#picturesofthegoneworld

[ratinayellowbandana]

Hello! Can I request a number 22 "Do you trust me?" "I don't know." from the angst prompt list if this appeals to you at all?

Best of luck with getting back into the grove, I look forward to reading anything new <3

hi! thank you very very much for this prompt - it's delicious. might even reuse it for another idea I have rolling around. i hope you enjoy how this one turned out; it was a great warm-up piece and i got to play around with second person (very sorry if that's not your thing). and on a personal note - I'm a huge fan of yours, so this was a wild ask to wake up to!

cw: mild gore, self-doubt

length: ~1250 words

~~~

You watch as Imogen steps forward. Once. Twice. Her head tilts, and her eyes narrow. Another step. You back away. Your chest is heaving. Why are you shaking? The cold calculation in Imogen’s gaze is unfamiliar. You have been reduced to an object—a threat to be sized up before you are dispatched by those capable hands. And, in a way, you are, aren’t you? A threat. An object. A strung-out puppet without a home.

She is-was-could-be your home, you think. Maybe. She has been. At least, you want to believe that is the truth of it. But how can you be sure? Home has always been an abstraction to you, a thing kept just out of sight, dangled like a lure bobbing just beneath the surface, tempting you up from the depths. It remains just out of reach, it seems. You feel yourself sinking, sinking back into the places the sun cannot reach. It’s safe there, you have learned. The shadows protect you. They are just as much a part of you as the scars that litter paper-thin skin, reminders of rising a little too close to the warm-bright world above.   

Imogen’s stare is piercing, the faint purple glow radiating faintly, only detectable in the darkness. Two pinpricks of violet that bore into you from a safe fifteen paces away. 

Jagged rocks loom, emerge from the ceiling, the walls, like fingers crooking accusingly in your direction. The heel of your shoe catches on a massive hooked chain, snaking and coiling and disappearing in and out of the shadows. Mist curls around your ankles. Hands clutch at a corseted chest as if fabric and boning could freeze the magic leaking from taloned fingertips. 

“This isn’t me,” you swear, and the words sound hollow, distant, echoing, like the air is swallowing them up before they leave your lips.

“It isn’t,” Imogen replies sardonically, but her hands remain pinched at her hips, a faint crimson flickering at her fingertips. “Did you do this?”

Your brow furrows. Three crackling purple spheres appear overhead, and the mist thins. Shriveled corpses sprawl across the stone floor between you. Their skin is ashy and gray, lips dried and drawn back in wild grins that reveal stained, rotting teeth. Bulging eyes too wide for their sockets, bloodshot and unseeing, stare vacantly at the ceiling. Stiff fingers curl into claws, digging into bodies contorted and frozen in expressions of agony. 

“No,” you say, “no, of course not.” You shift back, away, away, and stumble over a red-robed thigh. “I wouldn’t,” you insist. 

“No?”

You repeat, “I wouldn’t. I–”

“How would you know?” Imogen’s tone is cool, “If you did.” She steps over one mangled body, tutting, thunderously calm. A spark flashes in her fist.

“I–”

“You wouldn’t know, would you? If it was you.” She pauses, stares. Her words are biting. “You told me yourself. Maybe it was Delilah.” You shrink back, away, away, until your back hits the jagged wall, and you relish in the pain because it means that something is solid. The fog in your head is thick, clouding, as Imogen stalks toward you. “Is there a difference anymore?” 

A chill runs through you, and the beautiful new corset you wear seems to constrict around your chest, squeezing, strangling. Imogen doesn’t believe you. She doesn’t believe you, and if she doesn’t believe in you, can you believe yourself? She was your home, once, (right?) but the foundation is cracked, leaking ichor and electricity that fries your toes. You need to know. Suddenly, it is the most important thing in the world. Imogen’s confidence in your goodness. That something in you is worth saving. Worth something. (There must be something.)  

“Do you trust me?” Your voice is thick, rattling, when you whisper through dusty cords. 

Imogen is five paces away, now, and moving closer as you press all you can into the wall. Perhaps you could become a fossil for the next generation of adventurers to find. Compressed and hardened between shale and mineral and away, away from piercing violet. Imogen studies you, unmoving, untouching. 

“I don’t know,” she says at last. She brings a hand up to grasp your chin, and you flinch. You have never flinched from her before. (You haven’t.) Her grip is firm. “Should I?”

“Yes,” you say, desperate. “Yes. Please.” Because you need her to understand so badly you could tear your heart from your chest and lay it at her feet if only so she would know it’s there. 

“You hurt us. You hurt your friends, Laudna. Look at them.” She releases your chin and spreads her arms.

Bathed in dim purple light, the corpses wear the clothes of your companions. (Have they always looked like this?) Fearne in FCG’s tattered coat, seafoam hair limp and stringy. Bor’dor, his green shawl stained dark with ichor. Chetney, his throat torn out. Orym, bruised, with Seedling and the Summit Blade fallen at his side. Ashton, arm in pieces.

“I didn’t.” You sound uncertain even to yourself. 

Imogen scoffs. “Running away again?” (Again?)

Always running. You always run. It has always been easier to run. It would be easier to run. (Why can’t you run?) You want to run away. You cannot go far from Imogen. (Can’t you?) The wall is moving. (The wall shouldn’t be moving. Walls can’t move. Why is the wall moving? Are you moving? Are you? A r e  y o u) 

“This is your fault.”

Your tongue refuses to move. It sits limp in your mouth like rotting meat. Sour. Disgusting. Useless, useless. Imogen doesn’t believe you. Doesn’t believe in you. Did you do this? This is your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault your fault your fault your fault your fault

You shudder and gasp, and suddenly, Imogen is holding you, but that cannot be right because she doesn’t trust you and why should she because who are you if you are not yourself and maybe you are just Delilah but how can you be sure and and and 

“Hey, woah,” Imogen croons near your ear. “Hey, you’re all right; you’re okay. I’ve got you.”

Stale cavern air that tastes of death and decay floods your lungs, and you heave. Your hands and knees scrape against the floor. You need to get away, away. Away from her. You need to run. Before you hurt anyone. Before you hurt her. 

“Okay, hey, you’re okay, honey. Dominox got you good, huh?” 

Your vision darkens, and your ears ring, and your teeth lengthen.

“What’d you see?” Chetney crows. 

Imogen’s arms tighten around you, and you stiffen.  

“Give her a minute.” 

You shake your head against Imogen’s chest. Bits of debris lodge in your palm, and you savor the sting. Dark hair hangs in a curtain where it has been torn loose. 

“Take your time,” Imogen murmurs. Her eyes are not glowing; her hands do not spark. They trace small circles along your back where you can still feel the imprint of sharp stone, and you shiver at the dissonance. “It wasn’t real, Laudna. Whatever it was, it was the demon messin’ with your head.” 

A shaky exhale escapes your lips. “Do you trust me?” 

“What?” Imogen pulls away slightly to meet your wide eyes. She hesitates. Her mind presses against yours. You can feel her skimming, paging through your surface thoughts like a stone over water before she settles, bobbing, tempting. 

“Is it her?” Orym asks warily. 

“I think so,” Imogen says, but she remains intently focused, searching.

You repeat yourself through the weight that has settled low in your stomach. “Do you trust me?” 

“I… Why are you askin’ me that?”  

[avalencias]

yes I was inspired by the latest chapter of this fic, no I don’t want to talk about it.

(fic by @picturesofthegoneworlds)

[distant--shadow]

When Imogen wakes it is with an ache in her neck

a drop into reality unusually cushioned

a hand combing through her hair

and she can’t help the smile that breaks when she meets Laudna’s watchful eyes peering down at her, flushes shortly after.

“Sorry, did I fall asleep?”

Laudna smiles back at her, halts the hand playing with her hair.

“You did.”

An unspoken mutual agreement allows the moment to stretch in silence –

that or time is still fucky from Imogen only just waking up. It gives her enough of it to contemplate.

The sun must be high, the atmosphere muggy and the fauna all bustling as if it were a market day and the critters had stalls to set up and produce to bring home for their litters in the burrows. She feels the layer of sweat on her skin wherever the sun directly touches it, smells in waves where it heats the floor and diffuses the groundcover as if it were potpourri-

Above her, backlit - Laudna’s wearing a halo. The giant leaves of the giant trees are so high above them that the scale almost looks normal, the light breaking between the canopy in beams, sparkling in places where it catches insect wings and pollen, silhouetting edges of wiry strands of hair that act as though curtains on a canopy bed, all giving cover from the storm (should it come). It all feels so hazy, could be the vision starting to turn to grains of sand in her eyes like before a migraine but it’s also unusually clear, her head weightless despite the aching neck – funny what a handful of hours of good sleep can do.

The unspoken mutual agreement is ended.

“Did you rest well?” what did you dream about?

“I did, yeah...”

Unintentional, excusable really - waking with her defences down.

Wouldn’t be outta the ordinary to share.

“…dreamt we were back at Oddrún’s, was nice-” she withholds the details, just to save a little face. Exposes it anyhow, when she finds herself inadvertently taking the hand that had stilled in her hair, holding her palm up above her head with Laudna's lying flat on top of it “-then the roof caved in again and the place got swarmed with birds.”

“Birds?”

Imogen's thumb traces the knife-edge of the long nail on Laudna’s.

“Birds.” Imogen confirms, distracted, half-awake, giddy. The word already sounds funny; thrown back and forth between them. She chuckles at how her lips form around the repetition of it, says it again in Marquesian to see if it feels as abstract- that causes Laudna to quirk her brow from behind the fan of their fingers. “All different kinds, real cute and stuff, mostly. Place got furnished in feathers, was pretty chaotic - parakeets nestin’ in the cups and saucers and kingfishers in the rafters…” Laudna exhales a single syllable of a choral chuckle and Imogen has never felt so relaxed. “There was a kinda shady lookin’ big one standin’ on one leg in the corner by the hearth though, kept squawkin’.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, think it was a shoebill. You ever seen one of those?”

“You know, I’m not sure. I wonder if there was any significance…”

Their fingers interlace, under Laudna's initiative. Imogen stares at the long nails now reaching to her wrist like plates of fine ebony gauntlets.

“I could try draw it for y’all, but I don’t think it’d help…” comes out audibly distracted, the points of Laudna's talons gently making contact with Imogen's scarred skin-

“Allow me to get my notebook~” Laudna enthusiastically sings – nearly cutting Imogen, their hands separating - and Imogen is left staring at the empty space that was occupied by the shape that the two of them made, wonders if there is a word for that, like ‘bird’ - each hand a wing of some amalgamation, dream chimera, released between palms.

Probably a word she doesn’t have the language for.

(passage and illustration from @picturesofthegoneworlds ' intertwined)

[astoriacolumnstaircase]

I am so in love with the quiet and contemplative travel years story Intertwined by @picturesofthegoneworlds and i wanted to draw a scene. This comes from the eighth chapter, Rain, when Laudna mended some crockery for a woman who offered them shelter in exchange for help fixing the roof. If you haven't read it yet, you are in for a treat.

[picturesofthegoneworlds]

Posting here with @distant--shadow's permission - a painted illustration to go with this piece of my writing:

<3 <3 <3

[antlereed]

top 5 fics?

1) high speed connection by hoodieheda ( @wvearp)

listen. listen to me. im a sucker for a good modern au and this is the holy grail of modern fics for critical role as a whole for me. i reread it once a month just because i love barista laudna with an army of grandmas

2) intertwined by picturesofthegoneworld ( @picturesofthegoneworlds)

the way the girls are in this is just!!! the way their relationship is still new but just as volatile as running away with the witch in the woods would really be. always in love with how goopy and weird laudna is, i love her so much in this (this is a theme in my favorite fics. laudna is my babygirl i love her)

3) Lives Like A Haunted House by AstoriaColumnStaircase ( @astoriacolumnstaircase)

this fic has it All. ghost laudna, morally ambiguous imogen history, crafts, just. i want to live in it so bad i want to be ghost besties with laudna so so so bad

4) Shit, Let’s Raid Area 51 by Caubool ( @caubool)

obligatory homestuck fic. this was writren, if you cant tell, during the area 51 raid meme craze, and while it does focus very heavy on that it takes the idea and Runs With It so well. one of my favorite fics of all time, i love the formatting (and rose) so much

5) Time of (un)Death by Antlered (meeeee)

is it cheating to list my own fic? who cares, i still think this is the funniest thing ive written, the idea of laudna being a world record holder still makes me laugh just from the sheer hilarity of the idea that a world record rep would find this deeply traumatized woman to give her a certificate and medal for her Literal Death. also laudna and chet being woodworkers together is still a great idea and im just patting my own back for that lmao

[distant--shadow]

I will allow myself to (along with witches be switches) claim ownership for coining the term (g)love language.

anyhow, go read picturesofthegoneworld's fics on ao3. glove master

the role reversal of laudna now being the one wearing gloves and imogen having her hands free is INSANE you guys… cue the (g)love language

[nightphlox]

4. What detail in [insert fic] are you really proud of?

This is a fun question. I don't remember what I was proudest of when I hit publish, but scrolling back through, this (and just above) is the part of wanting me wanting you where I started to figure out what kind of things I could do with the idea of telepathy + sex, and it still makes me go, hey, that was a pretty good brain blast I had, thank you brain can we do that again?

“Oh,” Imogen says incoherently, and she lets herself settle backwards against the bed. In Laudna’s mind’s eye she sees herself, dress pooling around her, flushed and wanting. There’s a confusing rush of arousal at the image—Laudna’s, she realizes. She is seeing herself in the mirror of Laudna’s mind’s eye, and aching with need. It turns her on deliriously.

And this paragraph in push/pull has gotten some love, which makes me happy because I am still very pleased with it:

“Good,” Laudna breathes, reaching for the words to try them on, “Good girl,” and Imogen moans, her hips bucking wildly against her. Laudna rises and falls with them and loves the way that it feels, Imogen rolling into her, Imogen connected to her, Imogen part of her, the drag and push of Imogen’s cock in her cunt, filling her to bursting, the dull grounding pain of Imogen’s electric fingers bruising her skin, marking her, and that’s all she wants, always, ever, this feeling of being Imogen’s, being full of Imogen, being possessed by Imogen, possessing her, Imogen gasping under her with her tits and neck and mouth stained with Laudna’s ichor, Imogen inside her and under her and everywhere, only Imogen, just Imogen, nothing in the world but Imogen.

12. Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you?

Answered!

24. Are there any easter eggs in [insert fic], and if so, what are they?

Hmm, nothing that anyone wouldn't have caught, I think. push/pull has revivify cock ring and monkey gun. Does it count as an easter egg if in my mind the rest of the Hells one million percent knew Imogen and Laudna were heading off to fuck even though they went to bed "not so early as to be indecent"?

Also not sure if this counts as an easter egg, but I always have an internal battle over whether to be consistent with dropping Imogen's gs, and this is a spot where I went back and forth and back and forth and ultimately could just not bring myself to do it.

“You’re dripping,” Imogen says as Laudna lowers herself onto Imogen’s thigh and rocks her hips into it, and she doesn’t know what ravenous part of her the words are coming from as they spill hotly from her mouth.

"Drippin'." absolutely not i'm sorry just. i cannot

30. Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter?

I mean here is how my smut-writing career began:

so honestly, writing smut to begin with was a big step outside my comfort zone! I'm glad I started with a First Time fic because it let me explore things more slowly rather than vaulting in with more of a charged dynamic. I think it's probably safe to guess that the more smut I write the more interesting the range of attached tags is going to get.

50. Answer any question of your choice, or talk about anything you want to talk about!

When in doubt I'm pretty much always going to default to talking process! My process was really different for these two fics--wanting me wanting you is the least-outlined fic I've ever written (had a typically thorough outline for the introductory scene, but almost nothing for the sex, just a little section at the bottom of the doc labeled LET'S INCLUDE SOME OF THIS STUFF with some ideas/scraps of scenes below it. I figured out what I wanted to do with the fic, including the entire telepathy sex conceit, as I was writing. push/pull, however, had not only an outline but a beat-by-beat bullet point sketch of almost the whole fic before I sat down and started writing any actual sentences. (My usual for non-smut is somewhere in between these two things, although definitely closer to the push/pull side of things.)

This was fun, thank you for the ask!!! <3

[kingsavetattoo]

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The Highlight Reel to Ed Hardy's "Pictures of the Gone World" is now up on the Mike Rubendall YouTube page. Thanks again to everyone who came out and was a part of this amazing weekend! #kingsavetattoo #bowery #EdHardy #PicturesOfTheGoneWorld #deth #donedhardy #kingsavenyc #kingsave #tattoo (at Kings Avenue Tattoo)

[picturesofthegoneworlds]

“Remember to breathe, darling.”

Don’t make me fret - if I bite this glass will shatter and our blood will be ash in my mouth, and what use is that?

“After that, will you kiss me?” its barely a murmur passing whatever it is that has lodged itself in her throat, burnt umber ashes, saliva clotted paste Laudna would probably make use of as a ceramic glaze or a paint if Imogen- when Imogen dies first and Laudna is that time the one left with ashes

‘Can I kiss you?’ ‘Can I kiss you?’ ‘Can I kiss you?’ ‘Can I -

She smiles. Toothy and wide.

“Of course.”

Imogen makes a show of filling her lungs, breath deep and ribcage expanding, comically raising Laudna in her field of vision and they both start laughing and the oxygen occupying her chest is intoxicating love drunk room spinning giddy Laudna giddily kisses her throat, her jaw, her chin, the corner of her mouth before swallowing Imogen's laugh her love toxic intoxication into her own, down her windpipe and into her lungs

[distant--shadow]

illustrations from chapters 4,5, and 6 of Intertwined by @picturesofthegoneworld

emma's doing some real cool stuff with her approach and format for telling this story using repition and bleedover of POV and mirroring and callbacks and in ways i'm tryna do that with the drawings too, but i'm fully aware these are probably only apparent to me haha

anyhow chapter 6 and we finally got their faces together in one picture woo.

[distant--shadow]

@picturesofthegoneworlds I got a new blog-header for u

[picturesofthegoneworlds]

When Imogen wakes it is with an ache in her neck

a drop into reality unusually cushioned

a hand combing through her hair

and she can’t help the smile that breaks when she meets Laudna’s watchful eyes peering down at her, flushes shortly after.

“Sorry, did I fall asleep?”

Laudna smiles back at her, halts the hand playing with her hair.

“You did.”

An unspoken mutual agreement allows the moment to stretch in silence –

that or time is still fucky from Imogen only just waking up. It gives her enough of it to contemplate.

The sun must be high, the atmosphere muggy and the fauna all bustling as if it were a market day and the critters had stalls to set up and produce to bring home for their litters in the burrows. She feels the layer of sweat on her skin wherever the sun directly touches it, smells in waves where it heats the floor and diffuses the groundcover as if it were potpourri-

Above her, backlit - Laudna’s wearing a halo. The giant leaves of the giant trees are so high above them that the scale almost looks normal, the light breaking between the canopy in beams, sparkling in places where it catches insect wings and pollen, silhouetting edges of wiry strands of hair that act as though curtains on a canopy bed, all giving cover from the storm (should it come). It all feels so hazy, could be the vision starting to turn to grains of sand in her eyes like before a migraine but it’s also unusually clear, her head weightless despite the aching neck – funny what a handful of hours of good sleep can do.

The unspoken mutual agreement is ended.

“Did you rest well?” what did you dream about?

“I did, yeah...”

Unintentional, excusable really - waking with her defences down.

Wouldn’t be outta the ordinary to share.

“…dreamt we were back at Oddrún’s, was nice-” she withholds the details, just to save a little face. Exposes it anyhow, when she finds herself inadvertently taking the hand that had stilled in her hair, holding her palm up above her head with Laudna's lying flat on top of it “-then the roof caved in again and the place got swarmed with birds.”

“Birds?”

Imogen's thumb traces the knife-edge of the long nail on Laudna’s.

“Birds.” Imogen confirms, distracted, half-awake, giddy. The word already sounds funny; thrown back and forth between them. She chuckles at how her lips form around the repetition of it, says it again in Marquesian to see if it feels as abstract- that causes Laudna to quirk her brow from behind the fan of their fingers. “All different kinds, real cute and stuff, mostly. Place got furnished in feathers, was pretty chaotic - parakeets nestin’ in the cups and saucers and kingfishers in the rafters…” Laudna exhales a single syllable of a choral chuckle and Imogen has never felt so relaxed. “There was a kinda shady lookin’ big one standin’ on one leg in the corner by the hearth though, kept squawkin’.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, think it was a shoebill. You ever seen one of those?”

“You know, I’m not sure. I wonder if there was any significance…”

Their fingers interlace, under Laudna's initiative. Imogen stares at the long nails now reaching to her wrist like plates of fine ebony gauntlets.

“I could try draw it for y’all, but I don’t think it’d help…” comes out audibly distracted, the points of Laudna's talons gently making contact with Imogen's scarred skin-

“Allow me to get my notebook~” Laudna enthusiastically sings – nearly cutting Imogen, their hands separating - and Imogen is left staring at the empty space that was occupied by the shape that the two of them made, wonders if there is a word for that, like ‘bird’ - each hand a wing of some amalgamation, dream chimera, released between palms.

Probably a word she doesn’t have the language for.

Laudna unthreaded their hands and after that, she doesn’t move.

Imogen remembers her position in her lap

sits up abruptly on her bedroll, turning back towards Laudna’s skirts with the same instinct as for making a bed

“No, really, I can’t draw. It’ll just be embarrassin’. It won’t help any.”

“It’s good to draw regardless-”

Imogen would call what falls on Laudna’s face a pout. Hates that she is, unsurprisingly, intrigued to see what lines the pages of Laudna’s notebook. Apparently hearing inside her head is not enough.

Greedy. (maybe she’s hungry?). Gods, Laudna’s been sat cross-legged with Imogen's thick heavy skull in her lap for hours. How does Imogen show her gratitude?

“-have you even eaten? I should make us breakfast.”

She clumsily scatters away before Laudna has the chance to really answer.

(thanks as always to @distant--shadow for the illustrations <3)

[picturesofthegoneworlds]

Rating: E

There hadn’t been much time to talk. There is never much time to talk. She had accumulated so many mostly-empty decades with too much time to talk that surely she could re-distribute them now �� gut the words from the straw stuffing in Pâté’s taxidermy stomach and grind it between mill stones and bake it in shrapnelled-belly into bread, share that time in Fresh Cut pillowy slices and buttered toast and sandwiches with the Hells, though certainly what would be regurgitated would be of less use than manure, not even bone-meal, and Imogen deserves more than thirty years of grey monologue slop - nutritious as the influence of time-rot isolation on her own accent, acknowledgeable in a short amount of time bloomed further in how Imogen’s diminished within her own company and fleeing home, causing Imogen’s inflection to soften, dull, slowly, over their nearly-three-years, over and under the time Laudna offered, burnt oven loaves and skillet-fried flatbreads -

and Imogen had taken. There could never be enough time when it was willingly shared.

That had been the case from the beginning. Their beginning – it always will remain that, despite- despite later…developments. Names. Formalities. Definitions. Uncertainties. The bed was always theirs - perhaps always made. Destined. What a small corner of the world to find herself in! To find herself with basket underarm – with butter, bacon fat, eggs, and tea. And Imogen, with a loaf of bread! She shared it – tore crusts to dip in market-egg golden yolks and holster-dagger-cut slices folded and mimicking the grab of hands around butter-fried foraged mushrooms. Nutritious. Nourishing. Enriching. She shared it! Saviour. Special. Laudna must Support her. She must support her because Imogen found her, followed her from the market into the forest and shared her loaf of bread and so for their nearly-three-years she followed Imogen.

She follows Imogen. She followed Imogen as she fell into pace behind Ludinus – she must support her because she shared her loaf of bread, she must support her because she is tied to the fate of the Gods, and more importantly by extension, Exandria. She follows Imogen now, back in Zadash, teleportation-messed and mead-warmed, follows Imogen up the tavern stairs varnished with decades of spilt liquor and projected vomit and buffed with the worn leather soles of travellers and drunkards-

and otherwise, she is witness to suppose – to support.

Imogen's boots land out of syncopation with Laudna's short heels (she used to do a much better job of playing her shadow), their steps map the architecture of the building under the hollow staircase, wooden rafter meeting stone wall, perhaps pots and pans for the kitchen or other metal instruments hanging in storage under the stairs, perhaps torture devices, shackles and chains bolted to alabaster stone-

There’s a slight sway to Imogen’s hips - there always is, always was - divine feminine being, (un)holy vessel, muscle and fat and sinew and skin and magic scars intercepted by worldly stretchmarks gate only interrupted by ankles twisted on desert boulders and more-than-earned more thoroughly-deserved rest, sway resumed in sweat and salt and sex arousal rolled intentionally against Laudna’s own and there hasn’t been much time for that

Hadn’t…?

Developments. Definitions. Uncertainties.

She woke up and Imogen was holding her hand-

How many steps are there to the next floor?

Imogen stumbles slightly in the dark bottom-of-the-whisky-bottle amber lighting, no windows facing the stairwell – now hallway, as there had been none in the frozen underground ruins too, and Laudna was following her there, followed the lilac dancing sparks that she has been following for nearly three years now.

Laudna almost crashes into her back, almost crumbles and creases around Imogen like that wagon they saw in ruin, the one that had left tracks veering off of the dirt path of a mountain trail, flora flattened by wheel and chassis footprints to reveal the wagon folded in splinters around the majestic trunk of a red pine at the base of the incline.

Sorry, just gotta wrestle with the key…

the rattling of key to lock – a discernibly different sound to that of Imogen's footsteps causing the unidentified metal assumedly hanging from hooks under the stairs to jostle.

Don’t mind me- Laudna responds, and it is a pretty hilarious statement to make between the two of them-

three of them-

The door groans (four) as if it had been animated and was reacting to her distasteful pun.

Imogen takes Laudna by the hand before she has time to berate it. (you can read the rest here)

[picturesofthegoneworlds]

The sands are repetitive, despite Laudna's best efforts to catalogue the differences – trying to allow each grain to wear its own hue, oil-slick petrol rainbow under the mid-day sun, rippled from sandstorm residue and snakes’ belly dancing, heat hazing horizon.

But it all replicates, barren, bleak, another blister to the sole from a charcoaled burn on Exandria’s surface.

Imogen's focus is elsewhere, on staving off exhaustion. She’s quiet. It leaves Laudna with too much mind to paint herself in the tattered black skirt guise of the desert.

Imogen stops for the fourth time in a short amount of it, hand to her hip retrieving then removing the cork stopper from her waterskin with her teeth before dabbing its contents onto her neckerchief, patting it over the exposed skin of her chest and forehead before she ties it back around her neck, bright yellow hue ambered.

Laudna has been studying. Deciphering what is adult human behaviour and what is Imogen. Comparing quirks against necessity, can argue the case for accommodating, for blending in.

Their pace has been slower than usual, much slower, and it must only be early afternoon, but Imogen’s waterskin is almost drained, and of course, Laudna will happily give Imogen her own supply, undoubtedly, but she fears that there is a quite likely reality where even double her ration will not be enough, is unsure of the amount of days travel ahead thanks to empty horizons.

“It’s too much, isn’t it?”

“huh?” Imogen pushes her hair off of her forehead with the heel of her palm, revealing all of the perspiration congregating at the roots of her hairline, percolating at her temples.

“The heat…”

Just a moment later and she is ruffling her fingertips through the front of her scalp, causing the lengths of lilac locks to cascade back over her forehead and cover more of her face from the sun.

“I can’t lie - I’ve been fantasizin’ about bein’ back in that forest during the rainstorm.”

That forest where Imogen had built them a shelter, had dried Laudna out, and as her thanks she had rouged Imogen’s lips with elf cup stain that her ichor blighted, answered her questions as if her intricacies were reward enough-

Imogen’s eyes squint from the bright light, or possibly the salty sweat that has gathered in the corners of them – probably both.

“Perhaps we should be travelling in the night and early morning. Let’s rest and try to make cover.”

Imogen shifts her weight between her feet, stepping from one onto the other, dancing on hot coals.

“I won’t say no.”

Laudna is just as grateful for that placation as she was for the one that had lead her finger to the swell of Imogen’s lip, maybe more. 

The sand is hot. The sand is hot so Imogen can’t stay still. The sand is so hot that the heat transfers through the soles of her shoes, so it must transfer through her dress, her shorts, through the pile of their blanket. Laudna gathers sticks, branches, has no need for kindling. Laudna gathers tangled brush and bark from dead wood and dried up shrubs and weaves them all together like a nest, instinct maternal, infertile, basket weaver, furnishings gathered in the back of a butcher’s cart. They build it together (the shelter, not a nest, not a basket, not a home), Laudna arranging the twigs like plaited threshing and Imogen driving longer, more substantial branches into the ground, energy exerting, muscle and flesh sculpture shadows exaggerated under sun four posts for canopy tarpaulin and perspiring profusely and Laudna wishes that maybe her lungs could hold a much greater capacity, that she could walk the two of them, Imogen wrapped under arm-awning’ed shade of her cloak and fanned by cold breaths like a draught from under a snow-capped cabin’s door.

[picturesofthegoneworlds]

For one word prompts, I'm finally seeing some green in my garden again, so: Sage?

Oh, of course you know how to appeal to me. I hope this brings the vibes <3 ~

There was a variety of sage (still is, most likely) - sanctified – a herb that they would dry hanged from the rafters and tie into bundles like broomstick bristles, its own fibrous stem knotted in noose around the neck and ankles of the bale, burnt at the stakes and raised pitchforks to sweep away the wicked.

The smoke was what woke her, herbaceous floral distress signal, thrown through the open (paneless) window, accompanied by salt and circle.

They hoped to lure her out the front ‘door’ - she concluded with groggy post-dream clarity - strategized to trap her between saline force field and stone and mortar.

She stumbled over herself, gathered her few possessions. In time shorter the flames carpeted the threshing covering the floor, climbed into her bed to alight the straw stuffing the mattress, exorcised from there to cross exposed rafters to the mossy thatching comprising the roof-

She left through the vacant fireplace.

From a distance fled she observed the thick grapevine coiling of smoke as it billowed out above the forest canopy from a chimney that had crumbled decades ago.

Fire-licked masonry, tattered and scorched fabrics. Perhaps their malice left the cabin more befitting, well-suited, paralleled - outfitted in ash grey skin and soot ichor stains. The hunting party retreated but she could not return. She wondered who would take up residence in the hollow shell - as such a body must be an invite, must be a vessel (at least that was a lesson she was soon to learn) - but who would cohabitate with the spiders, birds, and other small mammals?

The thick smoke filtered through the pines

All of her grievances aside (packed away once again with her bedroll and cauldron), it smelt rather wonderful-

~

There was another sage (surely must be, still) - common - cultivated in window boxes and allotments, the leaves torn to marinade meats, to infuse healing balms, unbiased towards the dead or the living, transmuting itself for both in order to permeate soft tissue.

Laudna would grab handfuls of the silver-furred leaves; amass them in pocket-lint-lined-bundles of potpourri. Crushed the sage between her fingers, rubbed it on her pulse points, tied it with red twine dried in parcels of cheesecloth that she decorated around her person. Loose in her coin pouch, trinkets, her spell component satchel too, sewn into Pâté’s stuffing, flattened behind her belts and tucked into the front of her bodice and trampled in the soles of her shoes-

Never sure if it was necessity or in her head, not like when she wore flushing and sweating flesh, saturated, awkward teenager dealing with the stubborn stench of puberty or drenched in the fragrance of a farm-girl-butcher’s-daughter composting straw manure and coagulated pigs’ blood –

-not the perfume of The Ladies, certainly, refined with their age, aged mahogany liquor barrel vintage sophisticated palate, finery of silks satin lace velvet layers stored in lacquered marquetry hardwood armoires and mausoleum-sized wardrobes, aired in gilded vase and bouquet’ed marble surroundings, chandeliers ornately framed paintings in alabaster hallways-

She would feel rather self-conscious of it; of her differences - but continued her play with the worms in the forest regardless.

Then, for a short time, she slept with them.

Or rather, she woke to fall onto a heap moving with them, dancing drunken room-spin carpet shag pile of maggots and flies and mosquitoes and pillows of other larvae unidentified, turning familiar faces into fertiliser.

She was not sure if it was the memory, or the actual (un)working order of things

Permanently rotting 

Hard to smell past the end of a decomposing nose

Perhaps it wasn’t so hard to tell for others?

Every time she passed the plant she filled her pockets and hands - ironically unaware of how time had stilled, that she was embalming herself - hoping it would fight the trauma-ever-present smell, that she could throw off the(ir) scent.

~

There is a sage that blooms violet throughout the summer - wild - like early humid evenings with head thrown back in laughter and perspiration jeweling tanned neck, clouds underlit and voluminous as purple-sunset tousled hair.

Imogen points it out with inquisition; at the gatherings of spears of blossoms lanced into soil growing not far from the bank of a river in the sun-bleached and crunching-under-foot tall grasses of an open field.

Seeds from dried out flower heads are carried along the docile breeze, ashes falling in hazing-heat ground fog, smithing dandelion diamond rings to decorate the fingers of the willows that lazily wave, bid farewell to the jewellery that doesn’t fit, allowing it to marry elsewhere between clumps over the grass and charms accumulated at the banks of the gently moving river.

“D’ya know what this is? Smells good.”

She kneels down with her palm held open to the purple blooming sage, presentory, skin offering the tan lines above her knees exposed from the displacement of the tops of her tall leather boots, a dandelion seed catching in the mass of her mane like a feather, her hand not designated to indicating specimen shading above one of her eyes squinted shut and the corner of her mouth raised baring teeth as she looks to Laudna with the midday sun over her shoulder.  

It’s a bit overwhelming, the life and the bliss it elicits.

Laudna walks the few paces over to her, gives a quick inspection with the cast of her shadow.

Smiles in familiarity, nods to the plant in greeting

“Would you like to try it?”

Imogen starts the fire, uses the abundance of dried grasses as kindling. It smells just like the burning cottage had, does so every time. Laudna prunes the wild sage, gathering toothed leaves and small violet petals into her wicker basket, rolls the fragranced stems between the pads of her fingers and inhales, implores the herbal scent to momentarily mask the memory of deterioration as it once had. Imogen sets up the frame for hanging the cauldron, drives the iron spikes into the dry ground, fills it from the river, has to submerge her hand into the gathered water, fingers tweezers removing errant dandelion parachutes that she wipes onto her gauzy dress skirt, skin glistening with the cascading droplets that intuitively follow the scarring of her lightning marks and drip onto the floor, where a lizard with skin like stones flees under the weave of the trodden grass once her footfall returns, retreats for safer ground. Laudna questions whether it will turn to watch the fire or let instinct tell it to keep running-

“You’re quiet…”

Imogen states, offers a softened and upturned corner of her mouth.

Another feather of an airborne seed lands in her hair. A warning arrow shot through the window and puncturing her pillow, innards flying-

“I seem to be having a reflective day, sorry.”

 “Anythin’ you wanna share?”

Imogen wears her empathetic apology in her brow, strained, and Laudna isn’t sure of how legible abstract memories are to her, if the furrow is from an attempt at unknotting the tangles, mostly it feels a weight too unquantifiable to know what to share with intention.

“Not now. I think this is good, something new.”

Present is good, a gift, shared (willingly, in part).

“I don’t dislike it…”

Imogen declares, staring into her cup as she swirls its contents under inquisitive-eyed assessment.

“It sounds like you are warming up for a caveat there.”

She pauses, holds the pottery between her hands on her lap.

“I’m not, s’just new. Tea back home was mostly black and made with lemons and alotta honey or sugar; was cold if the occasion were special-” she tucks her hair behind her ear as her eyes read the pattern of the blanket they had laid over the floor. Laudna wonders if there were birthday parties on picnic blankets out in the paddocks, waited by her father, Imogen and her childhood friends drinking sweet tea and running around in daisy crowns “-I guess we had other teas, but they were more for if y’all were sick?”

She doesn’t like to think of that.

The birds and the crickets carry on their background accompaniment, Imogen's hand returning to the other cradling the cup. Laudna feels as though she can see the slow turn of the skin on her exposed thighs from bronzed tan to sun-kissed red, convinced she is observing the freckles multiplying.

“This one is supposed to be good for anxiety.”

Imogen scoffs, it causes a nearby bird in the brush to scatter

“Yeah? Well I’ll report back on that - maybe we should take more with us just in case.”

Laudna laughs agreeably, enthusiastic. She knows how to make plenty of room for sage.

To follow the tea she also makes them a salad with the plant’s greens; a field-foraged thing prepared with borage and dandelion leaves, fleshed out with wild strawberries, a little olive oil and a little cider vinegar, served in a wooden bowl. 

finishes the assemblage with an intentionally random flecking of the wild sage's violet petals, as though the bowl is a miniature diorama of the meadow in which they sit, olive oil babbling brook and cast iron fork fallen-tree bridge ready to present on a plinth, garden plans proposed by the landscaper in the study to a snooty gent stroking his chin and um-ing and ah-ing -

the hidden door that was disguised behind ornate wooden panelling, adjoining the ransacked and emptied floor to ceiling shelves of the study via dark stone corridors to the equipped and practical, cell-like laboratory- 

She thinks that was the layout, at least - worries who she will rouse if she thinks too hard on it. There is comfort in the answer being left immaterial.

“All’a those times I was sittin’ in fields of flowers, I never really thought I could be eatin’ them.”

It is so nice to have someone she adores break up her ruminations.

“You had a lot of quality produce, there wasn’t really the need.”

"I guess not. Honestly, I think I prefer the salad to the tea." 

Imogen licks her teeth, reveals a violet petal plastered over incisor that she shortly removes with a blade-of dry-grass toothpick, re-places the petal on the flat of her tongue, rolling it around her mouth and swallowing it. 

Laudna stares.

"You like the flowers?" she finds herself leaning towards Imogen. Wants to tell her that for years this one was her perfume - pomanders adorned and concealed in tattered layers.

“They’re purple, ‘course I do.” she giggles, resting sat cross-legged with her weight behind her on her palms. Her head rolls towards Laudna, leaves their foreheads almost resting against one another, Laudna able to count each individual eyelash.

Purple, like the deep undertones of her hair. That much Laudna was very aware of.

“I should have guessed that that would be what caught your attention.” She brings her hand up and wraps her bony index finger in a ringlet of Imogen's hair.

“More like your magic, I was thinkin’…” She drawls, tenor lowered and breathy. 

“And the taste?”

Imogen visibly swallows, cheeks flushing a further tint than what the sun has already given - it makes Laudna feel overly aware of the networking of her own heart and veins.

Imogen clears her throat

"’s’good - kinda familiar."

Laudna feels overwhelmed by the compelling need to kiss her - so she does. Her hand with finger still tied in ringlets of hair sprawling over Imogen's chest as she responds with a squeaked moan that reverberates underneath it. Her lungs halt in their expansion as her mouth is sealed with her own, the increasing pulse at the base of her neck decipherable carved runes under the tip of her fingers, her heart thudding against her palm.

Familiar. Laudna can muse on that in the future, certainly.

She sits back from Imogen - already breathless and chest heaving, lips kiss-swollen - and appreciates the sight she helped curate; the picture of her looking a little dazed on their tartan blanket with the surrounding flora densely reaching above her shoulders, crowned in multi-coloured paint strokes.

“Familiar? And here I thought that was your first time eating a flower.”

Causes her to blush furiously

“Don’t you use ma’words against me.” She pushes Laudna playfully at her shoulder, pretends to look away in dissatisfaction, bottom lip pouting.

“I apologise, that is your advantage to keep. My words are but humble ammunition for your armoury.” Laudna exaggeratedly plays acting pious at Imogen’s half-turned back, Imogen turning back to her with one eyebrow raised and a laugh she is clearly trying to keep within her stomach murmuring at the corners of her lips.

"That so? Well alright, how would y’all describe it?" 

She puffs out air towards her head, hairs previously put behind her ear falling back out of (or into, depending on which of them you ask) place, sits forward again, arms folded. Adorable. Laudna is aware of how susceptible Imogen is to her teasing, always so charming and charismatic, and so often a bumbling mess - and it is intoxicating - to exercise any sort of outcome on such a gifted sorceresses’ disposition, is doing her best to learn what the differences and distinctions are between that and her own longer ongoing situation…

Focus.

Despite the more imposing associations, she can still remember

Can still remember her father butchering the pig, her mother in the kitchen slicing its fatty flesh into patchwork diamonds, stuffing the incised indents with sage and garlic and other seasonings, the slab of flesh tied with butcher’s twine around a whole peeled onion and roasted, skin crackling, the three of them sat around the oak table, talking about the small things, Laudna's mother showing off the basket Laudna had weaved that day, presented like a cornucopia on the kitchen table top, holding that weeks offering of vegetables.

She would describe it as herbaceous, sweet, and floral. Peppery, perhaps like a minty aniseed. Earthy. Mulchy. Rich as the soil it grew from. Could also admit to it being 'like the first home I'd made burning down, like the incense I'd crush between my palms and rub behind my ears so as to not offend any people who would be so kind as to get close enough to notice the death’

what she does say is

"nostalgic." 

not a lie - though she hopes in futures she won’t be drowned marinating in it, the complex layering of all of the ingredients and flavours, hopes one can remain dominant, bountiful and nourishing.

Imogen there, seen over the end of a nose that did not rot and fall off. She’s sure that it can change.