#stelegy

@stelegy sent : from yasuo : a kiss on the corner of the mouth (wahhh oh no i couldn't windwall ahri charm oh nooooo oh nooo)

ahri doesn't remember when she stopped fighting it, when she allowed him to traverse the wall she built from nettle and thorns, when things changed irrevocably between the boundless depths of bilgewater's murky seas to the undeniable closeness and desperation for this shared warmth, this tenderness. it feels impossible to needle out the exact moment he slipped through, with all his irresistible smiles — some lopsided, some crooked, but all so unmistakably as brilliant as ionia's brightest sun — and contagious laughter. that rasp in careful inflections when he's laughed too hard for too long and is fighting for air, it's her favorite. the reverent way his thumb brushes her cheeks, the edge of her chin sitting comfortably against the rough groove of his palm like it was meant to be there all along; or perhaps it's the way he looks at her, cradling her in the warmth of his roasted chestnut eyes, with untold devotion that she cannot even begin to fathom why he finds her worthy of.

but he is here at her side as he's always been, unwavering, unyielding, absolutely stubborn in his refusal to leave her, so adamant in his duty toward her. surely he's heard every fable and myth of legend of ionia's most terrifying beast; and of course, ahri told him, too. shared the memories buried deep in the darkest pits of her soul, let him see the blood staining her hands, drenching the snow-white fur of her maw and the sinew strung between her teeth. nothing dissuaded yasuo, though, and ahri knows why. in spite of it, she still doesn't know what makes him stay, how he looks at her and does not recoil in fear, how he can touch her so softly, bind himself to protect her, when she is the very creature ionians once needed protection from.

ahri closes her eyes and lowers her ears against her head as she feels the warmth of yasuo's breath brush against her skin, smiling when his lips press to the corner of her mouth. even now, she doesn't know if she could pinpoint the exact moment in time the stars aligned, when the winds shifted. it is more than duty and honor, now. more than a companionship of circumstance and need, transcending beyond simply loyalty and respect. a yearning, nestled behind her ribs, fluttering in her chest.

" you hardly need to thank me, " ahri teases gently, nuzzling her nose into the prickly patch of stubble on yasuo's cheek. " not that i'm complaining. are you feeling better? that was quite the nasty blow. you had me worried, yasuo. "

@stelegy sent : from swain : love and legacy are the sacrifices we make for progress.

" and if i have neither love nor legacy, what do i sacrifice? " eden can no longer count just how many decades it has been since she left the only home she'd known, and with it, her family. she was only a girl, too young to be separated from them, from anyone. and like countless other ionian children, she was swept in the tides of war toward noxus. she was simply too young. too young to be alone, too young to know how to fend for herself, too young to realize what it meant to step foot upon noxian soil and bleed for a country that wasn't her own.

but eden learned, eventually. she learned what it took to survive, promised herself that some day she would break free from the shackles of circumstance and search for her family. that isn't at all how the cards fell, though. she never did find them — she never had the chance to find them. blood magicks have kept her like a fly trapped in amber; she knows better than to think that time has been as kind to her parents, her brothers.

her hands squeeze together beside her thighs. eden breathes in a long, deep breath, holds it in her lungs until it became too excruciating to not set it free. here she is, one of hundreds of thorns in the winding brambles between the roses. noxus is her home, now. the nation within which she learned to fight, grew her power, where ionia remains distant and foreign. she wonders if the grand general knows, that her heart remains still, without love for either land. she would not, will not, betray noxus, but what is she working for? eden lowers her head, stares quietly down at her hands.

" perhaps my soul, then. "

inbox prompts / always accepting.

@stelegy sent : from fiadhaích : there is an evil in you. i see it.

evil is not always born — sometimes, evil is made. nurtured in the darkest corners of the world, a fissure in the in-between that isn't quite heaven or hell — and most certainly not of earth, but not quite purgatory either — that allows little motes of dust to fester and rot and become something unspeakably dark. eden was not always this way. she hadn't even a single mean-spirited bone in her body, but if you looked at her now, if you picked apart her life and pried the teeth from her gums, you'd see. if you carved open her chest and ripped her heart from behind her ribs, you'd see the decaying vines and the thorns pressing into it, the blackened brambles reaching out from her desiccating veins.

she could feel it rot with every life she took, no matter her attempts at justifying the killing. no matter how evil they were, perhaps she was worse. in the end, though, she's learned to find comfort in becoming the worst version of herself that everyone already feared, to be the monster everyone already believed her to be.

there is no light to the knife-sharp smile that twists her lips. her pale eyes are dull, dark. eden looks to the lord, then, supposes he has all the answers she might seek in this realm within the palm of his hand, or in the sheen of his eyes. " do you? " eden presses, coming alight like a blooming flower in sunlight, sudden as a fire igniting into an inferno as it devours fresh air. " and what does it look like? this evil. " she circles around him in a slow saunter as innocently as someone like her possibly could, pausing only once her back is turned to him. it is easier, to bear this burden. it is easier to be vicious, cruel. better to be seen as evil than someone who still has something within her to be stolen and corrupted. " pretty little gift i've been left with, don't you think? "

inbox prompts / always accepting.

@stelegy sent : from alexandra : this place looks like it has bodies buried in the basement. (she means this as a deadpanned compliment probably)

there's a certain type, a certain degree, of eccentricism you learn to come by when you get to a certain age. eden can't say if it's because it was simply the right thing to do, because it keeps the world around her forever on their toes and always looking twice over their shoulders, or if simply because she's stopped caring what people think of her when she isn't in the business of keeping anyone close by. anyone who spends any more than a few minutes with eden — several repeat encounters over a span of a few months, perhaps — always quickly comes to find that there's something off about her. beyond the porcelain facade, well, they'd be right about that. there is something terribly wrong with her.

because where anyone else would frown and take this as an offense to heart, eden grins a moonbeam bright smile, the corners of her mouth pulling apart from ear to ear. " you really think so? " she asks, suddenly eager, ecstatic. overjoyed, actually. it might be infectious with how it spills from her ears and bleeds from her eyes. eden blinks a few times before glancing over toward a distant hallway and its closely guarded elevator entrance, leading to another series of hallways and even more hallways and more elevators and more guards. she leans in close, whispering, " would you like to see the basement? "

inbox prompts / always accepting.