THE DARK PRINCE.

MY MOTHER ONCE SAID, "NATASHA MY PUMPKIN, DO YOU WANT TO BE A WITCH OR A QUEEN?" AND I ANSWERED: "BOTH, MOTHER. AND IT'S TASHA."

© ⋆. ̊ 𝙈𝘼𝙐𝙍𝙄𝙇𝙔𝘼𝙉 , ❝ 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐦 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬, 𝐬𝐨 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬, 𝐚𝐬 𝐢𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐲𝐚𝐥 𝐨𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐡 𝐨𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫. ❞

Greedy minnows crowd the view from white-belly dace; bleaks shimmer like silver coins along the edges; and the glassroach can find no wiggle space at all. Like all Waterfolk, they are very eager to spy on the comings and goings of the upper world... They will watch, bubble their gossips, and await the next midnight to watch it all over again. And from the bravest, most ancient manta to the guppiest naiad, all are wise enough to leave it just there. To keep behind the invisible veil— the one thread by their King many ages ago— and never dare to swim the earth.

All except one.

Adelaide, the Fool of the Sea, a jewel of the Deep, claws through the black and the ice. Strange that her skinny corpse fingers can tear against the vicious current with such ease, like needles through silk. Stranger still that the cold does not bewitch her teeth and joints to clatter as she drags herself up the riverbank. A blue princess dress, her dark seaweed hair... both are constellated in gems that drink the polarlights from above, and both cling their damp to every contour of her long and serpentine body.

It's the snow that encumbers her. That mess of Land, biting her ankles while she makes her trek. She wrings her hair dry, and as she does, pink crabs, no more the width of a thimble, come tumbling out.

They reach her destination much faster than she can, scuttling over the party host's oily slick shoes just the way she would've wanted to. The bold ones attempt to summit his brooding head, but none succeed beyond the great length of his legs.

The winter sky, thinned to pearl by the long tyranny of the polar night, offers only a low and lingering pallor of dawn, and that wan illumination falls upon the snowfields; they take it up and return it in lavish excess, smoothed to a strange and treacherous sheen.  The warm brilliance spilling from the lodge, similarly, strikes crystal frost, frozen wood, and packed snow to raise fresh gleams at every angle.  All around, on every smooth surface, light arrives twice and from directions it ought not as if from a series of askew mirrors.

Echoes of their master, the land and the lodge have grown eager to look and be looked at.

The black river alone resists as it slices through the effulgent snow—and, just now from its bitter seam, a doomed and deadly creature breaches the surface.

He watches her ascent without moving to assist, framed in the ajar doorway where light and heat and sound pour around him in a heavy miasma.  Her trudge from the water to the set of wet steps, glossed by lanternlight into amber mirrors, is observed by the prince and a pair of ravens battering one another over a glittering scrap in the nearby snow.  As she climbs, wringing pink little casualties from the black tide of her hair, Graz’zt lowers his gaze with a dispassionate displeasure.

Adelaide is upon him when he looks back again, her wild stare caught in the mirrored light.  If her cold and trespassing fingers disturb him, he shows no sign; his attention instead lingers on the much more agreeable picture of her river-soaked dress, which has taken too loving an interest in the slender curve of her hips.

“I am not yet persuaded to admit so flippant a young lady inside,”  he says.  “I have not even welcomed you over my threshold, and already you’ve made a—”  his eyes dip once more to the industrious creatures scaling the length of his legs—  “a mess.”

A bead of meltwater slips from the thick of her lashes and falls with a demure little splash into his drink; he tuts and reaches up with his free hand to draw a strand of hair out of her lovely face.

❝  Such beauty is rea𝖑 power, ❞  said Ade𝖑aida, warm𝖑y. ❝  With beauty 𝖑ike that one might turn the wor𝖑d upside down. ❞ 🦋 Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

#𝖑ap𝖊r𝖑ina 🌈🧚🏻‍♀️💘 an origina𝖑 character adapted from the 𝖑itt𝖑e mermaid, inspired by su perisi, the water fairies of kazakh fo𝖑k𝖑ore, gothic 𝖑literature, & ta𝖑es of things that go bump in the night. written by aqssa 🍭♡ caard.

AS WELL ASK MEN WHAT THEY THINK OF STONE.

WAR ENDURES.

Independent, semi-selective RP blog featuring the Student from Sifu and Rakatak First-Among-All, a D&D-based paladin OC. Crushed by Burgah. Multiverse, multi-ship, multitalented. Est. 2023, though I've been writing in some capacity since 2012.

An exploration of: internal justification, depersonalization, physical prowess in place of emotional openness, and the desire to be more than one was meant to.

Xue / Rakatak / Verses / Rules

Art credit: @jjcre8

Rules transcribed below cut.

❝They say her dwelling sits in the middle of a valley so overgrown that men cannot walk it without being torn to bits by sticky vines and brambles, their blood leaving an easy trail for the greater things that serve her.  ❝Her part of the woods smells of the rotten cucumber of copperheads, and the air carries the sound of bears poppin' jaws and every other warning that these woods are not safe. Hanging food from a tree branch will not save it, nor you​, if you are foolish enough to try to camp here. Both will be scented, found, and taken.  ❝She watches you here. She is snake bite and mauled bodies. She has never known death and probably never will. Yours will only feed her and make her even younger and full of sap. She is not to be stopped, and we call her the Witch Queen.❞

#HEDGEWITCHED: a private, independent, low-activity blog for an original witch character attached to the Feywild and the Baldur's Gate video game franchise. Suitable for general fantasy genres, particularly fairytales and Slavic folklore. 21+. Tended by @ophaleia. ©

DM: hey I really need you to talk to this guy

Players: I don't know, he seems kinda evil and suspicious

the following prompts were taken from the novel deathless by catherynne m. valente, an american novelist & poet. the novel was loosely based on the tale of koschei the deathless, incorporating other elements of russian mythology, & setting it against the backdrop of the russian revolution. feel free to change the pronouns / prompts as you see fit, but be warned – below the cut, it’s quite long !

❛ the service of your body is not yours to give as you please. ❜

❛ you probably won’t survive. ❜

❛ go. run. don’t look behind you. ❜

❛ i have come for the girl in the window. ❜

❛ i will never be without information. ❜

❛ i will see him with his skin off before i fall in love. ❜

❛ if the world is divided into seeing & not seeing, i will always choose to see. ❜

❛ secrets are jealous things, permitting no fraternization. ❜

❛ no, it’s not like that, when magic comes. ❜

❛ magic does that. it wastes you away. once it grips you by the ear, the world gets quieter & quieter until you can hardly hear it at all. ❜

❛ the sight of it bruised my heart so that i cannot think about anything else. ❜

❛ i’ll be so quiet, i’ll never talk again. ❜

❛ keep me & obey me, for i am your husband, & i can destroy you. ❜

❛ i shall be clever, & i shall not let him go. ❜

❛ it is a new world, & we do not wish to be left behind. ❜

a series of dialogue prompts from the 2021 dracula re-telling.  feel free to change pronouns as you see fit ! cw; gore, sexual themes, emotional abuse, & toxic relationships

❛ i never dreamed it would end like this. ❜ 

❛ there is no horror left in this world that can surprise me. ❜

❛ eventually, even your death becomes its own sort of inevitability. ❜

❛ i was so happy to be your marionette, at first. ❜

❛ am i sick to still think on you softly, even after all the blood and broken promises? ❜

❛ this is my last love letter to you, though some would call it a confession. ❜

❛ war is never valiant, only crude and hideous. ❜

❛ good. when life fails you, spite will not. ❜

❛ i will raise you out of the dirt and into queenship. and, i will give you your vengeance. ❜

❛ i wanted to break them, even more slowly and painfully than they had broken me, leave them bleeding out and begging for mercy. ❜

❛ water your mother’s flowers with their blood. ❜

❛ in this world, you are what i say you are, and i say you are a ghost. ❜

❛ bloodlust brings on a delirium that’s difficult to describe. ❜

❛ i have loved you too long to imagine you do anything without an ulterior motive. ❜

❛ i’ve never been looked at before. like that. ❜

❛ what is more lovely, after all, than a monster undone with want? ❜

❛ i was your little mouse, kept in a gilded cage until it was time for the cat to play. ❜

❛ i knew nothing except the strength of your arms and the scent of your hair. ❜

❛ your priest’s bedtime stories cannot account for us. ❜

❛ to know oneself, one’s limits and abilities, is its own power. ❜

❛ i was alone, and i was scared. i had no home left to speak of. ❜

❛ and god, how i adored you. it went beyond love, beyond devotion. ❜

❛ i wanted to dash myself against your rocks like a wave, to obliterate my old self and see what rose shining and new from the sea foam. ❜

❛ you turned a strong-minded girl into a pulsing wound of need. ❜

❛ what would you have me do, as ruler? ❜

❛ are you sure you aren’t a holy man come to lecture me on the sins of excess? ❜

❛ i was well-acquainted with violence by then. ❜

❛ but I had never outgrown my thirst for vengeance. ❜

❛ in my mind, i was god’s lovely angel of judgement, come to unsheathe the sword of divine wrath against those who truly deserved it. ❜

❛ you mocked my lofty aspirations, cynical as ever. ❜

❛ when will you give up this ridiculous crusade? ❜

❛ there was a darkness in your eyes and a tightness to your mouth i hadn’t noticed before—or perhaps hadn’t wanted to. ❜

❛ i would never leave you, my love. not for the entirety of my second life. ❜

❛ you seemed to me a fire burning in the woods. i was drawn in by your enticing, smoky darkness, a darkness that still stirs memories of safety, of autumn, of home. ❜

❛ it was like grasping at a flame. i never penetrated to the burning heart of you, only came away with empty, scorched fingers. ❜

❛ whenever we were apart, you left your essence caught in my hair, in my clothes. i scented the taste of it on the wind, I shivered and ached for it. ❜

❛ i was happy to spend countless lifetimes chasing the warmth coming off you, even though the haze was clouding my vision. ❜

❛ my piety was a sporadic, half-feral thing, sometimes lashing out at god with teeth bared, other times nuzzling against his loving providence like a kitten. ❜

❛ i felt my heart tumble down through my ribs and hit the ground. ❜

❛ it tortured me, how perfect you looked. i wanted to pull you behind the carriage and drain you dry. ❜

❛ i wanted to crawl between whatever was blossoming between the two of you and live there. ❜

❛ you’ve found cruelty to be an effective tool. ❜

❛ do you want her for your own? ❜

❛ ours is a solitary existence. it would be good for you to have a friend. ❜

❛ it’s as easy as breathing. one foot and then the other. and don’t overthink it. ❜

❛ you must never overthink any good and pleasurable thing. ❜

❛ you must sit with me tonight at dinner. i must have you close. i want us to be the best of friends. ❜

❛ i think i shall never marry, my lord. i will simply take lovers and never let any man shackle me with wedding vows. ❜

❛ am i to be bidden to my own bed like a dog invited to beg at the master’s table? ❜

❛ desire makes idiots of all of us. but you already knew that part, didn’t you? ❜

❛ there was an uncontrollable fire in you that was hard to look away from, much less resist. ❜

❛ all vampires find some way to stave off the monotony of an endless life, with hedonism or asceticism or a rotating door of lovers. ❜

❛ i’m talking about us, you and i. let’s be honest with each other, for once. ❜

❛ love was no girlhood game. it was an iron yoke, forged in fire and heavy to wear. ❜

❛ laying with you made me feel so vibrantly alive. it was almost enough to make me forget that i was already dead. ❜

❛ this is about your obsession with justice, isn’t it? ❜

❛ i was suspicious, and even more dangerously, i was curious. ❜

❛ i was the love that started it all, wasn’t i? ❜

❛ it has been a long time since i have felt clean. ❜

❛ like christ, i had become intimately acquainted with violence and the sins of the world, but i had not come away unblemished. ❜

❛ but it was not god who spoke.it was you. ❜

❛ you could have kissed me or slit my throat and either would have made as much sense. ❜

❛ i don’t know what I had been thinking, supposing i was strong enough to leave. ❜

❛ you made it into an art form, this quiet sort of violence. ❜

❛ i want to live. but i want to live in the world, not on the outskirts of it. ❜

❛ love is violence, my darling, it is a thunderstorm that tears apart your world. ❜

❛ love makes monsters of us, [ name ] and not everyone is cut out for monstrosity. ❜

❛ [ name], our sunlight, our destroyer. my prince cast in marble and gold. ❜

❛ he was as inevitable as a revolution, and heralded in just as much violence. ❜

❛ potential. you always loved that word. you were drawn to potential like a shark to blood. ❜

❛ look around you. what sort of life is this? ❜

❛ i craved you like maidens crave the grave, the way death burns for human touch: inconsolably, unrelentingly, aching for the annihilation in your kiss. ❜

❛ i still wanted to believe I was living in a fairy tale, that i laid down every night with a prince instead of a wolf. ❜

❛ before your time dear, just some dreadful victorians. ❜

❛ it took every ounce of self-control i had not to pin him down and tear out his throat. ❜

❛ the world has no place for us, we are wanderers by nature, lions among lambs. ❜

❛ we cannot exist only for each other. ❜

❛ i had never allowed myself to want this because i assumed it wasn’t a possibility. ❜

❛ i love you. look at me, [ name ], my jewel, my wife. i love you. don’t do this. ❜

❛ i was tired of waiting expectantly at your tomb every night for you to rise and bring light into my world once again. ❜

❛ i made you into my private christ, supplicated with my own dark devotions. nothing existed beyond the range of your exacting gaze, not even me. ❜

❛ i apologize if you were expecting contrition, my lord. i don’t have any to muster. ❜

❛ here's your demon, do what you will with him. ❜