#compunctions

belladonna:    how does your muse respond to silence ? do they take comfort in soundlessness ,   or seek to fill the void with noise ?

silence makes him very uncomfortable. it feels too much like death and leaves too much space for self reflection, so i don’t think he seeks it as a comfort at all. at the most, it might be something he turns to unwittingly to wallow if he’s really in the pits and can’t show it, but even then he avoids this as much as possible. he knows himself enough to recognize that if he’s left to think and feel on his own for too long, he’ll lose his mind, do something reckless or become a real nightmare for the folks around him. sleep doesn’t come easy for him either, so he’ll do what he can to tire himself out or distract himself.

that means hosting frequent fetes and festivals at his castle during peace time ( at least once a week), going for night rides or night swims, or finding solace in someone else’s company. at his palace that’s pretty easy, he’s got plenty of courtiers willing to come over with a late night tap of their mirror, but when those start to bore him or become tedious, he’ll just walk around the castle and give overnight staff a hard time about something small as a conversation starter.

more often than not though, especially when he’s not in peace time, he’ll fill the silence up with a task: reading new books/tomes he stole, formulating a battle plan or a complicated spell. when he needs total concentration, that’s where he’ll spend the most time in silence. but he’s so laser focused on a task that it doesn’t register. goes to show how he tends to puzzle out a solution for his biggest problems on his own too, but honestly this wizard is a total extrovert.

i think he actually would benefit from or even enjoy the company of someone else while he’s at work. even a quiet presence is better than total silence, but the tricky thing is he’s so averse to welcoming do gooders into his workspace who won’t let him cook diabolically, so in that way he prefers silence to unwanted opinions. he’ll take in constructive ideas for sure, but unless they’re on board for helping him concoct a plan of attack or curse, sign at the door says “evil wizard at work dni”

silly text time 💬

[ TXT ] : james daniel fucking farrow

[ TXT ] : this is not very Libra of you !!!!!!!!!!!

[ TXT ] : come pick up this stupid idiot turtle. i hate him. he is VERY arrogant

[ TXT ] : it keeps looking at me

[ TXT ] : and i tried reasoning with it.

[ TXT ] : but it’s NOT WORKING

[ TXT ] : what part of JOINT CUSTODY do you not understand

the word was out of his own mouth before james had had a chance to properly speak, though by the guilty way he wore his shoulders and sauntered with a fragile gait into the lounge, he had a pretty good idea exactly why he had pranced back into their fighting ring with him again. ❛❛  grovel.  ❜❜  it would be no more effort than what james had already accomplished this week. irritating kenneth with his vitriol of moods the past few days, long enough for a fight to break out between them, and sweet talking his way past terry's immovable alertness and disdain of strangers, all to walk into the stadium with a smile.

"it's a party for a coworker. all academia types. big brains. english fans. shakespeare aficionados. the kind of people who are right up my alley... and right up yours, as well." a pause as he runs a thumb over his lips. "smaller group, though, so don't worry about a big thing with lots of people — it's intimate. and you don't have to go if you don't want to, james; i just figured out of anyone, you'd enjoy the crowd the most."

The girls she'd been working with had long since dispersed, but she hadn't left. Not yet. She'd never been in this part of the campus despite also making part of a performance art major, and she'd be lying if she said she wasn't curious. However, when she decided to start taking a look around, she expected the building to be empty. But it wasn't, and the sight of @compunctions visible startles her. “ Sorry! I thought everyone had left. ” She lets her arms fall to her side, hands softly clenching into fists. Everyone at Dellecher knew who James was — even she, despite having never seen him in person. The posters were very accurate. “ I've never been in this part of the building before. I was having a look around. ”

yale's borders stood tall in the dark night, like a count from a decrepit novel investigating his own city; there was nothing friendly about its looming, hovering nosiness as it kept eyes and ears, or rather the sensation of them, attached to every corner. who needed security cameras peppering each and every street when you had magic? what a prison of its own making, and he found no love in its interior, or for it, as he drifted through it half-awake, covered in soot and salt. even the smell of it was disdainful, and when he gripped the top-rail of an ascending stairway, he found little pleasing in the texture of touch too. at least it was bearable in the hours just after break had commenced. the absence of students left only one sense of the human soul to be desired: sound. a complete silence.

nearly complete. his eyes fluttered awake, chin tilted to the foot-steps descending like rapid rainfall. his lips parted as if to put a wine cork to the inevitable noise that would come out of the mouth of james farrow, but he was too slow. he caught @compunctions like a slap, but didn't budge from the last step, didn't fall and split his head open. that would have been unfortunate, after he'd seen first hand how messy it could be.

where have you been? he didn't answer, and got himself shaken proper for it. odd bit of strength for a maggot. had he been gone that long after all? two weeks trapped in a bonesmen's basement, maybe it was that bad. but it could have been worse.