#selfembodiment

A deep gaze into the mirror your entire body revealed. Your own eyes, your nose, your lips, your hair, your hips… every line, every curve. You notice the traces of body dysmorphia, even if it lingers only in one or two details you resist.

And then, something shifts.

You become aware of the power you hold, of the beauty you truly embody. Time has touched you, shaped you like wine, your body has absorbed the world, its weight and its sweetness, and from it, it has blossomed into something richer, fuller, more deliberate. Youth has not vanished; it remains etched into you, but deepened, textured, transformed.

This realization stirs something beyond the physical. It awakens the mind.

You begin to appreciate your body more with each passing day the way it carries your years, your experiences, signing them gently into your skin. There is more grace now, more sensuality, a quieter, more grounded beauty.

And in that reflection, you feel it: a growing passion, a tenderness, a form of desire directed toward yourself.

You love this feeling the way you can look at your own body with kindness, with longing, with pride.

The structures were... interesting. Styles he's never seen before from an era he's never been witness to. As overwhelming as it is, Muzan stayed in the shadows. The light couldn't reach this deeply, unfortunately it was also riddled with filth.

Creatures crawled along the walls just from the corner of his eyes. Humans watching him from the cracks of their boarded up windows. Despite the changes this island placed upon him, his senses were still sharp as ever.

Humans were nothing more than red dots behind these walls, heat signatures, nuggets of substance. Or at least he had thought so.

A human who had bumped passed him, attempting to pickpocket him for whatever was in his possession was used to as an experiment. There a portion of their body was torn free and eaten. The taste was... bland. Dissatisfying. The rest of the man was subjected to an injection with his blood.

The screams, as loud as they were, soon was a garbled mess as his cells overwrote the human cells. His flesh expanded before collapsing under the sudden weight, breaking and reforming his bones before death took him.

As it does, his body dissolves and fades away like a dream. Even the blood that was smeared across the demon lord's face was whisked away by some unseen force.

"Interesting. Now just to find out where they go..."

He trails off before he turned his head toward the deeper part of the alley where he stood.

Cecil finishes penning the last handwritten thank-you note to his latest customer at the register when the bell rings over the front door—someone has come into Faucher.

❛ Welco— ❜ he starts and stops, mouth clamping down like a vise. Because he recognizes the structure of this face very well, knowing it down to the minute measurements of nose and skull and cheekbones.

❛ ...we're clOseD, ❜ Cecil manages before a single flower spontaneously blooms on his shoulder.

The structure of the city was incredible as it was overwhelming. Trailing downward, opting for on foot than any other transportation allowed one to full take in the magnitude of the buildings that ground the clouds into a heavy fog.

According to the phone, the deepest part of the canyon was the worse place to be where the top held all the glitz and glamor of what he couldn't imagine to be grand enough for Dukes and Duchess and beyond. In time, he will venture up there as well, just to get a proper lay of the land, but for now his feet led him past the bright lights into the darker roots of the world.

What the phone failed to mention was that humans weren't the main ones running amuck.

"Was that... a flying rat?"

Said creature was trying it's best to flap it's too small feathery wings to lift itself from the ground. Which didn't make a lick of sense. It was oddly shaped for a rat with working fingers and a scaly tail. A small mismatch of creatures all within this-- thing.

A nasty little thing at that. Whatever it was gave off some horrible fumes that he couldn't quite place. Bitterness.

The vibes were rancid in any regard. Maybe some sort of Geass was at play? Maybe not. Until he can find a world map, he'll have to just keep in mind anything that can happen will happen in this world. He took several steps back only barely stopping short knocking into the stranger.

He stands in front of a church, asking people for their ills. Then he offers to cure them—for the price of devout prayer and a week's worth of good deeds.

It's only minor ailments—coughs or colds, a runny nose. Aurelius isn't keen to tackle more serious conditions without first judging the worth of the human's soul. Still, a sizable queue forms in front of him.

When the latest person in line stops before the angel, he stares at the face marred by stitches with thoughtful golden eyes. Something about him is...off, though he's not yet curious enough to dig deeper.

"I didn't rightly think you'd come to me," Aurelius says after a while.

"You seem content as you are. Or am I mistaken?"

Of all the times for him to be cursed, of all the places for it to activate, of all the beings for it to activate in front of--!

His body immediately locked down, tensed, solidifying to stone. His cursed energy coursed through him, crashing in tidal waves through his system, urging him with every pulse to move, to fight, to flee, to do absolutely anything but stand fucking still and start talking--

But talking he did.

What even was there to say to the curse?

Hand over his heart, phone on the other and takes a deep breath before tapping onto the text message field. It takes couple of attempts to start til it feels natural...

"It's silly, but something about your face...reminds me of home, a little bit."

If she were anyone else, it might sound like flirting: she's not trying to, really, instead thinking of a battered toy that had clunked down the stairs with her and had faced quite a few repairs (the seams and mendmarks not so dissimilar from her companion's scars).

Then again, she herself had come back from said incident matching with that little treasure; her own facial scar is the most obvious of the survival markers, but underneath her hair are the marks where her skull had briefly cracked, and a line along the back of her neck (the whole wardrobe's a veil, really).

"Something I treasure very much was mended in the same way as it seems you or I were taken care of."