#i'll probably post it separate tho lol but i hope you like the finished piece <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[townofcadence]

"Smoke?" He repeats, trying to make sense of what he thought he heard. She's speaking loud, but the blizzard is doing it's damndest to swallow them both. The snow is already to their thighs. "That's good!" That meant there had to be somewhere nearby. Even if it was the worst option, a cave, or the best, one of those buildings along the trails, that would at least give them some respite from the storm until it passed. Either way, those options were better than standing here. And with the flurrying winds, it couldn't be far, or the scent would've been dispersed by all the air movement. Right?

He pauses as she takes point, a protest on his tongue. He knows how much trust it takes to show her back and there's a bitter feeling in placing her in that position, but what he hates even more is the idea of her taking the brunt of the load. Salena was so sacrificial, she'd hurt herself without a thought to protect him, but he needs to protect her, when she already suffers so much for him and everyone she cares for. She shouldn't have to do this.

But....he can concede that her fur is protecting her, and it was senseless for both of them to face the winds. He can tell how she much this will take out of her this close too. If she even started to twinge in pain, he could step in so she could recover, if need be.

He keeps that thought tucked into his chest like a safeguard. Arms hugging himself, Artair follows behind her in the storm.

It seems worse every minute, and he's glad they have her nose; he can hardly see in the sleeting wrath of the blizzard. It all is just white, drifting, pelting, slicing--- he can only focus on Salena's tail, trying to use it as his guide as she trudges forward. The furrows she leaves in the snow help him keep up, though they fill near as fast as she plows them with her legs. He can see the spires of pines, black and frosted and barely visible in this weather, the needles billowing under the intensity of each snowy gale. They.... won't make it much farther. He's cold-- cold cold cold he can't stop shaking and crying and he's so ANGRY---

Artair lets out a shaky breath, one stolen by the wind before he can even see the fog of the exhale. His shoulder is burning and he feels numb again--- that was--- he wasn't sure. The feelings drop away and then crescendo all at once in his chest before vanishing again. It's exhausting, almost as exhausting as he's starting to feel. He's still crying, and the tears freeze on his cheeks into crackled ice, breaking as his skin tightens in winces.

He's ready to ask Sal to stop, to just dig a space out, and make a shelter. He isn't sure he can make it much further before he's a fucking popsicle, with how soaked and bedraggled he is. His hair is hanging against him, plastered to his face and iced white by snow, and he stumbles from the stiffness in his legs, even if moving them is all that's keeping him from freezing. The prosthetic hardly moves, and when he brushes himself with the metal it feels so frigid it burns. His veins are cold, it feels like his heart is pumping ice through his body, and his breathing feels slow, strained. If he swallows enough snow, can he drown? Maybe? Fuck, he's tired. The cold is seeping into even the marrow of his bones. They feel liable to snap. He keeps coughing--

And then Salena stops in front of him. He peers around her.

Lights. Window panes lit in warm gold.

It's like being struck by lightning. Both their paces increase, moving as fast as they can towards what can only be some kind of outpost. He can barely see the shape of the building, but the yellow casts like a beacon into the dark of the snow; it leaves pools of warm light, shimmering and wavering with snow as drifts of it pass through the light. It can't be more than a hundred feet or so, maybe just a little more than that. They can make it. They came this far, they can do this. A hundred feet is nothing.

At the loping pace they both manage, they're already halfway there. The door opens and he can see fire, warm light, fucking salvation from the cold. Someone runs out, waving their arms frantically and yelling. They must have seen them from the windows, and are trying to flag them over--

Artair feels a gust of wind leave him and his arm lights up in fire. He can't catch his breath, as cold burns into his lungs like thin tendrils of ice, which splinters into spears that pierce through the precious tissue. He almost falls forward, seeing Sal continuing to move towards their destination. She knew he was supposed to be right behind her but---

His thoughts scatter like the flakes stinging his skin and his eyes threaten to droop. He turns his head to the sensation and sees frozen crystals like quartz and icicles growing from the perimeter of the sensation. And there, ringed by that growing ice, was a hand. It is pale and damaged, blue at the palm and black at the tips of their fingers. It clutches his arm at the bicep tight, and the touch sent convulsions through him, flooded his eyes with tears enough to blind and a dizzying vertigo.

He manages a few blinks to clear them, and a zombie turn of his head to follow the hand-- a woman stands there, her hair mid length and sleek, black and tipped with frost until it shimmers, and floating around her like she's underwater. Her outfit is bleached of all color, a coat with fur trim and thick pants, all damaged, tattered with rips and tears. He can see what looks like a knitted hat, tangled in her hair near the crown of her head and vanishing behind her in the curtain of her wavering hair. She's shorter than him, but she seems to stand on the snow itself, so she towers above him by at least a foot as her tattered boots glide over the banks at his side. One leg sits twisted, near all the way backwards, with splinters of bone jutting out where a break likely was beneath her pants. The whole of her visage carries an ethereal glow in the softest blue.

She has a pale face, white beyond life, with parts shorn away like one might expect with biting winds like this. Her lips, her cheeks, her nose and ears-- even the hollows of her eyes were all black and bloodless. Sparkling flakes of ice dapple her eyelashes and brows, the corners of her mouth, and the edges of raw, damaged flesh with white. The rest of her glitters, like freshly fallen snow catching in the golden light of the building ahead. Her eyes were white with a milky sightlessness. Tears flow in streams that froze over themselves in sheets on her face.

When her mouth moved, black dribbled out, dripping down her chin before seeming to congeal where it oozed along her face. Her lips opened more, wider and wider, and her cheeks seemed to crack, to fracture like glass along the skin, revealing black underneath. Still she stretches her open mouth, until they shatter entirely in black and white shards; he can't even feel as some of them embed in his arm where she holds it. They continue breaking away, allowing her jaws to stretch into a yawning chasm, impossibly wide.

For someone alive, that is.

"S-sAL--"

A wail escapes her throat. His own strained whisper cuts away. Artair's vision turns snowy with spots and static as a wave of something wracks him. He swears she doesn't speak, but he hears it nonetheless, even during her endless, unyielding scream.

It's.

MINE.

It bounces in his head like a ricocheting bullet. The woman is still screaming, but he hears the voice in his head with clarity, like those two words were whispered in his ear in a silent room. And the voice-- it sounds tattered, wrecked and raw and desperate and enraged; the torrent of it drowns him to mutism, makes him wish he could rip each rib from his chest to escape the torment. His fingers flex under the compulsion, and he almost collapses, almost drops to his knees--

But this isn't the worst he's suffered.

He bites his lip until it bleeds from the points of his incisors, and inhales through those clenched teeth. A flicker of life restores itself in him with the forced breath. He wrenches his arm in the woman's grasp, feeling the hand break away with a hollow, crackling snap. It twists his stomach, but he focuses on the momentum.

Keep moving.

He stumbles forward in the snowdrift, trying to put distance between him and---whatever that woman was. Hopefully he'll end up closer to Sal and what might be a break from all the freaking perils. He hears a howl behind him, another shriek from the woman, but he pitches only further forward, trying to navigate while blinded by just-- too much.

Admittedly, keeping her attention on something other than the snow was doing some wonders against her own body. Assess the situation, be mindful of the other person with her, figure out the next step they would need to logically take. Her armor and fur were naturally made to withstand the weather, but it wasn't going to last forever. Her shivers from the initial hit would die down, but the blizzard would remain.

More concerning was Artair. He was significantly worse off than she was. Skin rather than fur. Clothing that was going to get soaked the longer they stayed out in the open. All he had to protect his face was his hood, and even that was not going to be enough.

Finding shelter was of the highest priority. Even if she had to dig a hole somewhere for them both to hunker down in, she would.

Or hell, maybe her vial could be a last resort option. A stone body wouldn't suffer much from the snow, and it would make blocking the wind and snow from Artair much easier... trouble was they wouldn't be able to move... not easily anyways. Flying was out too.

So they would walk.

Salena's ears pulled back, eyes narrowing as they fell on his hand. It was already turning red... they needed to move now.

He tried his phone... and while slightly helpful, couldn't give them a direction. Neither could his compass. She couldn't help the way her lips pulled up into a silent snarl. A random direction wasn't going to do them any good. He'd suggested seeing if she could hear or smell anything. Hearing wasn't really doing any good for them either... not over the roar of the wind from the blizzard.

She thought she could hear something else under it... but not certain. Not anything that would lead them to shelter.

Then her nose caught something. Smoke. Smoke was liable to be coming from some kind of fire. There wasn't anything else she could think of that would create such a source, at least not in this storm. If there was a fire going nearby, then it had to be in a covered space.

Salena turned her head back to Artair, "I can smell smoke. I'm going to lead us to it. Fall in line behind me and I'll take the brunt of the storm." Of course... she was aware of what this meant... asking him to do that. It all came down to trust.

She took a deep breath, turned her back to him, pushed against the storm, and began to lead them, following the only smell that might be their saving grace.

[ping-ski]

Hewwo, hope you are having a lovely day! :3 For the Artist Ask meme questions, what is your favourite music to draw to, your go-to things to draw for comfort and do you little warmup sketches before drawing? Thank you and have a wonderful rest of the weekend!!

hi ama!! :3 thank you and i hope your day + weekend is lovely too!! <3 (now to the questions, sorry for the yappage lol)

🎼 Your favorite music to draw to right now? ooo how fun!! i got 2 other anons asking this too haha! i love music and i'm also a (hobbyist) musician myself so... usually the music while i draw is dependent on the mood/intention/character i have with the piece! (silly art = silly music etc.) often times i'll loop a song for DAYS just to keep up the "vibe" cause i don't have a go-to favorite when i draw! otherwise i just listen to whatever comes to mind in the moment! but yeah right now (while i draw DCA au stuff), i'm listening to Willow Smith's "empathogen" album & yaelokre's "Hayfields" because i adore that project and it's fun to sing along with!

🐻 Your go-to things to draw when you need comfort? hmm... my go-to comfort to draw is almost always whatever my current hyperfixation is! which is primarily DCA right now! outside of that (tho i'd probably have art block tbh), it's usually drawing myself in varying styles or (if i pull them out of the basement) my OCs. i'm a fanartist at heart, so drawing original stuff sometimes feels alien to me haha! i need a fictional muse to fuel the art lmao

☕ Do you do warmup sketches before drawing? (Bonus: do you have any to share?) actually- no i don't! i don't really "warmup" at all because it ALWAYS ends up being a sketch i post or end up as a finished piece! (i feel like this would make more sense if you watch me draw live ig/posted a speedpaint? maybe for art requests and commissions, but i can't recall tbh.) before digital art, i always drew with a PEN or CRAYON cause that's the most sensory friendly option for me. (it doesn't make a lot of scratchy noises like markers and pencils) so i unintentionally trained my muscle memory and myself to draw whatever comes to mind because every stroke was (literally) permanent + i tried to draw fast and loose cause i hate the feeling of paper. it gives me the strongest, most volatile, and intense visceral ICK. when i draw, i always draw with intention otherwise i'm probably not drawing at all! (this is also why i'll go on streaks of posting often then disappearing) idk my vision is usually clear, even for sketches and the muscle memory does its job! im too lazy to do actual "warmups" tbh. anyways, it's not a warmup sketch per say but i here's a random wips i have !! :3 (it's all LDR, but the last two images are from a separate wip!)