#rubyfall

things like this never would have happened to bella before.    over many sleepless nights,    at the front of her mind had been the moment the breadth of the known world grew larger than mortality — the ethereal beings that walked into the cafeteria as if they ruled it,    then shrunk from the attention of the rest though somehow bella got past their guard   (  it’d been alice that first put bella at ease:    while an oddity,    she was quick to placate and assure,    to make you feel like a friend in a room full of people you didn’t know.  )    it is more than bella can say for most she’s met in general:    let alone in forks,    where everyone either knew you since you were too young to walk,    knew your family and your business and where you lived and what your dad did for a living,    or they treated you like a total outsider and iced you out.    those were the cold ones,    or so she’d thought until the past few months.    the thing is,    at least those people that catch your attention and leave before you can breathe again don’t just show up at your door.    especially not when you almost,    almost started to believe you were capable of forgetting them.    they don’t hurt you when they leave,    and they don’t act like people in movies that come back in your life just as you’re moving on and try to make things right. 

❛❛    i’m fine,    alice.    ❜❜     bella lies when looks into her friend’s golden eyes,    and all she can think is how much she missed this girl she hadn’t known a year ago.    she missed edward too,    and the rest of the family,    but none had given her what alice had.    an ear on the other side that listened.    even if alice never wrote back,    she must have thought it was better for bella    (  people can be empathetic,    and not realize just how distant,    how cooled they come off.  )     ❛❛    i’ve been looked after by my friends  ...  i guess you probably don’t like me calling jake that.    ❜❜     how can she explain this haphazardly repaired part of her heart,    the way the edges still hadn’t smoothed over just because she’d been forced to patch them ?    faced with alice’s reproachful brow,    bella’s stuck in a loop,    thinking of how tired she is.    really,    beyond tired — of talking around her feelings,    walking on eggshells with people she loved and loves still,    like that wasn’t enough to make them stay.

❛❛    i’m just  ...  wow,    you’re here.    you got my e-mails.    or did you see something happen ?    ❜❜    curling her grey-socked feet up on the couch,    she leans against the cushions,    not into alice.    she seems on the verge of something important and has yet to touch the tea bella laid out.    which was characteristic,    since alice was a vampire,    but she wasn’t even holding it as a grateful gesture.    that’s something the old alice would have done,    just so bella didn’t feel unnerved.    wide brown eyes narrow and she turns her chin away,    feigning interest in something like the rug or the wall so she wouldn’t start crying in frustration.    alice’s visions were vivid,    edward once said — yet fragile,    plucking her out of the world the rest of them lived in at often the most frustrating times    (  maybe she really was alice,    like in wonderland,    tripping down,  down a rabbit hole in her mind.    probably bella was just one of her curiosities,    and soon she’d move on to something more interesting,    because regular human things don’t interest curiouser girls.  )    bella pipes up,    hating the insecurity in her voice.   ❛❛    — what is it ?    is something wrong ?  ❜❜

✺    PRIDE AND PREJUDICE    —    ACCEPTING.      ⊱      @rubyfall​

beneath the spring sun the girl once had her first taste of peace,    a sense of tranquility not often afforded folk such as her,   and now she has grown rather greedy   ─   a day cannot be considered  good  if not spent outside under the warming rays from above with the welcomed breeze tickling her neck.     were it up to her alone,   she would not go to school at all   &   instead sit by the lake of masks all day,   basking in the serenity.     all too soon  the mirage  is shattered,   with what she’d thought was a cloud rolling past the sun quickly revealing itself to be a permanent shadow settled before her.

from above calls a voice alina wishes she could unlearn,   wipe from her memory   &   banish from her close proximity for all time:      «  if you wish to avoid seeing me,  you must go,  not i.  »

❝   were you not taught manners in that palace of yours ?   ❞    her question rolls off her tongue nonchalantly as her gaze refuses to lift from her sketchbook,   though within her the little orphan girl she once was stirs a witch’s brew   ─   a concoction of fury   &   frustration     (   mixed with an ever - growing undertone of amusment   )     spilled from the pot and sept into her bloodstream,   floating through her veins purring with purpose.      ❝   i was here first.   ❞      at long last the girl peeks up from her artwork,   golden gaze straining against the sun peeking from behind his back.     her head tilts to the side,  dark brows raising in a challenge.

❛❛   just what is stupid,    miss cushing,    about reading up on some harmless old ghosts ?   ❜❜    will looks up from the book in hand,    one he’d clutched to himself under the pretense of researching what seemed to be edith’s most favored topic:    hauntings.    there were few books on the subject,    as shadowhunters rarely concerned themselves with spirits.    they did harm to the living here and there with their pleading,    like beggars on the streets,    and coalesced prominently near graveyards,    ancient sites of terrible deeds or rivers like the thames,    but it was not as though most could see them,    and fewer still communicate well enough.    those superstitious even among the folly of the clave’s legalism managed to avoid them most often,    while seers of particular sorts were sometimes brought in to interrogate the dead when crimes went unpunished by nephilim retaliation.    politics oft’ considered the voices of the deceased less troublesome than the investigations they conducted under the premise of saving the living,    and fighting the downworld.

truth be told they could not have been more wrong,    and will herondale knew better.    ghosts remained on earth because something had gone very wrong for them before they passed beyond,    and these spirits could return to the living as easily as though stepping through your mother’s curtains with their bargains and warnings and attempts to appear to those they’d left behind.    he’d always kept mum on the subject of his aptitude,    while some knew him to possess it,    lest it be used for further clave tactics.    specters liked to trail him sometimes when he took long walks,    down fleet street or closer to the east end and the docks.    most often they left him alone — will didn’t have the look about him mistakable for anyone’s savior.    other times he kept them company,    and there were those he considered informants,    which would trouble charlotte or any respectable hunter to know.  

yet here was their newest arrival under the protection of the institute,    asking will reluctantly of them as though speaking to him were her own last wish.    and she was opening up to will    (  albeit at his own interrogative efforts,    which were vexing as well as convincing to anybody  )    about her brush with the dead.    it was troubling that such things could follow one over the ocean.    will might have been conflating her narrative with his own perils.    yet will’s curse was laid out,    and he needed no fine print to seal its terms.    miss cushing knew less,    and could hope less to avoid the fate that seemed to come for her. 

❛❛   they are usually blue,    or seem blue in a transluscent sort of way,    though i suppose they could be red when dripping blood.    wraiths they sound like to me.    the sorts one reads in a foreboding fireside tale at the witching hour.   ❜❜    he lifts his brows in suggestive horror beneath his hair,    stepping across the room to set the book upon the table.    ❛❛   perhaps these illustrations might be ringing death knells ?   ❜❜    he trails one finger over the page,    lifting a gaze to the curious young woman.    she did have a look about her of a heroine in a gothic tale,    striking in the dim haze of witchlight.    the sort that took her story into her own hands only after no one came to help.    ❛❛   not even consecrated ground can keep them from crawling in these walls,    i’m afraid.    you may be stuck with your morbid callers if you refuse my helpful and obliging heroism.   ❜❜

... @rubyfall​  !

a  moment  of  unequivocal  realization,      like  those  lucie  has  read  of  in  all  the  stories  she  loves  most:       the  part  when  the  heroine  gives  herself  pause  to  recognize  the  feelings  she  has  long  repressed  over  her  dashingly  complex  lover.         it  is  a  time  for  the  pen  to  endow  romantic  fantasy  and  dismay  in  simultaneous  grandeur,       with  a  hint  of  future  resolution  that  shall  only  come  once  all  is  explained  as  it  ought;       as  two  people  equally  confused  that  have  stored  all  their  hopes  in  one  another  must  feel,       for  in  feeling  they  are  justified  of  bitterness  and  betrayal.         in  stories  there  is  hope,       in  poems  there  is  resolution:         but  in  reality  these  events  are  difficult  to  parse,       an  inextricable  mire  of  loyalties  and  disappointments.

this  is  what  lucie  discovers  as  cordelia  tucks  into  herself  in  a  chair  by  the  fire,       its  upholstery  comforting  in  the  orange  glow,       a  familiar  damas  pattern  lucie’s  eyes  traced  in  childhood,         retired  into  her  mother’s  old  room  and  now  befitting  her  intended  parabatai  to  reside  in.         (  daisy  will  always  have  a  home  among  them,         as  her  father  has  said  the  carstairs  shall  have  always  with  the  herondales.  )      cordelia  clutches  a  handkerchief  with  the  initials  c.h.  which  lucie  herself  embroidered  in  a  dainty  and  delicate  script;       a  wedding  present  that  seemed  morbid  at  the  time,       which  regrettably  has  served  her  friend  well  tonight.         i  ought  not  to  have  prophesied  such  a  thing,       she  thinks,       guilt-tinged  and  grieving.         as  though  i  wove  tears  into  the  tapestry  of  her  fate  and  its  sorrows.

cassie   howard   had   never   been   very   good   at   hiding.         perhaps   it   was   the   one   thing   she   had   learned   from   being   maddy's   best   friend,   who   did   not   like   to   keep   her   voice   down   no   matter   the   circumstances.         easy   to   remember   their   eleven-year-old   selves,   and   maddy   bashing   a   girl's   head   against   a   locker   just   because   she   had   made   fun   of   her   accent.         loud,   bright,   impossibly   herself      :      cassie   was   admirative   of   maddy   in   ways   she   could   not   quite   explain,   nor   did   she   necessarily   try   to   pin   them   down.         like   most   things   about   herself,   cassie   preferred   to   not   pay   too   much   attention   to   it,   from   fear   of   seeing   it   blossom   into   another,   more   potent   issue.   

or   perhaps   cassie   did   not   feel   like   hiding   simply   because   she   had   been   so   used   to   hearing   her   parents   argue   at   the   dinner   table,   airing   any   minor   issue   in   front   of   their   two   baby-faced   girls.         even   back   then,   lexi   had   been   far   better   at   observing,   whereas   cassie   had   always   felt   the   need   to   intervene,   as   if   she   could   somehow   help   ease   the   tension.         she   did   not   like   conflict,   and   truth   felt   like   a   very   easy   way   to   keep   things   straight.      or   at   least,   it   used   to.

∗   38﹕   what’s      a      bad      habit      you      have      when      it      comes      to      roleplay   ?

putting   waaaaay   too   much   pressure   on   my   writing,   which   is   one   of   the   main   reasons   why   i   am   such   a   slow   writer.      i   will   take   eight   thousand   years   to   post   a   reply   because   the   imposter   syndrome   is   Real   and   i   usually   stare   at   the   drafts   until   i   get   overwhelmed   and   abandon   entirely.      this   is   clown   behavior,   i   know.      another   one   would   be   my   inability   to   reply   to   ims   in   a   timely   fashion.      i   will   get   the   notification,   open   it,   get   excited,   and   then   i   forget   about   it   because   i   can't   reply   immediately.      this   sucks   because   i'm   sure   that   if   i   was   more   consistant,   i   would   make   connections   much   more   easily.

∗   26﹕   who      was      your      very      first      muse   ?      would      you      consider      writing      them      now   ?