#fishermcn

[hawksblooded]

Rare for them to find moments like this, when their violent and relentless world slows to a stop even if for only the evening. Aye, the grog's still too much water and too little liquor, but the tavern is warm against the chill of the winter-bitten night and the gathered crowd's merriment seems infectious in an all too welcome way. Their off-key singing and laughter carries up from beneath the floorboards of their half-decent room, and Sam hums one of the tunes even as he presses his thin lips against Liz's own, stained hands cupping her strong jaw and long fingers leaving streaks into her darker skin. There's a few candles scattered about, a lantern haphazardly hung over the desk they'd shoved into the corner of the room to illuminate any late night tinkering, and the light is plenty enough to see the usual hard set of those grey eyes melt into something far warmer, far softer for being here with her like this. "Heldin," he murmurs inbetween soft kisses, the tenderness here stark compared to the violent shape their shared affections usually take. What with how gently he holds her face and traces her scars with those keen fingers down to her neck, one might've thought he was holding something fragile or delicate rather than the hardened warrior he beholds every morning and every evening. Such is love, perhaps, fool creature he may be for it.

THERE'S SOMETHING SHE REMEMBERS Stenvarr saying, one morning as he took their travels to a sudden standstill. Surrounded by chill mountain air, he had stopped in his tracks, the little girl she once was very near crashing into his wide frame. Her impatient voice, still pitched high by youth, had asked, why stop? He hadn’t turned to her, his eyes filled with dawn’s roseate light fixed on the peak-ridden horizon. “Look,” he said, and the girl squinted where his thick finger pointed. “There’s nothing,” she’d remarked. “There’s beauty,” came her guardian’s answer. Shivering, eager for the warmth and shelter of the next hamlet their pilgrim-path promised, she had patted his side as one would a horse, as if to spur him from his reverie. “It’s useless,” Alizebeth had said. “Maybe. But you have to spend what little time you have with it. Ours is a hard world. Beauty rarely comes to us. Welcome it, when it does.” She understands what he meant, now. Stenvarr is gone, but the words remain. She’s older, worn by the life that she has chosen for herself, that lonely path she chose to walk. In her relentless world of bloodshed, of white-knuckled survival, her great and cruel wilderness, she could have been made to grow cold and cruel also. Still her mentor had made it clear that despite everything, one must find beauty in it. One must hold on to that beauty with that same iron grip one has on their life. Because beautiful things are fragile.

Ah, but the world, the path, it isn’t so lonely anymore.

Her face is ever impassive as a scarred hand runs up the length of Samuel’s back. He knows it well, now, that there is a feeling her expression can never betray, something buried deep in her broad chest under the thick earth of fear, burrowed. Not a sleeping thing, but alive, beating, such that it may well be aflame. Something she cannot speak of in words that slip from her grasp, riverlike, and that instead he must piece together. It isn’t hard to puzzle out her fondness for him, not anymore. It’s true, she hasn’t spoken it, the words so far from who she is - from what she’s been made into. Instead she’s opened herself up for him, slit down the middle like skinned game, bared and red and raw. There are no questions in it. He knows exactly where her heart lies.

Lips meet, and Alizebeth’s hand at the nape of his neck is a gentle guide. His fingers leave blackpowder streaks at the edge of the crescent scar on her cheek like warpaint. War; that is the shape their entanglement took, in the first months. Not against each other, but against the world, a violent reminder that they were alive, a rebellion against their lonely fates. Two people who had seen the edge of humanity, and sometimes breached it -  who had looked death in the eye and said no, not us, not today. Animals surviving, teeth at each other’s throats, clawing at skin and dirt.

It isn’t so anymore, in the candlelit tavern room, the pair still dizzy from the revelries below. There’s nothing animal or warlike to his crawling into her lap, cradling her face. He whispers that sweet name to her, traces her scars. Samuel holds her so gently, as though she is made of silver and not steel. His fingers come to rest just above her heart, in the dip of her marred chest. His mouth brushes against hers as grey eyes peer, not sharp but tender, at her impenetrable features. It had confused her, this tenderness. She had blamed the now-countless drinks, watered-down as they’d been. Had, because she doesn’t want to think about it anymore. Her fingers comb through his hair as she kisses him again, her other hand at his thin waist. It doesn’t matter if the shape has changed. Her heart may not race, her veins not burn with adrenaline, her body not dully pounding with pain, but this, too, is being alive. It may even be love. She doesn’t want to think about that, either. Only the shadow of a man who has grown so dear to her, the softness of his lips, the strange and new lightness of his deft touch. She sees it now; more than anyone else, he understands. He holds on to this near-silent moment, to its precious warmth. She will, too. Beautiful things are fragile.

[rppcsitivity]

♡    𝗣𝗢𝗦𝗜𝗧𝗜𝗩𝗜𝗧𝗬 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗙𝗜𝗦𝗛𝗘𝗥𝗠𝗖𝗡    ♡

❝   I'd  like  to  send  some  positivity  to  @fishermcn!  I  love  to  see  sam  on  my  dash,  and  I  love  learning  more  and  more  of  him.  he  feels  truly  lifelike,  with  his  struggles  and  skills,  all  presented  through  incredible  prose.  and  of  course,  the  writer!  easily  one  of  the  kindest,  sweetest  people  around.  you  are  a  light  for  all  of  those  who  know  you.  may  your  passion  for  creating  never  extinguish!   ❞

[swordluck]

Crow-- no, no. Samuel squeezes her hand gently, smudging soot into her knuckles.

“I can forgo the two missing tiles as long as you keep holding my hand.” Anri gives a little squeeze in return. Love is stored in the soot stains.

[voidrevelation]

@fishermcn said: A soot stained hand ruffles her hair, a rasped chuckle chasing the gesture.

"S-Sam! Hi...!"

She makes a sound that resembles the tiniest of laughters. Hee hee.

"Uhhh, ummm. Can you. C-Can you plea-please fix. My hair. I know. I know it doesn't lo-look good. Now..."

[schattenmagier]

There'd been a tavern brawl, some tiff between one gang of miscreants and another that'd ended up dragging everyone in on the scrap. They'd been no better off in that regard, the pair of rogues, though between their steel and how well they worked off of one another the only thing they'd earned from the whole affair were bloodstains and a few bruises. Soot gives the last of the dead men a none too gently kick to the head, breathing heavy and jaw set tightly still... before turning back to Lilli. Something in his face softens, those grey eyes intense as he steps over to her and almost gently takes her face. "Blood," he murmurs, a stained thumb swiping the cooling blood off of her cheek while he pulls out a shockingly clean rag from his cloak. Carefully he wipes it from her cheeks, her jaw, all while that one hand of his cradles her face. "No cut. All theirs, suppose." Even once he's finished, he lingers a moment on her face... before finally turning away. "Should leave 'fore the guards get here." ((for the fluster meme >:3c

[ Flustering... // Accepting! ]

Ugh. Really. She hates a tavern fight. And being inside said tavern when the fight was happening. And usually the thief would simply sneak her way out before anyone could be draggen into a brawl. But unfortunate, she can't leave her partner in crime alone. He was the one helping out the owner so he can have that secret little hideout. And his helping out included to break up a fight... Honestly, why did those ruffians had to drag everyone into their stupid fights anyway?

But they were capable enough to take down those idiots. Even thouugh it gave them some bruises, and splattered some blood on them. Ugh, her clothes are new. Now she needs to take the time to get all that blood out.

Lilli tries to already get some blood off, and just turned her head towards Soot when he spoke, and approached her. That left her off-guard for that moment as he takes her face with his warm hand. Brushing over her cheek, and some of that blood away. Her body goes stiff, and her mind blank, when he started to clean her face from all the red fluid...

The thief doesn't utters a word while Soot did. Unsure what to say or even how to react. He didn't had to do that. He had blood on him as well, but decided to get it off her first. And Lilli wonders why for a second, before he was finished, and turned away. And when his hand finally left her face, which took a moment to long, she feels her cheeks burning. The woman knows that it's surely easy to see on her pale skin... so she pulled the hood over her head, and her scarf over her mouth and nose, before following after the craftsman.

" ... Yes... Let's leave... "

She mumbled, barely audible... Until she clears her throat, and almost whispered.

" And... thank you... "

[deadn30n]

                  a  sigh  pushes  through  her  nose,  loud  and  imperceptible.   she's  aware  the  docks  may  not  be  the  most  quintessential  space  one  should  occupy,  certainly  not  these  days,  but  she's  reached  the  limit  of  land  she  can  scour,  therefore  leaving  her  no  choice  but  to  glance  at  dark  waters  instead.  it's  been  a  handful  of  hours  since  her  twin  left  to  gather  firewood   –   he's  normally  never  gone  this  long,  and  he  can  hold  his  own  quite  well  in  spite  of  his  otherwise  lanky  appearance.  it  doesn't  stop  her  from  worrying  all  the  same,  which  is  why  Faustus  is  now  found  wandering  the  nearby  docks,  her  eyes  sweeping  over  wet  wood  planks  and  the  deceptively  placid  surface  of  the  lake  alike.  as  if  either  one  may  grant  some  clue  as  to  Astraeus'  whereabouts.

@fishermcn 🌿 starter call

[hawksblooded]

"Gonna pull them stitches, keep movin' like that." He doesn't need to look up from sharpening one of her knives to know Liz is getting restless, what with their having been cooped up here now a few days longer than intended. A nasty, unwelcome combination of a gnoll's bite getting in through her shoulder and the local lord dragging his feet on coughing up her well earned coin for the pack's slaying meant cooling their heels inside for yet another muggy, rain-soaked evening. Propped up on the floor against the rickety bedrame, Sam admires the glint of the short blade's edge in the candlelight before sheathing it and leaning back with a tired huff. Glancing her way means seeing the set of her jaw against pain and mounting irritation, and he doesn't resist the urge to take her calloused hand into his own. Long, nimble fingers trace the small nicks and scrapes etched into her own fingers, trails of fine soot from his endeavors likewise ingrained into his skin left streaking her skin. "Should try'n sleep. Don't mind keepin' an eye on things." Here, with just the two of them behind closed doors, there's no need to resist the urge of interlacing his fingers in hers or to refrain from pressing a kiss or two against her palm.

Just a few more days, she tells herself. A few more days of endless pacing, of pain uneasy and unforgettable in idleness. Alizebeth has ruminated, cursed and befouled the name of the county’s lord a hundred times over. She has walked the length of their room like a caged animal, aching to feel grass under her boots, the wind on her scarred face. This kind of inertia does not befit her. The hunter is restless, agitation welling in her like a camp’s fire. She longs for the hunt.

But then Sam takes her hand, so gently. “Should try'n sleep. Don't mind keepin' an eye on things.” He takes it in his own without hesitation, without preamble, and dares to speak of her of sleep. She stares into his stormy eyes, hers razor-thin, gold-bright within the dark circles that always bruise them. Sleep, when everything in her body is begging for adrenaline, for the rush of battle, for an exertion that would at last help her forget the dull pain of torn muscle, silence the ceaseless onslaught of thoughts that overcomes her when she finds herself away from the wilds as if in dormancy. Yes, she wants to run, to fight, to feel her heart beat furiously, to feel her blood boil. 

She lays down behind him on the bed with a deep exhale that betrays her irritation as their fingers entwine, her strong arm wrapped about his shoulder. Her own aches terribly where the wretched coyote-thing had bitten her, hot with the remnants of infection. The slavering bites of these scavengers, hellish beasts bloated with the decayed flesh of men, count among those she fears most, and for good reason. In their bloodlust, gnolls go as far as to shatter their own jaws and beaks on the bones of their prey, and though being torn apart by the pack was a fate worse than death, rare survivors fared little better, as the wounds festered with a terrifying quickness. Though the pack had been small, the creatures still in the infancy of their loathsome curse, still one had managed to get its jaws around her shoulder. It was only through sheer instinct that she turned in time for that wicked maw not to close on her neck. She curses these monsters. She curses herself. She curses the local lord, too, for good measure, that equally bloated and greedy man that still wouldn’t give them their due.

Absentmindedly, she rests her head against the fisherman’s back, huffing in displeasure. Sam is right. She will need rest if she does not want the rot to take hold, rest and the attentions of a proper physician. There would be no such luxuries on the road where she longs to return. And so, reluctantly, she will do as he says. Her warm breathing at the nape of his neck slows as he kisses the palm of her now soot-stained hand. “Fine.” Alizebeth’s voice is sadly resolute, quiet as she shifts just enough to look at their entwined digits, at his lithe and skillful hands. She’ll stay in their room, in bed, an arm around him, face buried in the crook of his neck. Because she trusts that he’ll take care of everything. Because it’s him, asking. 

“Don’t think I can sleep. But I’ll stay here.” As long as you’re with me. She doesn’t say it. He must know that she does this for him. For whom else would she fight her very nature and lay down, obedient and vulnerable, and let herself be tended to? Another sigh escapes the hunter as she nuzzles Sam’s blonde hair. She is all scolded dog, all sad whines and reluctant indolence. But despite it all, she realizes - despite her aching for battle, despite her pain, despite her impatience - she is happy. Happy to be taken care of so gently, so tenderly, to be loved in a way she had long thought impossible. Happy to just be, in this small moment, with no one else but him, to breathe in his scent and feel his body, hold his hands. She finds that where once solitude had been her greatest solace, now being separated from him would tear at her more readily than any gnoll-beast’s fangs. She loves him, so much that it makes her afraid. Her scarred hand squeezes around his’. Where she has cursed every god, now she prays: let this moment never end. For this, for him, the wilds can wait.

“Tell me a story. Anything, just... stay a while longer.” Her lips brush against the tender skin below Sam's ear as she cranes her neck, leaning into him. “Please.”

[izar-tarazed]

✨

Send ✨for Izar to assign your muse a constellation and read their fate from the stars As well as she knows her craft—for after all, astrology is a kind of craft—, as much routine as she has by now with the essential steps of determining someone’s constellation before refining it all as she reads the fate proper… her results still surprise her.

And more so now.

It has taken Izar unusually long to get a hold of whatever the stars have in store for Sam. She has looked into a variety of star maps from different traditions, as she often does when it seems due; in his case, knowing his ancestry, she has gone through the meager notes she has gathered on Albinauric cosmovision, but there is little mention of the night sky in there.

And it’s not that her readings have been without result; it’s just… unusual.

She still seems a little bewildered when she sits down with Sam and unrolls her map, a wealth of loose pages and notes gathered within the scroll. There is the slightest furrow to her brow.

‟You see, there are many ways to look at the night sky,” she says, straightening paper and trying her best to sort the twirl of scribbled notes. ‟To focus on the stars is the most obvious, of course: look at what’s there, connect the dots with imaginary lines, spot figures and purpose between the pale silver spots. That’s how most constellations come to be. But there are some that are, well, the other way around. There’s patterns to be found in the absence of stars. The darkness, too, tells its tales. I’ve found your constellation to be one of these: the Hook. Not easy to see if you don’t know what you’re looking for.

But you’d find it to the east, one of those constellations that seem particularly far from us; and observing it over the course of the night, you’d see it move closer to the horizon, as if to dip into the sea. There are stories of old—as there usually are—of this Hook made of darkness that offers no guidance, and holds nobody’s lodestar within its silhouette. Some say it was left there after a battle so ancient that no one even remembers what entities might have fought, and for what purpose: discarded and forgotten. A battle, or a hunt. But others claim it is still in use. That it sinks down into the salty waves every time night comes to a close, and pulls forth the sun, piercing into it with the pointy end to retrieve it from beyond.

This, they say, is the reason why sunrise is gold mingled with hues of red: the sun bleeds a little when it’s pierced by the hook; it fights back as it’s pulled up, some days more than others.

…Of course, sunsets are red as well. But, erm… that is another story and shall be told another time.”

She pauses, tracing the form of the dark constellation with her fingertip, lost in thought for a moment.

‟Now what does the Hook mean, lightless, distant on the horizon, often overlooked among the stars and their light? We might think that without light, it serves no purpose. That it’s merely reminiscent of a long forgotten hunt where it failed to take hold in whatever beast it was aimed up. But no—there is purpose. Painful and piercing as it may be, but it pulls up the sun every day. Maybe this is what it was left for there. Maybe the sun is the ancient beast it was meant not to slay, but to snag from the darkness dawn after dawn? Maybe, of course, it isn’t even about pulling up the sun, but trying to hold it down? To make it bleed; to carve into its light and essence and turn gold to red for whatever reason? To slay it after all, always failing, and always trying again?

The Hook—both tool and weapon, depending on the hands wielding it—is about the impact and ambiguity of our actions and goals. It might bring the daylight, but it still hurts it; or it might manage to hook into the sun, and wound it, but the sun will still go up. It’s about making a difference from out of the shadows. I could slip in, of course, how it’s about persistence and all—alone, overlooked and so distant, the Hook is still there, unceasing in its efforts—, but that is a trait that many constellations share, whether they’re made of stars or of darkness. This is not what sets the Hook apart from them.

It’s about being what it is; being the way it is; a little crooked, not perfect in any way, but there, maybe spitefully so. Maybe painfully so. No mighty weapon; no rich tapestry of legend to envelop it. Just a hook, but fierce enough to sink into the sun, and spill blood for the world to see, remaining invisible in the process. I’ve seen you wield your fate like this hook, and you’ll continue to do so. You might hurt. They might hurt. Blood and sunlight; you can cause it both with what you have at your disposal, not regardless of who you are, but because of it.”

[hearthtales]

((for maude & arthur))

sleep: how many hours a night does my muse sleep? do they take naps? how restful is their sleep? do they experience nightmare? if so, how often? 

stress: does my muse handle stress well? what is a surefire sign for others to tell that they’ve become stressed? how does stress affect them mentally / physically? 

༄ all about health

sleep: how many hours a night does my muse sleep? do they take naps? how restful is their sleep? do they experience nightmares? if so, how often? 

maude — oh gosh, it depends on the night. typically i’d say she gets about six to seven hours of sleep, but she gets bad overthinking nights about once a week where she only sleeps a few hours. if you see maude napping, it’s not on purpose — it’s because she couldn’t stay awake any longer. her sleep is fairly restful on the nights she doesn’t have nightmares and when feld leaves her dreams alone. she gets nightmares about once a week as well, sometimes more often if life has been especially stressful.

arthur — arthur is very much an “early to sleep, early to rise” type person. ever since the incident where he almost died, he doesn’t need much sleep to feel rested, but he still tries to get at least eight hours each night to feel more normal. his sleep is very still and quiet and restful (aside from the occasional soft snoring). he never takes naps. if he dreams or has nightmares, he rarely remembers them. dreams for arthur are fuzzy, cold, fragmented things.

stress: does my muse handle stress well? what is a surefire sign for others to tell that they’ve become stressed? how does stress affect them mentally / physically? 

maude — maude is excellent to have in short-term crises; she’s very good at keeping level-headed. long-term stress takes a bigger toll on her, especially the stress related to her contract with feld. when she is stressed, she stress-cleans and overworks herself in general more (her hands get more reddened and cracked as a result). her ocd flares. she has more trouble sleeping. she gets bad headaches. she gets quieter, blunter, and more irritable around others. flickers in nearby flames (such as candle flames or the fire in a hearth) can also signal her stress.

arthur — arthur is almost scarily good at handling stress. he keeps outwardly calm regardless of how bad things get. it is extremely difficult to visibly upset him. inwardly, stress feels more like a cold numbness to him. his near-death incident numbed his emotions to a degree, including his anxiety. if one is observant enough, they might notice he gets quieter during stressful times, more prone to distracting himself by whittling and other chores in the woods when he’s not caring for his loved ones. the scar on his chest sometimes aches more when he’s stressed as well.

[luckyberet]

🌺 send this to ten muns you think are wonderful!! 🌺

Thank you so much! You too are wonderful! Always so kind and positive in messages, brightens my day! Been following you for ages and always joy to see you around. Excited for our ideas for ER threads!

[swordluck]

❛   patch .   help  my  muse  patch  up  a  wound . ❛   dressed .   help  my  muse  put  on  an  article  of  clothing . ❛   hand .   hold  out  a  hand  for  my  muse  to  take .

Stupid, stupid girl.

And the boy was no better. A fool, wasting his breath on this fruitless exercise. Anri did not scream but rather she panted, breath seizing in her throat, each gasp keeping her tethered to consciousness. From her, only soft moans, tremulous as dove-song.

Blood – so much blood. It spilled down her arm, dripping from her elbow in a river running syrupy and hot. Samuel knelt beside her, solid and steady, a splutter of curses escaping him, low and rough. He muttered as though she had merely trod mud onto his carpet, as if pretending this was nothing more than a scratch could make it so.

Stupid girl. Mistake upon mistake, laid brick by brick upon a bow-backed foundation. A skirmish – hardly a battle – save for the way her sword had been knocked clean from her grip. Save for the instinct that raised her hand aloft to catch the next blow.

The axe had met the soft webbing between her middle and ring fingers, split them apart, cleaved through her hand, shattered her wrist, before lodging somewhere between radius and ulna – ivory sisters now spread wide like a disjointed wishbone.

Instant pain. A flash of white-hot agony. Anri had vomited. Acid bile, barely a memory of her last meal, had sprayed through the slats of her visor.

Samuel said something, but she couldn’t hear him over the heartbeat thundering in her ears, over the dizzying rush of adrenaline that left her empty stomach roiling. Her horror-wide gaze was fixed on the wreckage of her hand, on the way her unresponsive fingers hung and trembled like upturned dandelion roots.

The limb was a ruin, a mangle of blood and bone. Samuel wrapped it hurriedly, his hands rough but careful as he bound it in the torn fabric of her surcoat. Blue – Astoran blue – immediately turned dark and sodden with crimson. Anri didn’t remember sitting down, but there she was, nestled among the roots of a stooped tree. Nor did she recall him pulling free her helm, though it lay discarded in the grass, her face exposed, deshelled.

She cradled her hand instinctively, though the pain had dulled to a relentless throb, a hammer blow striking in time with her pulse. Blood loss, resignation and exhaustion each mercifully numbed the razor edges of her suffering.

Samuel crouched before her then, his face shadowed beneath streaks of grime and ash. Her trauma-dark eyes drifted from him back to the carnage, to the useless, quivering fingers. Somewhere behind them, her sword lay abandoned, half-swallowed by mud. The memory of the axe, descending toward her raised hand, seared itself into her mind, looping endlessly. She hadn’t screamed then, but now an animal wail threatened to rise in her throat.

Anri swallowed it down.

“I cannot hope to hold a sword like this,” she murmured wretchedly.

Her words were faraway, even to her own ears. A ghost’s lament, dulled and distorted. Still she was stuck, the memory replaying, replaying, replaying until it lost its colour, stained by the grey mist that clouded the edges of her vision.

Anri finally looked at him, her eyes dull, the usual light of determination extinguished. Samuel’s mouth was moving beneath his cowl, but she couldn’t make out the words. Then he stood, offering his hand. His perfectly clever and functional fingers, smudged with her blood, reached toward her – steady, resolute.

Anri stared at it for a long moment, then shook her head, now shivering so violently that her teeth chattered.

“N–No.”

His brow furrowed, his shadowed eyes and shrouded face unreadable, but his hand didn’t lower.

“L-Leave me your knife, good sir – please – and take a walk,” she said, her voice thin, weak as water.

Let her stay here. Let her slip into a quiet, slumberous death beneath the tree’s shade. She would poke holes in blood-ripe places and fade with the light. She would return soon enough, shaking, crying, choking on ash and grave dirt. Physically whole, missing only some intangible piece – a face, a name, a memory, the absence rough at its edges, raw as an empty tooth socket.

She would do what needed to be done. She would find him again.

Or she wouldn’t.

[zcrayas]

❝ is something wrong? ❞ far be it for the roaming perfumer to pry too deeply into the affairs of the volcano manor, doubly so when said affairs belong to one of the two ladies that manage the whole thing. yet rya hasn't said much of anything today, not even while watching him brew aromatics and other potent tonics in the small space he's been alotted for his services to the recusants. definitely more than a passing strange, that. crow tilts his head towards her consideringly, grey eyes narrowed with something that might just be concern as he rasps. ❝ not like ya. seemed a mouse, quiet as. what's on ya mind. ❞

BLOOD AND DARKNESS || @fishermcn

" Oh..." the presence snaps the young woman out of deep labyrinths of her thoughts. Her gaze turns towards his voice, but the gaze of the green eyes seems almost.. empty. Moving as if searching a spot to focus.

His conclusion would be correct: Rya had always been there, hosting the champions and visitors of the manor - almost as if afraid of missing out of interaction.

Now, she had withdrawn from others to far quieter corner, accompanied by her own silence. How tired she must seem right now, and still trying to wear her best smile as if to say: 'don't worry about me'.

But that smile is far smaller, than her genuine one.

To confirm his words, she sighs with a nod. No, she isn't feeling well even if it was only apparent in her current demeanor. Yet, it wasn't anything strange or extraordinary. To Rya.

" You have sharp eyes." She comments with another small smile, shaking her head slightly. " I am not feeling too well... Forgive me for concerning you. This happens from time to time... ever since I was born I have these passing moments I feel the World gets blurry... But I assure you. It lasts a mere week and then, I will be just fine. "

[schattenmagier]

// gif us ;y

[ Gif of our muses! // Accepting! ]

[hawksblooded]

👤+ Stenvarr?

↣ A HUNTER'S THOUGHTS.

SHE’S NOT SURE JUST why they’re on the topic, why she’s thinking about him. Maybe it’s that she feels comfortable, sat in the hay of the tavern’s stable where they’ve taken refuge from the rain. Maybe it’s that she’s on her fifth drink of watered-down but not impotent grog, procured from a bandit’s hideout they’ve raided days before. They’re indulging in the last of the supply, now that they’re relatively safe, relatively warm. Horses placidly wait in their stalls, the smell nostalgic. Stenvarr was always the better rider.

“I’m not sure why I followed him,” she says, placing the dusky bottle safely down between the bales they're using as seats. “Then again, what else could I have done? I had nothing but some ratty clothes and the axe I’d just used to save my own skin. Suppose I had that, too. Skin and bones.” Alizebeth looks at her side, where the dreaded weapon still hangs. It’s a strange memento, she supposes, but it’s not her place to question where memory chooses to lay. “He was quiet. Not just at the moment, I mean. He was a quiet man. There were entire days where he wouldn’t talk. Some where we’d exchange but a few words. But I always listened. Because whatever he said, he meant it.”

She takes another swig of grog, makes a face. “This shite never gets any better, does it? Hah.” The hunter breathes in the acrid smell of the stable, looks out into the pouring rain. “Didn’t talk about feelings much, Stenvarr. One time, I… I asked him if I was going to have to kill him, too. I was just a child, you know? I asked stupid questions all the time. He usually just groaned, or didn’t answer. But after the usual silence, he put his big hand on my shoulder - like a bear’s paw it was, full of scars, his last two digits missing - and he told me, ‘If it happens, Alizebeth, you’ll do what needs to be done.’ “

She’s silent for a moment. She glances at Soot, waits for him to speak, but he only listens, bottle of bad grog in hand. You’re drunk, she thinks to herself. His eyes have a strange softness in them. It makes her want to keep talking.

“Stenvarr doesn’t believe in anything except being prepared. For every contingency, every possible variation of events. Doesn’t believe in luck, or talent, or the gods. Not spirits, either, not the way most people understand them to be. Of course, he knows they’re real, but he doesn’t believe in the strange things we say about them. About their powers, and the like. He believes in what he sees. And he saw something in me. He said that’s why he kept me by his side, instead of pawning me off to some orphanage. And I thank him for it, even on the hard days.”

“I saw him last a year ago, I think. We hadn’t hunted together in years by then. He’d raised me to be the best Hawksblood I could be, and we went our separate ways. Always preferred it like that. Nothing more I can show you, he’d said. But that time…” Something heavy chokes her heart, her voice hoarse, and not just from the alcohol. “He hugged me. Had never done that before. He was always worried, you know. I think part of him never wanted me to care for him, knowing the kind of lives we lead. But that time, he said, ‘I’m proud of you’. It… scared me. Like he knew something I didn’t.”

“No use dwelling on it, I suppose,” she empties her bottle, shakes it with reluctant disappointment.

“I don’t know if I could have done it. Killed him. He’s like a father to me.”

[through-fire-and-flame]

[ Jesus CHRIST Bree-eye!! Holy SHIT Sam!! ]

[hearthtales]

B) What inspired you to create them? For Feldmire!

༄ uncommon questions

!!! firstly, i’m a big fan of dream creatures who can slip into dreams and cause all sorts of nonsense in there. feldmire was inspired by dream-eaters like the baku, as well as equine shapeshifters like the púca who enjoy causing mischief. i took inspiration from slippery fae creatures in general who make sketchy deals and seek amusement and self-satisfaction above all else. i honestly don’t remember whether feld came first or maude came first, but i also wanted a creature who Tempts and Tricks to be one of the main forces of conflict and chaos in the oak haven story. its contract with maude is the sole reason that both bran and arthur are alive and living at the inn, but this deal required a serious cost in return.