#smallhope

“-- eh? ah...”

Owing to COVID-19 engulfs the whole world, all the weekends we stay at home.

DIY ..... Look !     Taiwan orchid is blossoming ......

StayAtHome, my achievement & pleasure !   

ceire’s magic is like a weight lifted, a freedom to move. it’s a memory of a performance, not one of his own but with the presence of pride and without the sear of wildfire. flames lick over and through him but with her spells active he doesn’t feel the heat or the violent clawing distance from humanity.

(there is almost a song here, just on the edge of awareness, cold and sharp and novel.)

flames flicker over salieri’s blade. enemies before a shadow servant. they fall quick, and salieri laughs. there isn’t a joy in killing, per se, but there is a joy in being lightened, in the ability to follow a rhythm that usually isn’t present. novelty and, if not happiness, then an absence of despondence. he skims over the ground in a rush of sound and fire. (there is a glory in it. a delusion of godhood, heady and rushing.)

last standing: the shadow servant. it’ll be easy. like this, light and with power dripping from his maw. quicken the tempo. the music played, soundless to him but flickering with violence. it weighs heavy on the battlefield. the ground flickers red. y es, it’ll be quick. of course. he’s [          ], after all.

no.

the sound falls discordant. he feels again the ripple of heat over his arms. another tune -- and the note of a bowstring tightening, a single noise that shoots through salieri’s consciousness and nicks in his chest, pinning him halfway back to reality. “you,” he snarls in a lick of flame. the wildfire shackles him again, and the delusion of a world where he isn’t evaporates, becomes something left for imagination. the blade is heavy again. 

the melody changes. the song isn’t played by him any more, it comes contrasting from that bow, fingers on a string that sounds too wrong, cut at his sides, and doesn’t even have the good goddamn graces to match the original timbre and tempo. fury flares in a spark, both righteous and petty in one at the ire of something taken and nothing given. “you! die, accept it and die, gottlieb!”

his sound rises in a bright crescendo, gleaming and angry. to wipe the tase out of his mouth of strange chords from a shadowed harp. there is still enough casting from the goddess behind him, whose presence he has forgotten except in the rush back of the spells -- they don’t lift him the same this time, but the add to the bite, to the swing of his sword as a cathedral crashes down around him with a violent crescendo from a choir of shadows, the rise and swell of music propelled by flames. 

a full orchestra, a performance led by a god wrapped up in anger and destruction and the feeling of loss. vengeance. the taste of someone’s blood wells in salieri’s mouth and he shouts wordlessly, a threat and declaration of victory at once. his sound will win. he’s been blessed. for once, he isn’t salieri, not something humanity and god hated. so he can do this. wildfire can raze what it wants, and there is no pity or mercy from the things that oppose him. he’ll kill them. he’ll show them, burn them, take--

and the battlefield collapses down around him. the choir is gone, the colour -- and it’s so sharp salieri gasps and staggers as if hit, falling back to the ground in an ungainly thump and stumble before he can catch himself and hop back to the air. the flames are burning this time, too. a crash from the apex back into reality, breathing ragged as he remembers. no, you are not a god. you are not [         ]. the fire pulses in his chest. it hurts this time, it hurts, and his ears are ringing. salieri’s blade drops from his hand.

there are no blessings. it does not feel like he lost them, it feels as if they have been undone, unwritten, there never were and never will be, there is only thanklessness and the weight of disdain. worse than silence, a sharp never-ending noise. “a-ah?”

this shouldn’t be happening with ceire around. she is a goddess, she doesn’t -- -- she doesn’t have protections from his music. they weren’t supposed to use their phantasms around each other. the ringing gets louder. he doesn’t want to look. he doesn’t want to. “ceire?” he turns to her, eyes wide. 

she looks lost and so hopelessly small with her own spear driven between her ribs. 

     “ ugh .. huh ? y’really think so ? ” material gathering wasn’t always easy , especially with unfamiliar teams . Ritsuka felt her performance visibly go down with rowdy groups . too much noise , even more to keep track of . she’s sure it’s not intended , regardless , the mental exhaustion formed . ( she couldn’t wait to go back to her room . )

“You don’t act very much like a god.” It’s a good thing, so far as Hektor’s concerned. Gods are capricious and incapable of understanding anything other than their own wants. People who say they care for humans but can’t understand life and death.

Ceire is, at least... a little more human. A lot more. He wouldn’t have expected her to be the god type if he hadn’t known.

Hektor looks back down at the table, where he’s rolling another cigarette. The one he’s smoking now is the last, he should plan ahead. “I assume you don’t smoke. You can hang out with this old man here so long as you don’t mind that I will. I like company.” Even though he’s keeping his attention to the cigarette instead of looking up at Ceire. Eye contact might make it a little too clear that he’s not being fully open, or let the mask slip to show any of his perpetual paranoia around strange divinities.

what to give a stranger on his celebration? oh, she's got no clue at all. a cake exploded in the oven; jewelry if she had the funds; and she never quite learned how instruments were put together; so what is she to do...? ceire glances off to the side as she hands salieri a small box, in which lies a thumb-sized carving of a bird. "you, um... your... birth-day?" she's flustered. "please don't-- comment, i... didn't know what a good present would be...!"

he doesn’t actually expect things from anyone - the most he would do is dramatically prod at mozart the day before as if mozart would brush him off, and use an excuse to buy himself cake. there’s really no other need or call to celebrate a long-dead composer and his impostor.

and yet, here he is instead, with enough people who decided to like him that he has gifts. what a novelty. even death itself is allowed to have a few birthday wishes. ciere wasn’t expected, but he offers her a pleased greeting nonetheless. they’re friends, right? sure.

it’s not for her benefit that she’s subject to feeling others’ emotions when it comes to being around salieri. there’s only extremes, things felt consumingly if felt at all, from the blank despair of the lamenting exterior to the human but still compulsive emotions off the battlefield. he was in a good mood already, but ciere offering him something makes that brighten into a signal flare. he’s surprised in the nice way (if anything, all she would have reason to give him is that acknowledgement, and that would be welcome on its own).