The ocean whispers in night air
and you once were with me there.
Do you remember"
And I'm speaking your name.
Though it's over, think of me.
Will you release me"
Into the darkness, farther, my heart slips. Into the darkness, into the sea. - Tiger Army
Good things, small packages, unexpected ways. The back door blew in a seer, patchwork roar and tow-toned head, signature slipper-shoes. Each foot encased was black-soled, start contrast to what the seer wore within. Summer courted her, played upon her skin. She touched the wall for a moment to whisper.
"VIKI!!!!" Belial fairly flies off her stool to dash at the young Seer intent on snatching her up for some hugging!
Amthy's gaze followed Bel and in turn found Viki. She brightened and waved, blowing a rosey pink kiss bubble toward her fellow ex-Blade.
Woodwork bade her feet forward, called out her eyes to stand at attention. Therein lies two familial celestial bodies, one already belting out her voice. A whine broke air, half pitiful, half shock. She was overwhelmed by the reunion, full up of limbs, extra, not hers.
"Belial.." Fingers twitched a wave to Amthy over the shoulder of one who hugged, and hugged, so many time embraces. The seer crushed a few kisses to Belial's cheek.
Belial hugs the Seer tightly.
"Oh, sweets, wherever have you gotten yourself off to!" She really really should think about the things she asks....before she asks them....as she may not like the answers...
"When it was that I was saved, it was naut. I sought shelter in the Sky. Did naut know the march of time extended so far..."
She spun her story against her throat, quiet, tiny words, framed by softness.
Bel lets up on her hugging of the girl and tries to make sense of what Viki is saying. Of course....Bel doesn't really understand. She smiles and nods, tugging Viki back towards Sid, Ebon and Amthy at the bar.
"The sky?"
"Well, a Tower..." Viki's voice trails off, lost perhaps between two red lips and the flat teeth that hide within. Off-blue crashes against Sid, wave after wave. The thing sound she utters is so pained, it might have been born of injury. But no, to behold her is another thing entirely.
"Manon."
Reaching forth her arms and smiling like Summer World's own sun, Sid whispers.
"Me Shimmer."
With a spring and a sprint, Viki is there. The mismatched waif tangles around Sid, legs locking hers, arms looping about a neck and latched as well, in equal tightness. She presses her face to a shoulder, lost for a moment in the scent of her, in her essence. So many universal tides shifting at once, a collapse of walls and time, a retreat from gravity. Here, there is starshine, bursts of birth, red and blue. She can taste it with her kisses, furious, tiny things, into the top of a cheek.
'Do naut leave. Ever."
Sid's glamoured blue eyes drift over Amthy's movements and then snap readily back upon the Seer as she moves in closer. There is a look of fragility about the girl and she fights the sensible thinking to not overwhelm her, but she is instantly wrapped up in the feel of her, the scent of her, the touch and taste. Like Big Bangs and Moonbeams, Destruction and Creation, Endings and Beginnings. Pale flesh sparks and luminesces, tendrils outward from the pair. Her kisses soft on brow and cheek, arms tight and possessive.
"I be nae e'er gone from ye, m'Shimmer. Ye know me call."
The worlds go round, all of them, rotating for the case of their design. The seer spots them in a mind's eye, touches Sid with it, interlocking spirits that threaten to float away. It is a power surge between them, and the air snaps electric, crackles a few moments longer, and then settles to a still.
"I called you, and the Crow."
"He misses ye." There is a sound so like his and for the briefest of moments there is hope before it is crashed under the weight of who truly brings the sound on wind. Still, she kisses Viki once again, and smiles.
"An' the bairns be missin' they star sister. I fear another took ye call an' nae let us hear it, Shimmer. A bad 'un."
Belial shouts over the crowd of the commons. "We can ruminate over it later....Tonight we should eat, drink and be merry! Look! All my lovelies are coming home to roost!"
Eventually, Viki returns, shaking off a coat of their connection, smiling ever so softly. Her fingers plant a small touch to her chest, just above the source of a heartbeat.
"A creature who swallows sound?" Questions cross her face, mingle and die. Belial was speaking of food and drink.
The softest of whispers for Viki's ears alone. "One who swallows Light, m'Shimmer. Ye hol' careful an' tight to those ye know an' trust. I be home now. The 'stone be safe an' there for ye, too."
Glanhelmion Tasartir settled into his stool and let a hand slide to his new toy, running his hand assuringly across the hip as a conversation formed inside his mind with the symbiotic weapon. A flick of his wrist called forth a bottle of Elvin wine, he chilled it with a cantrip, and then produced a glass in the same fashion. Taking a pull off of the Elvin clove and inhaling a mouthfull of smoke as he poured a glass, red flecked silvers sighting the new arrival, centering on him, he only squared his stance atop is perch, preparing for the inevitable, as he realized he decided to wear his crimson red Bloods Jacket tonight.
Tristin J. Thompson entered, a blunt askew in sneered lips, looking for enetertainment, as he toyed at the Mp3 device, a lope bringing him to stand appraising the crowd in the doorway, before that red-eyed glare settled on entertainment in the form of a Red Bloods jacket. Or a few, it was hard to make out amongst the crowd. He stopped short of Glanhelmion just out of reach of what he figured the rather tall, silver haired, pointy eared, a rather poor and twisted Spock impersonation in his opinion. His hand sliding casually to the gun, those red eyes meeting that red flecked silver 'gaze', yeah he was shaking in his nike's.
"Th' #$%^&* u s'posed to be some kinda' #$%^&* up joke?" His words holding all the warmth of compressed nitrogen.
Red flecked silvers hardened, red flecks dancing so that Glanhelmion could better see the 'Dead Man' before him, right hand still resting against the hilt of that black stone Greatsword on his hip, a twisted smile found those wicked lips of his, around the rim of his wine glass, taking a full sip before he set aside the thing, dropping it as though contaminated.
"Look you insignificant trash, unless you want to get cleaned off the floorboards, now's not the time, but I could use a work out."
Tristin wasted no time in getting loud, and ignorant in his actions, for after all he could.
"You dumb, mutha&apos #$%^&* reallll.....dumb!" Sliding the big black semi-automatic pistol from it's holster under his baggy tall Black T-shirt, spinning his fitted cap askew, and pulling on the blunt between his lips, red eyes glaring at Glan, sneering as he aimed the gun into the face of the Trueblood.
Glan found his movements fluid, spinning on a heel, low, pivoting under the gun, reaching up to grip his wrist, wicked black nails forming in the motion with intent to dig, and then snap with a follow through jerk, bringing his palm to bear in the man's (or whatever's) chest. Silver swallowed by red, glowing in glee, a smile forming on lips, as he smelled blood.
Shuffling Viki towards Bel's waiting arms, Sid sidles down the bar to the one with the gun. "Hey, ye' Loudmouth?"
Bel takes the Starchild close and drags her along with her towards the hearth. She does her best to steer both Amthy and Viki close to Mari and her protective shell.
"We can watch from here....it'll be fun!"
The hearth, home of Shadow. Viki looks for him in silence, keeping close the secrets she hoards. There was no time to speak of current events with the two of them in her periphery. The rest seemed trivial, unimportant, though the inanimate hummed all around.
A light note of burnt cinnamon in the air around Amthy as the tension brought her a measure of anxiety. Her lower lip thrust out and buttoned over the top. She stopped a comfortable distance from the bar—safe enough for the moment.
"Good to see you, Viki," she said.
More cat than girl it seems, though patchwork is a sigil for some royal house, for sure. Eyes continue to spill this way and that, eating up faces both familiar and familial. The guardian, Glanhelmion, is spotted at the bar. A smile is born at the corner of her mouth, and spreads wider, and wider still, as Amthy speaks her name. Or the half name. There is another name she buries like the secrets she collects...
"You as well, firefly."
Shifting the gun back to the sound of Glan, as Tristin dug a hand grenade from his pocket, spinning to duck behind a rather large wooden beam.
"#$%^&* Blood's, ya'll are shit, lower than it! C-P-Eight-Seven!" Calling out his affiliations, and hood, before tossing the grenade towards the bar, before now catching sight of Sid and her approach.
Bel, it seems, has her work cut out for her!
"You know," she said low to Viki. "I think trouble has a mad pash for you."
The scent of burnt cinnamon deepened and joined with dank soil. "Something wrong is happening," Amthy adds, in case they hadn't noticed.
It is then that the seer sees what is directly in front of her, and it is enough to squash the sound of a thousand other voices clamouring for her attention. Palms meet the lobes of ears, in preparation.
"Metal arrows?" Viki's eyes eat Amthy with concern.
"This fight definitely needs more exploding children," says a voice above the rest, disembodied, celestial, one Morning Star. Viki could not place his face.
There's rarely anything not made better by exploding children, at least that's the thought that wanders through the fragmented mind of the shadowed sandman that has slipped in through the back alley door.
Fingers leapt into patchwork, disappearing into the multicolored folds and fabrics that encased her legs, hips, and spiraled off at a section of waste. Here, she pulls free a few tiny blades that fit just between the spaces of those fingers, a curious lock of bands and rings. Bejeweled by violence, the seer bristles. It seems she has brought a knife to a gun fight.
With Viki and the pix, Amthy safe, Bel feels a tad bit of relief....She starts to turn her attentions to the battle then spies the blades Viki has seemingly pulled out of her clothing. A hand falls on Viki's shoulder, keeping her right where she is.
The blades are many. Sharpened at head and foot, mirror to a design once bestowed by another. Like claws, they clack when she moves them together, eager. But Bel's touch gives her pause, and her eyes wander, long enough to tumble into the sandman.
What with grenades and the stink of various magics, weapons, and sundries, the sandman hovers about the recessed area of the back door. Hands drifted through the lazy motion of lighting a clove, ears flicking back at the cacophony though eyes linger on those of the patchwork girl. A brow lifts.
Here dies the universe, or at least, this one. The bodies in motion, they fade and fall from view. Threat of violence is forgotten, even with the sharp click-clack of makeshift claw as Viki moves. Yes, moves. Feet are bounding, racing things on the shoes of Hermes. She nearly flies to him, years of wandering worn only in the deep-set of her eyes. For all of it, she is the same more or less. The skin, it still sings of him, to him, his markings, black as pitch, still scrawl across her arms, legs, chest, creep up her back into her neck, lost under a mane of two-tone curls. Wild, feral thing, coated by such dispair that he will not Hear, he will not See, all that time to track and lose and forget. Why had she lost him, in the frey of that final battle" She stops just shy of a foot, for touch was sacred and not to be taken, even between old lovers.
The sandman is quiet, unsurprisingly, but the grey-blue smoke of the clove curls in something of a greeting gesture and wanders the way of the Lady. He has shifted, wandered, drifted, a step or three up the nearbay stairs. A ruined palm drifts out to receive the flight of the patchwork girl.
Heartbreak rises, crests, then captivates, like so many glittering oceans. She takes the extension of palms as invitations, her mouth falls open, full of breath but no words. Her eyes, they squeeze shut.
A curl of finger to the waiting girl as he pulled his ears back at a pitched whine in the air that was sound and not sound.
"The air is full of vorpal blades tonight." There, the pin-prick touch of a claw on forehead, open your eyes patchwork girl...
Off-blue brusts forth from two pale eyelids, hooks the claw, follows it up an arm, and with it, the rest of her body. She presses against him, full up of things unsaid.
"The air is full up of many things, Skado."
Black-in-black eyes watched the rumpled figure move past, breathed a jag of grey-blue smoke and accepted the vague system shock of so much touch. Forearm moved across thin shoulders and settled.
"Old names. We see you are breathing..." This is how the sandman says he's happy you're alive...
A small shiver rushes her, from lumbar to neck, and all for a touch. She presses her cheek to his arm where it meets her shoulder, sucks a kiss into the meeting of skin, inked and not.
"What else?"
"We are glad of it, but most words are left in the sand..."
Black eyes swam the too many faces and movements of the common room and he shifted with the efficiency of a mathematical equation to bring spine to rest on the nearest empty space of wall, there in that space near the back exit. All the better to hear you, deary.
"The world is red, of late. I have seen much, naut you."
The mismatched silhouette fits snug between and sandman and a spot of wall. Better to hear, better to breathe, as the threat of metal arrows ensued.
"Your brother wore your face." Soft confession. She pulled at him, yet did not. Her chin fell, and eyes with it. Sandman feet, desert, dust. So much of him swimming before her. The rest of them could wink out like stars.
"He has talent for such things..."
Long ears flicked back mildly. It was not so much forgiveness as the sandman couldn't consider such activities a slight. It had marched past, as time was wont to, moments trapped in sequence (so it goes). Dark eyes followed a figurine, figure (sometimes sight is tricky) leaping into rafter beams and then dropped down to the patchwork girl. "Spend no more fragments on it."
"Amvel." Her smile is quick, but off center, barely there. She keeps her own counsel, steeling herself, 'less the words come at him in a rush. She was loathe to trap him with trivial matters, yet there were things that could be said, in this small sanctuary he so found them.
"Did naut leave, you know. Naut willing. And Time, it was...it was naut.." The same. As much as she had thought. So many words lit up her young face but failed to find sound. She wore all of her longing, all of her loneliness, all of her madness and confusion too. It reached out in snippets, snapping at him, seeking to mingle into the depths of his own. Black eyes, meet off-blue once more.
"We know those broken mirrors well." The sandman lifted a finger to mouth in a quiet gesture, but twisted it about to place the now unlit clove between harsh teeth....and then it was lit again, cyclops eye in the shadows.
"He put you in a pretty little box, and we put him in a pretty little cage." And the jackal would wander out, eventually. They never were any good at killing each other.
Her smile was secret, sharp, and satisfied. It was for him and him alone. She let out a hand, but it was the one encased by blades. Your trick, see" But she hadn't meant to extend that one to him. It was the other, the unadorned sister, that moved to catch him, small fingers press a palm, underclaw
"Make the birds?" A request, for the smoke.
Slow motion blink, the only kind black-in-black knew, and then there are the small crow's feet at the edges of eyes. The sandman tilted his head back, exhaling smoke shredded by feral teeth....and of the shreds glided down small small sparrows, gray and desert spice. They flocked together before flying away into nothingness towards the hearth.
The seer watched them for a moment with quiet awe, the same as the first time. And as they fluttered and flitted and dipped into darkness, she turned her head away. And in the corners of those watching eyes, pooling in the whites, small crystal tears which cascaded down a cheek.
One lone smoke sparrow remained, flying about to the direction the patchwork girl faced and landing upon a shoulder.
"Are you grieving?" He needed to ask, he read poorly such actions anymore.
"Xas.." She touched her face as if in surprise, drawing back a teardrop on the tip of her finger. She moved to offer it up to the bird, who was a light comfort to her shoulder.
"For you." And 'us' those eyes said, that line of red mouth motiom. And of pallets and paint and canvases that were as good as gateways. She turned her head back to him, aligning faces, celestial and lupine. She shifted on a foot, unsure.
The non-bird pecked a non-motion at the sacrificial tear and dissipated to nothing, as the sandman drifted into motion at the patchwork girl's shifting. The arm unwound from thin shoulders as the other hand carried the clove away from mouth. He leaned down to place a gentle kiss on forehead...almost apologetic, as any gesture was almost with him....and straightened, spine to the comfortable-and-not whispers that spilled out of the wall.
"I have been unwound, we don't know if we'll bother to find the string again."
It was more than she thought but less than she hoped for. At the touch of a mouth, her eyes fell shut again. Yet this did nothing to stop the stream of emotion that ran down in rivulets, broke, dripped, and fell.
"If you should find it, you will find me there." Her words held such a sadness that threatened to undo her. Even now, fragments drifted and spun within. Four chambers bled. Yes, she mourns.
"Do you regret what has been?" A simple, true question. Black eyes hold no reaction for the mourning, though he is not unkind. The baleful eye of the clove flares once more then is ground out in a leather-wrapped palm.
"Nau." Reply offered. There was a severe absence of singsong and riddle. "It is different for me. It was yesterday, the passing of a moon, not so many as the Real."
Thin limbs curled around her body, laying claim to patchwork, as if to bundle oneself together.
"You are the Lover. You always," she said.
"It was yesterday, centuries ago, and tomorrow..." An opening and closing of palm, which in a more animated figure might have been translated to a shrug. In that palm was a small something glinting a sad and chipped silver. This beaten to hell coin was offered between thumb and forefinger.
Off-blue eyes flicked open and fingers lay claim to the small offering, bouncing metal between digit, over knuckle, then back. Questions hung everywhere, ran wild in the small space between them.
"Then I will have tomorrow, for I will always love."
Her face, his reach, so many sharp angles she did not care fo avoid. She would kiss him once more, quickly, but only to a spot where bone framed a face. And, she was gone, black soles sporting slipper-shoes, small bright movement toward the alley and beyond.
Into the darkness, farther, my heart slips. Into the darkness, into the sea. - Tiger Army
Good things, small packages, unexpected ways. The back door blew in a seer, patchwork roar and tow-toned head, signature slipper-shoes. Each foot encased was black-soled, start contrast to what the seer wore within. Summer courted her, played upon her skin. She touched the wall for a moment to whisper.
"VIKI!!!!" Belial fairly flies off her stool to dash at the young Seer intent on snatching her up for some hugging!
Amthy's gaze followed Bel and in turn found Viki. She brightened and waved, blowing a rosey pink kiss bubble toward her fellow ex-Blade.
Woodwork bade her feet forward, called out her eyes to stand at attention. Therein lies two familial celestial bodies, one already belting out her voice. A whine broke air, half pitiful, half shock. She was overwhelmed by the reunion, full up of limbs, extra, not hers.
"Belial.." Fingers twitched a wave to Amthy over the shoulder of one who hugged, and hugged, so many time embraces. The seer crushed a few kisses to Belial's cheek.
Belial hugs the Seer tightly.
"Oh, sweets, wherever have you gotten yourself off to!" She really really should think about the things she asks....before she asks them....as she may not like the answers...
"When it was that I was saved, it was naut. I sought shelter in the Sky. Did naut know the march of time extended so far..."
She spun her story against her throat, quiet, tiny words, framed by softness.
Bel lets up on her hugging of the girl and tries to make sense of what Viki is saying. Of course....Bel doesn't really understand. She smiles and nods, tugging Viki back towards Sid, Ebon and Amthy at the bar.
"The sky?"
"Well, a Tower..." Viki's voice trails off, lost perhaps between two red lips and the flat teeth that hide within. Off-blue crashes against Sid, wave after wave. The thing sound she utters is so pained, it might have been born of injury. But no, to behold her is another thing entirely.
"Manon."
Reaching forth her arms and smiling like Summer World's own sun, Sid whispers.
"Me Shimmer."
With a spring and a sprint, Viki is there. The mismatched waif tangles around Sid, legs locking hers, arms looping about a neck and latched as well, in equal tightness. She presses her face to a shoulder, lost for a moment in the scent of her, in her essence. So many universal tides shifting at once, a collapse of walls and time, a retreat from gravity. Here, there is starshine, bursts of birth, red and blue. She can taste it with her kisses, furious, tiny things, into the top of a cheek.
'Do naut leave. Ever."
Sid's glamoured blue eyes drift over Amthy's movements and then snap readily back upon the Seer as she moves in closer. There is a look of fragility about the girl and she fights the sensible thinking to not overwhelm her, but she is instantly wrapped up in the feel of her, the scent of her, the touch and taste. Like Big Bangs and Moonbeams, Destruction and Creation, Endings and Beginnings. Pale flesh sparks and luminesces, tendrils outward from the pair. Her kisses soft on brow and cheek, arms tight and possessive.
"I be nae e'er gone from ye, m'Shimmer. Ye know me call."
The worlds go round, all of them, rotating for the case of their design. The seer spots them in a mind's eye, touches Sid with it, interlocking spirits that threaten to float away. It is a power surge between them, and the air snaps electric, crackles a few moments longer, and then settles to a still.
"I called you, and the Crow."
"He misses ye." There is a sound so like his and for the briefest of moments there is hope before it is crashed under the weight of who truly brings the sound on wind. Still, she kisses Viki once again, and smiles.
"An' the bairns be missin' they star sister. I fear another took ye call an' nae let us hear it, Shimmer. A bad 'un."
Belial shouts over the crowd of the commons. "We can ruminate over it later....Tonight we should eat, drink and be merry! Look! All my lovelies are coming home to roost!"
Eventually, Viki returns, shaking off a coat of their connection, smiling ever so softly. Her fingers plant a small touch to her chest, just above the source of a heartbeat.
"A creature who swallows sound?" Questions cross her face, mingle and die. Belial was speaking of food and drink.
The softest of whispers for Viki's ears alone. "One who swallows Light, m'Shimmer. Ye hol' careful an' tight to those ye know an' trust. I be home now. The 'stone be safe an' there for ye, too."
Glanhelmion Tasartir settled into his stool and let a hand slide to his new toy, running his hand assuringly across the hip as a conversation formed inside his mind with the symbiotic weapon. A flick of his wrist called forth a bottle of Elvin wine, he chilled it with a cantrip, and then produced a glass in the same fashion. Taking a pull off of the Elvin clove and inhaling a mouthfull of smoke as he poured a glass, red flecked silvers sighting the new arrival, centering on him, he only squared his stance atop is perch, preparing for the inevitable, as he realized he decided to wear his crimson red Bloods Jacket tonight.
Tristin J. Thompson entered, a blunt askew in sneered lips, looking for enetertainment, as he toyed at the Mp3 device, a lope bringing him to stand appraising the crowd in the doorway, before that red-eyed glare settled on entertainment in the form of a Red Bloods jacket. Or a few, it was hard to make out amongst the crowd. He stopped short of Glanhelmion just out of reach of what he figured the rather tall, silver haired, pointy eared, a rather poor and twisted Spock impersonation in his opinion. His hand sliding casually to the gun, those red eyes meeting that red flecked silver 'gaze', yeah he was shaking in his nike's.
"Th' #$%^&* u s'posed to be some kinda' #$%^&* up joke?" His words holding all the warmth of compressed nitrogen.
Red flecked silvers hardened, red flecks dancing so that Glanhelmion could better see the 'Dead Man' before him, right hand still resting against the hilt of that black stone Greatsword on his hip, a twisted smile found those wicked lips of his, around the rim of his wine glass, taking a full sip before he set aside the thing, dropping it as though contaminated.
"Look you insignificant trash, unless you want to get cleaned off the floorboards, now's not the time, but I could use a work out."
Tristin wasted no time in getting loud, and ignorant in his actions, for after all he could.
"You dumb, mutha&apos #$%^&* reallll.....dumb!" Sliding the big black semi-automatic pistol from it's holster under his baggy tall Black T-shirt, spinning his fitted cap askew, and pulling on the blunt between his lips, red eyes glaring at Glan, sneering as he aimed the gun into the face of the Trueblood.
Glan found his movements fluid, spinning on a heel, low, pivoting under the gun, reaching up to grip his wrist, wicked black nails forming in the motion with intent to dig, and then snap with a follow through jerk, bringing his palm to bear in the man's (or whatever's) chest. Silver swallowed by red, glowing in glee, a smile forming on lips, as he smelled blood.
Shuffling Viki towards Bel's waiting arms, Sid sidles down the bar to the one with the gun. "Hey, ye' Loudmouth?"
Bel takes the Starchild close and drags her along with her towards the hearth. She does her best to steer both Amthy and Viki close to Mari and her protective shell.
"We can watch from here....it'll be fun!"
The hearth, home of Shadow. Viki looks for him in silence, keeping close the secrets she hoards. There was no time to speak of current events with the two of them in her periphery. The rest seemed trivial, unimportant, though the inanimate hummed all around.
A light note of burnt cinnamon in the air around Amthy as the tension brought her a measure of anxiety. Her lower lip thrust out and buttoned over the top. She stopped a comfortable distance from the bar—safe enough for the moment.
"Good to see you, Viki," she said.
More cat than girl it seems, though patchwork is a sigil for some royal house, for sure. Eyes continue to spill this way and that, eating up faces both familiar and familial. The guardian, Glanhelmion, is spotted at the bar. A smile is born at the corner of her mouth, and spreads wider, and wider still, as Amthy speaks her name. Or the half name. There is another name she buries like the secrets she collects...
"You as well, firefly."
Shifting the gun back to the sound of Glan, as Tristin dug a hand grenade from his pocket, spinning to duck behind a rather large wooden beam.
"#$%^&* Blood's, ya'll are shit, lower than it! C-P-Eight-Seven!" Calling out his affiliations, and hood, before tossing the grenade towards the bar, before now catching sight of Sid and her approach.
Bel, it seems, has her work cut out for her!
"You know," she said low to Viki. "I think trouble has a mad pash for you."
The scent of burnt cinnamon deepened and joined with dank soil. "Something wrong is happening," Amthy adds, in case they hadn't noticed.
It is then that the seer sees what is directly in front of her, and it is enough to squash the sound of a thousand other voices clamouring for her attention. Palms meet the lobes of ears, in preparation.
"Metal arrows?" Viki's eyes eat Amthy with concern.
"This fight definitely needs more exploding children," says a voice above the rest, disembodied, celestial, one Morning Star. Viki could not place his face.
There's rarely anything not made better by exploding children, at least that's the thought that wanders through the fragmented mind of the shadowed sandman that has slipped in through the back alley door.
Fingers leapt into patchwork, disappearing into the multicolored folds and fabrics that encased her legs, hips, and spiraled off at a section of waste. Here, she pulls free a few tiny blades that fit just between the spaces of those fingers, a curious lock of bands and rings. Bejeweled by violence, the seer bristles. It seems she has brought a knife to a gun fight.
With Viki and the pix, Amthy safe, Bel feels a tad bit of relief....She starts to turn her attentions to the battle then spies the blades Viki has seemingly pulled out of her clothing. A hand falls on Viki's shoulder, keeping her right where she is.
The blades are many. Sharpened at head and foot, mirror to a design once bestowed by another. Like claws, they clack when she moves them together, eager. But Bel's touch gives her pause, and her eyes wander, long enough to tumble into the sandman.
What with grenades and the stink of various magics, weapons, and sundries, the sandman hovers about the recessed area of the back door. Hands drifted through the lazy motion of lighting a clove, ears flicking back at the cacophony though eyes linger on those of the patchwork girl. A brow lifts.
Here dies the universe, or at least, this one. The bodies in motion, they fade and fall from view. Threat of violence is forgotten, even with the sharp click-clack of makeshift claw as Viki moves. Yes, moves. Feet are bounding, racing things on the shoes of Hermes. She nearly flies to him, years of wandering worn only in the deep-set of her eyes. For all of it, she is the same more or less. The skin, it still sings of him, to him, his markings, black as pitch, still scrawl across her arms, legs, chest, creep up her back into her neck, lost under a mane of two-tone curls. Wild, feral thing, coated by such dispair that he will not Hear, he will not See, all that time to track and lose and forget. Why had she lost him, in the frey of that final battle" She stops just shy of a foot, for touch was sacred and not to be taken, even between old lovers.
The sandman is quiet, unsurprisingly, but the grey-blue smoke of the clove curls in something of a greeting gesture and wanders the way of the Lady. He has shifted, wandered, drifted, a step or three up the nearbay stairs. A ruined palm drifts out to receive the flight of the patchwork girl.
Heartbreak rises, crests, then captivates, like so many glittering oceans. She takes the extension of palms as invitations, her mouth falls open, full of breath but no words. Her eyes, they squeeze shut.
A curl of finger to the waiting girl as he pulled his ears back at a pitched whine in the air that was sound and not sound.
"The air is full of vorpal blades tonight." There, the pin-prick touch of a claw on forehead, open your eyes patchwork girl...
Off-blue brusts forth from two pale eyelids, hooks the claw, follows it up an arm, and with it, the rest of her body. She presses against him, full up of things unsaid.
"The air is full up of many things, Skado."
Black-in-black eyes watched the rumpled figure move past, breathed a jag of grey-blue smoke and accepted the vague system shock of so much touch. Forearm moved across thin shoulders and settled.
"Old names. We see you are breathing..." This is how the sandman says he's happy you're alive...
A small shiver rushes her, from lumbar to neck, and all for a touch. She presses her cheek to his arm where it meets her shoulder, sucks a kiss into the meeting of skin, inked and not.
"What else?"
"We are glad of it, but most words are left in the sand..."
Black eyes swam the too many faces and movements of the common room and he shifted with the efficiency of a mathematical equation to bring spine to rest on the nearest empty space of wall, there in that space near the back exit. All the better to hear you, deary.
"The world is red, of late. I have seen much, naut you."
The mismatched silhouette fits snug between and sandman and a spot of wall. Better to hear, better to breathe, as the threat of metal arrows ensued.
"Your brother wore your face." Soft confession. She pulled at him, yet did not. Her chin fell, and eyes with it. Sandman feet, desert, dust. So much of him swimming before her. The rest of them could wink out like stars.
"He has talent for such things..."
Long ears flicked back mildly. It was not so much forgiveness as the sandman couldn't consider such activities a slight. It had marched past, as time was wont to, moments trapped in sequence (so it goes). Dark eyes followed a figurine, figure (sometimes sight is tricky) leaping into rafter beams and then dropped down to the patchwork girl. "Spend no more fragments on it."
"Amvel." Her smile is quick, but off center, barely there. She keeps her own counsel, steeling herself, 'less the words come at him in a rush. She was loathe to trap him with trivial matters, yet there were things that could be said, in this small sanctuary he so found them.
"Did naut leave, you know. Naut willing. And Time, it was...it was naut.." The same. As much as she had thought. So many words lit up her young face but failed to find sound. She wore all of her longing, all of her loneliness, all of her madness and confusion too. It reached out in snippets, snapping at him, seeking to mingle into the depths of his own. Black eyes, meet off-blue once more.
"We know those broken mirrors well." The sandman lifted a finger to mouth in a quiet gesture, but twisted it about to place the now unlit clove between harsh teeth....and then it was lit again, cyclops eye in the shadows.
"He put you in a pretty little box, and we put him in a pretty little cage." And the jackal would wander out, eventually. They never were any good at killing each other.
Her smile was secret, sharp, and satisfied. It was for him and him alone. She let out a hand, but it was the one encased by blades. Your trick, see" But she hadn't meant to extend that one to him. It was the other, the unadorned sister, that moved to catch him, small fingers press a palm, underclaw
"Make the birds?" A request, for the smoke.
Slow motion blink, the only kind black-in-black knew, and then there are the small crow's feet at the edges of eyes. The sandman tilted his head back, exhaling smoke shredded by feral teeth....and of the shreds glided down small small sparrows, gray and desert spice. They flocked together before flying away into nothingness towards the hearth.
The seer watched them for a moment with quiet awe, the same as the first time. And as they fluttered and flitted and dipped into darkness, she turned her head away. And in the corners of those watching eyes, pooling in the whites, small crystal tears which cascaded down a cheek.
One lone smoke sparrow remained, flying about to the direction the patchwork girl faced and landing upon a shoulder.
"Are you grieving?" He needed to ask, he read poorly such actions anymore.
"Xas.." She touched her face as if in surprise, drawing back a teardrop on the tip of her finger. She moved to offer it up to the bird, who was a light comfort to her shoulder.
"For you." And 'us' those eyes said, that line of red mouth motiom. And of pallets and paint and canvases that were as good as gateways. She turned her head back to him, aligning faces, celestial and lupine. She shifted on a foot, unsure.
The non-bird pecked a non-motion at the sacrificial tear and dissipated to nothing, as the sandman drifted into motion at the patchwork girl's shifting. The arm unwound from thin shoulders as the other hand carried the clove away from mouth. He leaned down to place a gentle kiss on forehead...almost apologetic, as any gesture was almost with him....and straightened, spine to the comfortable-and-not whispers that spilled out of the wall.
"I have been unwound, we don't know if we'll bother to find the string again."
It was more than she thought but less than she hoped for. At the touch of a mouth, her eyes fell shut again. Yet this did nothing to stop the stream of emotion that ran down in rivulets, broke, dripped, and fell.
"If you should find it, you will find me there." Her words held such a sadness that threatened to undo her. Even now, fragments drifted and spun within. Four chambers bled. Yes, she mourns.
"Do you regret what has been?" A simple, true question. Black eyes hold no reaction for the mourning, though he is not unkind. The baleful eye of the clove flares once more then is ground out in a leather-wrapped palm.
"Nau." Reply offered. There was a severe absence of singsong and riddle. "It is different for me. It was yesterday, the passing of a moon, not so many as the Real."
Thin limbs curled around her body, laying claim to patchwork, as if to bundle oneself together.
"You are the Lover. You always," she said.
"It was yesterday, centuries ago, and tomorrow..." An opening and closing of palm, which in a more animated figure might have been translated to a shrug. In that palm was a small something glinting a sad and chipped silver. This beaten to hell coin was offered between thumb and forefinger.
Off-blue eyes flicked open and fingers lay claim to the small offering, bouncing metal between digit, over knuckle, then back. Questions hung everywhere, ran wild in the small space between them.
"Then I will have tomorrow, for I will always love."
Her face, his reach, so many sharp angles she did not care fo avoid. She would kiss him once more, quickly, but only to a spot where bone framed a face. And, she was gone, black soles sporting slipper-shoes, small bright movement toward the alley and beyond.