#morghulis

VIOLENT REACTION PROMPTS  /  ACCEPTING

THE CAT HAS CIRCLED HIM FOR THREE DAYS, gradually coming closer, but always a hand's breadth out of reach. Warier even than most the strays that populate the city. Estel remains against the wall with the others, travelers and shipless-sailors and vagrants waiting on whatever ship will bring them out of the harbor and towards another world—none of them going home, but all going somewhere. The city is dangerous and few are willing to leave the docks to venture deeper in. When Strider goes, he comes back out with nearly enough food and fresh water to distribute. Nearly. Enough for the children, at least. Their parents, to the last person, claim they are not hungry, and so Estel loves every one of them, and finds that he is not hungry in his turn.

It is a scrap of stale dried fish, laid down beside his boot, that finally brings the cat close enough to touch. She does not arch or hiss when he places a slow and tentative hand on her back but only watches him with unblinking eyes; luminous and grey as winter, neither human nor animal in feeling. She has been watching him thus for days, three days, and Estel offers her a small smile. She hisses, and he laughs. Seemingly displeased, she stalks away.

None of the ships that come in will have him. The next day, when all the others have caught their boats and he is the last remaining on the wharf, legs tucked against his chest and his salt-stained cloak drawn around them to shield some of his body from the cool rain, pressed into the wall, the cat is the only creature which seems to pay him any mind. He lays the last of the fish out for her, far enough away from him that he will not be able to reach her, and watches as she takes it in her teeth and retreats to a near distance to devour it.

She does not clean herself after she feasts—only sits, and stares, and then slinks away.

Somewhere between the din of the cold day and the thick, wet dark of the long night, Estel sleeps. It is no more than a broken moment here and there, but it is enough. He wakes and a girl is before him. Her knife is at his throat. She is staring with unblinking eyes; luminous and grey as winter, neither human nor animal in feeling. He sees his own reflection in them. He looks tired and weak. A lost man who no one will remember, and certainly no one will miss. She has observed him thoroughly. Perhaps she has decided these truths for herself.

"For three nights, you might have killed me—yet for three nights you have not."

The docks are empty and silent but for the sound of the water and the boats. The only lights are from the city behind them and the low-glowing ghost lights of the sailors aboard their ships, smothered in the mist. The fog stinks of the canals.

"I think you did not want the children to see my blood in the morning. That was kind of you."

The rest is plain: the children are gone now, and no one will see. No one but she. Estel is still as glass, unblinking as she is unblinking, but his body is not tense even as her knifeblade is warm where it is tucked beneath his tipped-back chin. She must have been holding it in her palm before she approached. Estel's neck is slender, tough with sinew, and bears some scars already. She will not be the first to try to cut it. She may be the first to succeed.

He has been hunted all his life, even when he did not know it. When the reality of the danger he was in lived only in the tired vigilance of his mother's eyes, in the way she would tense at the slightest unexpected sound. They killed his father with an arrow through the eye. As with the hero Huor in the old tales, who he would often pretend to be when he played alone on the walls of the gorge in the heat of the day. Leaping onto an Eagle's back, utterly unaware. Sometimes, Gilraen would put her left hand over her small son's left eye and look long at him just to see—and then disguise the gesture by petting back his wild hair. As with so many things, it makes sense to Estel now only in the distance of his memory. The way she craved reminder and any certainty that it was not so. That it would not be so. The way they lived outside the world and his mother's sacrifice—his own confused happiness, to know only they two existed. The whole world of men, Gilraen and her son Estel: that one, he thinks now with a small sting, he might have lived in well. That one, he might have ruled, when his mother grew weary of the work. Outside of it was only the inevitability of others' births and deaths so that he, too, could eventually be born and die.

The heavy-laden branches on the tree of life and death. A dead tree, too, a world away that is awaiting him. A life unlived that he cannot map in his mind with clarity enough to fear for it now, even with death herself crouched over his legs which he has stretched out before him in sleep, poised to snuff out whatever meager light.

The girl is waiting for him as well. Waiting for him to speak, or to fight back, a dark frustration brewing under the cool facelessness of her previous expression. Dark and childish, like the dark and childish meanness that lives in his own heart, too. She has inherited some of it. Some of it, like his, was taught to her. She is hesitating, or considering, or hovering on the edge of a familiar decision. Every time is like new. He knows. Strider knows, Estel knows. Somewhere underneath, Aragorn knows, too. She should not have watched him so long. It is always easier to close one's eyes.

Wherever she has come from to arrive here, surely she understands. She has watched him as he slept. Kept him safe from all but her. Strider looks at the girl and smiles a small, paradoxical smile, "It is a hard world, and my life or death will little change it—but I would be sorry to leave it now."

Estel’s hand rests loose on his thigh and he thinks of the knife concealed there. His brows furrow. His assassin hovers over him, and they are looking at one another.

THE SHERIDAN TAPES PT. 2  /  ACCEPTING

   𝙷𝙴 𝚃𝚁𝙸𝙴𝚂 𝙽𝙾𝚃 𝚃𝙾 𝚃𝙷𝙸𝙽𝙺 𝙰𝙱𝙾𝚄𝚃 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚆𝙰𝚈 𝚃𝙷𝙰𝚃 𝚂𝙷𝙴 𝙼𝙴𝙰𝙽𝚂 𝙸𝚃. About the things she has to do, and the places she should be, and how all of this and all of them are just an interruption. A temporary rivulet split off the body of the river but running right back into it all the time. Getting lost in the greater current. Gendry rips a fistful of grass out of the dirt—and then hesitates, and stuffs the roots back into the soil with the heel of his palm. It doesn’t work. The reeds are bent and flattened, and he thinks they’ll probably die. It was a stupid thing to do, like a child who doesn’t think. He wishes he hadn’t done it. He wishes he had a hearth to sleep in the soot of, but that doesn’t mean he wants to ever go back.

   “I didn’t either.”

   That sounds stupid. Of course he didn’t mean for any of this to happen. They’d told him to go, and he’d gone—it’s not the same as what happened to her. Gendry tries to think of what he would have done, what it would have been like, if he was her. It’s like a story; abstract, and ununderstandable, like most stories are to him. A nasty part of him housed in the bottom of his belly thinks it wouldn’t have been so bad to see his father killed, if he were him and him was her, and it had been his father, not her father, and he’d been watching it happen instead—some mean, drunk, and stinking stranger who probably deserved it, it wouldn’t have been so bad. He hates that he thinks it, hates that it makes sense to him, but he’s not stupid enough to say it aloud.

   He didn’t mean to get stuck out here, but he’d never been going anywhere in the first place. Nobody had ever told him where he should be going, or what he should be doing. Suddenly, everything feels like its unravelling inside him like a string.

   “It’s not so bad here.”

   It’s isn’t good, either—but it’s not so bad. Not like some of the places they’ve been, recently and before. He doesn’t know what her home was like, but when she talks about it she sort of glows, so it must have been better than this. Gendry misses the sun-warmed stone of some of the cleaner buildings right around this time of day, but the rest of it—he can’t think of anything else that he particularly liked in his whole life. She’s looking at him, waiting for him to say something, really listening. This is better.

   “I think—I think I’m going to wish I was back here some day,” his face is twisted up, brow knotted as if with pain. She usually laughs at him when he looks like that, but Arya isn’t laughing at him now. He doesn’t say anything else, just sits still and lets her look.

   The sky above them is purple, lilac, like a pigeon’s wing portrayed in a painting. It’ll be dark soon. He thinks about the man he’d watched her kill at the gate, even though he doesn’t want to.

   It doesn’t make sense to say such a thing, and Gendry knows it. The sick girl is gone, he doesn’t have to stop her sating her hunger by eating mud, and Lommy’s been dead so long it feels like he was never here. Or maybe like he’s still here. That’s all good, isn’t it? The ground under them is still damp from the rain and the cold is seeping through his filthy trousers. Too wet to start a fire even if they could risk the smoke, and it’ll be cold again tonight. Cold enough for frost on the edges of the fallen leaves in the morning. It’s another bad reminder: winter is coming, and they can’t stay out of sight forever, not if they want to survive.

@morghulis​ said: ‘ you’re not a good killer . obviously . ’

   Amusement laces through his form and cold gaze settles. Not many chose to talk to him and even less said something so audacious. Question lies therein if this one was a fool or could stand against him should they come to blows. He certainly is curious to see. While the sarcasm was not missed there was little reason to take it at face value, why speak if not to provoke a response?

NONVERBAL RP STARTERS. | accepting.

@morghulis​ asked: Wipe away my muse’s tears.

At night he finds that what he thought he had learned was not a serviceable lesson, had been found lacking by his conscience and his heart, had, in blunt terms, been a placebo at best and a fucking lie at worst. 

He thought, before this night, that he had learned. A painfully, horribly, difficult lesson, but he had put himself to it and he had learned. It had made its way into his bones whether he wanted it or not, whether he could handle it, kicking and screaming. But it was there, settled. It was there: the knowledge of experiencing grief. He had nursed it into something serviceable to him in those long, dusty years, alone in the desert, and he thought it was a serviceable thing to him still.

Then Eddie had died.

   LOVE HAS MANY LANGUAGES,  most of which Geralt has no fluency in. He has heard them, translated them, but they are difficult. He has had very few uses for them  ;  they take a long time to say very little, and most of that is useless to a practical man. This, however, he understands with perfect clarity. The resolute voice of his protector, his little protector, who loves with a needling love. A daughter’s sharp, needling little love, always making itself bigger to prove its worth. She wants to be of use, to prove that she is of use, but more  :  she wants him to sleep. To sleep and feel certain that nothing will harm them in the night. As a gift to her, he does not argue, though he should tell her that a Witcher needs sleep less than a girl.

   Geralt considers kissing the side of her head as he rises from his chair, but lets her stay in her folded place, arms wrapped about her knees. A kiss will not keep her awake, will not help her focus, and there is blood still drying on his shirt. Instead, he sets his hand atop her head briefly when he passes towards the back of the kitchenette.

   ‘  Thank you, pchełka. Eyes sharp, yes?  ’

   ‘  Ostra,  ’  she answers.

   The Witcher ghosts a smile and nods,  ‘  Tak  —  ostra. Jak igła.  ’

   He watches her mouth the word, dredging the rich well of her congested mind for its meaning. Her serious face twitches a little once she finds it but when Arya directs her gaze dutifully to the window and the square down below them, Geralt can see the low flash of the ghosts in her eyes as the light passes through. A ghost sits beside her, shaped by his love  ;  or the fear of the love that he did not give enough of when the ghost of the girl was small, when she was frightened, when she needed it most. He put a gun in that girl’s hand instead. She lived, the girl, and Geralt is proud of that, grateful for it  —  but a momentary hope she might have had remains to haunt him.

   He crosses back and drops a kiss on Arya’s dark hair that smells like cold wind and the oils of her scalp. In the other room, he does not sleep, but keeps watch at the narrow window for any activity on the road that dips down towards the clubs and the Stavropoleos. Just before sunrise, he hears her stand and stretch. Hears her footsteps coming to the door. The Witcher lies down on the undressed bed, slows his heart and closes his eyes  ;  so that when she peeks inside Arya will see that he has slept the night and that she has kept him safe.

I did it!!! I found the Warglobe to my Marglobe. Poor Mar.

(The fact they have the same primary and tert was a great coincidence. Probably gonna change the secondary on the Wildclaw but not sure if ill do hex or noxtide or something else?)

send me a 🌻 and i’ll tell you something i love about you / your writing. | always, always accepting. | @morghulis​.

So my involvement and interest in GoT / ASoIAF has always been -- lukewarm, at best. I think I’ve always been more interested in the possibility that a world like Westeros holds, and in the potential that these characters may or may not have, rather than the actual world itself. 

If I had to pick, I’d always pick the Starks. With me being only somewhat emotionally involved in the series to begin with, the Starks were and are still the group of characters who fall in most of my favourite tropes categories. Hopelessly loyal to each other? Check. Siblings with realistic, conflicted but ultimately loving relationships? Check. A love between parents strong and steady, but still somewhat tinged with melancholy? Check. A connection to strong nature-based magic, which few believe in and even less know how to wield? You betcha.

And in comes your Arya, James.

You capture all that I listed above, and then you elevate it. You make Arya this intelligent, broken, quick-witted young woman, and in all of it, you make her big, boundless heart take centre stage. Something I love about the potential of Ary is the interrogation of humanity that, to an extent, all the Stark children undergo one way or another, some more or less literally. With Arya, it’s in her blood and it’s in her abilities, of course, but it’s also in the ways in which you can show so easily that yes, she’s broken and yes, she’s turned herself as sharp as a knife, but by all that is holy, underneath all that violence there’s still a beating heart. She’s still here, alive, and able to find beauty and joy. And that’s absolutely magnificent. It’s a trait that’s so hard to capture in writing, and especially that’s so hard to convey with the subtlety you manage.

Reading your Arya is an exercise in understanding complexity. I admire that so much, and it’s a trait I strive to capture in Roland as well and as effortlessly as you do with Arya.