ph_logs | [July/August] Dog Days

[July/August] Dog Days | OTA

Who: River la Croix and YOU

What:
Getting a summer log up god fucking damn it
When:
July & August
Where:
Check prompts
Warning(s): Relationship arguments, potential violence and/or curses, bitching about the heat, and whatever you take with you (check individual posts/threads)

Dying In This Forge | Infernal Arms And Armor

The only mercy about running a smithy during the summer is that River has never had to experience air conditioning and therefore has no idea how much better it could be. The pace of the work here at Infernal Arms and Armor has slowed considerably; every door and window is thrown wide open, hydration and shade breaks are mandatory, and no less than twice a week River's apprentices and customers both arrive to find the forge locked up with a sign posted outside which reads:

Fucked off to go swimming If you need us, don't.

Still, if there's work to be done, here's still the place to order it. Just expect River to be pissy about it, she's a bit on fire, y'know?

Cooling Off | Beach

River's desperate to not die of fucking heat stroke and it's an uphill battle. While she usually enjoys the hot springs, right now the beach is a more likely bet, even with the crabs. Friends might be invited to an afternoon crab roast down by the water, or you might find her swimming in a soot-stained shirt too ruined even for forge work these days. Either way, it's not hard to spot River. Look for the steam coming off the water. No, really. It's not a joke. Look for the steam and you will find an elf and friend.

Fire Dancing | Nighttime

It may be hotter than a succubus's asshole from River's perspective, but that's no excuse to slow down her studies. A couple nights a week, towards the bridge over the river into the woods, one can find River practicing her pyromancy. She doesn't take much with her, just a brazier, some coals, and a MASSIVE stone jug that formerly housed whiskey and now contains a great deal of water with lemon juice mixed into it, for hydration. Oh, right, and an undead dragon. It hovers ominously near her, a passive protection against oncoming monsters while River strips down to her shirtsleeves and goes dancing amidst ribbons of tame fire, flickering in many colors while they shift and twirl, never quite kissing her skin, her arms smoldering coal-bright.

You'll never get her to admit it while the sun is up, because she's fuckin' dying in this heat, but these are the moments when the world falls away, and River can lose herself in her art. It feels remarkably freeing.

Blunt Love | Closed to Ruby

A hand on Ruby Rose's shoulder, during a work day. River's sweating buckets, panting like a damn dog, and if her ears drooped any lower they'd fall the hell off, but still the expression on her face is gentle concern. "Lunchtime," River says, with a little shrug. "C'mon, you're eating with me. We should chat, O Mine Apprentice. Plus I got those meat pies from Max that never go stale and girl lemme tell you, my ambition when I bought 'em? Vastly exceeded my grasp."

Wildcard

Fuck me up.

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The color drains from the world when River sends the fire back into the brazier, coals giving just enough illumination that darkvision latches onto it like a little campfire. But Fever smiles, something sincere and yet sharper than what she wears being devoted to Town Hall and their community. As if this current Fever and the other are twins, and yet the same. One who hides the scent of blood under perfume, and one who wears it proudly.

"Please, don't stop on my account. I'm no more than a moth, drawn in and bewitched by your flame and your sorcery."

And yet, for all her danger, for the killer's air and the sense that things might be so wrong, these words are as honest as they come.

River can't help it, she really can't; she blushes, ears wiggling, reaches for her jug in a vain attempt to hide her face by taking a long drink.

"It's training," River demures. "Pyromancy instead of summoning, I need...less lethal tools."

Beat.

"Red fucking Troth I really just said that about fire."

"And yet, it makes perfect sense. All in one's amount of control, to shift from laying waste to all around to precision, to choose what damage you cause or don't cause. The finer one's control, the more accomplished the caster. Any fool with the right scroll can toss a few bolts around, torch a place. To persuade it to dance with you, to kiss you with no marks save the ones you choose? That's power."

Perhaps it would help if she didn't sound so truly sincere in what she was saying, dazzled by the display. Enough to forego showing off herself to make the point.

...

......

A lilting whistle. River extends a hand to the brazier, an odd expression on her face; a ribbon of fire twines around her arm, dances across her shoulders -

- wraps through the air, spreading, weaving into a latticed cage around herself and Fever and that odd undead dragon.

"Power," River echoes, her voice quiet. "You know, Fever, I have a hard time reading you. I'd like to hear you tell me about power."

Her eyes follow the fire, all aglow from its light and her fascination, before she registers the question, arms loosely folding.

"...should be frank, I'm not some learned scholar, nor some wise soul blessed with innate knowledge. Whatever answer I give you, the dictionary won't like it. But from my own experience, it's sort of..."

One hand creeps up towards her own neck, toying with a small pendant on a chain. Something to do while she thinks on this, giving it careful consideration. Longer than a statement like that might need, but it's clear she's trying.

"At the center of it, power is you saying I want this, and then having whatever it requires to make your desire become real. For a sorcerer, that could be fine control of your spells. For a soldier, could be enough skill and defense to know you'll survive the coming battle. For nobles, could be money and status and feeling secure in your own home." Fever pauses, then shakes her head. "I feel like something's wrong with that thinking, but I don't know enough to know what it is."

'I'm not some learned scholar' gets a soft snort; River is also not a learned scholar, she's a half-feral warmage taught up by a dead man. But she listens, and she watches, in the light and the heat of the burning cage.

She does not reply immediately.

"...I gave an answer like that, the first time I was asked," she says, at last. "And my teacher told me it's the answer of someone missing something no one ought to lack, taken by others with no right to hold it. Woulda punched him out for saying so if he weren't a damn ghost." Some decision seems to have been reached, just behind those green eyes; River holds her hand out, palm up, and whistles. The fire churns and threads itself into a blossoming lotus on her palm, glimmering and shimmering, leaving a heat haze in the night air. "You could learn to do this, or something like it. If you don't mind a half-trained teacher."

She isn't fully certain she understands what River's teacher meant, but Fever can sense enough to know she's passed some internal measurement. That if she was found lacking, this would be very different. But here, again, River is offering something out to her. Something that for all she could ask why, she wants to accept.

"That's not the word to describe you that comes to mind. But you really think I could?"

If River wouldn't mind a student who can't even recall if she ever had training. The worst that can happen is that she can't do it, that her magic won't comply. She's felt that before, trying to practice spells that just slipped from her grasp before they could be realized. But others, they were there, a new part of her magic weaving into itself.

"Anyone could. Whether they will is more complicated than that, but anyone could." River beckons with her free hand, for Fever to come closer, and she keeps talking in a low and gentle voice. "Power only looks like its results when you don't know what you want. That's a bad place to have power; it makes bad uses of it sound like good ideas. I thought...I dunno, when we met you seemed off. Vicious, maybe, someone going rotten. But that ain't it, is it? You're just at the bottom of a hole, with power in your hands, and it looks like a need from down there."

Her voice is like a lure, and Fever responds, stepping around the skeletal dragon to come closer. And oh, the words are sweet. Kind in their intentions.

The shake of Fever's head is a slow thing. Small, but enough to say what's needed. Her eyes on the flower, not River's face, because she expects what comes next will not be so gentle.

"Your first impression...no, that was all correct. I've been rotting for a long time."

It might be easier in the short term to fully deny it somehow, but sooner or later she'd be exposed. Say the wrong thing, let the bloodlust show, her self control slipping. Better to be honest enough that the fine details remain her own. She is vicious. She is something gone bad. If she's at the bottom of a hole, that might be for the best.

"The first step is to figure out what you want, Fever. What's the power for?"

Now is when her eyes flick back up to River's, then down again, to the side. Someone self sacrificing and noble might say it's for shattering the barrier, or something like that. Some task appointed that must be fulfilled. But she's not. The most she can do is resist what in her mind screeches that the power is for laying waste to everything that yet lives, hatred and contempt for life itself. No. No, if that was the case, she would not have asked people to stop her should it be needed.

(There is an answer, but looking too closely at it is like looking into the sun. She turns away her gaze to save her sight.)

"...I don't know."

"Those words are the walls of your hole and the heart of your rot, as they were mine." From the lotus in her hand River plucks a single petal, and it ought to burn her. Her fingertips should blacken; her flesh should split, revealing bloody bone that scorches and chars, but no such thing happens. This she holds up, almost as if offering it to Fever. "If you take this, it will burn you. You are not fire's friend, I think, not yet. But maybe...maybe, courting it might help you figure out that 'I don't know' and come back with a better answer."

It's an offer, frank and without judgement. River has found why she felt so uneasy around Fever, and the answer was simply a mirror. Who can see that, and not be moved to help?

It may work. It may not. She might be as unable to look at that answer as ever. But all the same, there's something to it that feels like she might as well. It's not as though she's ever stopped improvising, making up her moves as she goes. The pain of getting burnt isn't a deterrent to going and trying. If she is to get scorched, it will happen.

So, now, Fever nods. If River is still offering, she's accepting.

"Tell me about fire. No wrong answer; I need to know how you see it."

There's another one of those silences, but it's born of contemplation. Wanting to sum up feelings into words.

"Fire is something that causes great destruction. Learning to use it to harm is one of the simplest things a magician can do, if they're putting any strength into it. It says burn, and things do. Fearsome and relentless, not something to be bargained with when it comes to set you aflame. But it's not just something dread - the same fire lights up a camp, cooks food, offers warmth and safety. The fire that sears the flesh from my enemies' bones is the same fire that gives the smith the ability to forge. Causing chaos or lighting a lantern."

She could go on in that vein, but her point's been made.

"A good start," River says with a solemn nod. "The fundamental principle of pyromancy is this: all fire is the same fire, even when it isn't. The second is sympathy, to find the parts of yourself that are fire. I took up smoking to build up that sympathy, like many pyromancers do. For you...for you I have another suspicion."

The petal flickers and gleams in River's fingers.

"This will hurt. Do you accept it?"

Red eyes meet green. Only the slightest pause.

"Yes."

She's borne pain before. She can do it again, as many times as her life will need her to.

The hand holding the lotus closes, crushing it into mere flame once more that River casts back into the brazier. Still, her palm is so very warm when she cups Fever's cheek in it, to hold her steady; she presses the petal of flame, soft as a flower, bright as a candle, to the sorcerer's other cheek.

It needs to leave a scar.

In that moment, Fever understands, and her own hand darts out to grab River's wrist and pull it back. No. She accepts the terms, but this - not on her face. Surely it's the experience that matters, not the location.

"Not there. Don't need anyone asking what happened."

"Pick your poison then," comes the reply, nice and calm; River's pulse barely quickens under Fever's fingers. "Somewhere you'll think about it often, is all. Even after it stops hurting."

"That won't be difficult to do."

Stepping back, she turns around, and undoes the fastenings of her shirt enough until she can pull it down, bare her shoulders and upper back. Anticipation makes her skin prickle.

"Back of my shoulder."

Edited 2024-07-24 06:58 (UTC)

A deep breath in; a steadying breath out.

"Fire can be hard to be friends with," River whispers. "But it's worth it."

She lays the petal against Fever's flesh, and sears it into the back of the sorcerer's shoulder.

It hurts, as she expected it might - but it's somehow worse than when she'd taken the Absolute's brand. That was a thing of heat and magic, shocking but over swiftly, soothed away by magic and adrenaline. This reaches deeper, and she has no choice but to cry out if she's going to keep her legs steady and not falter. It radiates everywhere, across her back and down her arms, floods her entire body and Fever feels all her muscles tense, overriding the inner instinct to get away.

She can do this. She can bear with it. However much is needed, until River decides it's enough.

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[July/August] Dog Days | OTA

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By tradition I declare: damn OCs and their one-liners

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