#nathaniel steepleton

This is a bit odd, but I've been tempted to do it for a long time. I tried my hand at using Thaniel and Mori's names as palettes, based on my synesthesia.

Thaniel Steepleton who’s born with a mark spanning from shoulder to calf, a mess of gears and clocks and octopus legs (???) and lemons and random objects (that suddenly become clear the more time he spends with Mori because they relate to his clairvoyance) (his mark takes up so much of his skin because isn’t he just an ordinary man, isn’t Mori his everything?) (he gains a little lightbulb for Six once they “adopt” (cough kidnap cough) her and it moves around wherever she wants; even Mori’s mark makes way for hers because isn’t he the man who would do anything for those he loves?)

Keita Mori who doesn’t get his mark until decades after his birth but who isn’t bothered by it because he knows his soulmate already, and when it comes it’s morse code and piano keys and a single pocketwatch on a chain over his heart (his mark is only over his heart (and small in comparison to Thaniel’s) because hasn’t he held the memories of Thaniel close to his chest ever since he’s been alive, isn’t he the reason he loves and the reason he still lives? His beating heart personified?) (His mark for Six is also a little lightbulb that usually hangs behind his ear on a chain until she decides to make a game of it when she’s bored and rolls a die to decide where it will move next)

Merrick Tremayne who thinks he’s soulmate-less for the first several years of his life before he realises that there’s a spot of grey on the bottom of one of his feet; as he ages it grows up his leg and darkens in colour. He thinks it’s a coincdence that it’s the leg that gets crippled (even if twelve-year-old Keita couldn’t bear looking at it) until decades later Mori confesses that it was the only way to stop him from running after Clem. The last day he ever spends with Raphael it is indistinguishable from true stone; he dies with a rosary held in grey hands.

Raphael who is bonded with the whole Tremayne bloodline; he has a mark for Harry and then one for Merrick’s father (whose name I forgot) and then one for Merrick himself (the marks disappear when the person dies, so sometimes they overlap when father and son are both alive, but how much of it does Raphael really witness, because of his “sleep paralysis”?); he ends with all of them carved into his skin when he fully becomes a markayuq and they all form one big picture (insects and spiders for Harry, tree bark Merrick’s dad (relating to the storybook and the sketch of Raphael in the tree), the leaves of whitewood trees for Merrick)

Missouri Kite with the mark of a lighthouse and two pillars that bursts into colour when he meets Jem Castlereagh, that instantly loses colour and recolours when Jem turns into Joe Tournier, and loses colour again when Joe leaves. Until he finds Joe Zhang, and he never loses colour again.

Joe Tournier with the mark of a lighthouse and two pillars but is confused as to why it’s coloured (he figures that he met them when he was young or something, or tries to reason with himself that it’s Alice’s); Jem Castlereagh knowing immediately once he meets Kite; and Joe Zhang, who learns he has the words Dearest Joe, Come home, if you remember. M branded into his mind, and finally decides that he can’t leave Kite again

Konstantin Shenkov with rusty streaks the backs of his hands, tinged with frostbite, and tiny text wrapping around his wrists that he can only read with a magnifying glass (it’s some stuff about nuclear things that he thinks came straight out of a textbook and doesn’t fully understand until he meets Valery)

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - Natasha Pulley Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Keita Mori/Thaniel Steepleton Characters: Keita Mori, Thaniel Steepleton Additional Tags: Fluff, Idiots in Love, Banter, Missing Scene, Epilogue Series: Part 6 of Lost Moments Summary:

‘He wanted to drop everything and steal Mori away and get drunk at home, and shout at him for being so reckless, and die for him, or live for him, and everything.’

Me: well, okay I mean sure he is pretty powerful but he's just one person and that kind of manipulation seems like a lot of effort

Mori: hey, Thaniel, what weather do you want on your wedding day