[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]

"Given the season, I think I can afford to tell you to fuck off and not get divinely smote for the disrespect."

Mama's farthest away, after all, and Kora would probably laugh. Still, she's taking the tea and sipping from it.

"Thank you for letting me stay over."

[graveling]

“Disrespect is a shitty thing to smite someone over any time. C’mon, you know I could be being a lot more of a dick right now.”

And there’s the subtly implied ‘told you so’.

[abhorrently]

There's a tensing of her jaw, but she takes another breath and sets the cup down.

"...why aren't you? I was expecting it."

He could be worse. She does kind of deserve it.

[graveling]

“I wouldn’t want someone doing that to me. Fever, whatever you experienced last night is yours. All I need to know is that you slept like you weren’t being tormented, so something went right.” He shrugs stiffly. “Are priests all dicks where you’re from?”

[abhorrently]

"I wouldn't remember if they were."

Her posture slumps a little, and she leans her head back before looking at him again.

"I guess...I just thought somehow you'd know. That she'd tell you or something would be already there." A tiny pause. "Beyond actually getting to sleep."

[graveling]

"Mortanne's not a gossip. My relationship with her isn't the sort where we talk behind people's backs. She's my mother, not my chatty best friend. And I wouldn't ask, too, because I mean it--your dreams are yours. I'm not owed answers about them, good or bad."

He slurps at his tea, trying to defuse things with a little funny sound before finally asking a real question, but not the one she expects.

"Why are you still here with me, instead of taking what's in your head and going home?"

[abhorrently]

"I don't know. Does it matter?"

It is a heroic feat of effort that she doesn't correct him, remind him that it's not her home. She hasn't made one of those yet. Her roots are only across the surface, fragile and easily crushed.

[graveling]

"I think it might? Maybe. I think it might matter to you."

Angel shrugs.

"Do you wanna talk about it?"

[abhorrently]

She's quiet for a long while after that. Sipping the tea, gathering her thoughts into the right order.

"...she knows about me. What I am. And she brought me here anyway. I don't understand her thinking."

When you've spent the last several months repeating something to yourself over and over, getting it contradicted will require more than one night to process.

"She also said you were right, so go ahead. Bask in that. She talked about a community."

[graveling]

"A community that you can be a part of." This isn't intended to come out as gloating.

He absolutely realizes Fever's going to read it as gloating.

[abhorrently]

She glares at him a little, but then slides her eyes away.

"...that can depends on a lot of things. A community's one of those things I don't have memories of."

Or, well, the tattered echoes and shadows that hint at other things say there was nothing like what is here - what is on offer, if somehow she doesn't fuck this up one way or another.

[graveling]

"Yeah? Me neither. Means we're not carrying bullshit notions from home about how it's supposed to be, though, also."

A lot of the people here, he's noticed, were failed by the communities they did have.

[abhorrently]

"Means we don't have any idea on where to start, though."

Fever sips from the tea again, wanting to keep drinking it while it's warm.

"And it isn't home. It's just a place I was, before I was here. Home is for people."

[graveling]

"That sounds pretty ass."

[abhorrently]

"Why? It's how I've felt ever since I woke up."

Not here, but back there. Since she realized she was a thing with a name and a consciousness.

[graveling]

"I'm not saying I don't understand it, Fever. I'm not saying I don't remember existing in isolation wandering from here to there after digging myself out of a shallow ditch. But, like. It's pretty ass only to know that. And it's kinda okay to have a place to call home."

[abhorrently]

"But you've got to have it in the first place, before you can call it that."

Which draws them back to Angel's point about this place, about setting down roots, about the idea of a community in the first place. Wallpapering her apartment and redecorating some didn't stop the disconnect she feels inside when she steps into a place that feels like someone's home.

[graveling]

"Putting it like that, you make it sound like home is something you just get and have, out of nothing." Angel's head tilts to one side.

[abhorrently]

"Isn't that how it goes, though? You're born into it, or you drift around looking for it, or you stumble across it."

She shrugs.

"Some people aren't going to fall into any of those situations. It's a matter of chance."

[graveling]

"...no? No."

The look on his face is the one you get when you're tasting something in a dish that's not the main ingredient, but is strong and there and you want to describe it, but you're not sure if calling it out is a done thing.

[abhorrently]

Her brow furrows in confusion, looking at him.

"What do you mean, no?"

It's an honest question, despite the circumstances. She doesn't understand - like she's told people, she's not the smartest. What part is she overlooking? If this entire morning is just her being wrong about things, she kind of hates it, but she's still here.

[graveling]

"You left out the possibility of building it. Of actively working to create home. It's not easy, it's not instant, it's not something that happens to you, on this path. And I think that scares you, because...trying means you might fail, and it just never happening at you means it's not your responsibility. It means committing. It means considering what the long haul looks like, instead of just what-comes-next. And you balk at that, Fever. I don't think I've met anyone else so scared shitless of the idea of the long term."

[abhorrently]

She's gone still. Too still. As still as Angel himself is, having felt it all rise up behind her teeth. This has been fine, this has been working out for her so far, why does she need to change it? Her head throbs uncomfortably, threatening to crack - it had all surged up back from where she'd put it when he said you might fail, something wound to that so intrinsically that she needs to fight back.

Long-term has never been in the cards. Why is that so difficult for other people to grasp?

(Where does that certainty come from?)

He needs to stop. And she sees an easy way to make it happen, wants to know if he can't cry, can he scream, can she spill blood in front of the Mothers and have them let it happen, say this is what you're risking, keeping me, and it'll all end in corpses and calamity. She could do it, she could, and she wants to, so very badly.

Her jaw has gone so tight that she feels nauseated, there's pain and her organs writhing, and she's barely even breathing, bloodless. Looking sick, instead of rested. She has to fight up while the broken limbs of every dead soul want to drag her down, to where it's better, it's better, it would feel so much fucking better than sitting here and listening.

[graveling]

And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man(?) with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was pained, as he wrestled with him.

Angel sees that Fever is wrestling, with herself more than with him, and he waits for her to decide if she's going to do him violence or not. He doesn't show worry or concern. Not because the pain wouldn't hurt, but he is here, safe, in one of the places where his borrowed body will knit itself together if harmed. He is silent, watching her unblinkingly.

[abhorrently]

It would feel so right. It would be so good. It's coming and she can't stop it, she's too exhausted and tired to fight it off, and she barely feels attached to her body. She's slipping, slipping, holding onto a ledge while finger by finger is pried off. She wants it, needs it, she'll kill him and Degas too and that mousy little one who scurries about, she'll defile this place with their deaths and crack them into pieces and scatter their organs across the altars, ruin and ruin and ruin and-

"...I need you to bind my hands, and get me away from people. Please."

Her voice is hoarse, forced out. Getting the words out feels impossible, her head feels as though it weighs a thousand pounds and every one of them is made of knives that turn inward. They don't have much time. This has been looming, hasn't it, since that fucking ship. Since she stood there drenched in someone's blood like a twisted baptism. Standing on the edge, clinging to it, and now so near to letting go. Fever feels like fainting, but she has to hold on. Just long enough. She wants to hurt him, and she doesn't, and she wants to rip someone into so many shreds they no longer have a face.