different than normal.

[hearthebell]

[L narrows his eyes, in curiosity and care.]

How can you tell what he feels? Are you bonded?

[butnotyet]

And now, suddenly, the light is on.

It hadn't been; the moon's out, there's a window open, and presumably to someone used to the dingy recesses of the Ninth that's more than enough light to read whatever bit of poetry she's looking at now — but for those who are more used to stations and ships, or at least houses — those who are desperately hoping, at their one-year-anniversary here rapidly approaches, that the month of April is not in fact going to be spent entirely devoid of sun again — look, for fuck's sake, Harrow, turn on the lights when it's nighttime, would you?!

Augustine doesn't bother to say that, of course — not this time — he just flicks the switch himself, when he walks into the space that his not-quite-never-mate is not exactly visible in.

(There's a piece of Augustine himself in there, too, above and beyond the bond he has that's the same as Harrowhark's, with the shrike — a piece of his own bone, which she has surely spent at least some of her time investigating, stretched and shaped and extrapolated into a quasi-impossible sequence of spinning cuffs. Suffice to say: he isn't surprised by the cocoon.)

"Why are they all black?" he asks, not looking for the chick who has sometimes been his student, and sometimes been the shrike's sister, and sometimes been his own sister besides. His gaze rests steadily on the cocoon itself, instead.

[necrosaint]

The Ninth House doesn't really differentiate between daytime and nighttime, and thus Harrow doesn't, really, either. She hadn't noticed. It probably doesn't surprise Augustine that she didn't notice, and she barely reacts when he turns on said light. She doesn't jump, at least. She doesn't twitch noticeably.

"Why is what all black," she says, instead of what does it feel like to be inside and outside at once. Even though that's really what she wants to know, of her Lyctor-twice-brother. Not because she doesn't know that things are all black, but because there is more than one thing that's all black. "The answer is probably no red was available," is tacked on before he gets a chance to clarify.

[butnotyet]

"And no white, either? You could at least have crafted a few out of bone, in that case," he half-objects, half-grumbles, and then holds his hand out and waits —

And, five seconds later, a twist of black smoke and scale coils through and around his hand, depositing one of the shrike's very own feathers into his palm.

"Thank you, brother," he murmurs more softly, and steps (with a wood-elf's silence shadowing his tread) over to the display to find the proper place to put it.

Then, and only then, just in case it somehow wasn't completely obvious, he adds: "The feathers."

[necrosaint]

"Then they would be bone, and not feather, and they would not be in the right place or the right configuration. If you had not yet figured out that the reason the feathers are all black is because they're mine."

Not that Devyata—whose tone of voice that absolutely was more than Harrowhark's—doesn't have a bit of red on her, too. But there are so few of them she hadn't wanted to shake any off, and none of them are presently visible.

She keeps watching, to see if he's adding feather to the cocoon-shrine, or more to her nest. Not that she can imagine why Augustine (or Alfred, for that matter) would care about her nest—why should anyone from the past truly care for her? To them does she not exist to be a source of mockery, a broken shell that was a failure as Lyctor?

[butnotyet]

"... don't you know how to make feathers?" comes out somewhat more perplexed; they mostly are just keratin, much like hair, that's why shrike hair is feathers, just more like a Silkie's than a raven's — wait.

Right, yes, of course, it isn't that he doesn't remember Devyata, exactly, so much as ... he hadn't realized, before this exact moment, in the middle of this response, that the chit of a girl in front of him isn't Harrowhark, with memories of Devyata, any more than she is Devyata, with memories of being Harrowhark. She's both of them, somehow, more thoroughly blended than any of his complicated and confused memories have ever become.

(There are no traces of Lord Deathless's physique when Patience enters a room, after all; no feathers here, to spare — only something in his movement, sometimes, and in his memory, almost always.)

"— I need to talk to you, about him, anyway," he adds, somewhat more abruptly, but — kinder, somehow.