#rosmcrinus

Another wriggling parasite was plucked clean from it’s hosts mashed head and pushed into the glass vial. Iosefka snapped the lid closed with a gloved finger and secreted her catch away into the small satchel at her hip alongside a handful of coldblood flower buds. She loathed to dirty her hands in this way, it was beneath her, but the tomb prospectors had sticky fingers and one could only trust yourself in these times of extremity. 

The crunch of downtrodden vegetation had the woman spinning, muzzle of her pistol held aloft and pointed to the gloomy darkness beyond. Her lantern was of little use in these dust choked halls and she cursed her lack of foresight for not bringing a torch. 

"'Course y'can! Kins 'ave gotta love their fellow kins. Jus' don't complain if she gets slime all over ya."

---- The Chants rose from the Unseen Village, some miles from the Cathedral Ward. The appointed hour was nigh, and for the first time in what felt like ages, the cool winds of Yharnam whipped at Mary’s skin. Red eyes, tinted not with beasthood but of another, more potent blood, scoured the surroundings from on high. Just as the Healing Church did, she’d muse.

From the woman’s pack, a thick mat had been rolled out -- treated to cause viscera and guck alike to run off it in globules, to stain the ground, rather than her working area. She had not the possibility of setting up a laboratory here, out in the open as it were, but instead, she had prepared her wares and a lantern; lit orange to signify business.

---- Hooded under the cloth customarily worn by the Church’s Tomb Prospectors, the hunter’s garb was mismatched and dark. Her coat suggested that she was one of the Yharnamites, conscripted during the earliest days of the hunt by Ludwig and his Holy Blades. However, it was on her extremities that the true patronage of the prospector was on display. 

To those accustomed to the brutes employed by the School of Mensis, the rugged gloves and trousers worn were unmistakable, chosen for their sturdiness and resilience to physical harm. Thick rope hung around her belt, and from beneath her hood, her eyes watched one of the two alleys that led to her position. It was the barest of sounds, but...

“Is anyone there?” She spoke, straining a voice many years in disuse. “I don’t bite, you know. Come on out, I have wares.”

---- True to her word, the scholar had set up small, folding tables; with some tablecloths draped over their surfaces to hide their ramshackle construction. The heaviest thing is a small stone bowl, resting beside her. Inlaid are a number of runes, but to those who had been touched by the nameless moon above...

Why, their loyal messengers would be within the basin! A handy thing, for those not herself.

Like birds’ wings mangled and tangled in a web of wires - each lie she used to free herself. The more the story continues, the tighter it becomes - like the arms of prison shackling her form without warmth. Like a catch between fangs of the beast. Or talons pierced deep into her form. Is it fear of a prey to not fight free and flee but to submit to an inevitable death, or is it determination to keep the play going? What was there to be feared, if she truly was who she claimed to be? As long as one behaved like a prey, a prey they’d be in the eyes of a predator, trigger a chase by attempts of escape- true hunter would know its equal, approach without fear. Which one, would she choose to be. But was it even fear… this all lingered between edges of danger and pure curiosity. Adrenaline rush she could become addicted to. What would he do.

Her hand, running over the chest she pressed her form more and more against, reaching up towards the covered frame of his face - small and delicate compared to the hands much larger - yet, her touch could be just as firm as the fingers digging into the layers of a town man’s attire.

❝ —  Don’t you feel anything but the thrill of kill? It is but a passing joy, while… you could have my very everything. ❞

@rosmcrinus

How is it that between the two of them, it is her gaze that is confident and his that is shaken?

Despite how light she is, he feels a ten-ton weight pressing against him. Her hand spreads across his chest like a flame spreading throughout a home, leaving blazes and sparks with every motion. That flame now threatens to set alight his mind, his eyes, his lips.

His hands are ungloved, bare, raw, simply because he wished to clean his equipment. Now he has been ambushed without his armor, and his hands - massive, thick, ready to tear and snap and crush at a moment’s notice - hover around her, fingers twitching with uncertainty.

“Do you know what you are saying? Has the delirium taken you? You know nothing of me, not even my name, and you would give me your everything? Me, who does not even know your name?”

This is a different interrogation. He seeks not beasthood or infection but something far more sinister and formless. His hands slowly clasp around her shoulders, before they move up, up. They trail across her collar, and they crawl every so slowly up her neck, fingers pressing every so slightly like teeth around the neck of a captured animal - yet, he does not feel as if she is the captured one.

His fingers press against her skin and trail up to her face, which he now cups between his palms. They both know it would be so easy to snap her neck right there, for a single motion to end her everything, and indeed, how possible it was that he might do just that. He lowers himself to look more throughly into her eyes, and from this close, she can see the inferno flickering within them - and she can see her own reflection filling all that he sees. In this moment, he is looking at nothing but her, and only her, with his complete attention.

Does he seek betrayal? Yes, that is what he searches her face for. Certainly, she will show fear, or she will show disgust, yes, there will be the telltale twitch of her eyes, a sneer on her lips, yes, this is what he searches her face for. He must confirm that this is not real, that she is simply deceitful or mad, for he knows everything there is to know on how to handle traitors.

But what if she isn’t? What of the alternative? What is the possibility that makes his own gaze waver?

“You speak of your everything, but you do not fool me. What could you possibly desire from me? I could destroy you at a moment’s notice, and you know it. What game are you playing?”

His thumb slides over her cheek and rests on her lips.

“This is all an act, I know it is. How far would you take it, hm?”

His thumb presses against her lips, tugs at the lower one, and his hand moves under her chin to tilt her face up at his command. His eyes - the only part of his face that she can see, the rest hidden away like the secrets she worked her life to uncover - burn into her.

“You have something up your sleeve, I know it.”

His hands slide away from his face, dragging across her skin, her neck, in all the right and wrong ways. They rest upon the collar of her shirt.

“Surely, you do not desire this? Surely, this is temporary madness, or you seek to trick me? Confess, and it shall cease. Do you not see reason? What could you possibly want?”

In the pool of the age-spotted mirror that hung above the sink, Maria found Yurie.  A kindly silver gaze traced the slope of the cleric’s jaw, the bud of her mouth, the expanse of her eye covering.  Those stars were veiled, the windows to the soul obscured.

“How faraway you seemed.”  Maria’s explanation came quietly, murmured near the helix of Yurie’s ear.  Distraction – or intense focus, perhaps – had been written into the bend of the woman’s back, the way she stared into the gurgling, rusted eye of the sink.  It was the burden of a brilliant mind, the huntress supposed, the price paid for seeing in the dark.  “I had to be certain that you remained within my reach.”

For all the apparent remoteness of Yurie, she came alive with touch.  In the lady’s arms she still held the same weight and shape, the same rumour of strength still brimming beneath that heavy fall of robes.  Coiled like a spring, tense in the cage of an unexpected embrace.  Maria glimpsed herself then, colourless save for the shadows that ringed her eyes.  Exhaustion wrote itself into her features.

Slowly, with a gentleness that was inherent to her, Maria released Yurie.  Even as distance opened up between them, her nose was remained tickled by the aromatic scent of rosemary, woven with something bitter and medicinal – beneath that, there was the familiar tang of blood.

validate my (slightly less) drunk ass

MAYAAAA oh my god this is such a sweet message. I remember the excitement I felt when I first saw the goddess of sin herself on my timeline, it was like a whole new world opened before my eyes. We've been writing together for many years now and it's still an absolute delight every time. 80% of the reason I came back was because I saw you on my dash again and all the memories of the fun times we had really motivated me to come back.

Don't question the integrity of mum (@rosmcrinus) and da (@bcwblade)!

"Do you like my clothes?"

Soft, recently gloved hands lifted from her sides to smooth out the choir clothing she wore. Sharp whites, stark blacks. A lone splash of blue about her neck, the color of the sky; the cool grasp of the cosmos.

Her blindfold cap was the only outlier. Homemade, as opposed to gifted like the rest. Hers attempted to mimic the choir's aesthetic, but left her eyes free. She was distanced from Master Willem. From the church as a whole, really. She knew she was an outlier, an abomination and a fallen star...

She knew that in the wrong hands she would be torn apart. Dissected, dismembered, divvied up among the faithful and used to close the gap between heaven and earth.

She knew these things, these truths, and yet she still offered herself freely to two. Two whose hands were as stained with ichor as her own, two who claimed her despite her differences and guided her honestly.

"My mawma got them for me special. My measurements, she made sure they'd fit me perfectly, even though she had so much work to do..."