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paintedkinzy-88 · 2 months ago

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Lust's bro coming home after a date with his bf only to find a large golden noodle curled up around Lust both asleep. Blue in the kitchen cooking and Ink in his half form doodling surrounded by half a dozen sketchbooks.

Stfu that’s actually hilarious hold on—

Warning for. Suggestive topics in the background, I suppose. It is Underlust. I tried to keep it PG, but also I’m very tired so eh ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Writing jumpscare boo

“Sans, I will be completely honest with you. I do not know what I am looking at.”

He wasn’t quite sure how to describe it, either. Papyrus’ brother has always been an… interesting character, to put it lightly. And he doesn’t mean that in any negative way! Stars knows the Great Papyrus would never settle with normal, especially in the world they live in. “Normal” here was extravagant, in-your-face, and exceedingly too personal. It had to be, unfortunately, for all of their survival.

Sans, however, found a way to be all of that, but so much better. He knows everything and everyone, flaunts his stuff like there’s no tomorrow, can party with the best of them and put on incredible shows every other night at Grillby’s. He’s memorable, in ways Papyrus just cannot understand, but deeply admires. And above all else, Sans is respectful.

Sure, he is the biggest piece of fruit on the grapevine, collecting gossip like it’s a national treasure, but he knows when to share and what to keep to himself. He’s become a safe space for many monsters, for better or worse, able to pick apart their walls and façades like they’re just a big game of Jenga. Papyrus has seen him do it too many times to count. He’s able to pick out the one monster in the crowd that’s clearly trying to drink away all their feelings for the sake of a party, and coerce them into cutting off their tab, talking it out in the bathroom, and going home for the night with newly smeared makeup. Whether that was with or without Sans coming along depended on the monster and the mood.

In other words, he was a reliable “mom friend” at a party, despite often having a few drinks himself.

But, more importantly, Sans has a personality beyond just sex and drugs. It’s something only people that manage to get past his pelvis have the opportunity to see. His room is filled with space memorabilia rather than the hottest magazines. He had a secret lab instead of a dungeon. He’d rather have a good burger and a soda than any of the tangy drinks and edibles that were so often found in everyone’s homes. Heck, his hobbies revolve around “star” gazing, pranks, and just making people laugh.

He encouraged Papyrus to live by his heart rather than by the lust flowing through his magic, unlike every other monster that wants him to be “down for anything.”

More than all of that, Sans was impossible to predict. He could honestly tell you the secrets of the universe one moment and then hit you with a water balloon the next. He made life in the Underground interesting and infinitely more tolerable.

That is to say, this scenario that Papyrus has currently walked into has certainly taken the cake. Multiple cakes, even.

There were currently three skeleton monsters in his living room, not including himself. One was standing in the doorway of their kitchen, in an outfit so unlike what he is used to seeing around Snowdin. A blue bandana is wrapped around his neck, hiding his neck and collarbone, with sturdy grey shoulder pads underneath it. His shirt covers his entire ribcage, and his pants are baggy and tucked into noticeably-not-high-heeled boots. On top of all of that, he has an apron on that says “Reach for the Stars” with multicolored stars littered across it.

In front of the couch, surrounded by an insane amount of paper, pencils, and other art supplies, is a skeleton of much similar structure to the other one — if you chose to ignore the horns, tail, and bare wing bones. He also has a scarf around his neck, this one brown and covered in writing and black splotches. His tan and white long sleeve shirt also covers much of his torso, but at least it’s a little more form fitting. His pants are flowy, however, but there are some sort of black leggings underneath them. He has no shoes, and Papyrus doesn’t see any near the door that aren’t already supposed to be there. A little strange to be barefoot in Snowdin, given the weather, though he supposes the folk in New Home or Hotland may enjoy the aesthetic?

The final two are by far the strangest part of this scene. Which is quite amazing, considering one is his actual brother.

Sans, in a rainbow hoodie with a purple star on the chest that Papyrus has never seen him wear, is currently in the center of a rather large, yellow, lizard-like… beast? Monster? Was that a monster?? Papyrus has never met a monster like this before, and he’s met a LOT of monsters in his time in the Royal Harem, before meeting Mettaton. Perhaps Undyne would know them? Or, actually, if they were a monster, maybe he shouldn’t be so surprised that Sans knows them, since Sans seems to know everyone in the underground far better than he probably should.

Either way, this was a very… Innocent yet weird moment to have walked into. Not that Papyrus was necessarily complaining. He hated to walk in on anything else.

All of the skeletons present (aside from the large one, who seemed to be asleep. Were they a skeleton monster?? Their pseudo skin seems very similar to his and Sans’ ecto bodies) are now staring at him, sockets wide and bodies frozen, like three children with their hands caught in the cookie jar. Even Sans himself looks surprised and confused, as if seeing his only other house mate within their very house was an unexpected turn of events.

Finally, the one in blue whips his head around to look at his brother, brows pinched downward. “Lust! You said he wouldn’t be home for another hour!”

He’s holding a plate of tacos in his hands. That’s perhaps the most normal thing in this entire scenario.

“Uh, yeah,” Sans replied, surprisingly. Why on earth he’d reply to such a cursed word, Papyrus had no idea. “He shouldn’t be back until, like, six somethin’.”

Papyrus distinctly remembers saying he’d be home at four-thirty sharp, actually. It figures that his brother would remember incorrectly, though he supposes it didn’t matter since he was technically correct. “It’s actually six twenty-four, right now,” he informed them, crossing his arms. “I had to stay later than normal because Mettaton needed help brainstorming new and exciting questions for his game show this week. Obviously, I was the best person to ask.”

Sans nodded, as if he expected this response. “Yeah yeah, hold on.” He shuffled around a little bit, reaching down towards his pants pockets. The large skull that laid on his stomach huffed unhappily, to which he simply patted their forehead with a soft “sorry, Dream.” Finally, he pulled out his phone and clicked it on.

A small purple phone Papyrus has also never seen before.

The horned skeleton on the floor snorted, propping his head on his hand. “Lusty, I think that’s the phone I gave ya.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Oh my stars,” the blue one groaned. He ran his free hand down his face, finally setting the tray of tacos down on the nearest table. “How did you mix that up?!”

“I’m sorry! They look similar!”

“The multiverse one literally has a star keychain, how did that slip your mind?!”

“You try havin’ two phones!”

“I literally do, you absolute doofus—“

“Yo, guys, don’t wake the baby,” the horned one scolded playfully, gesturing to the lizard-skeleton-thing. Which, if that WAS a baby, Papyrus was terrified to know what the parents looked like.

Though, knowing how rare children were, he supposed the skeleton was joking, now that he thought about it.

Great. Another comedian then (he says with all the fond annoyance, of course.)

“Excuse me,” he speaks up once again. They all turn back towards him, almost completely in sync. Terrifying. “I’m sorry to interrupt… whatever this is. But I would like to know who the heck you all are and why you’re in my home? How do you know my brother exactly? And are you all skeletons?? I didn’t realize there were other skeletons like us. And, more importantly, WHAT and/or WHO is THAT?”

He gestured wildly to the yellow being, sockets pinning his older brother down. Sans at least had the decency to look apologetic.

He should be, for keeping such cool and not-ravenous friends to HIMSELF.

“… Any chance I can convince you this is a dream?” Sans tried with a sheepish grin.

“Absolutely not.”

“Damn.”

“I can explain!” The skeleton-dragon-monster popped up from the ground happily, tail wiggling like a boney snake. Now that he was up, Papyrus noted that he was even shorter than his own brother. It was quite cute.

The blue one ran both his hands down his face now, though Paps swears he can see the corner of his teeth perk up a bit.

“Okay, so, I’m Ink!” the little one started, pointing to himself and then to his friends, “That’s Blue, Dream, and you know Lust! Kinda. Not AS Lust, but whatever. We’re all best of buddies, and we’re just hangin’ out today because Dream hadn’t seen Lust in a while and he really likes Lust’s hoodie, and when a piece of your hoard calls to you, ya just have to answer.”

“Mhm,” Papyrus nodded, utterly perplexed and not understanding a good portion of that entire explanation.

“A hoard is a dragon’s, like, very important personal belongings?” Sans tried to explain. “Like… a collection of… actually, never mind, it won’t matter in the long run and it’s hard to explain. Just know that Dream sees my hoodies and blankets and pillows as his own, and they’re very important to him.”

This is going to give him a headache. “So he needs to. Snuggle them. While you are in it.”

Sans snorted, patting Dream’s head again. “I mean, I don’t have to be in it, but it makes the experience better for both of us.”

Fair enough. He would much rather be cuddled up to his boyfriend than dealing with whatever-this-was.

“Anywho!” Ink paused. “Where was I?”

“Introducing us and failing to explain why we’re here,” Blue offered unhelpfully.

“Right! We’re alternate versions of your brother—“

“Oh my Stars, Ink.”

“And we all defend the multiverse together, but we’re also really close! Like family, not friends-with-benefits close, to confirm—“

“Oh my STARS, Ink—“

“— so we like to hang out in each other’s universes when we’re not fighting world-ending bad guys, and today we just so happened to be here for… whatever reason I may have already forgotten. Anyway! I gave Lust a phone to use across the multiverse, and it has the time of the Doodle Sphere on it because that’s consistent across the multiverse, but that also means it’s different from YOUR world’s time, with timelines and resets and all of that, so we confused the two.”

There was a long pause after Ink finished rambling, smiling happily up to the taller skeleton in the room. Before he could really register any of what was said, however, Blue muttered a little, “Technically, Lust confused the two, not us.”

This, of course, earned him an indignant shout from his brother, and—

Okay, yeah, no.

Papyrus nodded multiple times, clapping his hands together and pressing them to his teeth. “I have no clue what’s happening here,” he stated plainly. “I’m going to assume this is just more of Sans’ weird time-space shenanigans and… and I am. Going. To bed. I think.”

They all blinked at him quietly. The dragon-thing shuffled peacefully, sighing and rubbing his head against Sans’ chest. He looked comfortable, and incredibly soft as well. Perhaps when Papyrus had more motivation to understand what was in front of him, he’d ask if he could pet the large creature.

Breaking the silence, Blue gestured to the plate of food beside him. “Do you want a taco before you go?”

“… Sure. Why not.”

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desognthinking · 9 months ago

Text

WIP... Wednesday

Tagged by @willowedhepatica (thanks!) I'm so sorry that this comes so late 😭 life got in the way. Not sure who i can tag who has things in the works they can share, but please Please know if anyone has any snippets or sneak peaks I would love to see them and yell about them with you pleaseee

Not strictly a WIP but here’s just under 3.5k of an oldish experimental AU inspired by this post :’) in this one they’re… *checks notes*, ah, hmm. Chimerical tomb guardians carved from stone.

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It’s a wickedly stormy day when a procession scores up the hill through beating rain and blowing dust, but there’s no time to waste. The wedding will not wait, and on its occasion, as a symbol of the new ties between the families of the bride and the groom, there is a terrible, beautiful new guardian grotesque to be received by the Silva tombhouse from the Salviuses.

It is surely mounted on the property sometime during the silver-black onslaught of sky upon earth, but Beatrice cannot clearly see it through the rain and the maze of trees that still separates the Silvas from their neighbors. The families on this hill are not quite rich enough to expand at the pace of the wealthiest among them, who slice and raze to add to their already broad campuses of tombs. Instead, in this part of town, modest, often unmatching clusters dwell amongst the wildflowers and long-lived trees sprayed across the land.

Beatrice likes the nature. Her perch is kept cool by the damp and dewy mornings, birdsong flickering from above and around. In the filtered haze of heat and light there is some measure of peace too – here, there is less to fight over, and fewer lines of tension between the families. Hidden by farther slopes, there are fewer threats from beyond. And, overshadowed by the lower circuit of large gated tombhouses, there are far milder spoils for aspiring robbers.

It’s from one of these large inner-city tombhouses that the new stone protector is said to arrive. The Salviuses have money spilling out their hands and down their wrists. It’s said, it’s said, it’s said – it’s whispered in the wind that carries the falling leaves from vine to vane, so easy for Beatrice to stretch up and put an ear to. The pollen clouds dispersed over grass in shapes spelling disruption and newcomer. It’s gossiped over pages in the library, first with smug nods and just you wait and see, dear, we’re never wrong from the grandfathers and grandmothers as Beatrice pores through the volumes in the upper shelves, precious books pressed so high and so far back that they’re backed into both wall and ceiling.

Then, inevitably, it carries through the air in the giggles and hushed gasps of the living members of this family, hands curling over yarn and needle as the youngest children breathlessly run and hide behind the walls and in the shadowy pockets of the tombhouse. The Great-great-great Grandmother who had been the first to break the news is mollified by the confirmation, and generously refuses to gloat.

A Silva girl is marrying a Salvius boy, and the Salviuses are pledging a guardian – the spirits know they have too many anyway, but still, a Salvius guardian – to this hill.

“You’ve got to go over and see what’s going on,” Beatrice is instructed one morning, in no uncertain terms. They’re going over integration by partial fractions on the little platform at the back that looks down over the mills: her, Great-Grandfather, and Lilith, who’s slunk over yet again from the Villaumbrosias’ for some ‘peace and quiet’, and also because Beatrice’s family likes her for some mysterious reason. They pretend it’s because they need the extra pair – or, well, pairs, in Lilith’s case – of eyes. The massive, foreboding, Villaumbrosia affair the next hill over already boasts so many fearsome hands on deck, and they only have one Beatrice.

Great-grandfather is gentle and teasing about it; Beatrice (and Lilith, although she will never admit it) is his favorite captive audience.

Of course, it’s easy to treat her as one of their own on mornings like this — quiet summer days when she’s stripped of silica and scale, descended from her weatherworn perch. Devoid of the coarse matter of rock and metal twisted into hungry, flame-spitting fangs, and instead merely a soft-spoken spirit in a youthful skin. When the great grandfathers and mothers and their grandfathers and grandmothers look at her and see dark, almost-human eyes and loosely-bound hair in a bun above her shoulders.

And when Beatrice walks Lilith out and across the rocky way that leads home, it’s easy for them to wave the two of them off. After all, Lilith is just a young woman with black waves she tucks carefully behind her ears and a handsome, slanting jaw that could almost pass as being real; as being pressed and molded with muscle and mandible and a fragile, mycelial network of vasculature and nerves. Not another delicate illusion that would slip and shatter at the first sign of danger, revealing in a flash the grotesque ugliness within.

There hasn’t been an attack in a while. When there hasn’t been an attack in a while Beatrice thinks the family tends to forget where exactly they hold court.

(Here, cradled close enough within these hills to walk back to where home once was. Children’s handprints on the threshold, coal scribbles on the floor. Walls still perfused with the fragrance and vapor of hot homemade stew.)

This is a graveyard. This is a necropolis, a city of the dead. It slithers amongst the roots of the living but does not make a home of it. In its palm lies the fragile in-between, the sickly sweet intersection where the living and the after-dead mingle like the meeting of two clouds. Within its grounds the family is wont to forget the ruthlessness that’s sometimes needed to keep it in balance.

Once they depart, Beatrice and Lilith’s guises fall away. Invisible to a still-beating heart, two terrible chimeras gouge skid-marks through the dirt to get to the Villaumbrosia citadel before its guests arrive at ten-thirty. Miraculously, only twice during the entire trip does Lilith half-heartedly threaten to snap Beatrice’s tail off.

They make it there just in time. Beatrice watches as Lilith sweeps her way up the manicured moss columns and melds, in a quick thrash, with the magnificent dark-gray creature of stone that lunges out from the south turret. Frozen like this: mouth curled in a snarl and sharp wings flung out – in mockery, in bombast, in warning; Lilith at her most vindictive and most frightening, the elaborate Villaumbrosia insignia branded hot and painful down her side.

Beatrice knows it hurts, of course. Perhaps less so like this but certainly in the flesh, where it is always red and raw like the day it was carved down Lilith’s ribs in the workshop. Preserved unchanging in the meat as it is preserved forever in the rock. Lilith winces, when she thinks the others aren’t looking, but Beatrice knows. Camila might say something – probably does say something, but Beatrice doesn’t. She understands too well, and after all, what can they do?

After all, this is their work. This is life: whatever is asked of them. For Lilith today, it is to be a showpiece for guests at a bloated, overwrought tea ceremony. Broadly, it is watchman, and protector, and advocate. And at times like these, when there is a stir in the tangled ecosystem of bloodlines and their guardian-creatures, Beatrice is called upon to be an ambassador.

So, the day after the storm, Beatrice leaves her perch to seek out the Silvas. She glides down from the still-slippery stone, and lands softly on the wet earth, scale meeting fur meeting soil and humid air.

In her hands – her metaphorical hands – she clasps fistfuls of string that stretch, infinitely thin, to every corner of her tombhouse. She flexes each one and puts it between her teeth as she steps over the threshold and into the trees, testing their elasticity and tensile strength. If there is to be a twang, however minute, she must feel it. There is only one of her at home.

As she approaches the Silva tombhouse the air around her shifts and seems to solidify into a medium both probing and warning. Beatrice stills, allowing the woods to see her and course through her calmness. They know her, of course, and she waits for them to pass on the message to the newest guardian, still incredibly sensitive to the prickle of unfamiliar movement and sound.

Presently, physically, the world exhales.

Beatrice cautiously continues forward, until the treeline peels away to reveal the Silva tombhouse.

Tombhouse, as it goes, is a misnomer – a tombhouse is a complex rather than a single shell. It is no single cell for a coffin, but a collection of connected mausoleums and courtyards and passageways and corners and gates, lifted high and tunneled low. And as befitting a clan of esteemed craftsmen, the Silva tombhouse is a harmonious set spiraling outwards in organic whorls. Its walls are scraped clean and brushed beige, curled and leafed and folded in at the edges. Delicate and pretty in its strength in a way Beatrice’s own plain, stoic little set of residences could never be.

At the top of the central mausoleum, bounded by a parapet, rests a flat platform. On that ledge sits the new grotesque.

Ink-black stone peeks curiously down at Beatrice.

Immediately it is clear that she is like nothing Beatrice has ever seen before. Yes, as is tradition she is joined and jawed together piecemeal from various symbolic beasts, but this composition and style is unique.

She’s simultaneously entirely unlike both the typical statues produced by-the-dozen in the workshops, and the specially commissioned sculptures like Beatrice herself. This guardian is a patchwork of shapes and textures Beatrice has only ever seen in the watercolor sketches of her tombhouse’s own library as belonging to exotic creatures from faraway places. Still other elements escape her recognition and description, and everything meshes deftly at smooth, near-invisible seams.

Perhaps this isn’t surprising in a Salvius guardian – Jillian’s own commission too, it’s rumored. No less should be expected from someone the alchemists and scientists alike shy away from. Jillian Salvius considers herself a traveler, and a collector, and a dabbler, and Beatrice hears that the spokes of her gates are gnarled and carved in strange patterns from foreign lands.

The guardian shifts and cocks her head curiously, and Beatrice pulls herself together sharply.

“Hi,” the creature says. “You must be the neighbor from the east.”

Beatrice snaps back into polite, exceedingly proper posture. She nods, dipping forward in a movement resembling a bow. It makes the high-perched creature giggle, gauzy like air.

“Good morning,” she replies. “My name is Beatrice, and you’re right. How did you know?”

The guardian doesn’t answer. She separates from her stone in a miasma of color, swoops down noisily, and lands, a little clumsily, on a lower ledge. “Two heads, huh?” she says, thoughtfully. “Kinda perfect for the scholars.”

It’s not said judgmentally; more so with a further curious slant of her head, observational and light. Beatrice feels strange and semisolid all over.

She doesn’t correct the new guardian; tell her that no, she hadn’t actually been crafted or blessed for this bloodline, only gifted to them just one generation ago. And gifted rather carelessly, at that; an obligatory token presented upon the death of the benefactor’s tutor.

Before that her two heads were designed not as a tribute to wisdom or a paean to collaboration, but in order to stare proudly over an excessive estate, stretching out in opposite directions over land too vast for merely one head to behold. An arrogant symbol of not just physical, but political reach. She was a status symbol for powerful people – two-faced might be a better descriptor.

Beatrice has always considered this with some bitterness, but today, she oddly feels no urge to self-flagellate. She feels, suspiciously, nothing at all; a fuzzy blank.

Instead, in response to the guardian, Beatrice blinks. Both of her heads do. They crane and incline together, like long-necked birds bending to convene. She feels sharp ears on each one twitch and flutter.

The creature laughs again. She descends further to the porch, then approaches Beatrice slowly. “I’m Ava,” she introduces herself, finally. Shyly. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Ava,” Beatrice repeats, careful and hushed. She parses it over and traces it as though threading a needle – how the strange, simple symmetry of the word, the hypnotic up-down-up of A-V-A, doesn't begin to encompass the entity approaching her. On cue, Ava does a funny, shuddery motion that cascades down her whole form.

Beatrice, leaning her heads over old tomes like water jugs tipped over a parched tongue, dreams of fantastical things, from places that often sound even more surreal. And yet before her now stands the most peculiar thing alive yet, that defies everything she’s known and seen.

Yes, clearer now before her eyes, Ava is a patchwork of impossible parts.

Up close Beatrice can see she’s also a riverbed of illusory things. Small divots seem to scoop themselves out, sink deep, and then ripple back up into the surface of her body. Bubbling, and collapsing, and reforming, like springs of molten mother-of-pearl. Each little cavity shimmers like roughened gemstones: a gasping, dark blue, like well water under the sun; or a moody green like the light-starved undershade in a storm; or a thawing amber that Beatrice cannot even describe except that it looks like the smell of hot bread with a sweet cream core, tempting and steaming.

“Beatrice,” Ava echoes, her eyes gleaming and dark. They bubble expressively and endlessly deep. Gazing at Beatrice, straight, still and pondering. Searching.

Silence stretches until it doesn’t.

Something snaps – a bird on a twig above – and Ava shakes herself awake. “Where’s my manners!” she exclaims suddenly. “Come on,” she swishes around gamely. Beatrice, bewildered, sneezes.

She’s learning quickly that when Ava laughs, the dense tassel-like feathers on the back rise in delighted reflex and splay apart.

The two of them slip between trees into a little glade, buoyed by her relentless charm and a thrumming current of something else, in the undertow.

Once upon a time, this was a courtyard, although now that the Silva tombhouse has unfurled in the opposite direction it’s been allowed to tastefully overgrow into its former self, mossy and scruffy. Old pieces of wall and pillars still cordon off one side; Beatrice resists the temptation to bound about and explore, and instead parks herself primly at a corner, not fidgeting.

Ava has no such compunctions. She wriggles herself into a comfortable position on a large boulder. Her weapon of a tail dangles down and bats at the ground idly, uprooting chunks of grass.

“How are you finding it here?” Beatrice asks, trying very hard to be normal.

“Honestly? I don’t know yet,” Ava grins, “and you’re the first one of us I’ve met here.”

She pauses, cocks her head to one side so strikingly. The gesture almost looks human. “You know, my new folks think very highly of you,” She looks appraisingly over Beatrice with an indecipherable expression.

Beatrice feels quite hot. “Mine are curious about you.”

There is a shift in the air as Ava straightens abruptly. Her tail stills. “What will you tell them?”

Beatrice bites her tongues, undecided. She’d meant to think of it later, to phrase and rephrase and turn the words over and over in her mouth on the way back to get them right. It takes a while, usually, to distill her thoughts precisely into words that balance both insinuation and tone, and half the time it ends up all too stilted and formal anyway. How people seem to be able to do that, off the cuff – it’s confusing. Far easier, Beatrice thinks, to sit quietly beside and let such people do the talking.

Especially now that this seems, somehow, to be important to Ava. And especially now that she finds she doesn’t quite have any of the words.

If Beatrice had hands she would wring them. She thinks, distantly, of what someone else wiser than her might say. “They’ll agree with me that you’re certainly unique,” she starts, and it’s like Shannon’s talking through her, stately and gentle. Bold, like Mary.

She adds, in an abrupt impulse that’s, alarmingly, all Beatrice, “I do think you’ll fit in well here.”

“Oh,” Ava seems surprised. Her tail, heretofore curled tightly on the boulder, relaxes and turns a loose arc in the air, hacking at the grass. “Thanks,” she looks at Beatrice, and inhales sharply, although not unkindly.

Pauses. Sheepishly, she adds, “I’ve heard some people, uh, calling me devilish and other things, you see. But you know, it’s fine. Whatever.”

Beatrice grimaces involuntarily, then schools her expression back into an empathetic nod. It’s not unexpected. There’s bound to be a procession of curious gawkers and onlookers filing through to try and catch a glimpse of something hailing from the elusive Salviuses. Beartice knows the type: traditional, gossipy and busybodies.

They’ll take one look up the roof and gasp in disbelief or disgust, probably. Sneer up at the twisted, unnatural proportions, if they’re brave. Ava runs too close to the precipice of their diluted tolerance.

“The Silvas are good people. They’ll stand by you.” Beatrice isn’t sure if it helps, but it’s true. The households here are the little silver lining of this part of town, otherwise ragged and out of the way and a little discordant in its hues.

Ava exhales gently. Beatrice thinks there’s a small smile there. “I know.”

“It doesn’t make it easier.”

“Yeah. I know,” repeats Ava, her eyes shining, and it’s almost like she really does.

Beatrice understands. They did it to her, too, after all.

The people who commissioned her had made a puppet of her. They had demanded a departure from classical references and therefore affixed to her frame things like startling, swiveling joints and odd angles. Two heads, of course, among other modifications – all in an arrogant, ambitious drive to defy tradition and create a visionary symbol of fear and envy. Instead, the lay beholder glanced upon the warped anatomy and thought it blasphemy. And so, Beatrice rapidly became that to her own family too: acrid to the eyes, rotted in the soul, a disembowelment. Failure. An embarrassment.

The whispers billowed large like cotton sheets drying in the fields, caught and blown out in the wind.

It was a matter of time. Beatrice imagines the tiny family offspring being taught their true oral history in a sugary sick little chant, clapping their chubby hands cheerfully and squealing every grim word,

Then the old teacher died / and it was a great relief / The family rushed to ready / a token of public grief

Her, of course. Her, and not any of the cruder, more sedate, stone guardians that studded the estate. The small ones who, on a good day, sat patiently and circulated air and respired noisily, and who were not capable of thought or pain. The family had a lot of them lining their walls, not much more than large decorative lumps of dough programmed to trap, waylay, or bite at intruders.

Instead, they parted ways with the looming, ghastly and elaborate figure that guarded one of their main wings, and painted it as a great outpouring of sadness. Beatrice knew better.

The whole event was swift; almost planned in advance. She’d barely had time to send an urgent warning to Lilith before she was gone – a failed experiment in pomposity that took an unforeseen and regrettable turn into the profane.

In a matter of days she was transplanted from lush green gardens into dry hills bathed in reedy, half-obscured sunsets. The kind of neighborhood her old family would call avant-garde or ‘forward-thinking’, although with a scoff that betrayed what they really thought.

And at night, looking down to sleeping homes, Beatrice would hear in the nothingness the same whispers splashing down the stone like rain, all over again.

Mindlessly, now, she has the sudden urge to reach out and feel. Fluttering cells or hardened stone, it doesn’t matter. She wants to transmute a hand of tender human pulp and skin, and run fragile fingers softly over the strangest braided foldery and flattening of membrane, bumps and spindles until they catch, pierce and bleed.

And she so badly wants to tell Ava: I think you’re nightmarish and very beautiful. You would hold an army off this humble hill. like holding out a pathetic little bundle of flowers– but she doesn’t. It’s too long and too much; I’m here. is too short, and both are too naked. She’s not that kind of creature. She’s carved from solid rock and even when she sheds it it still feels like its weight chains her to the earth.

Her voices remain even and steady, somehow.

“I –This isn’t the customary welcome and introductory visit,” Beatrice confesses, in lieu of it all.

“Oh. It’s not?”

Beatrice shakes her heads. “There’ll need to be a more official one.”

The overlapping layers of spines along Ava’s limbs rise and then flatten, quickly. “So I’ll get to see you again soon?”

Feeling warm, or moist, or something like a pillar of pressurized foam, Beatrice clears her throats. “I suppose so. Yes.”

#“Ard wtf is this AU” 😭 listen. it was a strange and fun little thing/experiment to play around with #YEAH imagine a large town/small city that spills out over the hills in a labyrinthine necropolis of familial mausoleums / tomb complexes #pragmatic bulwarks of defence and important centers of social/intellectual/cultural life and death and the rich after-death #beatrice is the super serious guardian of a respectable but modest bloodline of teachers and scholars #when she's not staring moodily out into the distance she spends like all her free time in the library/underground heirloom chamber #and getting tutorials from fond but vaguely concerned ancestors #They love her unconditionally btw she’s just sometimes in her head too much to see it #the Silvas are renowned artisans! Jillian is jillian lol #If some of the words sound like they don’t exist it’s because they straight up don’t. I’ve no idea what old me was thinking.#hashtag avatrice hashtag meetcute hashtag wrarior nun hashtag mutually obsessed at first sight etc.

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