in the gutter, looking at the stars.

"Very well."

I was able to recall in vivid detail the last time I had demonstrated the Mind Gift so brazenly, and although I did not harbor the same resentment that I had that day for Daniel's...intrusion, there was nothing particularly kind in the way I lifted the boy up in the air. I considered throwing him against the wall just to prove my point, but the sudden memory of Louis doing something eerily similar stopped me from doing so. I settled on pulling him toward me instead, surging forward whilst a foot or so off the ground, his height surpassing mine with ease.

Armand's demo is intimate. Confessional. And—Ben catches himself on Spanish heels—it smacks of? Cold rage. Well-aged.

Very well. Ben glances down, grins. Crooked wolf teeth catching the dangerous glow in a mystified gaze. It's not Ben's fault that he's built like a Bernini. Yes, he knows. Thank you, Armand.

"I wanna see how you keep yourself entertained. It's got to get boring."

[ sms: Ben S sent at 05:16:09 AM ] It's just a question....something to consider.

Here's another question, now that Ben's responsive again (did he fall back asleep???? This is important shit!):

It was the right thing to do; whether Ben was a good person, whether he wanted to be, or whether it would hold up in front of a jury was irrelevant. The book was irrelevant—it was, in fact, thoroughly destroyed. 

Would a good person commit criminal mischief or vandalism, ranging from a Class A misdemeanor up to a felony, 'depending on the financial value of the physical or digital medium destroyed,' Cullen?

Ben shoves himself and his felony into business casual slacks.

“No,” he says to his reflection, “I did not bypass multiple layers of physical and digital security. I did not exploit a shared work system to access the final proof. Nor did I introduce subtle factual errors, plagiarized passages, or legally defamatory statements before it went to print.”

^lol

activity forecast://

low. i am absolutely smashed, fried, and latke'd. rip.

updates://

i have created this Beautiful, Stunning RPThreadTracker for ongoing stories.

amazing and gorgeous thread tracker

presently, i have two tracking qualifiers: 1. i track posts with at least 5+ reblogs (depending on pace and length) 2. i stop tracking posts that neither of us has replied to within the last 1-3 months (relative to activity). that doesn't mean we can't continue old threads; they just won't be in the tracker. also, these are not hard and fast rules. this is mostly to prevent me from getting like

Lost or Stuck

in my drafts

F o r e v e r.

'we'll see if it works out.' 

anyway!!

feel free to like this post if we haven't interacted yet.

Fallen, he said, swallowing her. A dream, she had said, wrapping herself in him. Ouroboros. Around and around. Through and through.

His voice echoed like lungs under a tombstone. She swallowed around fingers and teeth.

"Then you shall witness it," Brunnhilde promised into the chilled air of her sleeper. Promised, as the Ren lapped over the scar at her ribcage, and as she tugged at his shadow. She beckoned him through split flesh. Beckoned his mouth, and that of the man, to that pale country beneath her navel. To the shoreline between mind and moon.

Her dreaming made space for him, as did her spine and the spreading of great wings. A gale of feathers stirred cosmic air, splitting stars. The ground fell away to naught, the sky became a sea, became a sky, became a bolide and its booming.

Kylo Ren became a man again. Around and around. Around her ribcage. Through and through. Through the spreading of her great wings.

It was like being lifted out of the ocean and into the sky. It was like breathing. It was like dreaming. It was like the tales pilots told each other before their fighters soared into the night; of meetings on the other side of the jump, luminous beings beyond the stars.

It was like a boy once asked his father,

'What happens after?'  

It was like a father told his son,

"I've touched more than just the heavens."

Now fingertips drift upwards, along the side of a chosen nose to under eye socket, the flat of a cheek. No, this isn't his true form, but he'd selected it like a mortal choosing a suit for the evening. Just as she'd plucked this one from her closet, occasionally playing with the hem, the way it draped across glittering stone.

“What do you see?” 

What had she touched as she traced his face? As she trailed the bridge of the nose he wore, the puff of an eyelid? Ren longed to know, in the way mortals once longed to know who made the stars and who had inlaid them in the firmament.

Was she crouched in a pitch cave, whispering into a thin, trickling film of water? Did she see into the first blood of the Earth? Would she taste it and speak with the dead? 

After man became his own creator, gods rarely longed for knowledge, for they knew themselves to be the reason for all there was to know. That was how Poseidôn became the ocean and then a name upon a ship. It was how the marrowlanders, the earth-born, the grain-eaters, consumed his remains as Kronos, Time, had devoured his children. 

But Time never came here. There was only Ren, and now, Æther.

“I believe very little, for I have seen little,” he spoke into the hands that held the mask. “I believe you, for I have seen you.” 

The mask he had chosen for her. For now. For all the time there simply wasn’t. 

A serpent entwined with the stem of a wine glass.

The orb of the day. 1883.

In here, the shadows were still as deep as ever, though the contents of the study were able to distract Mason's fury for several moments before Ren spoke.

"Do not try to fool me with false flattery," she snapped. As if Ren would be spinning tales of his gardener to the ears of other nobles. The night they had met at the theater had been the last time Mason had seen him outside the gates.

Vermillion light and black shadows threw her delicate features into sharp contrasts, highlighting how her eyes wandered over the interesting specimens and pressed flowers, the way her fists had difficulty holding their tightness at her sides.

If there were any rooms at this place besides the greenhouse or the library where the half-blood might feel somewhat at ease, this would be one of them.

Her distraction ended once Ren spoke again. She wished she had whipped the lens in his direction. Added it to the pile of shattered refuse in the corner, though she knew it would do no good. Ren was a relentless force of nature that would never be denied what he desired. The only factor that could be altered was the speed at which he would claim those wishes.

Mason pinched the brow of her nose, eyes shutting for a few brief moments as she turned over his words in her mind. Her fingers drummed against the edge of the workbench in an uneven rhythm.

Chin lifting, her gaze found the vampire's after several heartbeats. His unexpected expression nearly pierced through her steely demeanor.

She knew she'd never hear the end of it from the theater if she declined an invitation from a known benefactor.

"I would enjoy not taking on the appearance of a pincushion for the rest of my days," she murmured, rolling up one sleeve to expose her scarred wrist. The skin around Ren's teeth marks was still a light pink.

"Perhaps, from now on, you would see fit to heal the wounds you cause with your own blood? It would take at most a drop or two," Mason shook the fabric back over her flesh, arm falling back to her side.

“It is a simple request,” he muttered reproachfully, “and all you ever need do is ask. Allow that to sink into the depths of your profound awareness.”

His cheekbone warmed in the vermilion light like marble. With a pair of fine forceps, Ren lifted the fern’s youngest pinna and turned it toward the lamp, exposing the pale underside, the earthen constellations of sori.

“You confound me,” he admitted. “You seemed so certain of your worth. No matter. The trouble is…”

Ren stopped then and stood as some old garden figure overgrown by its own grounds. The forceps remained poised between his fingers. Then, with unusual care, he laid them beside the lens.

“I would have you attend, or else Phasma may very well bring the ball to Corvax Fen.”

His attention wandered past Mason into the middle distance, where moonflowers climbed their supports behind him, white throats open in the cultivated dusk; fern upon fern feathered the windows, broad leaves flattened against black panes. 

“She is fond of firearms, as you will learn one way or another.” A latent sneer etched itself into his stony face. “And I would rather you didn’t learn it here.”

At last, his eyes flitted in Mason's direction.