heed the call.

‘   Admission?   ‘   The water will meet his stubbornness where it tries to dig out shame. It will stare at the blank pages, trying to tell his story. Telling it as it imagines story-tellers do; images, smells, sounds, recalled from a secretive victimised life that unlocked his feelings.    ‘   What admission?   ‘   Which. His gaze pours into hers, daring every skin and fat cell to show its true colour. If he’s to let silk waves rub against his body and wrap around his breath with its teeth, then she should at least walk her own dance, relinquish the anarchy.

‘   I’m unemployed.   ‘   A former priest without his vestments. Yet the Virgin Mary beams her bright red heart down on them all.  ‘   Doing what most do; wander...   ‘   Now, he’s teasing. She could tie up his loose tongue or cut it out of him, but be slow, so his fingers can dally by her wrist, closing on it. Cold. Burning.  

‘   -doomed to bore you with tales of never really leaving my hometown and worrying over people I don’t quite know, and- ' he lowers her hand. ' I don’t know you.   ‘

He fights her the same way he swims the ocean, reckless, desperate, asking to be challenged, as though he would not find peace without collision.

"Your mind is not." Else he would have ceased this continuous self-flagellation. "But you do not just dawdle– you are lost. You feel unworthy and thus you withdraw from the hand that cares for you, that reminds you of your purpose as a man." There are licks of fire in his eyes, concealed beneath a furrowed brow. The sun catches in each freckle scattered over his shoulders, white salt drops drying on his flesh. She wants to take her thumb and smudge them, but he peels her hand away.

Going

Going

Troy Saga ❛  do what i say and you'll see them again.  ❜ ❛  what do you live for? what do you try for?  ❜ ❛  say no more, i know tat i'm ready.  ❜ ❛  the blood on your hands is something you won't lose.  ❜ ❛  is the price i pay endless pain?  ❜ ❛  something feels off here, i see fire but there's no smoke.  ❜ ❛  we should try to find a way no one ends up dead.  ❜ ❛  why should we take when we could give?  ❜ ❛  i see in your face, there's so much guilt inside your heart.  ❜ ❛  have you forgotten the lessons i taught you?  ❜

The Cyclops Saga ❛  it's almost too perfect, too god to be true.  ❜ ❛  what gives you the right to deal a pain so deep?  ❜ ❛  your life now is in my hand.  ❜ ❛  remember them, we're the ones who carry on.  ❜ ❛  what good would killing do when mercy is a skill more of this world could learn to use?  ❜ ❛  i am your darkest moment.  ❜ ❛  i don't know where i went wrong but i warned ya', and you failed the test.  ❜ ❛  that's just like you, why should i be surprised?  ❜ ❛  unlike you, every time someone dies i'm left to deal with the strain.  ❜ ❛  i'll remind you i saw you as a friend but now we're done.  ❜

The Ocean Saga ❛  at this rate, we won't make it out alive.  ❜ ❛  please don't tell me you're about to do what i think you'll do.  ❜ ❛  yes, but how much longer til your luck runs out?  ❜ ❛  you rely on wit, and people die on it.  ❜ ❛  you're like the brother i could never do without.  ❜ ❛  and suddenly you doubt that i could figure this out?  ❜ ❛  keep your friends close and your enemies closer, never really know who you can trust.  ❜ ❛  'cause the end always justifies the means.  ❜ ❛  do you know who i am?  ❜ ❛  you are the worst kind of good 'cause you're not even great.  ❜

The Circe Saga ❛  whatever you need to say can wait some more.  ❜ ❛  there's no length i wouldn't go if it was you i had to save.  ❜ ❛  wouldn't you like a taste of the power?  ❜ ❛  don't thank me friend, you very well may die.  ❜ ❛  did you do something to them?  ❜ ❛  if you make one wrong move, then you're done for.  ❜ ❛  you and i are now evenly matched.  ❜ ❛  you've given me no reason to bestow you with my trust.  ❜ ❛  who's to say, with the mistakes i've made that they will be the last mistakes i ever make?  ❜ ❛  this is the price we pay to love.  ❜

The Underworld Saga ❛  all i hear are screams, every time i dare to close my eyes.  ❜ ❛  i no longer dream, only nigtmares of those who've died.  ❜ ❛  when does a man become a monster?  ❜ ❛  now you tell us our effort's are for nothing?  ❜ ❛  how has everything been turned against us?  ❜ ❛  do i need to change?  ❜ ❛  i'm the only one whose line i haven't crossed.  ❜ ❛  what if i'm the problem that's been hiding all along?  ❜ ❛  what if i've been far too kind to foes but a monster to ourselves?  ❜ ❛  if i became the monster and threw that guilt away would that make us stronger?  ❜

The Thunder Saga ❛  you wouldn't have spared me. i made a mistake like this, it almost cost my life.  ❜ ❛  i've got a secret i can no longer keep.  ❜ ❛  you know that we are the same.  ❜ ❛  we must do what it takes to survive.  ❜ ❛  tell me you did not know that would happen.  ❜ ❛  if you want all the power, you must carry all the blame.  ❜ ❛  how are we supposed to trust you now?  ❜ ❛  how much longer must i suffer now?  ❜ ❛  someone's gotta die today and you have got the final say.  ❜ ❛  please don't make me do this.  ❜

The Wisdom Saga ❛  you've made your worst mistake here.  ❜ ❛  this cruel world doesn't give out presents just for being good.  ❜ ❛  you're my friend, i couldn't ask for more.  ❜ ❛  did you know you talk in your sleep?  ❜ ❛  i'm what you want here, i'm what you need here.  ❜ ❛  you don't know what i've gone through.  ❜ ❛  i know your life's been hard, i'll stay inside your heart.  ❜ ❛  life would be so much worse if you had died.  ❜ ❛  you dare to defy me, to make me feel shame?  ❜ ❛  no one beats me, no one wins my game.  ❜

What Paradise? There was enough wonder in this world to sate an eternity of appetite.

"Well, for one question, I still need to find my Comet." James sinks into the clutch of her fingers with an easing sigh of supplication, surrendering with utmost leisure. His loosed suspenders drifting aimlessly with the tamed current of the waters around them, drawing distorted, languid loops upon their shimmering surface.

"She wanders the night skies, solitary traveller— void-sent beauty. Trailing her gown of ice across the endless black, she carries a message from worlds beyond what mere mortals such as I can fathom."

He grips pebbles between his pale toes, sifting through silt and weeds to reacquaint himself with earth— communing with nature while he dreams of heaven. All while his eyes remain fixed on this liminal creature before him, her rope-like hair and her ravenous teeth. How wonderful it would be to be consumed, relief and exultation.

"The wisdom of the universe. Her prerogative and reserve."

James thinks he sees her jaw shifting, imagines her tongue rolling over the interior wall of her incisors; he becomes fixated with the way his muse holds him in place, as a cat might pin a mouse. Food or toy, a binary choice.

"There is so much she could instruct me in, if it was her wish." Ever the eager student, he speaks upon his admiration for her through extended metaphor and comparison, drawing parallels between these facets of nature.

Morgan of the Fey before him, cosmic omen above. His fate to be decided by the twain.

He dresses her as a star. Wish-bearer, mother and saviour. It is as flattering as it is self-serving, in a manoeuvre she finds exceptionally audacious and telling. He was aware that he was under her influence, and still.

No wonder he'd made it out of that cursed litter. Unfortunately, it only further whets her appetite.

"You would ask a lion to teach you to hunt?" Nix stands close enough for her breath to caress his mouth when she speaks, petrichor and sweet moss, tasting the trepidation of the soul trapped in the young vessel, wet lashes languidly batting as her pull gradually increases. "And why should I starve, if all you want is to be such a good, loyal student?" Venom swirls around the latter adjective, seeking out the rot in his intentions. "I have no use for a disciple."

She pulls away, collecting his hands instead. One, then the other, she begins to lead him to where the lake deepens, slowly, as though she merely invites him to dance.

He neither wants to talk, nor have his hands tied and forced to gaze at his own reflection. He wants to tell her, you know what, it was nice meeting you. Thank you and goodbye.

The silence stays for long, him contemplative, his hand floated to close around the wrist of the thing, to keep her still.

‘   You’re right about a lot of things,   ‘   he says finally.

‘   But even you don’t have a hold on me.   ‘   He turns to her, the ache in his neck forming at a point.   ‘  What I’ve been resentful about. What I’m meant to be, or do.  ‘   His large brown eyes peer, not forceful, but unshy enough to tell the truth of it.

She had a face of beauty shoved down to make room for danger. Anger, a hurt that he could tell she would not want read. So he wills himself to see the rest.

‘   It’s okay… Whatever it is you came to do. I have to believe we're more than the worst thing we're tempted to do. Otherwise my profession's in terrible trouble.  ‘

She meets his honeyed gaze, eyes full of prayer. His hand on her wrist is inconsequential; even in death he is trying to save her. All the anguish writ on his countenance transfers to hers – and her next laugh begins as a low wail. "You would condemn a dog for eating, a bird for flying. Hypocrites, all of you."

The image blurs between what he shows and she conceals, while around them she continues to hold the breath of the ocean. Seagulls watch restlessly from the cliffs.

Suddenly his shame made a lot more sense.

"If you think the cloth will keep me from you, you are terribly mistaken." Nix opens her arms. The man rests on her belly for a split second longer before she is gone, bringing back the turbulence of the ocean with her departure. She resurfaces by the cave he had been sheltering on, slithering out of the water and up the plateau where his belongings had been abandoned, intent on inspecting them.

NIX. kelpie original character, inspired by norse & celtic mythology. lady in the water with a crystalline voice. dark & mature themes present. indie, selective, private. – summoned by marmelo. ©

"I tried everything."

When he speaks at last, James surprises himself in the ease with which he shares what is the plain and simple truth. He raises his head, just enough to make the statement of dropping his line of vision to the swirling depths between them.

"It was never enough."

The futility in those words relays the rest of his story well enough. What more had a child been expected to achieve, beyond weeping, struggling on and laying blame in the end? All he'd had to hold onto was the gouging hollow of grief unrelenting, until it had matured into a simmering resentment, then blossomed into a broken rage.

A rage he continued to carry with him from place to place, starting fires just to chance the memory of their warmth. To feed this furnace, he would use anything as kindling.

Anyone.

Nix lifts his clenched jaw with but a nudge of her finger, strokes his chin with a sweep of her thumb— gelid reprieve for he who harboured this inferno within. He unleashes a welcoming sigh, closes his eyes and rests in her grasp just so.

Another question, though the answer to this one comes to him with more readiness; indeed a strange, rebellious comfort in its blasphemy. To deny the Church was to render oneself ungovernable, beyond the threat or care of sanction.

"God surrendered me unto an unforgiving world, and the hand that raised me from perdition was my own."

He would live free. Even if it was the more reckless path, the most dangerous course in their lifetime. Knowledge and prudence would yet guard him, courage and boldness would continue to provide for him. God's hands had not cradled him since birth. What reason had he to turn to Him now, when Death's grasp had instead that intimacy?

As though to underscore this belief, his copper lashes flutter open once more to regard the lady of obsidian waters before him. In this enclosed proximity, he catches sight of the iridescence in her eyes— shades of violet, and periwinkle.

"Moreover, I do not believe that you are something to fight." His next words are spoken with a placid, overwhelming calm. Indeed his thin brows furrow only slightly, to but scrutinise his own choice in vocabulary. Only when James finds the term most appropriate to his sentiment does he close this sentence.

"You are... inevitable."

There is but a brief pause, before he leans his face gently into her bearing touch.

It is refreshing to find a fallen one amidst the god fearing crowd, one who knew what it was like to have been betrayed by the same divine that had sent him to wander the earth. It is an arrogant, losing fight, but Nix sees value in the act of resisting even that which you know you cannot win. He had crawled through mud and pestilence to be here, fiery Narcissus, standing proud against all odds.

How exciting he must taste, coal-forged and vain.

"You are not special, child. God surrendered all of you."

Disperse his notion that this fatherly transgression had been personal in some way, when all souls thrust into this plane were at the mercy of all of Nature's children. James seeks comfort in the cradle of her hand, which she offers as readily as a dream, long fingers curving over the high point of his pale cheekbone – while her thumb digs, firm but discreet, into his other cheek. Closing him in.

Inevitable.

Nix unhurriedly glides her tongue along the inner edge of her lower teeth, eyelids heavy as she continues to lazily study him. He sure was full of convictions.

Her lips press a teasing image of the two of them sliding together with nothing between them, warmth blown onto the salty spot of skin cloyed by rippling seawater. Her body formed behind him, her spread the press of rosebuds against his bare back tainted with the smallest sunspots, no distance between them, no fabric snags and a coast to roam a lazing hand around to his navel.

Her breath flows like a gap in the wind, sharply edged huffs moving to smear his skin with her name. The lining in his mouth tingles with desire until he swears, he could smell all of her in the air. He’s the fatal jerk of a shot-spun animal. Abstinence fleeing silky as water, a hot body played for his unadorned self like a stupid and cowed man.   

The grasp of his hand around hers leads her to the front of him, turning her against the soaked rocks. Imprisoned, but gently, she had no need for approval or attention. No look of grief, regret, or fear in her eyes. And he wonders, to be feted for the muppet she must think he, they all were, to have been long-stretched in some stale sick-bellowed time, if it was a life worth living for her.

She keeps slithering back, intercepting his routine. Testing the limits of his flesh, dragging greedy teeth up the back of his knees as he swims, pulling him under until he struggles, until her hands yield so he can breathe again. Cold lips to the priest's ears, she listens as his heart grows tamer.

They float back to shore, and before they make it to the top of the incline he decides he has something to say.

Nix peers down at the human, savouring this sudden jolt of defiance. It's endearing how much he tries to reprimand the actions of a wild thing. "Depends on the human." She explains, her voice dancing around an airy chuckle as she allows herself to be held still. The water still laps at her waist, breaking against his back, throwing a shimmering mist around him. "But usually no more than the life of a mollusc, or a prairie vole."

Her free hand lifts to sift two bony fingers through the hair on his temple, drawing a slow, sweeping motion until her palm cradles his nape, effectively trapping him in her space. Tenderly.

Perhaps he feels a little sad for her when she tells him that she is always cold. She needs a blanket, he thinks, the one that always keeps him warm during winter, he has two after all. Both gifts from his grandmother in France, his sister too have two. She wouldn't be angry if he told her about the fairy in the lake.

Before he can say anything, however, the fairy in the lake hands him a flower. It is beautiful, glowing orange, and he cannot help the little gasp that falls from him. He is about to reach out when he sees the marks, they look painful, but then he isn't sure what he can do to make her feel better.

"Are you hurt? Because those look like they hurt a lot! Sometimes when I get hurt mother says she can kiss them better, and it works actually"

In all honesty, he knows it is not so, it is simply just the feeling of his mother's warmth. Her smile when she tells him that he is so brave and strong, even when he doesn't feel so. Even when he cries.

"I can ask mother, maybe she can help you?"

"I am okay now." She aims to soothe his worries, which were beginning to take dangerous proportions. The more he wanted to help, the more likely he was to go rounding up his carers, trying to get an adult to intervene. "No– No, do not trouble her." As the child had hesitated to accept her gift, perhaps understandably so, she carefully rests the flower down on a mossy patch, lest he change his mind.

Without her song, she imagines nobody would willingly come near her chthonic presence, let alone take something from her hand. Horror stories of deals with cunning fae were far too popular, giving the rest of them a bad name.

Not that she had a stellar reputation, anyway, even before her life was turned upside down.

Drawing a steadying breath, Nix sits up a little straighter, legs folded to one side, her face at last emerging between ribbons of obsidian hair, dignity unscathed. That timid smile does not escape her, and she offers one of her own. The little ones were cute, sometimes.

the night was always a kaleidoscope of colors in the presence of fletching & moondrop traveling carnival of curiosities. the brightly painted tents reflected moonlight like a crystal; laughter and applause filled the silence like music, rousing above the sound of the rain, and the rushing river that the circus had set up nearby.

the main event is swallowed inside a massive primary tent. dry, warm, and belly-full with awe, with wonder.

molly basks in the energy of the crowd, their attentions pouring over his body as he performed, creating little flurries of snow that fell upon the audience like a gentle breeze.

he loved the show. he loved being a part of it. but that did not make him any less eager to return to the warm abode of the fortune teller's private quarters, a relatively spacious tent set up next to his caravan.

he sighs, as he bursts through the tent's threshold, a bottle of aged wine in one hand. raindrops clinging to his purple hair.

"hello," he pauses, staring straight into the eyes of nix, caught amidst his cushions and blankets. decides he is unbothered, and smiles, "if i knew i'd be havin' company, i'd have brought a second glass."

Refusing to shell out coin for a ticket, Nix opts to slip in when nobody's keeping watch, intending to have a word with their resident fortune teller. She glides underneath the tarp, determined to wait for the tiefling in his own tent. Inside, the air is less saturated with the smells of bonfire and candied apples, instead favouring floral essences and resin incense, which cling to the rich fabrics draping the bed that she cannot resist touching. Such patterns, such vibrancy! Smooth velvet cushions in jewel tones, shimmering satin pillows, ornated with silk-thread embroidery.

She is hardly done enjoying the seer's lavish furnishings when she's interrupted, caught red-handed in the act of feeling up his bedding.

Nothing weird about it.

Nix sits politely on the bed, back very straight and legs crossed at the knee, hands folded over her thigh. She takes note of the bottle, the solitary glass, and presumes he had plans to indulge himself into a light coma after another successful show.

"I can share." The creature casually suggests, mischief glimmering on bronze features, chin dipping into a surreptitious, amiable smile. She appreciates that his first instinct at finding a stranger in his tent wasn't to panic or call for muscle... whatever that said about him.