Léonie Tremble (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pythonissam) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ourhaven2015-09-20 12:42 pm
pythonissam) wrote in ourhaven2015-09-20 12:42 pm
video; (mild horror warning)
[It's been so long since she last had anything to say on the rune, since she last did anything much more than travel from Veldime to the Market and back, perhaps to the Steppe once or twice for a few extra things. One might be forgiven for thinking she'd left, returned back home to whatever terrible deeds she has waiting for her but no, still here, still quiet, still in the shadows.
When the rune flickers to life, white lines flash through it, as if it's somehow managed to fall into disrepair through lack of use; she's had time to study it, to play with it, not quite so easy to play with curses but well, there's not any real social media here in the first place is there?
Eventually something plays, something she's been working on for some time.]
[In the Market the central carousel spins and spins as black figures crowd ever closer, as Leonie sits with Persephone coiled about her throat, gold and fierce and hissing. The screen cuts to black, only her voice that still rises above the din of the Market and the discordant music approaching a frenzy behind her.]
And he shall cleave it with the wings thereof, but shall not divide it asunder: and the priest shall burn it upon the altar, upon the wood that is upon the fire: it is a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord.
[The screen brightens. Veldime, her kitchen, her quiet little house and the rows of plant pots crowding every ledge. Three cards she turns over one by one.]
This your past. [At the turning of the first card, a man on a white horse, bearing aloft a banner is revealed.] This is Death; no one is surprised, Death is transition, one stage to the next. It usually sticks; we are born, we age, we die, we move beyond and the body withers, the spirit fades, the soul goes up or down or it stays stuck and screams. Death brings change, transformation. [A chime rings, echoes, back and forth like a metronome.] The Hermit. [A second card, a man old and done, his lit lantern containing a star of six points, stood in the wastelands with the mountains beyond.] He is your present; the answers you seek, and you do seek them, they gnaw at your bones, they would crack them open to get at the marrow, they are hungry, howling, always wanting. These answers can only be found inside you. [The last card, a sly smile on the reveal, a figure cloaked in black and again the land is barren but for five cups.] This is the future and this card is never happy. Grief, disappointment, regret – this card is all of those. It means you have taken things for granted so you don't value life. But look, there are five cups. Three are spilled but two are not. It means that change may come, though this man can't see those two cups. Remember that.
[It shifts, a low humming growl as the chime strikes louder, smoke pluming around the edges. A strange scuttling of some many-legged beast. A reedy hiss of the fire lizard. A bark from a beast of the Steppe made to bend and yield.
A figure kneels in the midst of a chalk and salt circle. His eyes are fevered even in the dark but he kneels of his own free will and when she steps between the sigls, toes at the edge of the circle he tips his face up into her hand without flinching, smiling in wonder. She hands the rune off and up, up to her fire lizard who grabs it in her mouth and wings upward to some dark spot, peering down on proceedings.]
Remember, the kindness of witches. We break the chains in this world and the next, we walk the paths we made ourselves because you would have set the rest with thorns to stop us. You should always place your trust in a witch though; we know. We remember.
[Four little altars, each alike but not flank the circle, nestled between the swirls and lines and symbols of her sigils. The smoke that curls through the air as she walks is too thick to make out any real details but if this place brings people and places, why shouldn't she bring the names of demons and angels and everything else with her? Why shouldn't she invoke them and offer them such gifts for a price?]
When has a dragon ever given you this?
[The north point is air, it is the mind; long white feathers so delicate and fine they could be snow or ice, covered with a square of cloth so thin it might as well be glass, small bird ornaments dotted around it that appear to take flight.
The south point is water, it is emotion; a bowl of water filled with silver fish – are they real or is it the smoke and the height and the flickering of candles that sets them to swimming – and a bowl of blood because blood is the water of life, too dark, too red to tell where it came from.
The east point is earth, it is the nature of balance even if the point they dance on is a fine one; there is sage, small trees in pots, other plants from all about the havens and beyond growing green and strong, sand poured in a long lazy curving line and fresh dark earth shining black.
The west point is fire, it is the nature of purification and all things are pure depending where you stand, and it is change, the nature of will and she has always been fire; there are candles, of there are so many candles of different colours and shapes, a dragon hemmed in by them because a dragon is fire, and this one snarls as if to escapes, the flickering play of light and shadow bringing the carved features to life.]
This is the world and you are the core, with air and water, earth and fire, man and woman, sun and moon, life and death. It's not so difficult to make a world. It's even easier to unmake it. You came because you dared. Because you wanted the dark – I let it in here, I let something in and I haven't forgotten that.
[Time passes or it doesn't; it's hard to tell when the fire lizard holding the rune is above and wheeling restlessly in the opposite direction to Leonie, as if time is running forward and back, meeting twice in the middle for each revolution. The bowls boil, the feathers rise, the plants burst their pots; the candles collapse inward and paint drips from the dragon as it catches light, twisting the features into something monstrous. There is a cry above the chime, above that droning low note, wavering, pulsing until it stops and Leonie grabs for the wrists of the kneeling man, her hair a black curtain, her forehead against his.]
You can unmake a thing even if you never made it, sometimes that's even easier.
[The lizard wheels down, landing on her shoulders and Leonie takes the rune, her own eyes completely black, all the light swallowed up but the young man the rune is turned to kneels quietly, limp, shaking. There's a blankness about him, as if empty, a curious sort of slump.]
There are no strings on me. [A mocking little sing-song, soft but not sweet.]
Everything can fall. The air can topple it or whip at it to whittle it away, the waters can rise to corrode it bit by bit or drown, fire can melt if it has a mind to or all else can be consumed by it, the earth can rise to break and rupture or it can swallow everything. Anything can fall, no matter what they think holds them up. Not even faith is enough.
Everything falls.
When the rune flickers to life, white lines flash through it, as if it's somehow managed to fall into disrepair through lack of use; she's had time to study it, to play with it, not quite so easy to play with curses but well, there's not any real social media here in the first place is there?
Eventually something plays, something she's been working on for some time.]
[In the Market the central carousel spins and spins as black figures crowd ever closer, as Leonie sits with Persephone coiled about her throat, gold and fierce and hissing. The screen cuts to black, only her voice that still rises above the din of the Market and the discordant music approaching a frenzy behind her.]
And he shall cleave it with the wings thereof, but shall not divide it asunder: and the priest shall burn it upon the altar, upon the wood that is upon the fire: it is a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord.
[The screen brightens. Veldime, her kitchen, her quiet little house and the rows of plant pots crowding every ledge. Three cards she turns over one by one.]
This your past. [At the turning of the first card, a man on a white horse, bearing aloft a banner is revealed.] This is Death; no one is surprised, Death is transition, one stage to the next. It usually sticks; we are born, we age, we die, we move beyond and the body withers, the spirit fades, the soul goes up or down or it stays stuck and screams. Death brings change, transformation. [A chime rings, echoes, back and forth like a metronome.] The Hermit. [A second card, a man old and done, his lit lantern containing a star of six points, stood in the wastelands with the mountains beyond.] He is your present; the answers you seek, and you do seek them, they gnaw at your bones, they would crack them open to get at the marrow, they are hungry, howling, always wanting. These answers can only be found inside you. [The last card, a sly smile on the reveal, a figure cloaked in black and again the land is barren but for five cups.] This is the future and this card is never happy. Grief, disappointment, regret – this card is all of those. It means you have taken things for granted so you don't value life. But look, there are five cups. Three are spilled but two are not. It means that change may come, though this man can't see those two cups. Remember that.
[It shifts, a low humming growl as the chime strikes louder, smoke pluming around the edges. A strange scuttling of some many-legged beast. A reedy hiss of the fire lizard. A bark from a beast of the Steppe made to bend and yield.
A figure kneels in the midst of a chalk and salt circle. His eyes are fevered even in the dark but he kneels of his own free will and when she steps between the sigls, toes at the edge of the circle he tips his face up into her hand without flinching, smiling in wonder. She hands the rune off and up, up to her fire lizard who grabs it in her mouth and wings upward to some dark spot, peering down on proceedings.]
Remember, the kindness of witches. We break the chains in this world and the next, we walk the paths we made ourselves because you would have set the rest with thorns to stop us. You should always place your trust in a witch though; we know. We remember.
[Four little altars, each alike but not flank the circle, nestled between the swirls and lines and symbols of her sigils. The smoke that curls through the air as she walks is too thick to make out any real details but if this place brings people and places, why shouldn't she bring the names of demons and angels and everything else with her? Why shouldn't she invoke them and offer them such gifts for a price?]
When has a dragon ever given you this?
[The north point is air, it is the mind; long white feathers so delicate and fine they could be snow or ice, covered with a square of cloth so thin it might as well be glass, small bird ornaments dotted around it that appear to take flight.
The south point is water, it is emotion; a bowl of water filled with silver fish – are they real or is it the smoke and the height and the flickering of candles that sets them to swimming – and a bowl of blood because blood is the water of life, too dark, too red to tell where it came from.
The east point is earth, it is the nature of balance even if the point they dance on is a fine one; there is sage, small trees in pots, other plants from all about the havens and beyond growing green and strong, sand poured in a long lazy curving line and fresh dark earth shining black.
The west point is fire, it is the nature of purification and all things are pure depending where you stand, and it is change, the nature of will and she has always been fire; there are candles, of there are so many candles of different colours and shapes, a dragon hemmed in by them because a dragon is fire, and this one snarls as if to escapes, the flickering play of light and shadow bringing the carved features to life.]
This is the world and you are the core, with air and water, earth and fire, man and woman, sun and moon, life and death. It's not so difficult to make a world. It's even easier to unmake it. You came because you dared. Because you wanted the dark – I let it in here, I let something in and I haven't forgotten that.
[Time passes or it doesn't; it's hard to tell when the fire lizard holding the rune is above and wheeling restlessly in the opposite direction to Leonie, as if time is running forward and back, meeting twice in the middle for each revolution. The bowls boil, the feathers rise, the plants burst their pots; the candles collapse inward and paint drips from the dragon as it catches light, twisting the features into something monstrous. There is a cry above the chime, above that droning low note, wavering, pulsing until it stops and Leonie grabs for the wrists of the kneeling man, her hair a black curtain, her forehead against his.]
You can unmake a thing even if you never made it, sometimes that's even easier.
[The lizard wheels down, landing on her shoulders and Leonie takes the rune, her own eyes completely black, all the light swallowed up but the young man the rune is turned to kneels quietly, limp, shaking. There's a blankness about him, as if empty, a curious sort of slump.]
There are no strings on me. [A mocking little sing-song, soft but not sweet.]
Everything can fall. The air can topple it or whip at it to whittle it away, the waters can rise to corrode it bit by bit or drown, fire can melt if it has a mind to or all else can be consumed by it, the earth can rise to break and rupture or it can swallow everything. Anything can fall, no matter what they think holds them up. Not even faith is enough.
Everything falls.
no subject
[But he does and always has, and probably always will. He can never be as good as Cecil, never be as admired or loved, never hope to aspire to reach him. Not even close. Kain hates himself for those failings, but he hates himself most for having this jealousy in the first place. Envy, his worst sin...]
It’s not like that! I’m not as black and awful as you say! It’s not true, it’s not… I’ve never corrupted anyone… I may wish that I could be as good as some others, and I try to live up to that… but I’m not… so horrible… Please. You must be wrong. There must be some good in me, there must… Isn’t that supposed to be a sign I’m still good, still redeemable? That I still strive and fight to reach the light?
[Something he might never reach, no matter how high he jumps.]
no subject
[After all, Leonie is as guilty as any she knows for slipping into her future enough to know and plan accordingly to make sure she ends up at just the right destination. Valentina has waves but her hair is the same, fine-spun. One day she should tell him fairy tales, but the ones with the unhappy endings, where there are no heroes and hungry beasts licking their lips.]
You can struggle all your life and fail, and there are others who are not like me and who will feel sympathy. They will expend their energy on you, trying to drag you with them or carry you. Is that fair to them? That they care and yet by the very virtue of you being you that you will exhaust them and envy how they can move through life so easily?
no subject
[He looks away for a moment, frustrated at what she's saying. It's true, he envies almost everyone else he comes across, because they have it so easy, their lives are so much simpler than his own. No one else has to struggle the way he does. No one else has this constant darkness inside them the way he does, not even Cecil's darkness was this bad.]
What are you saying, that I should give up? Find some way to fade, to return to the grave, is that what you want of me? [Kain clenches his hands into fists.] I've never asked anyone to carry me or my burdens, and I'm not about to start.