#allmonster

Spring breathed its spectral warmth upon Faramir, drawing from him a chill that had clung to his bones since dawn patrol. Warmer still was the water where Eivor waited half-submerged, their shoulders gleaming beyond the drifting veils of vapour.

He eased himself into the spring with a soft exhale. The water swallowed him in one warm, rising breath, closing around his chest like an embrace long withheld. Muscles unknotted beneath the steady pulse of some unseen underground current. Steam beaded on his eyelashes as the world contracted to that shared circle of wild water, to the wind combing through the leaves, to the cadence of another’s quiet breathing.

From the corner of his gaze, he allowed himself to study them – gently, respectfully.

In the wavering light, Eivor’s skin gleamed like metal worked by a master smith. Burnished, strong, imprinted with the hieroglyphs of many battles. Faramir found himself reading their body as he might the sweeping script of an ancient tome. The curve of their breastbone, the breadth of their shoulders, the taper of their waist – all shaped by war into something that defied the single, simple lines he had been raised to understand.

He wondered, quietly, if the Valar had touched them differently. If some spirit of the wild had laid a hand upon their cradle. They reminded him of the vaguely androgynous statues set high in the turrets of Minas Tirith, figures carved so gracefully that their beauty could not be bound to any one shape.

Steam curled around their face, softening the hard cut of cheekbone and jaw. Faramir felt a curious warmth bloom in his chest – a kind of wonder, one perilously close to desire.

He sank lower into the heat, letting it lap at his ribs.

“It is rare,” he murmured, voice subdued. “To find peace so complete.”

Birdsong warbled overhead while the scent of moss and warm, wet stone filled the space between breaths. His thoughts slowed, drifting like silt towards the bed of a river. For this moment – this brief, steam-draped span of time – there was no war, no duty, no dark promise of bloodshed.

His gaze returned to Eivor’s form, now limned in the sun’s bleeding gold. Power lay in them – he saw it in the sculpted muscle, in the scars – but so too did grace. Duality within duality. In their presence he sensed the widening of his own understanding, the subtle shifting of old, inherited boundaries.

dialogue starters | accepting | @allmonster (eivor) “i do not have time for distractions right now.”

Sigyn exhales and closes her eyes, relaxing into her seat further. The mood around them is jovial; people gathered around, sharing food and drink. Laughing, relaxing, enjoying themselves — all things Eivor ought to be doing as well. All things she seems almost opposed to. Surprising, given Magni’s infectious personality.

Regardless, there is nothing pressing that needs attending to, nothing that cannot wait until tomorrow. Even if Eivor cannot see that just yet.

【 𖤓 】 NONVERBAL PROMPTS. 〳 ACCEPTING.

There is a crick in her lower back, a stiff pain radiating all the way up her spine and flaring out the width of her shoulder blades. Her boots, once soaked, are now damp and cold, and her thighs ache from the hours of riding behind them. Strands of her dark hair are flattened against her forehead and cheeks by the brutal wind, the sounds of which still echo off the walls of her mind. The Sun Summoner is so preoccupied with an internal cataloguing and damnation of all her discomfort that she misses the rustling of the trees beyond the clearing.

An orb of scorching flame catapults through the branches ahead, barrelling straight towards Alina ─ the sizzling of flesh is inevitable, though the pain never strikes her. Instead she is shoved aside, fall softened by the thick coat of wet leaves covering the ground. The flame crashes against Ira's side, licking up the length of his arm, before suddenly dying out in a cloud of steam. From her spot on the ground she stares up at him, eyes wide and mouth agape, worry flashing across her face as she scours his figure for injury. On the tip of her tongue an admonishment awaits, proclamations of never do that again and I can look after myself, but one glance at his face is all it takes for her to pause; a somewhat rare display of saintly constraint on her part.

Is it not her Saint-given duty to allow the lives of others to form the armour which shields her own? The argument on the tip of her tongue (the passionate chastisement of his tendency to put her life above all else) is snuffed out just as the fire was by this knowledge of both their fates; hers, to forever be saved before others more deserving & his, to always choose her life before his own. Instead she thanks him, her hand clasped in his as he pulls her to her feet. This little skirmish in the woods will soon be forgotten in the midst of the far bloodier battles of the war; in her periphery Alina can see the rest of their company handle their foes with ease, which is why she allows herself the time to remain by his side.

Faramir listened in stillness, firelight drawing slow, pained gold across his face. Eivor’s voice moved through him like the memory of an old wound – one not his own, yet familiar, intimate. As they spoke, he felt the strange ache of kinship, their shared sorrow an almost-living thing between them.

When silence settled again, he let it linger. Then, gently, he reached across the narrow distance between them. His hand found Eivor’s forearm, fingers resting there in a gesture that was not bold but deliberate. The quiet touch of one who understood that words could go no further.

“It is no foolishness to love where love has wounded us,” he said at last, his voice low, heavy with empathy. “To love, still, is the very proof of the heart’s strength, of how deep the roots of those organs run.”

His thumb moved once, absently, across the coarse fabric beneath his hand, a motion that seemed to steady him.

“Perhaps that is our burden,” he went on quietly. “To love beyond what reason advises. To offer our devotion to those who have neither the grace to cherish it nor the wisdom to refuse it gently.”

His eyes dropped even as he continued to speak.

“Yet, even knowing this, I would not trade such love for the numbness of those who cannot feel it at all.”

Nor would he trade the love of his brother for the love of his father, for Boromir had loved him with a devotion that outshone all the cold suns of Gondor’s house.

Faramir withdrew his hand slowly, reluctantly.

“You honour me with your candour,” he said. “Your pain… it mirrors mine so closely I scarce know where yours ends and mine begins.”

He paused, gaze distant for a breath, before looking back to them.

For a moment, he said nothing. Wind whispered through the long grasses outside, a slow breath drawn from wild gardens.

“Ah,” he murmured at last, a soft and wounded sound. “A son should not have to earn such love, no.”

His voice, low and frayed by restraint, carried the ache of long years. He lifted a hand, as if to brush aside the words, but it fell uselessly to his side. Eivor’s face, solemn and unafraid, seemed carved from starlight and sea-stone – the kind of face that saw without judgement, that held a quiet, dreadful understanding. Under their gaze, Faramir felt seen, beheld, and the long-guarded sorrow in his eyes softened.

“My father is not an unkind man,” he said, almost pleading. “He is… wounded by the world. It has carved him hollow and filled him with contempt for weakness.”

Somehow, somewhere along the way, Faramir had become that weakness incarnate.

“Still,” he whispered. “Still, I love him. I would give all I am for the light of his eyes to fall upon me with something like pride.” His voice cracked, a small and human sound tearing through the finery of his speech. “Can you imagine the hunger of it, Eivor? To be worthy in the eyes of one’s sire?”

His expression broke, gentleness undoing careful lines of composure.

if cole had been asked this years ago,   he’d have no real answer,   other than something empty, sarcastic, entirely passionless,   because it always felt impossible to really dream in kettle springs,  especially when the people there had always put him in some kind of box. 

after what his father did to him,  what he tried to take,   cole knows that’s something he’s going to spend the rest of his life fighting against.   he’s not just arthur hill’s victim,   he’s not just the kid who should’ve died in place of his sister,   he’s not just one of ‘the three’ of the baypen hoax   (a murderer to them, one who’d never actually killed anyone.)   that doesn’t necessarily mean he knows who he is and what he wants now —  he just knows he wants to keep moving forward,  not dwell on the fact that his father’s body was never recovered,  not live in fear that any of it could happen again.

but cole is still pissing people off,  still enjoying the attention from the media no matter which way they lean towards him and his friends,   and he’s showing no sign of stopping,  no attempt to be too careful.

“i’d say a cool car,  but— check.”   he grins,  playing around before he tries to offer a serious answer — because he’s never really been good at that,  taking himself too seriously,  especially lately.   cole takes a deep breath,  pushing his hair back as he tries to give a more proper answer,   even if the one he has doesn’t feel so simple.   “i want to do something good.  do something better with my father’s money than he did.”   and he’s trying,   trying to make something new of the hill legacy,  not get stuck in a cycle that cole never believed in—  it’s at least a start.

friend or foe-- do they even remember what they are? in the dying light of a torch abandoned on the muddy ground, ishtar is not completely sure of her aim; only that perhaps what they are to each other can be brought to a quiet end until the day begins anew & the king, once more whole, is fully aware of that new beginning.

approaching despite the growling of a suffering beast, the witch moves swiftly. no mistrustful glance is spared to the shadow of a bear, though it would be impossible to miss. it seems that eivor's essence takes much of the space in the cave, ishtar no more than a spark from the torchlight as she takes the next steps.

though she isn't tense, it is evident that she is prepared for a fight… the possibility of it is heavy & potent, almost a smell of its own in the wet surroundings. still, she appears calm-- as steady as the ocean in the darkness, only the waves crashing against stones & sand threatening the unchanging nature of the scene. "i'm going to help you. try not to bite my fingers off." -- though, those two she'd grow back. every part of her body has been rebirthed, pain her sole birthright.