December TL -- A Triptych

[stoneoftherose]

Who: Pyotr Stamatin and players like you <3
What: Open post for those who would like to meet Artemy and Daniil's castmate!
When: December
Where: See below
Warning(s): Depression, alcoholism, and suicide ideation, including references to a successful attempt pre-game.




Panel One -- The Oak & Iron

A new ghost has come to Pumpkin Hollow.

His heart may beat, his skin feels warm, but he is a ghost all the same, one with clenched jaw and burning, agonized eyes. Coming here was a mistake; he'd opened his veins in anticipation of oblivion. Finding himself in a mundane office instead so bewildered Pyotr that he'd participated in the following conversation by rote, agreeing to everything the strange woman said so he could get away. And now he's stuck here, in a place where he can't die.

Nothing could be worse -- except for the fact that he's also sober. No, even worse than that: he feels healthy, in a way he hasn't since boyhood. Steady hands, clear eyes...if he cut himself open he'd probably find his liver fresh and regular in color, free of the cirrhosis that used to fret Andrey so until he rejoined Pyotr in architecture.

His thoughts follow one after the other in steady procession, without interruption or pause. Agonizing. Intolerable -- and he knew from long experience that wine would not be enough to soothe his soul, but it would make a fair enough anesthetic. If he could just stop thinking...

A ghost in the shape of a man sits down at the bar at the Oak & Iron, looking no higher than the level of the counter as he orders a bottle of wine.

Panel Two -- The edge of the woods

Eventually the noise of the bar gets to be too much for him. All those people coming and going, and even when they do him the courtesy of ignoring him he struggles to do the same. There was a reason he always avoided the Broken Heart...

No surprise, then, that he eventually walks out in search of a little quiet. He winds up on a track leading west out of town, through a thin patch of wood that opens out into farmland. There by a wooden fence, an interesting sight at last: a fallen kite, built in the shape of a bird out of colored paper and sticks. He turns it over gently and finds one of its wings crushed beneath the body, its bones snapped in twos and threes.

"Don't be sad," he tells it softly. "A bird can live quite well without its wings, so long as it takes care to avoid the cats."

Panel Three -- The Temple

The Cathedral was a loathsome sight, a great dead block of stone with neither love nor the will to seek it. He'd never understood Eva's infatuation with the cursed place; he'd boarded up all the windows in his flat that faced that side of town, so he wouldn't see even a speck of it by accident. The Temple...is not like that. Even standing outside, he can tell: this is a building with a soul.

Possibly four of them, if you listened to the locals.

It makes him sick, the way these people talk about their goddesses. Like they're people who can be just walked up to and touched --! It's not the first time Pyotr's wondered how much simpler his life might have been -- if he'd born one of the Kin, for instance -- but now the question burns him like a stomach full of coals. If he'd been born in a world like this...

What is he even doing here? Do these goddesses long for death? They could have satisfied themselves with Burakh in that case; he's the experienced god-killer. Pyotr Stamatin's talents lie more in the area of divine maiming. And besides, his useful days are over for everyone. What did they bring him here for?

Supposedly, he might be able to just walk right in and find out. Supposedly...

Fuck it, he's freezing his balls off out here. Pyotr pushes the heavy door open ahead of himself, passing through -- and immediately loses his nerve, sitting down on one of the nearest pews. This is fine.

The Frame -- Wildcards welcome

Comments

panel one;

[medekh]

Artemy is trying to get himself out and about more.

It's good for him.

He still isn't much of a drinker, but a lot of new people come to The Oak & Iron, and the meals aren't bad. It's a good stop to make.

What Artemy isn't expecting is to see the backside of someone he knows.

One of those Stamatin brothers? It sure sounds like it too. And he's drinking.

Time to go see which one it is.

Without asking permission, Artemy takes a seat next to him.

"So, you met Mortanne then?" He asks, voice sounding even keeled and not amused.

panel one!

[famedthanatologist]

Dankovsky had just felt like getting himself a drink, that day. He pushes the doors to the Inn, expecting to find no one of importance, when he freezes at the entrance. His eyes are honed in on an impossibly familiar figure, hunched over the bar.

It feels almost like seeing a mirage. Like when he found Artemy, on his first day in Pumpkin Hollow— the feeling is unreal. Dankovsky's pulse skyrockets, and he calls out to the man before he can even stop himself.

"Stamatin?"

Panel Three

[preacher_in_reticence]

Angel's still off duty for Reasons, so Degas is on duty at the temple when Pyotr walks in. He's currently cleaning one of the altars, replacing the offerings. Something smells like booze. Is he offering rum to one of the goddesses?

Yes, yes he is.

He has not failed to notice Pyotr entering and sitting down. But he's not immediately going to crowd the man. The Temple is for all who seek the goddess's peace.

panel one

[amourtician]

Anzu raises an eyebrow at the order he just overheard — an entire bottle of wine? — and, his curiosity piqued, decides to investigate. He approaches Pyotr.

"An entire bottle of wine, darling?" he says, smiling. "Thou'rt expecting company? Or merely buying a bottle and hoping it'll summon company?"

A Frame of Reference

[graveling]

A corpse slouches into the Oak and Iron one night, not having the energy to figure out cooking for himself. It's a well-preserved corpse, dressed in simple clothes (the priest robe was left at home; it's not on duty tonight), and it barely seems to be paying attention to anyone else in the room.

But there are few open tables on this particular night. So, it does at least speak to someone with a seat available by him: Pyotr.

"Mind I sit?"

panel two.

[abhorrently]

There's a light crunching in the snow, coming from the woods. Emerging from the underbrush is a woman with a sheathed sword in her hand. color higher in her cheeks from exercise, whose gaze sweeps over him in an instant before dropping to the kite.

She's managed to catch his sentence, after all.

"Will you carry it into the skies on occasion, so it need not mourn? Felines or none, a bird is a creature made for air and flight."

Call it enough time around her father, lately, to automatically keep going when confronted with such sentences.

Oak & Iron -- New OTA

[stoneoftherose]

The day after his 'fight' with Artemy, Pyotr doesn't make a beeline for the bar as soon as he comes downstairs, to the bartender's silent relief. He leaves the Oak & Iron instead, staying gone for several hours -- and when he returns it's to sequester himself in a corner of the room, bending over a new sketchbook and drawing at a feverish speed. When someone finally bothers to ask, he orders water, at least at first. What the hell, did he get replaced by a clone or twin? Don't ask that where he can hear you.

He'd almost certainly prefer to be left alone with his work, but as every artist knows, the world doesn't stop moving just because you've gotten into the zone...and there are people who'd undoubtedly like to talk to him about the things that happened yesterday. Are you one of them?

January TL

[stoneoftherose]

Word spreads slowly, but it does spread. The newcomer Pyotr Stamatin, who spent his first two weeks in town getting blackout drunk and then started a bar fight that ended with Erik Osborne getting stabbed, is an artist -- and he'll draw your portrait if you show him something miraculous or macabre. He has a profound interest in the magical, supernatural, and the blood-stained. His apartment on Goldleaf Street has been turned into a studio; climb the stairs to the second floor, and so long as Pyotr is home alone you'll find the door marked 'A' left unlocked.

Pinned to all four walls is already a thick layer of sketches and anatomical studies; here are Erik Osborne's fangs, the lips pulled back to expose both rows of teeth; there are Fever's hands, passing a coil of lightning back and forth as though it were a metal spring. Here is a sketch from memory of Mortanne, as she appeared in the cemetery at Mourner's Night; here is the island's wyvern in flight. In one corner a brightly-colored kite in the shape of a bird hangs suspended from the ceiling, its wings two sets of complementary hues.

At one end of the room a small stage has been shaped from a thick rug and a set of folding screens, with braziers left nearby for the comfort of anyone who wants to try modeling in the nude. The artist lounges on a settee nearby, a thick drawing pad in his lap. His hands and clothes are perpetually covered in ink and soft pastel dust these days; when he looks up to greet you, you notice that he's even managed to get a streak of it across one cheek. Yet he immediately lowers the drawing pad, offering you a small, nearly-shy smile.

"Did you want something?"