starry night.

“Hm? No, it’s okay. This is a public place so it’d be pretty rude of me to not expect company,” Lee pauses to look back towards the sky, nodding. it shouldn’t be too much longer before the sun disappeared under the horizon, shifting their view from one of a warm glow to one of calm night. “It does, doesn’t it? I hope there’s a lot of stars visible tonight.”

that was the one thing he would always wish for. back home, all the lights from the city drowned out the stars. they were difficult to see even from the rooftop of a tall building, which is why he often appreciated the colors of the sky instead. he certainly had a new appreciation for stars after arriving on the island, which brought his attention back to his flip book.

the new arrival seemed to be trying not to stare too intently at it.

“It’s a flip book,” he says, tapping the eraser of his pencil against the page. “You know, where you draw one frame of the picture on each page, then flip through the pages really quickly to get an animation.” he flips through the couple of pages he has already, showcasing the beginning of a shooting star. “Cool, huh?”

“there will be.” there’s a surprising amount of certainty in his voice, especially considering noel’s usual propensities. “there weren’t any clouds in the sky earlier, and... this is actually one of my favorite spots.” astronomy is one of the few things he’ll launch into a full-fledged explanation about at any time—truth be told, he’d even picked something up at the library recently in an attempt to familiarize himself with spirale’s skies a bit more. he rationalizes it to himself as a way to figure out just where on earth he’d ended up.

that can wait, though. it’ll stay tucked away in his bag given how there’s company tonight. for now, he settles down beside the stranger, eager to take a closer look at the book he’s holding. as the pages begin to turn, his expression lights up in a way that’s almost akin to a child on christmas—although once he catches himself, noel sobers somewhat.

@starlitpromise  - Starter call

Golden Ward ― Pearl Street 12.28 a.m     Feeling disturbed with his lack of sleeping concentration, he decided to vent off his stress by strolling around the current ward he lived in.  His schedule wasn’t hectic as usual, within this city or his previous world, and that got him uneasy. A relaxing life reminded him of low income, hectic life reminded him of health risk, along with the high income provided due to his effort.       An unfortunate guy like him would rely on the wheel of fate, awaiting for jobs coming to his side due to his circumstances in his original world. Thankfully the job he took here occupied pretty much of his daytime, enabling him to lose focus on his previous hometown. 

     Accessories in each store displayed in an appealing manner, captivated the eyes of passersby as they strolled along the main street. Now that he noticed accessories along the way, should he pick one, for a certain someone? Well… in case, just in case if he managed to see her once more. 

     “But man… aren’t these, a little too expensive?” He’s still a cheapskate in this universe.

still penniless, still unemployed. really, noel’s financial situation’s getting a bit worrying, even for someone as carefree about personal well-being as him.

               he’s just a bit afraid, probably.

something like getting a job here, after all—how is it any different from accepting the reality of the situation, that he won’t be leaving this place anytime in the foreseeable future? that isn’t something he’s ready to do. that isn’t something he’ll ever be willing to do.

and so, as a direct result of that irrational stubbornness, he’s become a penny pincher through necessity. eyes are drawn to the rows of accessories almost automatically, lighting up as the first thought to cross his mind is how pretty they’d look on her. the expression drops from his face just as quickly once he spies the price tag, though.

> REALITY MANIPULATION FURTHER UNLOCKED. > MOUNTAIN BIKE OBTAINED.

Rich spices and the undeniable aroma of meat fills their senses and seeps down way past the line of hunger and slips far into the pit of famished. They had been eyeing the skewer with a curious sort of interest, rapt and filled with awe so it comes as no surprise that this creature before them offers a sample.

And a sample it was they took. Scarfing down the piece they gnawed with great zeal until the succulent meat is swallowed and their sights is refocused on whats left. In the process, though, draws the attention of their companion and he whips his head around with a look of horror etched into his visage.

    ❝ Nooo! You shouldn’t take from others, especially if it doesn’t belong to you! ❞

eyes widen briefly at the sight—despite having offered and fully expected the creature to accept (he’s seen enough curiosities in this place to assume that the majority of animal companions can understand speech), noel finds himself in awe at the gusto with which the meat is consumed. it vanishes in the blink of an eye. by the time the voice of a panicked owner rises into the air, he’s certain that the meat’s long digested.

  The moment the bug is noticed and the stanky leg of a dance is made, he skitters backwards, cape jerking up to shield both his body and the lower half of his face from any possible ‘fling to’ happening to him. Green eyes are widened and he’s tense, part of him feeling bad for not helping, but another part of him thankful that he wasn’t the one dealing with the bug.

  “Kid..! Kid quit moving! It’s not coming off that way! Try..Try dropping and rolling!” That’s what they did for fires, but with the tension; the situation might as well be bursting into flames. Maybe that thought was too dramatic, but he was convinced it was a dire, horrible scenario to be involved in.

                                —wait, “kid”? is he even that much older than me?

it’s the most ridiculous of thoughts that flashes through noel’s mind as he hops; clearly, recent trauma with bugs (specifically, being fed one by a certain demonic acquaintance) has shorn away any sensibility that would’ve normally been present in this sort of situation. he officially hates bugs, at least for the time being. 

devoid of rational thought as he is, noel just does as he’s told: “r-right!” he says as if the suggestion makes perfect sense, and promptly drops to the ground. of course this is the correct method of removing a bug from oneself—he probably ends up squashing it beneath him in the process, but again, noel isn’t quite thinking straight (or at all, even).

While for whatever reason Raven can’t fly, she does still levitate while meditate, bobbing just a couple feet above ground as long as she’s focused. And calm. Something that’s been admittedly harder to achieve recently, which is all the more reason for her to be working on her meditations.

“Azarath … Metrion … Zinthos …”

She hears someone approach, but doesn’t allow herself to visibly falter.

“Azarath … Metrion”

how curious. he can’t help but stop at the sight of a girl hovering in midair, seemingly meditating—from the looks of it, she doesn’t appear to be entirely human either, which only increases his curiosity.

it’d be rude to disturb her right now, probably, and so he settles down several feet away. having seen a number of others perform seemingly impossible tasks, it’s been nagging at the back of noel’s mind for some time now: maybe, just maybe, he could learn something similar. he’d never really tried to do anything out of the box back in their own world, after all.

and so, as he waits, noel decides to do a bit of experimenting on his own. one, two, three. he tries willing himself into the air in a similar fashion, but—merely teleports himself several feet into the air.

                  “waugh?!”

“lime.” even as he says her name in greeting, there’s already a sinking feeling in his stomach. he hasn’t forgotten their last encounter (the bug-feeding incident is one he refuses to count, let alone remember), and is willing to bet that she’ll rub in the fact that it’s been a full month with no way back to claire in sight.

lips press into a smile out of politeness. “long time no see,” is the feigned pleasantry that follows as if he hadn’t been purposely avoiding her.

@starlitpromise

the sun is setting.

despite being in a foreign place, Lee still looks to the sky with a tender fondness he can’t quite replicate for anything else. once upon a time, the orange, red, and yellow hues of the setting sun were just something he had to imagine. illustrations in the books he had didn’t do it justice; the natural beauty of it had absolutely stunned him the first time he’d seen it over a year ago. he found himself captivated by it yet again, seeking the comfort it brought him. he needs it more than ever now.

he tears his gaze away from it for a moment, looking back down at his neglected project in his hands. he held a little notebook in his lap, pencil held loosely in his hand. he’d only completed a few frames thus far, but with a little more work, a simple flip book of a shooting star would be the result. he should really finish it before the light fades–

Lee senses someone approaching and glances around, not at all shy about the potential company.

“Did you come out here to watch the sunset, too?” he greets the newcomer with a smile. “It’s kind of secluded here, but I think it’s one of the best places to see it.”

another fruitless day. noel is nothing if not stubborn when it comes to his singular, all-consuming cause (returning to that place where she needs me), but even the most determined of souls grows weary after struggling alone for so long. relaxing here means risking complacence, yet the picturesque scenery draws him close regardless. surely just for a moment, it’ll be alright. 

he’s been here before. the starry views at night are breathtaking; and this is his first time having returned from the city’s outskirts so early in a while, so noel finds himself wondering just when he’d last seen the sunset.

               it’s a bit nostalgic. they’d used to play until the sun fell below the horizon.

@starlitpromise

In the Archimedes ward, there are theaters. Many stages for many performers, and Charlotte hopes to be one of them someday. She can already picture herself on them, performing her executions live to an even wider audience than before. First things first, though; she needs to scope out the right one.

That’s her mission today, but it’s been interrupted by the sight of someone standing outside one of the theaters. She watches him hovering outside of it, like he’s trying to decide what to do, and it annoys her a little bit. She approaches him like he’s just another schoolmate.

“Are you going in or not?”

of course there’d be places like this. eyes are turned upwards, surveying the sheer grandeur of the structure before him—really, everything in this ward speaks of architectural brilliance to a scale that he’s never once seen in reality. 

he wonders if his mother had ever performed in a place like this.

the thought springs to mind unbidden, but it’s enough to give him pause; noel finds himself hovering awkwardly before the theatre’s entrance, caught between both wanting to go in and a sense of guilt. he really doesn’t have time for things like this, not when a month after arriving, he isn’t any closer to figuring out a way home than he was on day one.

“It would appear this may be the ideal location in order to gaze at the stars. Perhaps Cotes may rival it, however, this Savior’s Respite, according to word, is a safe distance far from any hub of activity, and nightlife which may interfere”. Archimedes was a region they shared as home from the conversation thus far, allowing for easy beginning point into a much more natural subject such as pastimes. “It might not be so ludicrous to suspect we may be capable of viewing other planets should they be visible from the sky. I had read it was possible on the Earth of previous realms. we may be capable to locate a signal to aid in determining where precisely this isle may lie if it not also the same planet of another”.

Granted, her know-how on the subject was limited to articles in newspapers she had gleamed in the past. The notion of anywhere so foreign was unheard of in her lifetime; be it star or planetary - they existed far differently in the distant past - she couldn’t help but feel some intrigue towards the subjects. Though perhaps her approach her been too naive?

@starlitpromise

simply put, it reminds him of home. not the place he’d resided in for the past twelve years (not once had he thought of the witch’s mansion in such a way); but rather the blossoming fields of a peaceful childhood, hand-in-hand with her. it’s as close as he can get in this place, and stumbling upon savior’s respite had been a complete coincidence the first time. it’s fast become one of his favorite spots, though.

why. couldn’t. she. kill. that. thing. 

she watches as it disappears from her sight, appearing a small distance away. sop ii almost throws another grenade at the foul creature. her fingers grip the grenade tightly, so, so close to putting the explosive into the grenade launcher adapter already fastened on her gun, sending her final grenade off at the creature… who still hadn’t attacked her. 

… she stops. 

         she thinks back to the other creatures who usually attacked her by now. 

                      … she wonders if this is actually another one of those peaceful otherworldly people stuck here like her. 

                                         was that what the thing’s garbling was trying to communicate with her?

the pouting face is quickly is replaced by one of confusion. she tilts her head. 

she stares at the monster.

she stares at the gun. 

she stares at the monster again. 

“are you… not one of those monsters?” she asks. “… were you trying to tell me that the whole time?”

“can you even understand me?” she wonders out loud. with that, she clears her throat and tries to muster the most throaty and guttural–

“duoJKsyUiUndskTyGN!” she grins. “is that better?!”

no. it’s really not better—noel would’ve groaned out loud had his physiology allowed so, and a low grumble is instead audible from his current form. at least the girl seems to have understood his lack of intentions to attack her, albeit belatedly. as the last few seconds of his five-minute-limit tick over, there’s something akin to a shifting of the space around him, almost like an optical illusion.

and then, all that’s left in the monster’s place is a very ordinary, bedraggled young man.

he rises slowly, brushing himself off—thankfully none of the wounds or bullets had transferred over. a look of caution is still cast in the stranger’s direction, though. understanding attained or not, there’s something unnerving about a teenager armed with a machine gun.

she had already known he would worry before she even spoke– anyone who knew her for more than five minutes could tell that her expressions conveyed her thoughts easily. it didn’t make her any less delighted to see his futile attempts of dispelling his own doubts. his expressions were just as easy to read as her’s, although their range of emotions were far different from each other.

she hops down off the rubble she was seated on, and brushes off her skirt. her hands clasp behind her back as she watches him formulate different possibilities for what could be going on back ‘home’. the look on her face would seem innocent to someone that had never met before, but was likely downright terrifying for those who do.

            “ you already know not talking is something i have problems with, especially when it comes to you! you’re just so fun to talk to, noel! ” another small giggle as she steps closer once more, indicating she was fully ready to follow should he leave. “ buuuut, you’re right i guess! things could be a lot slower back there, so she might be safe for now… ”

            “ …wouldn’t it be funny if time was actually moving faster there, though? maybe she was gone before we even met up here. ”

frustration gnaws at his every fiber with a persistence that threatens to unwind noel’s composure here and now. this is this worst possible situation—stuck as he always is, ruminating over the impossibility of a universal happy ending, but more powerless than ever before. the situation’s only getting worse, he’d said to rouge in that world that already seems centuries away from this place, and it’d become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

           “c-can you please stop? i’m... i’m leaving.”

he can’t even muster the strength to fight back against lime’s words now, let alone bolster his own resolve. head hung, fists clenched, he just starts walking away—sure, she’ll probably trail after him while babbling on to push him as far as she can, but there’s nothing he can do to stop her. block it out. just block it out, and focus on what he can do.

                                                                               it’s for claire’s sake, after all.

“this place is big enough, so just... go do whatever you want. i’m going to look for a way back.” if lime’s the only familiar face here and he’s abandoning that, so be it. there’s no way he’ll be able to focus on getting out with her constant attempts to rile him up.

lime snickering in the bg

                “ahh... this again... ”