#sees her with gold under he flesh: oh we are taking honeyed abd syrupy heart all too seriously

[phantombs]

What an interesting way to see yourself, he’d tell her. Like the art of broken pottery... Kintsugi. Her.

How, he admits, poetic to its core, and perhaps, he’d add, that’s the only word for it.

Cường stares. Enraptured by that sight before him, her wound shimmering too golden, he’d confess to passing knowledge in the handling of clay. He’s made pots out of stoneware, has cobbled terracotta dishes, and on occasion, perhaps, he’s kilned vases with his etchings – and on their surface, rudimentary, stares koi fish and birds. True, he loves his hobby, even its charming imperfections! So, when he thinks of spilling gold into his planters with their cracks, he'd say, unlike her, how unsupposedly pretty.

Like the hearts that he’s mended with love and patience... See? No fracture, he's learned, can smother beauty dead.

(In fact, his pots with their fissures are his absolute favorites.)

“Relax. I didn’t say all lies are bad, now did I? In fact, I’m impressed by yours, actually. I’m not judging you for it.” He isn’t. Instead, Cường wonders, and with a halfway potent intensity, what all her imperfections could truly be. As it is, no thing should be so delusional, should treat gashes as trifling little gripes, and she’s a hole torn clear through the skin of her back. He can imagine, in fact, the pulsing sinew beneath. It's red and throbbing. There's spindles of gold. How — unbelievable, and yet, how admirable, too. Something's making her do this, perhaps a responsibility, "but you talk like you’re desperate.” Like this struggle’s proving something. (That she’s better than her kind’s been.) “It says a lot about you."

Insanity. “Whatever you’re here bleeding for must really be important.”

If only he knew. Enduring the hardships of the world, of mortal creations like him? That, as it is for all godlings like her, shall remain, perhaps forever, her glorious weight. What a travesty, admittedly, and a heavier burden. The skies crack, rain pours, and the whole world weeps – but not Cường. Sat with her wound – red, mangled, and left by ghosts – he's instead fussing with fleshy pottery. He drags the threads in her cut, spindles spackled like suns in the summer, and it’s like he’s moving its weaving into legible words, like he’s observing, studying, and reading her. Yet, funny thing, however, is he doesn’t even mean to. But wolf-thing can’t help it. She’s bleeding gold. “You make it sound like we’re unreasonable sitting here chastising you,” he starts, “but you’re the one in my stool taking honeyed heart seriously. Is that what’s pouring out of you? I should’ve known you were soft.”

She jolts. Cường feels his bones throb. His thumb remains over the gape of her wound, the edges of it tattered by the seams, and suddenly, everything comes together. There’s a bolt of strange light, a flash of citrine and sienna-tinged tourmaline, and when he peers back again, her wound has bafflingly vanished. He stares, finger dragging. No raised flesh or scars. Odd. “I told you. I can handle the strangest hurts, even the strangest, meanest of patients. Meeting me like this, coming through all this midnight and rain... All the poets out there would have called this destiny.” Like! “Like some unlikely encounter before a blockbuster romance.” What an analogy. Dreamer sets his balm down, fingers slick with blood and cream, and looks up to her. There, the thunder lights up the dreary of the store, and his shadow, oblong, swallows the floor. A wolf’s growl, silent, fills the air at once: Eating you – gold and power, yes! You'd be so, so delicious. “You’ve gone and broken their hearts, you jerk. Made them realists. But there. Now that I’ve helped you, will you exorcise me, too?"

"What? Is a man now a ghost because he works too late?"

He's not all human, surely she knows. But god, sings his wonder, who is she, really?

As if on cue, the more he tutts, the more her resolve starts to buckle. Her muscles coil and unwind, flesh angrily curdling against the ghostly affliction. The occasional pulses of fine, ichor-gold threads shine through torn skin in attempt to quell the flames. Nothing too dissimilar to the principles of kintsugi: to celebrate the broken with seams of gold. To her, it’s a fractured existence mended and forged by means of something supposedly beautiful.

She sways a little on the stool, hands clasped around the edge of the seat and nails biting shallow crescents into the underside. Now everything is starting to burn.

❝Lying? That would be a strong accusation there, good buddy.❞ The branded woman scoffs, and doesn’t say more to rebut his chastising.

She rolls her head to the side as much as her body allows to pass a wry smile over, just as he briefly abandons his work to toil away near the back of the shop. Nevermind that her nerves scream with protest. She hears a cacophony of tins sliding over wood, clanking into each other, and then a pause. The hiss of a blade against flesh is jarring, but intuition tells her not to worry… yet.

Her lips part, an exasperated retort warmed on her tongue suddenly dies when he presses the pad of his finger against the large laceration at centre of the spectre’s vicious assault. At first she feels nothing, just the pulsing sting of her wound being probed. Her eyes cast warily over her shoulder, cobalt beholding his dark gaze. He’s hard to read, but it doesn’t take much to comprehend that he’s scanning through her like a book, its pages splayed open and he is casually thumbing through some of the contents based on whatever tragedy, or trauma, lingered in her bones from long ago. And yet, his wary and deciphering gaze studies her like a puzzle, trying to fit all the pieces together. She can hardly blame him, not many would easily welcome those who tango with the otherworldly on a day-to-day basis.

Though his tone is soft, but there is an edge that could cut sharper than a knife. He isn’t going to let her slide so easily, that she accepts. The torrent outside echoes softly around the walls of the shop, like a growl rumbling within the confines of a maw. She isn’t afraid, but she’s aware that the injury done onto her is more like the scratch of a cat; she knows well enough that she is in the jaws of a wolf. But something else rumbles and it seems to grow louder within the time elapsed through their poking and prodding of each other. The louder it grows in her ears, the more the stinging started to subside through the prolonged mingling of their blood.

❝Mm… I’ll remember not to chase ghosts next time… nor let them chase me. Maybe spare myself from the additional chastising on your part, got enough commentary on my life decisions from other people.❞ A snort, breathy tone trying to disguise the strain. While pain ebbs, something surmises in its place. Heat surging through, not burning, but something else…

❝Think I’m starting to feel-❞

Before she can say anymore, she pitches forward with a sharp gasp, sides heaving, knuckles burning white from the splintering grasp of her hands on the edge of her seat. In response to wolven blood, gold flares from torn flesh, smothering azure flames. It roars like a storm, putting the tempest outside to shame and as quick as it arrived, it vanishes, taking the venom that ails her with it. Her wounds start to self-suture themselves, and then, nothing. Her skin looks too perfect, just an expanse of tawny-gold stretched over muscle and bone that echoed of the stories Cường deigned to read the moment she stepped in. Bewildered, the godling sits up a little straighter. Rolls her shoulders once, twice.

❝Oh… that definitely did the trick, Doc…❞