#🔪–;; messages┊( ANNABEL )

[carnivorarium]

✖.    —  [   @laplacemail​  / 𝐢𝐧𝐛𝐨𝐱 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬  ]

"hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like you to have." kissing you and sending this for aliah and annabel

    *〔 🔪。〕——— A gaze as sharp as a knife cuts upward to meet Aliah’s, and for a moment all the girl does is stare. She has not forgotten the slight she received as a greeting the first time they met, and she has no doubt that this, too, is meant to be an insult. But the beast inside starving for attention has been fed, and so she smiles with a flash of pearly teeth. 

      “Why shouldn’t it be?” Her head cocks to the side a little, reminiscent of a puzzled pup trying to understand a new command. Feigned confusion draws her brows together and tugs her lips into an inquisitive little ‘o’. Something flickers in her eyes, a slant of light akin to sunlight catching on steel. “It’s tiresome for aspirations to be innocent and meek. That’s how they get crushed, after all.” And she would know. Weak girl, incapable of even the most basic of spells, a slip of a woman waiting to be snatched up when she least expects it. She knows how the world sees her: a pretty gem that will be worn until the newest trend comes along or she loses her luster. He likely views her that way too. Possibly as even less than that. But she’ll never really know, and it makes her want to squirm. It makes her want to tear her own skin off and inspect it for any flaw or avarice that would mark her as so unworthy. That’s why she must--- that’s why that’s why--

      She blinks, and the shadow of hunger that had been creeping across her face retreats. Soft hands covered in freckles clasp in front of her, mimicking the gestures of an eager student ready to receive their mentor’s infinite wisdom. “Since you’re so knowledgeable in the area... what else would be dangerous for me to have?”

[carnivorarium]

✖.    —  [  @laplacemail​ / 𝐢𝐧𝐛𝐨𝐱 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬 ]

“We shall not give audience to an ill-mannered beast.”

     *〔 🔪。〕———  Anyone who lived in Alkenstar and did not know of Aliah Margolus and his untimely death either lived under a rock or had a skull made of stone. A very select few with an air of permanent mystique (and, in Annabel’s mind, an annoying penchant for melodrama) would murmur in hushed tones ranging from abhorred to awed that the late ex-Scion Lord still walks. Whether they meant as an undignified zombie or as an unholy revenant, they didn’t know. Of course they didn’t know. Who in their right mind would? Anybody sticking their nose into wretched business such as that, be it rumors or otherwise, would not only have it cut off and fed to them, but would likely end up with much the same fate as Aliah Margolus– sans resurrection, if you believe in that tidbit. 

    Well, Annabel certainly did not live under a rock, and she mostly didn’t have a skull made of stone. Though she has not known of his legacy for quite as long as others have, seeing as this is not her homeland, she is still familiar enough for it to feel as familiar as any other tale she’d grown up with. During the peak of his career, she had dreamt of eventually becoming one of his students. And how she had loathed it. Annabel Clarice Eldred, daughter of renowned alchemists and archivists, gifted in all practical skills and talents imaginable, fair young maiden with more power in her doe-eyed glances than a seasoned wizard’s most potent spell, did not dream of anyone but herself. To dream of anyone but herself meant to acknowledge there were others simply born better than her. And why should she believe that? Why should anyone? But the fact of the matter was she dreamt of it. And then that fact of the matter meant that dream must become reality. Because the unspoken law of little miss Annabel Clarice Eldred’s world was that if she aspired to it, it must come within her grasp, and she must take it. 

    If that did not happen, it would prove what she feared most, and what the world need not know: that she was a magicless, meek damsel in need of rescue from the cruel jaws of life. 

    Then, who could fault her this monumental failure of never becoming a student of that renowned wizard? The man had gone and gotten himself disgraced before he had a chance to know she even existed– and then died, too! For shame, for shame! And now these rumors of him lurking about in the shadows have to trail in her wake like ghosts after their murderer, sighing and whispering ceaselessly. It’s irksome, really. Except–

    Except she woke in the dead of night, a cold sweat drenching freckle-kissed skin, the coppery taste of someone else’s blood staining the front of her teeth and slipping down the back of her throat in a rich oily drip and known. And the taste like blood had sat low in her stomach, ethereally warm, filling up the constant hunger that gnawed and gnawed and gnawed day in and day out. Nothing had ever filled it, not even for a moment as fleeting as that one. 

    The three months since then are a blur the color of mist and vague bruised red. The omnipresent hunger stands behind her as a shadow would, peering over her shoulder at everything she does. Its saliva drips onto everything she holds, everything she touches. Its presence darkens her doll eyes when she catches glimpses of herself in the mirrors of inn rooms or along the crystalline edges of a river. It wraps her up at night, tender as a mother with her darling baby, vicious as a wolf tearing into the tendons of a rabbit caught in its wild jaws. Ever vivacious with possibility and voracious to the point of nigh-madness, the witch-to-be had toiled tirelessly. Endless reading, transcribing, navigating, bargaining, and a few rather unbecoming encounters (a proper young lady should never have to rip through the jugular of a man twice her age with nothing but her blunt teeth because he gets too invested in her journey, but bygones are bygones, and the blood had looked rather fetching smeared across her lips), all for this: a single callous sneer. 

    It’s impossible for her to hide her surprise. Cupid lips part into a little ‘o’, and cerulean eyes seem to glow from the whitehot sting of harsh rejection. Beneath a daintily embroidered traveler’s shawl, her thin hands clench into fists, nails creating angry crescent moons against her palms. A beast, was she? Nothing but a brute, a savage creature incapable of thought or rationale? Laughter bubbles up in her chest, burns her throat, presses against the back of her teeth. He does not know ill-mannered. She has not shown him ill mannered. If she’s a beast, what is he? Fodder for her to eat because isn’t this what it all comes down to–

    And it rings out, an embarrassed little giggle that sounds as sweet as a silverbell. “What a fine way to talk to a lady! I apologize— you’ve just shocked me is all,” she explains herself, tucking a few fiery strands of red behind her ear. “And I suppose I’ve unforgivably been presumptuous.” 

    The gravity of the situation pulls, tugs, nearly forces her to her knees. He ought to be dead. He talks of himself in plurals. There is something else there. It’s a sense she cannot shake, something she cannot prove and something she wishes to ignore. It’s the hunger that tells her. The hunger wants it. Strangely, though, she finds there is less to want in the real Aliah Margolus than there was in the deluded fantasy of him. Her smile falls. The shadow kept primly and properly tucked into the furthest corner of herself sweeps out across her brow. Seraphic features become a canvas for an indescribable emptiness: the kind that does not sit but actively pulls more and more into it, until only the void of her dead eyes remain. If she’s aware of such a drastic change in features, she does not show it. 

    “...And what…” she queries slowly, voice equally as dark as the lightless, lifeless doll-eyes that dare to gaze directly into that of the resurrected, “would change that, Lord Margolus?”

[carnivorarium]

✖.    —  [   @suender​​​  / 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐠  ]  

❛ did you hurt yourself? ❜ ->  annabel / deus

    *〔 🔪。〕———     It’s a question anyone in their right mind would ask a young lady by her lonesome close to 2 A.M.,  trembling like a fawn with blood smeared all over her hands and flecked across her face– and she loathes it. Beneath the shadow of neatly trimmed bangs, lifeless eyes cut the man a look that could kill if only he were able to see it. She lifts her head slowly as if in a stupor, flinching away minutely when realizing how close he is. 

    Her lower lip wobbles the slightest bit, doll eyes casting their gaze to the ground– a facade of shame, a facade of fear, that settles ever so well on such a pretty face. “I–” she starts, then stops with a hitch in her breath. “It… it’s stupid, really.” Gaze flicks up through lashes starting to dampen with tears. A little laugh bubbles up, one that she chokes on purposefully. “I went to the club with some friends. Girls’ night, y’know? But I had to leave earlier than the others and I didn’t want to worry them, so I said I’d just call an Uber. And, um, I was going to, but– but–” she grasps for words, her gaze casting about as if she might find them somewhere further down the sidewalk. “This guy came up to me. He wanted some money, but I’d given all my cash as tips. He… pulled a knife on me. He called me such awful things.” 

    As she speaks, she hugs herself. Her hands run up and down slender arms as she mentally rewatches the events of that night. What she's saying isn’t entirely a lie. She had left a club on her own, and it had gone south. But what she hadn’t spoken about was the switchblade, now stained with blood, nestled away in the bottom of her purse. A whimper forces itself out as it all floods back to her. The aggression. Him shoving her, cool steel against her sweating palms, a sharp pain near her wrist– blood splashing against her fingers and oh so sweet on her dry tongue– and then a scream. A shiver runs down her spine, and suddenly, she can’t breathe quite right. The mistiness in her eyes thickens. All the adrenaline from earlier crashes down, smashing her carefully crafted mask to bits. She stares blankly at the cracked pavement beneath her feet. I could have killed him. I could have killed him. I…. should have…. 

   One tear splatters to the ground, and then another. Stupid, stupid, stupid! How could she have let that dimwitted douchebag get away? Even if he wasn’t good enough for her palate, that didn’t mean he should have gotten away with little more than a harsh slap and a shallow cut. He’d even managed to wrestle her own weapon from her hands and use it against her! He’d thought she was weak, and now this man would too. Pitiful, weak, easy prey. If she would have just gone for the throat instead of the face–

    “Oh my god,” she all but sobs, staggering over to lean against the bus stop. “I can’t even call the police, I can’t call anybody.” Because she had pulled the weapon, because she was an underage drinker, because she hadn’t been smart enough to plan in case something happened. “My phone’s dead, and– I just ran. I don’t even know where I am!” Her smile wavers, turns to something cynical and petrified. Maybe, in this instance, being weak will be advantageous. “Mister… are you trying to be a good Samaritan right now?”