honeysuckle / hemlock

is a lie of omission as bad as a straightforward lie? juno wonders that, for a moment, as she catches sight of her friend across the way. sol is beautiful as always, in a way that suggests she’s barely making an effort. the epitome of the “woke up like this” meme. meanwhile, if juno were to go out with a “woke up like this” look, her dark circles and pallor would likely give rise to complaints of zombie virus running amok. she’s not eager for that reminder of the toll her life is taking on her. 

she’s at odds with herself in the same way she always has been. years spent as an outsider have made her eager to please but incredibly stubborn. both critical and yielding in a way that doesn’t seem like it should be possible, a way that can be written off as fickle. but she’s just lonely, when you get down to it. to her very core. it something that’s always been there- the loneliness and the fear of mortality, the surety of death. 

of course she grew up strange. who could blame her? half isolated and on the verge of death on more than one occasion before five years old alone,  not to mention the years thereafter. and then the incident, still emblazoned in her head in capital letters. the day everything changed, and who knows why? the forever nagging mystery of a week and a half of time spent in the blink of an eye. what had she done? where had she been? what horrors had been visited on her? 

so yeah, she hasn’t told sol. but sol hasn’t asked either. then again, who would ask that of a friend, really? hey, juno, are you a fucking witch? do you happen to be making psychotropic potions to assuage your own misery? are you using that biochemistry degree for hedonistic and occult purposes? it’s not exactly tea time chat material. 

but still, sol hasn’t asked, so juno doesn’t have to tell her, so they can still be friends. sol doesn’t have to look at her like she’s a crazy person and juno can have someone to get drunk with and everything can be fine. some part of her life safeguarded from her own shortcomings, wrongdoings. that’s the hope, anyway. 

she’s sipping punch from a crystal, shimmering glass when she does finally approach sol, with a smile on her face and warmth in her heart. “I meant to come over and say hi sooner,” she tells her, “but i keep getting distracted..” her attention span has run away with her tonight, and it puts a crease between her brows. she’s always been prone to that jump skip hop of attention, flitting curious from one topic to the next. she squeezes the other’s hand lightly. “what have you been up too? you want me to get you a drink?” she offers both in a single breath, the package tied up with a sweet smile.

she’s had too many drinks, tonight. too many drinks and too many vials of pretty potions tucked up her sleeves. too many packets of powder dug out of her pockets. in fairness, she’s created them herself. knows the causes and effects like the back of her hand. like the inside of it. like the lines that read out her fates and fortunes, if you care to believe in that kind of thing. and maybe she doesn’t. it would be ironic of course, to not believe in fortune telling, as she rides the high of  a potion meant to sooth away worries. as she breathes a powder that promises bliss and serenity, a casual ecstasy of forgetfulness. what are worries, what are cares, when you can erase them from the mind’s eye with but a little bit of plant life plucked at the full moon, under a promising star, dried for a fortnight and ground up at the crack of dawn. 

there’s a warmth that flushes her cheeks, perhaps only in minute capacity from the drink that stains her tongue and lips. she’s painted in the flush of it, hair falling in an untamed cascade of curls around her shoulders, over and down them, spilling like dark waves from a waterfall. she’s got a potion in her pocket with a name on it, though, and she makes a beeline for him when she sees him. 

things with hanjae are complicated. not in the way they should be, in a way she likes. but she can’t subsist forever on the dregs of jinsol’s affection, when he bothers to look her way. she knows she’ll never have what she wants from him, what she needs. she knows she won’t have hanjae either, but that doesn’t stop her from wanting him. it doesn’t stop her from wanting someone. she struggles with that. with the wanting. she pulls the bottle from her pocket as she approaches him, holds it up. it glints in the dim lighting, refracted light glimmering through the deep indigo liquid. 

“i’ve got something for you, if you’ve got something for me,” she tells him, brow lifting. everything comes with a price, after all. she lets her lips twitch into a grin that spreads slow and perhaps ever so slightly sinister in reply to his startled glance. “did i sneak up on you?” she teases, tilts the bottle to let the glass flicker and shine.

juno is a territorial little creature. a fervent thing that grasps after the few things she holds dear. she builds herself a sanctuary in the forest, in the quiet of it, in the serenity. she thus, ever so slightly and fully irrationally, cannot help but find a certain annoyance in the trespassing the crowds do now. meandering from the designated paths and trampling flat footed over saplings and clover, bushes and undergrowth. they stumble over roots and scratch at bark. she catches a couple carving their names into the trunk of a tree and brings down on them an unholy, half-drunk wrath, pockets the knife when it drops to the ground as they scramble away frantic, shouting claims of “crazy bitch” back over their shoulders. 

she hardly bothers to correct them. perhaps she is. the weight of the pocket knife is almost a comfort in her pocket, a quiet assurance. she reads too much into things, she knows that. into the meaning of objects, of plants, of talismans and treasures. she reads too much into people, too. people like seolbi. she sees her from a distance, raven hair spilling in long tousled waves, diminutive height. from a distance they could look similar, almost, but where juno remains sickly and waiflike, seolbi is refined and elegant, a graceful loveliness that speaks to poise. juno still stumbles through the world like a colt on uneven footing, but seolbi glides grandly through life as if unbothered, inured to every whisper or rumor. 

she had met her in the forest. 

watched the dark haired girl bent over a patch of earth, upending it with the swift work of a trowel, and being the faithful park employee that she was, she had stomped over to the girl and begun to tell her off, resoundingly, intently, all focused indignation given to her by occupation and advocacy for the earth. and seolbi had just smiled at her, that mysterious little smile, that quiet little expression. 

and the next thing she’d known she’d had her against a tree. and fingers had wandered and hands had grasped and god she’d - 

well, anyway. 

she approaches, a warmth quiet in her eyes as she reaches for the other’s hand, twists their fingers together and squeezes lightly, before she releases. “fancy seeing you here,” she laughs, cocks one hip and takes another drink, nose scrunching up a little. “tastes kinda funny, doesn’t it?” she notes, seemingly unbothered as she takes another sip. “are you having fun?” she notes, leans a little closer. wants to kiss her. “don’t suppose you need anything from me? you know, you could at least make up some demands as an excuse to see me.”  she’s made a side business of it, providing potions, or ingredients, supplies and this and that, to those who know to ask for it. 

the woods are familiar to juno. a second home. a redemption. she remembers the paths that trace the leylines like lattice work. she knows the plants that bloom and rot underfoot. she knows the creeping vines that strangle the trees and the thick, twisting roots that sink deep into the soil, feed on the energies of something deep and dark. it calls out to her even now, that energy deep beneath her feet. she wants to shuck off her shoes and dig her toes into rich earth. 

but this is a party and not a midnight pilgrimage beneath the moonlight, and such activities would be ill-advised done around the uninitiated. those who see her as the reclusive scientist up in the forest, or who remember her as the pale and sickly thing she had once been. gaunt and weary. those who remember the posters of her face up around the town - have you seen this girl? 

sometimes, juno feels that there was a changing, that day. that she had gone down beneath the surface of the water and another girl had resurfaced. someone else, who was not quite her. someone stronger, certainly. she wonders if she lives on the borrowed time of the soul of another. every year she’d lived, as a child, had been a blessing. another year of conquest over some terrible and unnamed affliction. she’d been baffling to doctors even prior to the miracle of her cure. 

as the sun plunges towards the horizon the sky behind and between the trees is painted in reds and oranges and pinks. it’s a cacophony of color that beams across them, these gathered revelers, and she’s not sure how she feels with this upset, this interloping on her sacred spaces. she pushes her hands into her pockets, the check shirt thrown over her shoulders falling past the frayed edges of dark denim shorts. it’s a thin barrier against the sudden chill, and she turns to the offered drinks to assuage it. as she approaches, there is a familiar figure there, one that brings a wry smile to her lips. a little bit of friendly animosity never hurt anyone, she thinks, and she makes sure to brush against his side as she approaches the table, wraps her fingers around a glass. “hello, are you here chasing the next pulitzer prize winning story? towns people have a party?” she sweeps a hand through the air before them, as if to illustrate the headline. 

hello hello! this is jung juno, bio chemist and researcher/development at the parks service. very glamorous job that involves soil samples and assessing plant growth and so forth. she was a very sickly and foolish child, born to a family that has been in the town for ages and one that came much later and gained prowess as shamans. they aren’t anymore into that kind of thing, being just ordinary and boring now. she was half in and half out of school throughout her youth in junae, until one day when she was about 13 she wandered off into the woods, almost drowned in a mysterious pond, and trudged home.... only to find she’d been missing for a week and a half, had no recollection of the incident, and her ailments were mysteriously absent. she still doesn’t know what happened. anyway, she ended up going to university, studying plant physiology, biochemistry, super sexy nerd stuff i know. she probably likes plants more than most people, she’s kind of a space case, she’s sort of macabre. she’s been told she has an unsettling gaze and an eerie presence. she makes a lot of potions now and tinctures and powders, mostly to, errr, indulge in various feelings or get herself some luck hre and there, you know, kind of self medicating to get through life, no big deal. she’s not above selling some your way if you happen to seem open to it, either. wink wonk. let her be your witchy potion dealer lmao.