#i need a tag for the two of them
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help I've fallen and i can't get up (i nearly made myself cry working on in the dirt because i thought too hard about a post-canon house that's grown used to showing softness from loving and taking care of wilson, kissing thirteen very softly on the forehead after supporting her through a breakdown)
#this is for a very niche audience aka me and maybe like one other person. maybe two#even.#writing to try and even myself out after yesterday before work tomorrow and oooop the big emotions are still there#in the dirt#remy thirteen hadley#greg house#i need a tag for the two of them#maybe...#the prodigal daughter
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I was going to come here and ask if this was stupid, but honestly I like it even if it is, so I'm keeping it either way. XD But I still want to talk about it, and am curious if it has the right effect, so:
(And since it's an Oblivion snippet: @druidx @babyblueetbaemonster @inkysqueed )
I always use italics to indicate onomatopoeia, like here:
Click, click, click, snap! Lecrinn paused. Pulling the pick out and holding it up, she grimaced as it was only half of it. “Uh,” she turned to the others, nervous, “would any of you have a lockpick?”
So a few lines later I used it in part of a word to evoke the sound:
Reptilious sneered. “Criminal only brought one pick?” “You try hiding picks in your mouth while getting arrested!” She threw it at him, it tinking against the floor somewhere between them.
#my writing#writing#writeblr#fanfiction#oblivion fanfiction#oblivion#the elder scrolls#tes#tes oc#lecrinn#reptilious#i need a tag for the two of them#i love their enemies to siblings dynamic XD#hok party
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okay listen. i know there's already one video about The Fucking Creep out there. but i NEED to share one of my favourite Creep Moments.
#buckshot roulette#hollowtones#kuueater#shinigamieater#spark talks about nothing of relevance#now that's what I call shitposting#stream is kuu's VOD of it on youtube (tumblr hates links). go watch The Creep in action#dollip daze#dollip#lynn#<- i would tag these two properly but i can't find channel sources. wailing crying etc#but this will find it's audience. i believe.#we NEED creep to be canon lore in buckshot. just like in the back.#people would rather face dealer than creep so dealer just lets them chill in the basement 👍
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Sabotage
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#the getaway skiff#there's a story behind every detail#I need to write them going on adventures I think#trafalgar law#op bepo#op penguin#op shachi#heart pirates#little heart pirates#<- tag in case I make more of them#I shamelessly traced the damn boat from a random photo I found so don't get too impressed by my boat-drawing skills#I have none#I stole the boat and then spent two days imagining these little guys repairing and decorating it and doing more crimes with it#the FUG-U#one piece
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i cant get them out of my head
#dan da dan#dandadan#okarun#ken takakura#ken dandadan#momo ayase#momokarun#fanart#dan da dan fanart#okarun fanart#momo fanart#momo ayase fanart#sketch#sketches#pose practice#art#digital art#artists on tumblr#my art#procreate#thats enough serious tags#i fucking love these two#i would kill for them#i tried not to put too much time into these and keep them quick pose studies#i havent done much ship art#but thats about to change#theyre just so silly#their relationship means so much to me#i need to draw these mfs kissing already
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the fritter (frin critter)
#inspo struck right after posting the last two. some kind of a hermit crab. a snail#they think they look all cool and mysterious under their safety shelter but if u remove it they're a disastrous puffball of uncombed fur#the hat is not accurate to an adult human btw. i tried to put them in a full size hat and they were lost forever. this is a child sized hat#they need to swap out for bigger hats as they grow#MY FRIENDS WROTE AND DREW SO MUCH FOR THE FRITTER I HOPE THEY CAN REBLOG AND ADD BC THEYRE SO GOOD <3#we started making a whole au about critter species in the wild and how they interact and survive. very fascinating.#i need to collect all the worldbuilding into one place eventually. rn all i'll say is.. overworked odile petsmart employee (tealgoat's idea#isat critters#isat#in stars and time#isat siffrin#my art#a6se/twohats (this tag only) implication then is that loop is bald i guess aksdks. loop = wild shorthair. fritter = domestic longhair.
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i heart these rivals so much. maybe they'll kill each other. maybe they'll kiss. maybe they'll make ou
#ghost's doodles#lego monkie kid#lmk#shadowpeach#lmk sun wukong#lmk macaque#sun wukong#six eared macaque#love how these two show how different my art tends to be. either wholesome cute stuff or Absolute shitposts#i need them to do stuff to each other Really bad you guys have no idea#on another note for those who read these tags: i am making shadowpeach plushies#who knows how long those will take... but im sure i can get everything patterned right before they come in after new years#im so freaking excited!!!!#merry christmas btw. shadowpeach fans get a tasty treat lol#also the second shadowpeach was in ref to a twit trend going around. it got 2k+ likes..................
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FINALLY, AFTER A TON OF SKETCHES and procastinating
My designs of Apollo and Hermes are finally complete!! Their designs were highly inspired by Wolfythewitch, Aniflamma ans Gigizets (i don't wanna ping them for this hajsva) and I am VERY proud of them, i didn't imagine myself to make designs like these and woah! I actually did manage to make banger designs!! :DDD
#artists on tumblr#art#digital art#artwork#epic the musical#character design#apollo#apollo epic the musical#Hermes#hermes epic the musical#I would write a ton in my tags but#I probably would just repeat my thoughts from past posts about these designs HSKSBDKBDE#oh forgot one tag#character designs#more actually-#apollo design#hermes design#there we go! Got all of them lok#Now that i am done with these TWO- It's time to work on Poseidon#Zeus and Ares!!#AND ALSO AELOUS.... BOY DO I NEED TO FINALIZE HER DESIGN.#and remake ody and telemachus...#AAAAAUAGHHHHHSVBS
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When your identity issues collide with your feelings of being unwanted ;p
Oops! Loops angst /personal vent!
Only doodle cuz. eepy.
#no sketch#straight from brain to paper#cuz eepy#in stars and time#isat#isat loop#isat siffrin#isat two hats#it's more-so implied than anything buuuut. kinda important for context imo??#cuz y'know. Not Their family#they already have a Siffrin so there's no need for Them#yk yk#id tag the rest of the party but like.... i barely drew thems......... idk idk i feel like there's not enough of them to tag em yk???#i was originally gonna color this and shit tbh i just. ugh. tired mann i don't wanna do all thatt#maybe i will in the future. probably not but. maybe.#vent#vent art#vent post#my art#art tag
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goro picks up a clingy nyakiren
#akeshu#i guess?? in a way ????#p5r#persona#art tag#guys it's been a WEEK tm#needed something to be cute and silly#i dont know the first thing about keeping a cat#also i think this is how my akiren acts anyway cat or not#i think akechi would take very good care of his new kitty#instantly reads up on cat care and soon his place is filled with cat toys and goods#takes pride in keeping his feline friend well brushed and clean#and what does he get in return? fur all over his clothes#nyakiren probs starts off with some attachment issues#and being very afraid of water (rain association)#but gradually overcomes his fears after gowo gives him some calm and loving baths#also i dont know when or where i started giving akiren his ahoge he doesnt officially have one ??#what a greedy man he even keeps it as a cat#also ?? happy 1 year anniversary to me finishing p5r#did not expect these two to take over my brain#but here we are i guess#they're basically just two OCs at this point#but in my head there's also a canon version of them and a bad end version :3c#wow my head is literally full of akeshus... three of them...
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Waltz
#isat#isat odile#isat loop#in stars and time#This is just vibe based - but odile looping vibe based!#Also#loopdile#because why not - sure#honestly the isat fandom tendacy to tag on a slopping curve of 'we ship it but that can mean WILDLY different things depending on context'#very much amuses me - that's been how i write ships for years! nice to not need to overthink tagging shit for once lol#cus lord knows that i never know if a ship is romantic or if they're just bloody weird about each other#These two WILL have tasted each others blood before too long#and DEFINITELY murdered the other in cold blood at least once#sure Odile isn't more fucked up then siffrin#but loop is cursed dealing with someone that they cannot predict the moves of and so has no choice but to get more invovled#The bones in loops hand are CREAKING right now#and yes#loop is forming the scissor sign#they are both so normal i love them your honor#my art
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sekuuti and akestur, deities of the rau-kakse and crakam
LONG ASS CREATION/ORIGIN STORY OF THE RAU KAKSE AND CRAKAM HERE
the sun and moon both have important roles in northern basilisk religion, and are interpreted as two deities: sekuuti (sun) and akestur (moon).
both seen as patron deities of their respective people (rau-kakse aka basilisks and crakam aka harpies). their eggs were originally stars in the sky that fell and hatched in the world below.
at first, there was only pure spirit. something known as "tukaarti" (which is an unconscious but all powerful driver of all things) - the "natural force", arose, and began create shapes from this spirit, polarities, warmth, energy eventually the forces shaped this spirit into The World, which was barren at first, amorphous, but this shaped energy began to solidify, first into mountains, then into lakes, rivers, flora etc etc. but the water did not stay liquid long for after the formation of these things, and a brief flourishing period, the World cooled down, and fell under a great winter, as it had no sun. the sky is basically where tukaarti resides in its rawest form still, and stars are "concerntrations" of it, and the only light source. the stars began to fall eventually on occasion into the world, and that would spawn Creatures. early on when the world was still fresh after this was when the eggs of sekuuti and akestur fell, they were among the last creatures to fall onto the world. prior to them similar animals had hatched from other eggs, but they all perished trying to survive on their own.
both sekuuti and akestur were lonely and struggled on their own - persecuted by hostile ancestors of other creatures. not only was it difficult, most of all, it was lonely.
sekuuti was so lonely that she desparately wanted children, but as she was the only one of her kind she prayed to tukaarti for a way to achieve that company she desired. she was heard, and granted the ability to shapeshift to any creature that she found. this also was something tukaarti needed, as it lacked a way for spirit to go from the World back to tukaarti, and by "collecting" bodies to learn as forms, sekuuti would also return their spirit to tukaarti. with this ability, she resorted to courting different birds that she transformed into and bearing their young. and she did successfully hatch them. her children would not only inherit a lot of her features and shapeshifting ability, but they also inherited the plumage and some other traits from their other parents, and she loved them all the same. this also means that according to rauk-kaksian lore sekuuti "has no comparison" and doesnt look like an extant bird in particular, but interpretations vary. these children were the first "rau-kakse". the most important established trait of her depictions though is that it seemed that the glow from her egg ("star") never faded, and her plumage glowed strongly and brilliantly.
akestur, meanwhile, sought company with birds in a different way. he found flocks of corvids, flocks of nightjars, and found certain comfort with them. but he was frustrated with the fact that they could not communicate, he prayed for the ability to "hold a conversation" with his new contemporaries. and the tukaarti granted him his wish - the flocks that he had become familiar with were granted a blessing, but with that blessing, they also changed in morphology - they became harpies (crakam), and gained sapience. he was reminded, however, that he had gotten this wish without cost - and that the forces counted on him to do what they wished in return if they so needed it. they only cryptically let him know to "not keep his eyes off of the flame". akestur is thought to have looked like a harpy slightly, but with a different face, black as night, but with brilliant glowing white eyes.
again, the world during this time was pretty barren and harsh due to an eternal winter, as they had no sun. sekuuti, while having found comfort in her kin now, was unhappy with the state of affairs - especially as many young would die in the harsh conditions. akestur, too, hated seeing his new contemporaries suffer.
the two groups would meet one day, sekuuti and akestur leading them. the two were fascinated by one another - sekuuti brought warmth to akestur and the crakam, while akestur brought a certain darkness, that while somewhat discomforting at first, also shrouded both groups from other hostile creatures, theyd come to find out. there was safety in his darkness. sekuuti and akestur grew very close and became partners (according to most legends).
sekuuti wanted to change the state of the world and set her eyes upon the sky, wanting to become a sun and bring warmth to all and end the eternal winter. akestur was hesitant, for he did not want to lose her, and her children needed her. when seeking the guidance of tukaarti - they discouraged her from it, urged her to stay and perform her duty as a bringer of spirit from corpses of this plane back to tukaarti. but she was insistent, and one day, decided to simply go for it. she flew so fast, with such force, that she caught flame, but her will was so strong that it didnt bother her and she became one with the flames eating her as she flew up to the sky.
akestur was too late, and only realised she was gone once she had lit up the sky. betrayed, upset, but most of all - realising that he had failed tukaarti. he had let his eyes off his flame. as a punishment, tukaarti undid the blessing it had granted his people for half of them, leaving half of them as regular birds again.
sekuuti lighting up the world had done something - it had taken away the eternal winter, but the problem was - sekuuti had nothing to temper her up there. the world was beset by a devastating drought with no end in sight. akestur, trying to lead his people as well as the basilisks, then realised what he had to do.
before leaving his people, he urged them "to not take their eyes off the flames", meaning the basilisks in this case, and then, he also set off for the sky. instead of setting ablaze, his eyes seemed to burst with the pressure of the speed of his flight, engulfing him in a cold, bright light. once he joined sekuuti in the sky - the heat was finally tempered.
however, sekuuti, both overwhelmed with love but also guilt and shame over abandoning akestur, fled him. but he, loyal and also overwhelmed with love, began to follow her. and basically, the day/night cycle is their eternal chase after one another - and on occasion, they meet, during eclipses :,) perhaps they also realised that their chase is what brings the world balance. and perhaps its a bit of a punishment from tuukarti for disobeying it.
#worldbuilding#lore#fantasy#speculative biology#speculative fantasy#speculative zoology#pareidolia tag#BTW FOR ANY ASKS hi guys again hi i will likely answer Later but yes. i have been pondering this sorry#pondering actually bcs i pondered a certain rau-kaksian tradition that i felt needed a connection to a greater creation story#these two are the “main” deities of both crakam and rau-kakse#but crakam also worship other different deities that can be highly local#while rau-kakse may worship some of them but mainly are most dedicated to these two. But it may vary ofc#rau-kakse#crakam#realising i should actually start making tags for the species and culture stuff so. LOL
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I want to fly with you on dragonback, see the great wonders across the Narrow Sea and eat only cake.
Alicent Hightower & Rhaenyra Targaryen in House of the Dragon 'The Heirs Of The Dragon' | 1.01
#rhaenicent#alicent hightower#rhaenyra targaryen#house of the dragon#hotd#hotdedit#alicenthightoweredit#rhaenyratargaryenedit#rhaenicentedit#tvedit#usermaguire#usermalcfoy#userzaynab#userellenberent#tuserlivia#rhaenicentdaily#alicenthightowerdaily#rhaenyratargaryencentral#gameofthronesdaily#my gifs***#posting way too much but these two have me in a vice grip rn#s1 rhaenicent my beloved#<- this could be a new tag I'll use for my gifs of them#this was just a glimpse of what they could have been#the support they gave each other when one of them needed it#the comfort and joy that they could bring out of each other with such ease oh my god#i just miss them man </3</3</3#this is like the only way i can provide my own analysis lol#long ass tags
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r we phuckin w the phaltar
#i took it down during a menty b a week or two ago and then was like wait . i can move it to the weird alcove on the other side of the room#need stronger wall hooks for the stuff i wanna hang up and will probs rearrange this but it’s past 12am i need to sit Down my joints r MAD#anyway phrine i missed u… i should make a tag for it actually#phaltar#phrine#?#who know . not me#this is not phanart but it IS art . like an art instillation#also purely ironic i am obsessed w them but not enough to do this for any reason other than the bit#started bc i put up the framed poster and had my kitchen table set up like an altar bc religious trauma-#-means my house is full of jesus memorabilia and it’s a funny reclamation for me bc yknow. pastors child and all that#anyway then was like wait i have so much random dnp shit i have the opportunity to do smth hilarious#blabble#dnp#dan and phil#daniel howell#dan howell#amazingphil#phil lester#phan#edited to say phuckin thanks to @im-a-little-kit bc it was midnight and i was braindead amd forgor#thank u for reminder#this is “we phuckin on the phed?🤨’ pt 2#……. wait what if i hang up the phlanket like a phlag above it
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Thinking of G'raha Tia, only 24 years old and simultaneously beyond and behind his peers because of how the archon accepted the fate of locking himself away in the Crystal Tower. Thinking of him, with the optimism of a 24yo and the attention span of a 24yo and the life goals of a 24yo who just realized that the world is a lot bigger than all the books he studied and slept on could ever describe. Thinking of him, telling his new friends and his old friends and his scared inner self that he's not going to die, that he's just going to sleep, knowing full well that he will likely never wake up.
Thinking of G'raha Tia, only 124 waking years old and carrying the memories of people that never lived because of what he did after waking in the Crystal Tower. Thinking of him, with a heart shattered by experiences and with the careful plotting that comes from experiences and with a pure self-destructive goal forged by those experiences who just realized that he is going to have to live in a world that never was but is now and is greater than all his hopes and fears ever conspired to put together. Thinking of him, telling his old friends and his new friends and the one person that he is scared of losing that he is going to be okay, that he is going to not sleep on life, knowing that this is the world he was ready to die for, knowing that he will likely never discover everything about it but is ready to die trying.
Thinking of that moment when G'raha Tia the 24yo meets G'raha Tia the 124yo in the landscape of their unifying mind. Thinking of them, when the life goals of a 24yo collides with the life goals of a 124yo and how the century of experiences between them makes them completely separate people. Thinking of them, telling his younger self that the ambition was fulfilled and it's time to wake up, telling his older self that there is still ambition more and the dream has just begun, telling each other that this is not a type of death but just a change and both of them knowing full well that they are going to die to each other so that G'raha Tia may yet live for one more adventure with their friend.
Thinking of G'raha Tia and that moment of ultimate surrender of self to self.
Thinking.
#ffxiv#G'raha Tia#Endwalker Spoilers#Endwalker#It's been two years but some people just started playing and I don't want to spoil this for them so let me know if I need to add other tags#ffxiv spoilers#This is a G'raha Tia Appreciation Post.#This is an allegory of the self.#Shadowbringers#Shadowbringers Spoilers
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It is no hardship, Emmrich tells himself, to wear his face. It is his, after all. The one he was born with, the one that grew and shifted under his own patient gaze, seen in puddles, in mirrors, in the glass of a carriage window as he smoothed down his hair with the flat of his palm. A face he had stared at for far too long that first time he shaved, and again a few years later when he invited that very pretty boy out for a promenade and wanted, with all the force of a young man’s vanity, to be just as pretty himself—no hair astray, the kohl at his lower lids an almost imperceptible shadow, the perfume at his neck a whisper of carelessness, though in truth, nothing had ever been more deliberate.
For a decade now, they have called him distinguished. Before that, they called him handsome. He knows his face, likes his face. Its summoning should be no trouble at all; especially now, especially like this, stripped down to something more elemental, all ivory angles and nothing more. But Rook is uneasy. She does not say so—she is all sorry, shit, don’t mind me, fuck, fuck, I’ll get used to it, I’ll get used to it—but she is not made for the sight of bone in the dark when she wakes abruptly. He has had years to come to terms with the unmaking of his flesh. She has not.
So he does not miss his face, not really. But Rook does. And for Rook, he will pretend.
No, he tells himself again, he does not mind. He does not.
Lichdom, as he had once explained to her, sanded down most of his senses. Blunted them, rubbed them smooth. But in their place, others have surfaced. Senses without names, without proper edges, ones that slip through language like smoke through a cracked door. He cannot smell the perfume she wears, though he knows it is dreadful, some sticky, saccharine thing she bought in Treviso with Lucanis and spilled all over her shirt. But he can see her pleasure when she presses a little figurine into his palm, triumphant and insistent. This one, she affirms, is so much prettier than the first, and most importantly, not haunted.
He watches her giddiness churn inside her, thick and writhing. It is purple, inexplicably. It loops and knots, wriggling sideways, swelling through her veins, a restless thing. It coils, slippery, around her heart before pouring from her mouth when she speaks. When she presses her lips to what passes for his cheek, he thinks he can taste it. Or something like tasting. As if she had chewed it to a pulp, crushed it between her molars, worked it down to something fibrous and wet and pressed it into him, like carrion slipped between teeth, offered as a gift.
He swallows it, slow.
Perhaps this is what purple has always tasted like.
There are other things. Other feelings. They arrive misshapen, crawling over the edges of his thoughts, curious, pestering, impossible to ignore. They perplex him. They amuse him. And sometimes—sometimes—he wishes he felt nothing at all.
Like when she cuts herself, and he watches the blood spill, a slow, indifferent line along the curve of her arm. But it is not blood, not in the dull, medical sense. Not something as pedestrian as iron and salt. It is a ribbon, impossibly red, and he can see the rest of it coiled inside her, packed neatly away, waiting to be tugged. How much could he pull free before she wavers, before her lips lose their color, before the bright, stubborn thing inside her gutters out?
He heals her arm. Does not look at her when he does it. Says nothing of consequence.
But he wants to take that ribbon and wind it around her wrist, knot it, twist it, pull it so tight that it ceases to be a ribbon at all. Flesh yielding to pressure, pressure forcing permanence. A bracelet of skin. A smooth, bloodless seam. A correction.
Rook thanks him. A glance, a nod—already half-gone as she turns toward Rivain. There are things to be done there for her, and he cannot stray from the Necropolis for long. What things, exactly, she does not say, but he knows their shape well enough: dragons, impulse, the peculiar magnetism of disaster. She has always been like this, drawn to the spectacularly unwise with the certainty of a moth misjudging distance.
He can no longer follow.
She will return. He knows this. And yet, if his hands still possessed the capacity for tremor, he suspects they would betray him now.
"I love you, I love you, I love you," she sings, a careless, looping refrain, a child’s chant repurposed for a woman who has never quite learned to tread lightly. She chatters as she moves; this and that, something or other, a bad decision or three. She shows him rings, delicate and stolen, lifted from a dragon’s hoard, then tells him of a strange mug found in the same place and promptly lost to someone forgettable in a game of cards.
"Look, look," she says, because excitement makes her redundant. "I kept these for you."
The rings slide onto his fingers—bandaged, skeletal, indifferent to the distinction. He flexes them. Smiles, because each one carries an emerald, and green has always pleased him.
"I was meaning to ask you," Rook says. She is still holding his hand, turning it gently in her own, left, right, right, left, as though testing whether it is truly there. "You are smiling now."
"I am."
"Don’t interrupt me."
"My deepest apologies."
"It was a joke," she says, but absently, without weight. Then, again, softer: "You are smiling now. But is it real? Or do I see a smile only because I expect to? Because I believe it should be there?"
"It is quite real," he reassures her, lifting his free hand, brushing two fingers against her cheek. "The glamour does not fabricate emotions. It is a projection, not an invention. A polished pane of glass through which I am seen, rather than a mask obscuring what lies beneath. It filters nothing. It simply allows you to perceive what is still there, as it was."
She exhales. He watches it unfurl from her mouth, a slip of breath that curls, dissipates, wrapped in green. Relief, perhaps.
"Good," she murmurs. "That is good."
There are things he misses more than others. Some he had not expected to mourn, believing that lichdom would cauterize the want before it could take shape. And perhaps it would have, if not for Rook. But she exists, unavoidably, and so the loss takes shape, outlines itself, defines itself against the hollow places she touches.
The intimacy of the body: its mechanics, its heat, its crude and glorious simplicity. He misses the way skin clings, damp and sticky, the tack of sweat drying between them. The way lips grow chapped from too much kissing, saliva sapped away until the skin cracks, until the next kiss stings. He misses the raw and graceless rhythm of it, the press of her thighs around him, the slow loss of self in the churn of it all. He misses the way he could press his palm to her stomach, still sheathed within her, and feel himself there, caged by her.
And afterward, in the languid sprawl of spent nerves and loose limbs, the way his mind would wander, taking him by the hand, showing him its little fantasies, its secreted-away indulgences—let us get married, Rook, I will buy you so much gold, let’s get married, yes, and then let’s have a child, but not immediately, not at once, let’s linger here a while, let’s lose ourselves in this, let’s glut ourselves on one another until we are utterly ruined by it, and then, yes, then, we will have that little thing.
Now, he feels her differently. Not through skin but through something more fundamental, a closeness that eclipses anything flesh ever allowed. It is fuller, sharper, deeper than anything he could have imagined.
But it is not the same.
And he does not yet know if he prefers it.
Time, as always, will decide.
Pleasure has not abandoned him. It has only changed its nature, its source, its means of arrival. Now, it exists solely through her. He sees, now, how men dissolve into drink, into smoke, into whatever tincture delivers them to sensation. The body remembers its peaks; the body conspires to reach them again.
"Will you come for me, darling girl?" he murmurs against her ear, his fingers curling inside her as they have done so many times before—when his hands were warm, when they ceased to be.
And she does what she always does: she writhes, she gasps, she laughs, she moves against him with the helpless, thoughtless grace of something yielding to gravity. Her hips chase the friction, her mouth parts, her breath hitches, her lashes lower, heavy with pleasure. And he—he is there inside her, feeling it as she feels it, tasting it in a way that has nothing to do with taste, swallowing it down, letting it course through him. It is vast. It is staggering. Pleasure enough for two, for more than two, enough to fill the space where he no longer exists.
Afterward, she is breathless, boneless, staring up at the ceiling and laughing that strange, impossible laugh. He no longer tries to make sense of it. Some things cannot be translated. She has a laugh for anger, a laugh for excitement, a laugh for surprise. He thinks he knows this one well enough by now, the one that trickles out of her in the aftermath.
A trick, an echo, the imitation of a thing once real. He kisses her where he would have kissed her once—her mouth, the sharp ridge of her collarbone, the small curve of her breast, except now there is no heat, no wet drag of a tongue, no parted lips. Only the careful architecture of a spell, a memory sculpted into sensation, something just close enough to pass for real. He trails lower, following the old pathways, the ones his hands remember even if they are no longer the same.
She sighs. Again. Again. Another time.
He lingers where she yields the most, where she is all pulse and warmth, where her thighs, slick and trembling, part for him before he even touches her. Where breath quickens and thought slips away. And through it, he drinks. Draws from her as he always does, as he must, in ways he does not fully understand, or perhaps does, but has decided against understanding. He takes until she is weightless, drifting, until her voice emerges in that low, drowsy enough, enough, until she exhales, unconscious of herself, shifting, turning into him, her cheek settling against his shoulder, her body already gone to sleep.
And he wonders—if he did not stop, could he empty her?
What is it that they share, exactly? What does she give? What does he take? Is it taking at all? Perhaps she is feeding from him just as he feeds from her.
He could ask. He could go looking for the answer. It is what he has done his entire life.
But he does not. Because the answer, whatever it may be, does not matter. Because, at his core, he knows this much to be true:
He is an empty thing now.
And all empty things must be filled.
It is a dreadful experience, watching her get hurt. Dreadful in its predictability, in the casual inevitability of it. Rook, as he has come to understand, is the sort of person who leaps from a cliff first and wonders, mid-air, whether there was perhaps a gentler way down.
He saw it in Hossberg—how she, in some fit of blind fury over a slight he can no longer remember, kicked a blight boil with all the grace of a petulant child, only for the thing to rupture, spraying its filth over her boots, her legs, her hands, her face. Later, when he spat out his anger—you could have infected yourself, and then what? Where would the Veilguard be without their leader?—she had, without hesitation, lifted her middle finger and held it aloft, like a banner, like a flag planted firmly into the dirt, a gesture so profoundly Rook that it settled the argument before it could begin.
She returns from Rivain with a sprained wrist and, predictably, does not acknowledge it until he gestures toward it, a quiet inquiry rather than an accusation.
So he buys her things. Things with weight, with shimmer, with the ability to distract. A bottle of wine she favors, a dress the precise shade of blue that once made her pause in front of a shop window, jewelry that catches light and throws it back in a thousand fractured directions. Loud things, bright things, expensive things. The kind of things a magpie would die over. Because Rook—misnamed, mislabeled—is no rook at all, no solemn, shrewd thing perching in the rafters. She is a magpie, ever in pursuit of the next gleaming fragment, the brightest piece of a broken world. That is why she is away, isn’t it? Always away. Always chasing.
But Nevarra has more gold than the Rivaini coast.
He wants to say—won’t you stay? Won’t you, at last, stay longer? But there is something perilous in the asking. The wrong phrasing, the wrong weight to his voice, and she will fold up like a map, unreadable, distant, already turning toward the door.
She lifts a necklace, lets it spill through her fingers, a thin chain pooling in her palm. "Ooooh," she hums. "What’s the occasion?"
"I have missed you terribly," he says. "You were away too long."
"I missed you too."
"Then stay. My townhouse is yours, of course. It is in the heart of the city—"
"But you won’t be there," she interrupts, without sharpness, without accusation. A simple statement of fact. "You’ll be in the Necropolis."
"Then stay with me in the Necropolis," he says, more softly.
She looks at him. Long enough for him to grow aware of the silence. Long enough for him to think he ought to say something more, to fill the space with some innocuous remark, something to break the weight of it—a comment on the weather, the slow drip of rain against the windowpanes, the scent of damp stone, the candlelight shifting across her cheek, the peeling corner of the wallpaper he has been meaning to mend but never does.
Then, at last, in a whisper, as if she is considering each word before releasing it:
"I'm trying."
A breath.
"I'm really, really trying. I love you so much. This frightens me, but I love you, and I'll stay longer, I promise, and you needn’t hide your face, no, no, you can stop hiding it now, but it is so terribly cold here, and I can smell the bones, Emmrich, did you know one can smell bones?"
Senseless, rambling little words, leaving her mouth with no regard for order, no real expectation of being understood. He listens anyway. He nods as if these words, specifically, are the ones he has been waiting to hear. He holds her hands, pressing his fingers lightly over hers, as though reacquainting himself with the shape of them, the bones beneath the skin. And this time—this time—she stays.
He does not move. Does not speak. Instead, he lets the moment settle around him, lets it press in from all sides, cautious and weightless, as if sudden motion might send it scattering. A trick of the mind, surely, nothing more than habit, the vestigial longing of a body that no longer exists. And yet—something, something faint and absurd and wholly impossible—something like warmth uncoils in the vacant spaces of him, and for the first time in too long, he allows himself to believe in the illusion.
And he is happy, so terribly, foolishly happy, until she steps where a step should have been, onto stone that no longer exists, because the Necropolis, fickle and treacherous as ever, decides to shift beneath her. One moment she is there, cursing the cold, flicking dust from her sleeve, and the next she is gone, swallowed into the dark, falling before he can reach for her. Then—impact, the sound of something snapping, something that should not snap.
"Oh, for fuck’s sake," she spits, voice sharp with pain, her frustration seething through clenched teeth. "I hate this fucking place. This miserable, shifting, plague-ridden, necrophiliac fucking mausoleum. This—" she swallows, gasps, rage momentarily overtaken by the white-hot shock of agony, then forces the words out, savage and breathless—"this godsdamned, dusty, corpse-stinking labyrinth of a tomb. Fuck this place. Fuck you for living in it. Fuck this floor for moving. Fuck my fucking leg."
She hisses even as she cries, squeezing her eyes shut as if trying to will the hurt out of her body. He sees, at last, what has happened. A break, and not a clean one: bone slick and white against torn skin, jutting through muscle, her blood already thickening where it pools on the stone.
And then—something strange. A pull, an unraveling, something unwinding before him, leading away. The ribbon again, unspooling, slipping from her, stretching outward, as though guiding him somewhere he does not wish to go. His vision narrows. He follows it. He follows it because he cannot help but follow it.
"Emmrich?" Her voice has changed. The heat is gone, as is the anger. She sounds uncertain now. She sounds concerned. "Emmrich, are you—?"
But he is looking at the ribbon. Watching where it leads. Watching where it ends.
And he would weep if he could.
He has spent his life in a state of want, always reaching, always grasping, always aching to be something necessary to someone. And now—now, at last—he has what he has longed for. Rook, quick and wild and untouchable. Rook, who was born lovely and careless and beautiful, who could have wrapped herself around anyone she pleased but chose, instead, him—old and grey, and then, simply, bone. Rook, with her hands always outstretched, her eyes always searching, who once told him, so offhandedly he almost believed she didn’t mean it, that she would have given him a child.
Now—now, she sits before him, cursing under her breath, her leg twisted, her blood sliding across the stone, and he understands, too suddenly, too clearly, that he cannot keep her.
One day, that ribbon will slip from her entirely.
And he will be wanting again, except this time, there will be no remedy, no second chance, no indulgence to dull the ache.
Because she—she—the only thing that has ever fit the hollow inside him, will be gone.
A year. Ten. Twenty. Perhaps less. Perhaps more.
She will be gone.
Gone, gone, gone.
"It will not break again," he tells her.
"Really?" she asks, pale from hurt.
"Truly."
He stands, glances over the chamber, and selects a sconce, its veilfire guttering weakly within its iron frame. He snuffs it out with a flick of his wrist, wrenches the metal free from the wall, and lets it sag into liquid in his palm. The Necropolis will not miss it. It devours offerings every day; what is one more? The molten iron shifts, pulses, rolls like living mercury as he shapes it between his fingers. She watches, suspicious, wary, but when he takes the pain from her, she sighs, slackens, her body a thing that yields, a thing that trusts.
Bone is simple. A structure, a framework. Break it, mend it, break it again. He has done this before, he will do it again, and the body always obeys in the end. With a slow push, he sets her leg back into place. Crack, crack, crack—shattered edges realign, splinters withdraw, raw ends fuse like wax pressed to wax. He sees the place where the bone has chewed its way free, white and wet against the torn meat of her calf.
He presses his fingers into the wound, past the sealing skin. The iron above them stirs at his will, stretching like a cat in the air before obeying, flowing down, clinging to the surface of the bone. Not inside it, no. That would be crude, inelegant. Instead, it forms a layer, thin but solid, a second skeleton over the first. It cools as it settles, solidifies, binds itself to her as if it had always belonged there. He guides it lower, shaping it over her tibia, letting it follow the curve of her ankle, turning his wrist slightly to direct it sideways, until the fibula is covered as well, safe beneath its new armor. There.
The final shreds of her wound pull themselves shut, sealing over his work, concealing what has been done.
She shifts her foot, tilting her head, considering. "Oh," she says. "I suppose I'll be heavier now."
He kisses her cheek and feels the faint shift of muscle beneath his lips, the small, secret curve of her smile. This time, for once, her happiness has no color. Not gold, not red, not that strange, shimmering violet he sometimes sees curling from her ribs. Just happiness, unembellished, undisturbed. And because she feels it, he believes it, and because he believes it, he takes it for himself, drawing her close.
"I am so, so happy that you are safe," he hears himself say, a confession with no real shape, a drunken speech without the mercy of intoxication. "I worry when you are gone, and I worry when you are here. It seems that no matter what I do, something always finds you first."
She hums, arms looping around him, her fingers idly mapping the planes of his back, tracing aimless patterns into the fabric of his robes. "I don’t know what to say to that," she admits, her voice softened by exhaustion, by the slow retreat of pain. "But I am so, so happy with you too. And it’s all right, it’s all right. Every time I break, you can repair me." She pauses, then adds, utterly deadpan, "Guess that makes you my skele-tonic."
It is an objectively terrible pun.
"Until you stop breaking altogether," he murmurs.
Another hum, vague, thoughtless.
He draws from her as he always does: pleasure, warmth, something deeper, something without a name, though it must have one, must have been cataloged somewhere, written down by some scholar who spent his life studying things that could not be grasped. He has never fully understood what it is he takes, only that it belongs to her, and that, by some quiet, unspoken permission, it is his as well. He wants to love her forever. But more than that, he wants to ensure that forever remains within reach, that it does not remain, as so many things have, just outside his grasp, dissolving the moment he closes his fist.
He has spent too long watching what he yearned for unravel before he could fasten it down. This, he will not allow. It will take gold, it will take iron, it will take something far stronger, something absolute. Until she ceases to break. Until breaking is no longer a possibility, a concept, a word that has anything to do with her.
He does not yet know how. But he has time—too much of it. More than she does. And he has always been a man of precision, of hypothesis and proof, of elegant solutions to insufferable problems. He will find a way. Through metal or magic, through that ribbon of red that keeps slipping from her, unspooling itself in slow increments, always trying to get away. He will take it, force it back into place, stitch it to the marrow, fix it with something incorruptible, something permanent, something that cannot be unwound without unmaking her in the process.
He presses a kiss to her temple, then to her forehead, and speaks of flowers. The new blooms in the Memorial Gardens. Hideous, by all accounts. She will adore them. She appreciates beauty, certainly, but she loves foolishness even more. He kisses her cheek, the tip of her nose, her small, stubborn chin, and feels it again—that bright, quiet thing. Happiness.
And, miraculously, when he takes a piece for himself, it does not feel stolen.
"Enough, enough," she murmurs at last, the same word twice, as she always does when she needs a break from him, when she has given too much, when she feels him pulling, drinking, taking in excess without meaning to. Laughter ghosts beneath the words, thin but present, a reminder that she is still here, still whole. She taps his wrist with two fingers, light, quick, final—a gesture that, for all its carelessness, feels uncannily like closing a book.
#i can't sleep so i quickly edited this thing i wrote a while back so it's not as raw and am now throwing it out into the depths of tumblr#we don't condone lichdom in this house#there is no way emmrich would remain a sane human being as a lich if he romanced rook#frankly they should have given us the option to break up with him if he decided to go full lich#he is only gonna transfer his fear of death onto rook#and it will not be healthy#it will be weird and uncomfortable and maybe downright creepy#aight im gonna try to sleep now#emmrich volkarin#emmrich x rook#emmrook#rook x emmrich#lich emmrich#dragon age the veilguard#datv#shortstories#my stupid writing#< those last two are just my personal tags for finding my own shit if i need it btw lol ignore them
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