multiversallogs | I see a bad moon rising

Entry tags:

I see a bad moon rising

Who: the Huntress (Anna) and “lucky” you (OPEN)
What: breaking down and going full True Fae, for your pleasure and entertainment
Where: ~moonpools~
When: the night after the Missions conclude
Notes: For the binding in question, see this log. Also, the Huntress is fun, but difficult, to write... so tags may be on the slow side.
Warnings: creepiness, and possible triggery-ness. This is the sort of character who will casually talk of violence and of using mortal humans as playthings. Oh, and skinny dipping.

The worst part of the fog, she thought, had been the way it had clawed at not just her body, but her mind. Yes, there had been dangers of the kind she could shoot, but that hadn’t really been the point of them, had it? They were a distraction, more like, as sharp teeth and serpents drained whatever mental resolve had been keeping Anna and the Huntress separate.

She had remembered things, out in the fog, from before she was Anna. Beautiful, vivid, perfect hunts through Arcadian forests, chasing deer that had once been mortals. Crimson blood is so very striking on white fur, and white skin.

Anna recalled hearing about the moonpools, when she first arrived in Baedal. They had interested her, then, but -- the realization had hit her suddenly, after Nuala’s binding -- not because of the part of her that was Anna. Now, that barrier is crumbling, and covering herself in liquid moonlight seems like exactly the recovery she is owed. She rubs her thumb along the embroidered ribbon tied about her left wrist. The stitching is frayed, though she can’t recall how it got that way.

And she loves the forest at night, doesn’t she? Hasn’t she always? It’s so easy to get there, her power quickening her feet. There’s a flicker of a thought: that she ought to hold back, that there is something she shouldn’t be doing. But her mind is tired, and glamour is heavy. Silly to wear one, and she shrugs it off, lightning streaming through her dark hair and over her pale skin. A sigh of relief: how light she feels, like she had forgotten how it felt to be anything but clumsy and heavy.

The Huntress scatters Anna’s clothing over the moss and the ferns, and slides herself into a silvery pool.

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Once the plague had lifted and Sebastian had been able to work through his priorities: get a proper shower, meal, and most importantly, a good night's sleep at the guild hall. Next on the list of necessities was at least a little bit of time to himself. With his own apartment currently off-limits and the threat of Death Eaters in the city, a short walk through the woods around the moonpools was a reasonable substitute for going home, locking the door, and ignoring the world for a few hours.

Admittedly, in this frame of mind, he's paying less attention to his surroundings (provided he gets no twinge of incoming Death Eaters) than he ought to.

She hears the man coming before she sees him. It is uniquely clumsy behavior for a potential quarry, and for a moment she is annoyed at the carelessness of it. And then she decides that the uniqueness has its own merit. This could be a new sort of chase.

An arc of her arm summons her longbow; she leans against the high bank of the pool, holding it. No arrows, though: the Huntress is unconcerned by the possibility (the impossibly slim possibility, in her mind) that the man could be any kind of threat.

When she sees the man's body appear between the trees, she lets herself smile: he is...interesting, somehow, in a way she can't quite place. Interesting is enough, though, to make him worth her time.

"You are either brave or foolish, mortal." Her tone is casual and even, and pleased. She makes no particular effort to raise her voice, though: it matters little one way or the other whether the man hears her.

While Sebastian no longer uses a cane, he does walk with a pronounced limp and there's really no point in hiding his unique gait.

Once he hears her voice, his attention in pulled back to the present and a quick assessment of the situation suggests he'd best keep his line of sight up and well over Anna's (the Huntress') shoulder.

"Foolish to the point that I've taken it as my own name. Please forgive me, I was out walking and lost track of time and place," he says with sincerity and a slight bow. Sebastian has read enough mythology to be concerned about being torn apart by his own service dog.

The smile he gets in return for his politeness -- lips curling at the edges in a pleasant little bow-shape; something predatory in her eyes -- is not particularly meant to be reassuring.

Liquid moonlight traces the curves of her small pale breasts, but she seems unconcerned where he rests his eyes.

"This is a good place," she replies simply. "I think I should like to have one like it." A pause; she tilts her head, considering him. Nuala's brand is near-blinding obvious, all golden heat and infuriating. "Alas, such things are not easily arranged. And...you are already claimed. What did you do to get so interesting?" The Huntress's eyes narrow.

"In a time of need, I became apostate -- traded a little of my time and self to get something my people and our land needed." It's not something he commonly talks about, but Sebastian quietly worships an old set of pagan British deities. One of those deities can be taken as roughly equivalent to Brigid and that is what brought him to Nuala's attention.

So he has made deals before; her eyes light with recognition. Still, it seems remarkably inappropriate that his making a deal should remove him from the game for everyone else, and her resentment of the brand-maker -- the very nerve of it; she hadn't even bothered to make him a changeling -- grates uncomfortably against Anna's respect for the Princess.

But speaking with him was hardly forbidden, and the nature of the bargain he describes reminds her of...herself.
"I traded myself, once, and received myself in return," she says mildly. Fae or not, she doesn't truly intend to speak in riddles; rather, it is difficult to distinguish between Anna's actions and her own. "And even if it was meant to be a gift, not a trade, I think the Queen got plenty out of it to suit herself."

By now she has pulled herself entirely from the pool to sit on the high bank, toes dangling just above the surface of the moonlight.

Edited 2011-08-11 06:52 (UTC)

Sebastian would counter that it is entirely fair. While he's no longer the 'guest' of those fae he bargained with, there's no doubt in his mind that he's still paying off the original bargain.

"They usually do and now, if you'll excuse me, I ought to continue homewards." As much as he's curious about the Huntress, he's not foolish enough to stay any longer than he needs to. While she may be aware of Nuala's protection, Sebastian isn't.

She watches him go without further comment: there is nothing subtle about the brand Nuala has put on him, and much as the Huntress would like to...well. There are many things she would like to do; the point is not which one she would choose, but rather the fact that she is prevented from doing them.

Bitterly, she turns away, then musters a bit of power to chase his footsteps with mist.

It's in Jones's nature to worry; after all, she's been more or less filling the role of substitute mother all her twenty-four years. And in the absence of siblings to worry about, she worries about Anna.

They saw some strange, unsettling things in the fog out there, on their mission, and Jones fears that Anna might have seen some more unsettling things than most, given her slightly odd behavior following their adventure. So it's for that reason she seeks her out, and it's in doing so that she catches a trace of something... familiar. Something she thought she wouldn't have to worry about again, but apparently not—

It seems the Huntress rides again. Wonderful. As Primogen Barrett—Mina—would probably say, bloody wonderful.

The forest is dark, but the dark has never been one of her fears. She walks, purposefully, letting her magical senses guide her, until she stumbles upon the moonpool.

"Ah! It's you!" Her smile is polite: magnanimous. She likes this one, for some reason. She is...kind. But of course she doesn't care about that; she brushes the thought away impatiently. Useful, too, though -- she remembers that.
The smile broadens.

Her skin is especially pale with the watery moonlight on it, and the lightning threads through the pool like ink dissolving in water.

"You will join me...Jones?" It is not particularly a request.

Jones has never really been sure whether to be relieved or worried that the Huntress seems to like her. (The Huntress would probably say she should feel honored, but she has never put a whole lot of stock in the Huntress's opinions. For obvious reasons.) Anna was who she was looking for, though, so she takes a seat, dangling her legs over the edge of the pool.

"I hope you don't mind if I don't join you," she says. "I didn't bring my swimming clothes."

"It is of no matter; I did not bring any either." Still the smile on her lips. The Huntress wears friendliness like she might an elaborate new hat: if it sits a bit awkwardly on her, it does not lessen her pleasure at the lark of trying it on.

She swirls the moonlight with her toes, and wonders idly if the mage will run. That would be entertaining.

"I suppose that's true. I'll preserve my modesty, though, if you don't mind. I'm not sure the moonlight flatters me as well." If there's one thing Jones and the Huntress have in common, it's that they're both willing to stick around to see if things continue to get interesting. She dips a toe in the pool; it comes out glowing. "Wow, that's fascinating," she says, and dips a finger in the water, painting the Moros rune in the grass. "It's lovely. You like the moon, don't you, Huntress?"

Of course she finds the moon interesting -- they had made it a symbol of victory, had they not? Or it would be, were she back...home. A sudden and unpleasant flash of resentment: at herself, for being so comparatively mortal, and so trapped. At her sister-self, the Queen, for exiling her to this strange dead flesh, where it was such a struggle even to remember who she was. But she remembers now, and clings eagerly to the remembering.

"Modesty is a pointless flaw to have." There is no particular reason, the Huntress thinks, to answer Jones's question; rather, she picks and chooses the parts of the conversation she feels like having. And, since she likes Jones, the Huntress considers it only fair to let her know when she is disappointed in her. Modesty? Tsk.

She pauses to admire the moonlight on Jones's finger, but what truly holds her attention is the shape the mage traces on the bank. Curiosity narrows her eyes.

"Tell me what that means."

The Huntress unsettles—and irritates her, in turns—her more than she shows, or would like to admit, mostly by dint of driving Anna around like an automobile. Free will is something that mages hold dear, and the Huntress using Anna this way is a bit of an affront as well as something that makes her wary. And while Anna is self-centered in the way a teenager tends to be, the Huntress is old enough to know better.

She'll explain, though. "A sigil of my kind. The shape of creation, and of destruction. That which giveth and taketh away." The Moros path is one of contradictions, of building up and breaking down. Mortality, and works with potential to survive a thousand years or more. She speaks its name aloud, although she doesn't know if the Huntress will understand the Atlantean tongue. "I think it'd be more appropriate for it to be etched in stone, but it looks rather pretty like this."

She continues drawing; below it she sketches a tower, and a path, and a river. "I suppose such things would be of little notice to one of a realm where many things don't have beginning nor end."

The word, like the symbol it names, is made of power; that much the Huntress can tell, though the tongue is unfamiliar and means nothing to her. Maybe, if she could remember herself better, it might be different... but this mind is an insufficient vessel for everything she is sure she once knew how to do.

What the mage says is intriguing, though, so she makes herself pay attention to the answer to her own question: information, freely given, is a good sort of gift.

"Not beginning, nor end, nor a middle, since there is no measuring time at all, except as we will it to exist or no," the Huntress adds matter-of-factly, with an expression that suggests she imagines she is being helpful. "Though there is a great deal of creation and destruction as well: I think your kind would not be so out of place as you expect."

She has been watching Jones sketch, but now she pauses, and traces the path in the drawing with a fingertip, ending with that finger at Jones's wrist. "...You would not be so out of place there." A subtle emphasis on the word; a subtle acquisitory fervor to her tone.

Edited 2011-08-27 08:47 (UTC)

"Would I?" Jones laughs. "I'll take your word for it, although I can't really imagine myself among such..." Flattery, flattery. She likes flattery. "...such creatures of ethereal beauty. I've always been a bit of a salt-of-the-earth sort of person, I feel." She smiles, though, and meets the Huntress's eyes as she shifts her hand subtly and lays the other on top of Anna's wrist.

And, with a quick movement of her fingers, draws a glowing cross there with the last of the moonpool water on her fingertip.

She screams, high and agonized.

The flesh beneath the moonlit cross boils with a horrible smell of meat and rot, and she swipes at her wrist instinctively, destroying the cross before it can hurt her further, though the shape remains like a brand.

Instinctively, too, she reaches for the lightning.

Hurts. Hurt her back, the mortal bitch, for reminding her of it, of how she was Damned--
But being Damned was a different sort of pain. Kindred pain.

Anna lets out a gasped sob, and curls into herself, covering her nakedness.

Oh, she hadn't meant it to hurt, but she can't help but feel relief as the body language shifts back to Anna's. She gingerly wraps an arm around Anna's wet shoulders in a motherly way. "Anna, are you all right?" Beat. "Sorry I had to do that."

At first she cringes under Jones's hand -- a twitch in her skin like a spooked horse -- and for a split second it seems like she might lash out at the touch, but then Anna relaxes, and leans against the offered shoulder. "I saw such terrible things out in the fog," she whispers. And then for several minutes she says nothing at all.

"I really would have done it, you know," she says at last, still almost whispering. "I would have tried to take you, even though there's nowhere here to go."

"It wasn't you, Anna," Jones says, running a hand through her hair like she'd do with her little sister, Justina. "You know humility, restraint, remorse. You're Anna Demirovna, and you need to hold on to that. Because you should."

The Lance taught that the Kindred had been Damned by God. And, whether or not others were affected the same way, the burn on her wrist seemed like pretty strong evidence in their favor. It is an unexpected relief, therefore, for Jones to find such positive traits remaining in her. Between Anna and the Huntress, it had been hard not to believe that the latter was the better, stronger choice. Jones's hand in her hair is very soothing. (She has never had a sister before.)

"...We should go home, shouldn't we."

Jones nods. "We should. It'll be dawn sooner or later, and you should rest. And—" She rests her hands on Anna's shoulders. "If it would help to talk about what you saw, I'm here. But perhaps we should get you dressed first. Although I can't say you'll catch your death of cold."

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I see a bad moon rising

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