[Open] And Did the Countenance Divine

[graveling]

Who: Angel and You
What: Properly priesting, or trying to at least
When: July
Where: Yes!
Warning(s): None yet

1. I will not cease from mental fight [Temple Matters]
With Degas on his sabbatical, Angel is taking on the full mantle of Priest of the Mothers. He’s wearing the brown robes of a priest and the green stole with braided knotwork patterns similar to Celtic designs along it, even though doing so makes him feel a little like a child in their father’s shoes.

Still, he’s here if you need guidance or blessing, trying to fill the role.


2. Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand [Milk and Honey]
As he’s trying to fill the role of full-time priest, Angel’s still in his robes as he brings products from Kasprak farm into town. Vegetables and fruits, eggs and goat’s milk. And, of course, honey, in small glass jars all with a wax stamp on top–a bee with a pair of stylized feathered wings.

He’s visiting stores and restaurants, but if you catch him on the carriage Arcadia’s pulling, you might get tossed a ripe tomato or offered a melon. There’s plenty to go around.


3. Till we have built Jerusalem [A Day Off]
Sometimes, it’s all a bit much. Angel occasionally runs away from his duties. Never on days when there are services planned, never when he’s scheduled for something. But when restlessness strikes, Angel’s feet take him to the wild parts of the island. Paradesium, Lockwood Forest near Elsie’s Tree, and even nosing around the cave near Tawny Beach, though it’s been caved in since he and River had their adventure. He isn’t wearing his robes, he hasn’t combed his hair, he might be up a tree or sitting on a rock, and he surely isn’t expecting company.

But still, if you approach, there’s a sheepish little nod and a wave.


4. In England's green and pleasant land [Wildcard]
[find me on discord at darkersolstice to plot]

Comments

[abhorrently]

She arranges herself so that she's balanced, one hand on the branch - worst comes to it, if she slips, she'll just pull herself back up. Sounds complicated, this existence of Angel's - wearing someone else's body, and all the things it carries. Alien in the skin that nevertheless, you wear.

"...If you're pretending to be a murder victim, I could pretend to be your murderer. Also not a person."

It's said so calmly, without a single pretense. Like it's the simplest thing in the world.

[graveling]

"Yeah? How would you have killed me?" Asked with the same casualness you check if a friend is gonna eat the crust on their pizza. It's the sort of conversation you can't stop and take seriously.

cw: murder talk

[abhorrently]

Looking at him, she tilts her head, sweeping her gaze up, then down.

"Bumped into you. Smiled, said something about being clumsy, and then moved to split you open. Four stab wounds at the least - heart, then each lung, then the liver. It would have hurt. It would have been messy. Maybe your throat, if you looked pretty enough in your terror. And I would have watched and waited, as it took time. Listening to you struggle for something so futile. Maybe the pain would be too much to speak through. But I'd wait until you stopped moving, until no more breath was in your body, until the light in your eyes was blown out."

So calm. So easy does that imagination of violence work.

"If you fought back, it would be even messier. I don't yield."

[graveling]

"Huh. Hard to say if that's crueller than driving a bastard into the woods blindfolded, then shooting him in the head. Feels more honest, at least."

If there's anything he finds weird about her having an answer so quick, he isn't showing it. No leaning away, no judgment in his voice.

"It'd be messy, but with the heart as the first strike, it wouldn't take too long, I suppose. Efficient."

[abhorrently]

"I don't shoot people. Firearms are very difficult to come by where I'm from, and even if I had the option, it just strikes me as somehow more...removed. Less favorable. My hand is what drives a knife, or tightens the rope, or casts the right spell."

Of course, if there were a lot of people one needed dead, then other measures could be thought of, like arson. Death is for quantity, not really quality. One makes do with what they have.

"I can torture, but I'm not in the mood at present. So you, my theoretical victim, get off easy."

[graveling]

"Most people wouldn't call that anything like easy."

Neither of them are most people.

"There've been not-theoretical ones, haven't there?"

[abhorrently]

A silence, before she readjusts herself, head tilting back to look up at the sky. Beautiful. Open. Glimpses through thick leaves, and endless space. Only then does she return to where she is.

"Yes."

If her life is going to blow up and collapse, if this is the moment it all fractures? If this is when it starts to come out and the ripples start shaking up her life and she has to inevitably start fixing up one of the abandoned shacks out here to live in since they can't just kill her and be done with it? Then she can't stop Angel from doing it.

How do you explain a compulsion in the blood, something that aches and yearns and gnaws at your bones until the soft and still living marrow is exposed, sucked out and left hollow, hollow, hollow. Empty mind, empty bones, empty body, empty chest. A vessel is supposed to be filled by someone or something else.

Not a person, resting on a branch with him. Something other, something apart. A monster with ghostly hair and all the color removed from her. Pretending her best to get by.

[graveling]

Angel doesn't let that admission sit to cool down before he asks a very important question: "Are you only pretending to be Degas's friend?"

[abhorrently]

"What? No. Definitely not. I like him, genuinely."

Her face snaps back to Angel with real confusion.

"Why would I pretend to be his friend?"

[graveling]

"Because you're pretending to be a person, and having friends is part of that. Pretending to know how to be a friend and having others do it right back at you."

Speaking from experience?

[abhorrently]

"...No, I'm not pretending that I know how to be someone's friend."

And yet, it's getting this, and she's getting this form of communication much easier than feeling like she's being scrutinized every second. Maybe that's why it was so easy to admit the murders.

"I'm just making it up as I go. Going with what feels right to do or to say. A lot of luck." Fever shakes her head. "Almost all of my memory was lost recently. I have to run on instincts quite a bit, to make up for everything I can't remember. Sometimes it works."

[graveling]

"And sometimes, it sure as shit doesn't."

He leans, slowly, toward her. Silently announcing his intent to lean on her, and giving her the time to opt-out.

[abhorrently]

She stays perfectly still, letting him complete the motion. Strange. The feeling in her chest is strange. Like she could say anything, and have it viewed without judgement that was not rightfully earned.

"Why are you staying, instead of fleeing? I told you I've killed people, many times."

Corpses aren't supposed to be kind to murderers.

[graveling]

"Because I don't think I'm in danger right now." As if to silently underline that, the shoulder against her nudges gently.

[abhorrently]

"Most would flee. Despise me for it. It'll happen one day."

And yet, Angel is in no danger at all. At the present moment, no urge stirs her hand, no grotesque mire to fight her way through.

[graveling]

"Okay? I've been a corpse before. A murder victim before. Do they have the story of the frog and the scorpion, where you're from?"

[abhorrently]

"If they do, I've forgotten it. The words ring no bells."

But if the story will help, she'll listen.

[graveling]

"A long, long time ago, there was a scorpion stuck on the wrong bank of the river. It saw a passing frog and asked for a ride to the opposite shore. The frog said no, telling the scorpion it didn't want to be stung. The scorpion pointed out that stinging the frog wouldn't help it, as it would fall into the water and drown."

Angel gestures with two hands throughout the telling, one hand with the little finger curled above it, like a scorpion's stinger. The other, hopping here and there. Now, the scorpion-hand climbs upon the other.

"The frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. And midway across, the scorpion stung the frog. As it died, the frog asked, 'why did you sting me? Now you'll die too.' And the scorpion laughed as it replied, 'I cannot deny my nature.'"

[abhorrently]

She listens, unmoving, until the end. Something in her expression is perplexed, or contemplative.

"People hate the scorpion, don't they. Consider it evil for all of that. After all, it never promised it wouldn't sting."

And yet it must, up and unto its own destruction.

[graveling]

"People do. But we're not people-ing right now, are we? Besides, I think there's something everyone misses. The frog can't deny its nature, either. There is no story without both the scorpion and the frog."

[abhorrently]

"One moved to help, even unto its own death. And one moved to destroy, even though it would ruin itself in the process."

If it's to tell a moral, it's a shitty one. Trust no one but yourself, she hears, and none can deny their nature. Like she needs to hear that again.

[graveling]

"Are we stories, Fever? When we're not being people, I mean."

His head tilts to one side slightly so he can glance at her face.

[abhorrently]

"You might be, if you like. Not me. I'm something easier to understand."

A story can be read by ten different people with ten different answers for the questions it asks. No, she knows what she is, and that expression solidifies into distance. Considering, contemplating, peering into the edge of a deep, deep well.

"Something that also cannot cry."

She didn't forget that admission.

[graveling]

Angel lets that statement hang in the air for a moment.

"That part kinda sucks."

[abhorrently]

"It does. It feels like there's all of this...everything in my chest that can't go anywhere. Like something's clawing to get out, but...nothing. Maybe I'm just..."

She gestures in the air, trying to get at a concept that's bigger than her and yet fully contained in the self. How's someone like her supposed to explain it? She's not brilliant. She can't give words to something so formless.

"Wrong. All wrong, down to the core."