#serenaderain

some places were better left unvisited, and hermes has seen enough to know love's domain to be one of them. still, he twirls the caught arrow between his fingers, knowing one wrong turn, one small prick from that blurred arrowhead, and his folly would be eternally devoted to the next soul he casts his eye upon. to a mercurial god, born as ambivalent as the mountain winds that swaddled him, the finite terrifies as much as it thrills; so, as with most personal matters, he makes a game of it :

let the heart of a loveless swain be shot through by aura's unrivaled aim or continue to roam the pastures freely and unharmed on the back of his wiles. it seems fair enough, when she only needed one good strike to claim victory, and the greater labor belongs to he whose only objective was to prolong the loss. is it his fault she disadvantaged herself in teaching him to catch and evade the arrow as a child? ( or had she underestimated a trickster's foresight even then ? )

❛❛ loveliest aura, ❜❜ the herald's churning voice wheedles around her in hushed, rose-jeweled tones, mindful of a slumbering paramour just beyond the threshold he'd hoped to escape from. ❛❛ should it be an insult to you, when this unfettered heart offers no small amount of cursorial fun to open the embittered ones to your worship again ? ❜❜

here laid the perfect example: the widow, wracked with a grief so profound she thought to renounce love's throes until her last breath, had in time become amiable to nightly condolences. of course, she never dared to love something borrowed, but realized, at least, that the end of a life did not spell the end of an entire world, and it could be a blessed thing to lean into the unknown and relearn the joys of companionship again.

a castle, carved out of the peak of mount huon, veils itself amidst purple-grey thunderclouds ; a most unwelcoming sight ( for a number of reasons ) to those who stand at the base of the mountain, in a quaint little town known as cloudsrange. the warm mist of petrichor serves as a warning and gentler prelude to the downpour that is to come, so when the townsfolk begin to clear the streets, tristan and yvaine follow suit, finding shelter inside an innkeeper's tavern. the innkeeper is a spritely crone, of an indeterminate age, but rumored to be old enough that she might have lodged the first of the eighty one lords of stormhold when he first came upon the high craigs.

' you mean the first of eighty two lords, ' the crone corrects yvaine, but does not answer to the truth of the rumor, much to her irritation. ' coronation or not, he who holds the power of stormhold be our eighty-second lord. tristan thorn, be his name -- and that's your husband soaking in the tin bath, isn't it lass ? ' knowing eyes warn her against lying, and the bite of fear darkens the star maiden's heart. seeing the dim of her translucent skin, the keeper purses her whiskery lips, and eventually promises to keep their identities a secret as her lady wishes. ' but better leave his mother a note, if he insists on lollygaggin' about for another three years !' the crone huffs as she wobbles off with two jugs of ale, leaving yvaine to herself but under watch.

❛❛ sing, o muse, of aya akazawa, who will take on any grief as her own. even yours, bubbles dry cleaners. ❜❜ his lofty address refrains into a chin-dipped smile, chiding the bleeding heart while utterly unfazed by the gruesome red streams overpowering her pale face and bare neck. the display may have been a horror to some, but the god's eyes regard her kindly, and without reservation. to him, this was just aya, divine and all the more admirable for her show of compassion.

disturbing was the rest of this scene: silent souls stripped free of their wailing torment were drifting en masse to charon's skiff, while aya did her best to suffer those burdens discreetly, and worst of all —— alone. no friend nor tissue box in sight. how was he supposed to abide that ? ❛❛ come on. get in here, ❜❜ hermes beckons again, this time with reaching fingers that ignore the protest. they pull her into an embrace, where he practically smothers her into the wrinkled button-down, sealing its soiled fate for good. ❛❛ bloody it up as much as you need. ❜❜

          PERHAPS,    THERE ARE WORSE PLACES TO LINGER IN WALLS.   this displacement is somewhat shared with that of the young warlock, @serenaderain   (    though it could be said that they were within the same time of their lives...    if this phantom still lived    )    the london institute was home to many of the departed,    although the lady eimile was not one of the souls that perished within its walls.    no typical specter but the denizens of the shadow world need not know the full extent of her whereabouts.    their concerns lay with the living,    of which she was not.    

          still,    she had come to develop a fondness for the newest resident amongst the hunters.   ❛   you should not be so hard on yourself,    miss gray.   ❜    there were times transparency escaped her and she conducted herself much like a young woman who still carried a weight with her step.    sitting beside the crestfallen girl with her veil of sympathy over her.   ❛   your circumstances are anything but conventional...    and you are so far from home.   ❜    an american,    how novel! it was her first time being able to speak with someone who was properly from overseas.    

          ❛   if you need a confidant that isn't one of those troublesome nephilim men,    i would be happy to oblige.   ❜    frequently the lovelorn poetess fell victim to a certain mister herondale's poison tongue.    his affinity for seeing the unseen made her easy prey for his more sour moods.    it was no stretch to say she did not hold the boy in high regard.    

“ just a moment of reprieve, ” was murmured into the palm of her hands. the exhaustion hung heavy on her frame, weighing her bones down like anchors dragging at the bottom of the sea. her duty was to remain within the confines of her parlor and support her people, but every night the guns went off and death was closing in. “ there’s only so much I can do — ” they were losing the war; that much was clear. she hadn’t slept in days. “ — and I wonder if I must surrender to save them. ”

what burns him here, in the underworld's high tower, that has him so hesitant to move any farther ? is it the warnings of her father, his lord ? the fiery pits somewhere yonder ? no, there was never much regard for that. it's the prick of an arrow that stings. and has had him pining quietly to this point, out of fear, out of wanting to contradict everything aya has heard about a trickster's intentions. still, the goddess invites him to come to her window; kisses him until he's rendered flightless, fallen prone in her bed, too eager to cross a line ( and should he refuse, when she says she wants this ? )

❛❛ do you ? ❜❜ he asks, his desire still clothed, but reaching for a gateway. a herald has to be sure she knows: they likely wouldn't come back from this. a second plea, and where a bright, lush-bitten smile grows, the eyes also darken ( how much ? ) his sleight of hand reaches down between them to pilfer the answer with a permitted touch to a forbidden place, and the wealth that he finds there is a welcome surprise.

what makes her offer it ? the god wonders, unused to a reward that didn't require some exchange of labor. still learning that a soul has value too. that he can sit with a heart for weeks, offering no more than his company, and still find that wanting thing overflowing from the boundaries of her body with just a thought, a dreaming. the evidence of her affection overwhelms him, sets the heart aflame, the ichor into a rush -- because no one has ever wanted him like this; no one has ever wanted him this much.

you wanna dance???? I'LL DANCE

elias & rhiannon : my basis for this is just. immortals ( or close enough ). but look, i love the potential dynamics between two beings who have been here basically forever. elias is a traveler and a meddler, so i imagine he has plenty of reasons to come by the inn more often than not. are they old friends ? gossip buddies ? got into a bad fight once or thrice ? exes ? on and off ? idk the possibilities are endless and we love to see it

i don’t officially have him on here ( unless… ) but ema & klavier content, anyone ? their dynamic in aa4 is hysterical to me. tfw you fucking hate your coworker but he keeps making a himself of nuisance to you. i think there’s a lot of room for their relationship to develop, and i definitely blame the storyline shift between aa4 and aa5 on that, but it could be fun to have them see past the fronts and attitudes(tm) they both put up, and maybe grow closer as a result.

listen. i’ve just pulled this out of my ass but hear me out : vasya & morgan. i’m still in the middle of winternight book 3 rn so please forgive any inaccuracies, but. something something au in which vasya did get sent to a nunnery after all and just so happens to meet a like-minded girl there. they both have ties to old magic, they’re both spirited as hell, they should get to pull off their jailbreak arc and go apeshit.