ʷⁱᵗʰ ᵃˡˡ ᵐʸ ʰᵉᵃʳᵗ.

CORDOLIAE (lat, pl.): heart-aches, the miseries stemming from the heart. 🫀 an independent & private multi-muse since ‘20,  ft. original characters and an array of canon muses across various genres. constant low-activity. please read the rules before following or interacting. affiliated with defyfates, echospast, sachingja, ahkuneho, and tewwor.

ON THE ROAD TO HELL: diabolus ex-machina, messianic archetypes, the dog bites back, gray and gray morality, found families, because destiny says so & bittersweet and open endings.

🌧️ // 01. RULES. 02. VISUAL ACCOMPANIMENT. 03. SHEIK. & VAX.

it's one thing to call out of work, another when it's become up to a whole week of being a no-show. sydney loathed, generally loathed being sick and feeling miserable and sluggish, but even more so when she knew right away how much her absence would fuck with her work at the restaurant. she didn't want to think this way, would be the first to advocate for any of her colleagues or friends to take the much needed time for themselves to get better, but there was something in her mind that always made her the exception to her own rules, that always told her she had to be there, had to do better, had to be healthy faster and get better quicker than anyone else. does that magically make it work? no, of course not, she's been down for the count for a week now, the fever finally having broken over the night, and has spent the day lamenting to herself in bed while she let some nonsensical tv show run over her laptop.

not often does she meet someone talking to her at this market, where people come for ingredients and parts of meals or processes not covered by the usual farmer's market or what one may find in a convenience store. it's a realm beyond realms, a place fallen outside of location, so anyone could visit it any buy something as long as they knew how to enter it. august has seen the man around, usually in small shops and in front of stalls that sold ingredients that mostly needed to be cooked, but she's also seen him eye dish-wear made of such ancient wood or mortar it could hold just about anything you'd put in it. unsurprisingly, for when she got closer, she could always feel small waves of his curiousity and a deep sense of interest at whatever was in front of him. a man of true passion for his work, which means he's got a lot more in common with her than both of them checking out the roots of a plant usually used to help with a more eclectic kind of . . . soup.

this has become natural now. there is a crime scene and he is there usually before they can usher him off for the police to do their necessary work, somehow a sixth sense for these things like a crude joke being played on him ever since the events of 2017. what is there to do though, besides doing his work repeatedly and seeing that he can close the cases that seem to fall his way before they can be spun into the spindles of the unfair wheel spun between those who have the most money and the most influence. if it were up to them, no one would look the way of dead teenagers or even taken prosecutors, no loss to cut where there is nothing to see. simok does not live his life that way. what he lacks in feeling for the things he sees, he makes up for seeing them to begin with, and he never shies away.

the fog is so heavy here that he can barely see a thing. it reminds him of the case with the drowned students, of that night he first found out about it. this time he has not stopped by the beach, though the call he got from one of the local officers led him to a vacation area with small bungalows reminiscent of sea-side retreats. apparently the couple they found has been dead without anyone being able to do something, only found because the woman had a young child out of her first marriage and the child has been wandering around the community for hours this night. simok hasn't talked to the young boy yet, but someone else is there to do so. simok hasn't spoken to dongjae yet either, to ask why he is here ( possibly he got relocated, or the new job woncheol mentioned has him look over the prosecution service's shoulder ) or why he is has had the recent fable to appear in front of simok out of thin air, like he used to when they still worked in the same building.

the wind has never been her friend and never has it been her stranger either. she has always known it well, how it howled through the forests and how it howled across a great plane, and how it showed little remorse to those not made for it. she has always wanted to see the world, to make a life where she could feel the tree branches of all the forests and where she could watch the endless flocks of birds unleash their wings into the air, always on the road themselves, never tied to one place for too long. adventure with a home to return to, a place to allow her to go but to always welcome her back, and that would shelter her in between her many journey. yes, she has longed for it, and nearly had it, only for it to disappear into the thin wind of a song and be trampled under the fickle feet of men.

what else is new? nothing under the son. the wind keeps singing its lonely melody and she keeps hearing it a faint sound in her ears, chilling her to the bottom of her toes, to the core of her body. she could feel herself start to shiver - eurydice was always lonely before she was anything else, the cold of it suffusing her flesh and bones.

frost eternal, the ice digs into their head and the root of their neck at constant pressure points. familar to this feeling, desensitized as they are to most everything happening to them, the cold does not move them much. it is their haven, the same way birds flock to the sun when they find the season turning and bears burrow deep underneath the snow to make it through the harsh reality of winter. they are the opposite, exposed to the elements and almost glowing from the snow's depths around them, the sun in the sky a mere drab image of it only made realer for his presence. they have noticed so immediately, the keen eye of an ancient thing, though they let him play with the fractures of light the way one may watch flowers grow before they'd wither in a change of wind.

" what you feel and what you are shall not be mistaken. they are not the same, boy king, " they tell him - unceremoniously, the murky glaze of their eyes seems to penetrate none of the shining young man's curiousity, nor his audacity, and there is little tonda has patience for than humans, even halflings. they have as much patience for those as they had for other fae, courtly ones at that, so the seelie heir sparks the same interest in them as the wind in the trees far down the feywild's land would. which is to say very little. but he somehow has crossed paths at the border of icy death and wilderness, and they could not let him go without making sure of his motives.

the ache sits deep in his chest, lead covering his torso from head to toe. it took hwarim and and sangdeok to fill him in, yeonggeun too worried to even speak, for him to find out how far his possession went. not even stitching back up where the blade entered could have kept it from going as far as it did, eating through him like a wildfire through his marrow only leaving ash in its wake, his body still feeling foreign to himself a week later, two weeks later, every day and night he spent confined to this stupid hospital bed. bonggil missed walking around like he wanted to, missed working out, missed every hour of his day he usually spent with hwarim ( all of them, more or less ) and hated spending them by himself.

physical therapy was a slow crawl, frustrating him, and he hated that the possession incapacitated him in so many ways. the thing he hated the most, more than his sluggish body and the emptiness in his mind after having another voice inside of it, was seeing hwarim leave out of the door knowing she'd have to work their client list on her own without his help, or his input in the moment. that she had to prepare rituals on her own, he couldn't reassure her, couldn't offer a helping hand or follow their usual rule of switching places for the more daring manoeuvrers. the idea of her on her own with whatever evil dwelling in houses or people alike left a bad taste in his mouth.