amaranthh (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greenling) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rainbowfic2014-07-20 01:05 pm
greenling) wrote in rainbowfic2014-07-20 01:05 pm
Daffodil #3, Ibiza Blue #8
Name: Greenling
Story: Unnamed Mosaic AU #1
Colors: Daffodil #3 (spring forward), Ibiza Blue #8 (Lemongrass - A Fabula )
Supplies and Styles: Mosaic (Exalted), Eraser (Crackpairings AU), Fingerpainting
Word Count: 1,971
Rating: PGish
Warnings: Mostly-implied violence, onscreen death.
Summary: A character dies, and memories of someone else's life flash before his eyes. Also, last Daffodil yaay.
Regarding the mosaic: I'm writing this in such a way as you shouldn't need to know the canon. In fact, it probably won't help much in this one, for which I apologize. Comments, criticism, and questions are all appreciated. Especially on the weirder bits.
--
Once, there were…
…shadows in the window.
…footsteps at the gates of life.
…whispering at the door:
"Should I live or die? Am I living or dead?"
"To know the world is to choose it," says the Void.
-THE SCRIPTURE OF ABSENCE, p.173, MoEP:Sidereals
--
He walked through fire.
It was so cold, he could see his own breath. His feet focused on the path ahead, but his eyes wandered to the paving-stones flickering beneath his feet, facets of red, gold, yellow, and white cut to give the illusion of a raging fire. It was a familiar path, but today it felt shorter and heavy with portent.
Despite his best efforts, he was afraid.
*
He felt a tap on his shoulder, and jumped half a foot in the air.
Terror, laughing, turning; he felt his stomach drop like a stone as his reverie faded, and he snarled at his sister for the sting of embarrassment. Then just as quick, the snarl dropped off his face.
"Oh, shit- how long have you been here?" He spoke just above a whisper.
Shelley raised an eyebrow. She stood in the doorway of his room, backpack slung over one shoulder and one of her smaller suitcases beside her. That was a good sign. "Mother and I just got home; I was going to stash my bags in my room. What were you doing, staring into space so intently?"
"Nothing. Look, I need to be someplace. Is there any way I could get you to do me a favor? Make sure she doesn't remember I exist for about twenty-thirty minutes?" He didn't waste any time, grabbing his shoes and shoving his wallet and keys into his hoodie pocket.
"What did you do?"
"Nothing!" he hissed irritably, looking for the grocery list. "She asked me to go to the store and get some things for tonight. I thought I still had at least an hour."
"It's not even five yet. Are we having an early dinner?" Her eyebrows had settled solidly into "quizzical".
"Did she not mention they're inviting Dad's boss over?" His teeth clenched. Of course not. She'd gone on a tear that week, scouring the house for Shelley, making him work, and fussing about making a good impression. "She's making this huge dinner from scratch, plus dessert and everything else. She tore up the whole kitchen this morning, swearing we had a brand new thing of garam masala and I'd hidden it or some shit." Finishing with his shoes, he dumped out his backpack and hopped over to open the window.
"Sydney, don't jump out the window." Shelley's frown deepened, but she didn't make any attempts to stop him.
He bit his tongue hard (figuratively speaking) and slipped out feet-first, catching himself on a small line of protruding decorative brick a couple of feet below the window. It would be stupid to yell at her when he needed her help, and anyway, he didn't really want to start a fight this early after she'd come home. "You can tell me what to do if you keep me out of her line of sight. One free pass!"
Shimmying over from there, he could just about grab the rain gutter without having to lose hold of the windowframe; from the gutter, it was a quick, only-slightly-rattly slide down the two floors to the street. He'd taken it more times than he felt like telling his sister, in much worse conditions than dry cold. He was nearly down by the time she replied, sticking her head out the window with a small smile on her face: "Fine! By the way, I like what you did to your hair!"
He glared down the street at nothing in particular, not sure if she was teasing him, hoping she'd think to close his door.
*
Someone tapped him on the shoulder, and he sat bolt upright in his seat.
A low laugh ran down the table, and he blushed, trying to hide his face behind the stack of books he'd fallen asleep on top of. His head swam, annoying but unsurprising given how little he'd slept. Thankfully, no one commented on it past that point.
Eight people sat at their particular low, heated table at the library, most of whom had little to do with the original project they had gathered to work on. The ceiling-light was beginning to change, spots of sunset red and navy mixing into the lighter blues it held through the day. Rationally speaking, it was getting time to have dinner and go home. For a gaggle of teenagers, it meant the conversation had drifted from boring schoolwork to politics and gossip.
He checked his notebook; he had been in the middle of a sentence when he'd fallen asleep, something about early advances in Wyld-clearing technology and... well, that was where it stopped. It probably wasn't important, anyhow, given he had the whole stack of books busy copying their content into bookmarks for later reading. What was important was that his nap had not somehow produced notes for the actual "create something and explain how it works" portions of the project. He had plenty of good ideas for the writing and history portions, but not occult theory or crafting. It may have been a moon until it was due, but if he didn't come up with something, all the good ideas (and all the ones relevant to what he most wanted to write about) would be taken.
He was about to ask about it when someone else turned around to drag him into the existing conversation.
"Hey, I want to know what the Heretic thinks."
He tried very hard not to wince at the stupid nickname, but his brow still curled into a scowl. The boy's girlfriend- whom he knew much better, her actually being in the section the project was for- reached over to flick the boy's ear.
"His name is Alex
(-dissonance; who? am I-)
, if you've progressed straight to nicknames."
"Alex is fine," he told the boy pointedly. Her annoyance made him feel a bit better, at least. "What I think about what?"
"Ow," he replied, batting his girlfriend's hand away. "About who's going to inherit the Exaltation of the Lord of the Scarlet Reach. Guy's been dead three years now, it can't be that hard to find a candidate."
"It took twenty years for Fallen Melody's Exaltation to find its current host," said a girl down the table, not looking up from her book.
"Wait, who?"
"She became Whispering Jackal."
"Keh- Sidereals don't count." The boy shrugged. "They're weird. Besides, I was asking Alex." He emphasized the given name, grinning.
Alex frowned. "There are tens of billions of people in this world, and you're seriously discussing who's getting one Exaltation? Do you realize the sheer odds of it being anyone we've heard of?"
"Not that serious. I just thought you'd have a unique perspective. You do know who I'm talking about, right?"
Alex balled up his fists under the table, refusing to give the other boy the satisfaction of seeing him angry. He glanced across the table to his friend, the one who'd tapped him awake in the first place. He looked nonchalantly up at the ceiling, and Alex decided tonight wasn't going to get much better.
*
He had started freerunning it the second he was out of sight of the apartment building, hoping to make good time. It was already getting dark and starting to snow, and he'd forgotten his phone, so he had no idea. The store was several blocks away, and whatever social-climbing aspirations his mother had, they didn't exactly live in the nicest part of Toronto.
Trying not to piss her off made him miserable. Not helping his mother would give her an excuse to make him much more miserable, possibly, or maybe getting kicked out would be the best thing that ever happened to him. He really had to wonder, some days, if all the bile, all the constant willpower, all her goddamn smugness when he did what she asked was worth one tiny bedroom with no privacy. Even if he managed to get a job before the end-of-summer deadline, could he save up enough to get his own place? He sure as hell wasn't going to pay her rent.
It had been much quieter before Shelley went to college, when she just tried to forget he existed.
He vaulted a low fence and skidded into the alley just behind the store- just in time to notice the alley was occupied.
*
Somehow, he'd gotten all the way to the professor's office. He hadn't managed not to be seen, which on some level made it more impressive, really, but he'd gotten there. Sorted through the professor's files with the active help of his assistant. He couldn't even remember what lie he'd told.
His friend owed him. He'd caught a glimpse of the files- not that he hadn't believed, exactly- but he owed him big. Bigger, afterwards. Bad enough when it was just grade-tweaking, corruption-
"Alexander Mitsrayim."
Frozen in the hallway, the three of them: the professor, mist coming off his scales like dry ice. His assistant, shrinking in hir robes from the look on his face. Alex, clearly holding the goods.
"I suppose you have an explanation," the professor growled.
Expulsion would be the best possible option.
Nervousness- fear- froze him, shattered him down to the core. The expression on the professor's face was a novel of it. He knew what he was throwing away when he stepped onto the path towards the school. He knew it would end up like this.
He had no idea of the anger he would find beneath the fear.
Alex clutched the files close to his chest, opened his mouth, and-
Alexander Mitsrayim, boomed an entirely different voice.
*
He felt cold. He tried to feel anything else, but couldn't. The pain had faded, but his head was stuck, unworking. Everything was slippery. Wavery. Someone was laughing, voices fading. He felt cold.
Gently falling, short and soft, the light fell away from his eyes
and
darkness, drifting, cold.
The chill set into his bones, deeper than shivering could reach; he had no eyes to see, no skin to feel, but his ears were filled with sound.
Thum. Thum. Gurgling, singing, sounds that set off some primal alarm within him. Fear. A hint of consciousness remained to him: fear. He was falling, drifting through an endless void; actively falling, as if he had substance and shape. More fear ran through him: Where am I? Am I being reborn? Is this Hell? Is this what you see before you die?
His thoughts echoed in the nothingness, off the voices and the gurgling and the darkness itself. If he had hands, he would have clapped them to his ears; if he had teeth, he would have gritted them. A spark of anger woke within him.
I thought your life was supposed to flash before your eyes. I don't even get that? I don't even get to see my shitty life one last-
dead
The word shook him to the core, shook the noise into more words, shook everything free but the spark.
dead. there are no dead here. only dreaming.
It seemed amused, for a hollow guttural mockery of speech.
that is not dead which can eternal rise,
And worse than that, it continued, itching his memories with wrongness.
and tremble bootless heaven with their cries.
He considered whether correcting the primordial void could possibly be a good idea.
Would you like to live forever? it smirked.
It smirked. He raged.
*
Deep and sweet and hot it burned, a blazing, impossible heat that had never known fire. Adamant. His soul screamed from it, screamed with it as in one joyful, eternal moment both he and it were consumed.
Reborn.
Until he could taste the very Essence of the world, taste it feeling his rage as the proclamations of an emperor, making way for his will. Other lives swam before his eyes, showing righteous vengeance drawn to his hand.
He opened his eyes.
Story: Unnamed Mosaic AU #1
Colors: Daffodil #3 (spring forward), Ibiza Blue #8 (Lemongrass - A Fabula )
Supplies and Styles: Mosaic (Exalted), Eraser (Crackpairings AU), Fingerpainting
Word Count: 1,971
Rating: PGish
Warnings: Mostly-implied violence, onscreen death.
Summary: A character dies, and memories of someone else's life flash before his eyes. Also, last Daffodil yaay.
Regarding the mosaic: I'm writing this in such a way as you shouldn't need to know the canon. In fact, it probably won't help much in this one, for which I apologize. Comments, criticism, and questions are all appreciated. Especially on the weirder bits.
--
Once, there were…
…shadows in the window.
…footsteps at the gates of life.
…whispering at the door:
"Should I live or die? Am I living or dead?"
"To know the world is to choose it," says the Void.
-THE SCRIPTURE OF ABSENCE, p.173, MoEP:Sidereals
--
He walked through fire.
It was so cold, he could see his own breath. His feet focused on the path ahead, but his eyes wandered to the paving-stones flickering beneath his feet, facets of red, gold, yellow, and white cut to give the illusion of a raging fire. It was a familiar path, but today it felt shorter and heavy with portent.
Despite his best efforts, he was afraid.
*
He felt a tap on his shoulder, and jumped half a foot in the air.
Terror, laughing, turning; he felt his stomach drop like a stone as his reverie faded, and he snarled at his sister for the sting of embarrassment. Then just as quick, the snarl dropped off his face.
"Oh, shit- how long have you been here?" He spoke just above a whisper.
Shelley raised an eyebrow. She stood in the doorway of his room, backpack slung over one shoulder and one of her smaller suitcases beside her. That was a good sign. "Mother and I just got home; I was going to stash my bags in my room. What were you doing, staring into space so intently?"
"Nothing. Look, I need to be someplace. Is there any way I could get you to do me a favor? Make sure she doesn't remember I exist for about twenty-thirty minutes?" He didn't waste any time, grabbing his shoes and shoving his wallet and keys into his hoodie pocket.
"What did you do?"
"Nothing!" he hissed irritably, looking for the grocery list. "She asked me to go to the store and get some things for tonight. I thought I still had at least an hour."
"It's not even five yet. Are we having an early dinner?" Her eyebrows had settled solidly into "quizzical".
"Did she not mention they're inviting Dad's boss over?" His teeth clenched. Of course not. She'd gone on a tear that week, scouring the house for Shelley, making him work, and fussing about making a good impression. "She's making this huge dinner from scratch, plus dessert and everything else. She tore up the whole kitchen this morning, swearing we had a brand new thing of garam masala and I'd hidden it or some shit." Finishing with his shoes, he dumped out his backpack and hopped over to open the window.
"Sydney, don't jump out the window." Shelley's frown deepened, but she didn't make any attempts to stop him.
He bit his tongue hard (figuratively speaking) and slipped out feet-first, catching himself on a small line of protruding decorative brick a couple of feet below the window. It would be stupid to yell at her when he needed her help, and anyway, he didn't really want to start a fight this early after she'd come home. "You can tell me what to do if you keep me out of her line of sight. One free pass!"
Shimmying over from there, he could just about grab the rain gutter without having to lose hold of the windowframe; from the gutter, it was a quick, only-slightly-rattly slide down the two floors to the street. He'd taken it more times than he felt like telling his sister, in much worse conditions than dry cold. He was nearly down by the time she replied, sticking her head out the window with a small smile on her face: "Fine! By the way, I like what you did to your hair!"
He glared down the street at nothing in particular, not sure if she was teasing him, hoping she'd think to close his door.
*
Someone tapped him on the shoulder, and he sat bolt upright in his seat.
A low laugh ran down the table, and he blushed, trying to hide his face behind the stack of books he'd fallen asleep on top of. His head swam, annoying but unsurprising given how little he'd slept. Thankfully, no one commented on it past that point.
Eight people sat at their particular low, heated table at the library, most of whom had little to do with the original project they had gathered to work on. The ceiling-light was beginning to change, spots of sunset red and navy mixing into the lighter blues it held through the day. Rationally speaking, it was getting time to have dinner and go home. For a gaggle of teenagers, it meant the conversation had drifted from boring schoolwork to politics and gossip.
He checked his notebook; he had been in the middle of a sentence when he'd fallen asleep, something about early advances in Wyld-clearing technology and... well, that was where it stopped. It probably wasn't important, anyhow, given he had the whole stack of books busy copying their content into bookmarks for later reading. What was important was that his nap had not somehow produced notes for the actual "create something and explain how it works" portions of the project. He had plenty of good ideas for the writing and history portions, but not occult theory or crafting. It may have been a moon until it was due, but if he didn't come up with something, all the good ideas (and all the ones relevant to what he most wanted to write about) would be taken.
He was about to ask about it when someone else turned around to drag him into the existing conversation.
"Hey, I want to know what the Heretic thinks."
He tried very hard not to wince at the stupid nickname, but his brow still curled into a scowl. The boy's girlfriend- whom he knew much better, her actually being in the section the project was for- reached over to flick the boy's ear.
"His name is Alex
(-dissonance; who? am I-)
, if you've progressed straight to nicknames."
"Alex is fine," he told the boy pointedly. Her annoyance made him feel a bit better, at least. "What I think about what?"
"Ow," he replied, batting his girlfriend's hand away. "About who's going to inherit the Exaltation of the Lord of the Scarlet Reach. Guy's been dead three years now, it can't be that hard to find a candidate."
"It took twenty years for Fallen Melody's Exaltation to find its current host," said a girl down the table, not looking up from her book.
"Wait, who?"
"She became Whispering Jackal."
"Keh- Sidereals don't count." The boy shrugged. "They're weird. Besides, I was asking Alex." He emphasized the given name, grinning.
Alex frowned. "There are tens of billions of people in this world, and you're seriously discussing who's getting one Exaltation? Do you realize the sheer odds of it being anyone we've heard of?"
"Not that serious. I just thought you'd have a unique perspective. You do know who I'm talking about, right?"
Alex balled up his fists under the table, refusing to give the other boy the satisfaction of seeing him angry. He glanced across the table to his friend, the one who'd tapped him awake in the first place. He looked nonchalantly up at the ceiling, and Alex decided tonight wasn't going to get much better.
*
He had started freerunning it the second he was out of sight of the apartment building, hoping to make good time. It was already getting dark and starting to snow, and he'd forgotten his phone, so he had no idea. The store was several blocks away, and whatever social-climbing aspirations his mother had, they didn't exactly live in the nicest part of Toronto.
Trying not to piss her off made him miserable. Not helping his mother would give her an excuse to make him much more miserable, possibly, or maybe getting kicked out would be the best thing that ever happened to him. He really had to wonder, some days, if all the bile, all the constant willpower, all her goddamn smugness when he did what she asked was worth one tiny bedroom with no privacy. Even if he managed to get a job before the end-of-summer deadline, could he save up enough to get his own place? He sure as hell wasn't going to pay her rent.
It had been much quieter before Shelley went to college, when she just tried to forget he existed.
He vaulted a low fence and skidded into the alley just behind the store- just in time to notice the alley was occupied.
*
Somehow, he'd gotten all the way to the professor's office. He hadn't managed not to be seen, which on some level made it more impressive, really, but he'd gotten there. Sorted through the professor's files with the active help of his assistant. He couldn't even remember what lie he'd told.
His friend owed him. He'd caught a glimpse of the files- not that he hadn't believed, exactly- but he owed him big. Bigger, afterwards. Bad enough when it was just grade-tweaking, corruption-
"Alexander Mitsrayim."
Frozen in the hallway, the three of them: the professor, mist coming off his scales like dry ice. His assistant, shrinking in hir robes from the look on his face. Alex, clearly holding the goods.
"I suppose you have an explanation," the professor growled.
Expulsion would be the best possible option.
Nervousness- fear- froze him, shattered him down to the core. The expression on the professor's face was a novel of it. He knew what he was throwing away when he stepped onto the path towards the school. He knew it would end up like this.
He had no idea of the anger he would find beneath the fear.
Alex clutched the files close to his chest, opened his mouth, and-
Alexander Mitsrayim, boomed an entirely different voice.
*
He felt cold. He tried to feel anything else, but couldn't. The pain had faded, but his head was stuck, unworking. Everything was slippery. Wavery. Someone was laughing, voices fading. He felt cold.
Gently falling, short and soft, the light fell away from his eyes
and
darkness, drifting, cold.
The chill set into his bones, deeper than shivering could reach; he had no eyes to see, no skin to feel, but his ears were filled with sound.
Thum. Thum. Gurgling, singing, sounds that set off some primal alarm within him. Fear. A hint of consciousness remained to him: fear. He was falling, drifting through an endless void; actively falling, as if he had substance and shape. More fear ran through him: Where am I? Am I being reborn? Is this Hell? Is this what you see before you die?
His thoughts echoed in the nothingness, off the voices and the gurgling and the darkness itself. If he had hands, he would have clapped them to his ears; if he had teeth, he would have gritted them. A spark of anger woke within him.
I thought your life was supposed to flash before your eyes. I don't even get that? I don't even get to see my shitty life one last-
dead
The word shook him to the core, shook the noise into more words, shook everything free but the spark.
dead. there are no dead here. only dreaming.
It seemed amused, for a hollow guttural mockery of speech.
that is not dead which can eternal rise,
And worse than that, it continued, itching his memories with wrongness.
and tremble bootless heaven with their cries.
He considered whether correcting the primordial void could possibly be a good idea.
Would you like to live forever? it smirked.
It smirked. He raged.
*
Deep and sweet and hot it burned, a blazing, impossible heat that had never known fire. Adamant. His soul screamed from it, screamed with it as in one joyful, eternal moment both he and it were consumed.
Reborn.
Until he could taste the very Essence of the world, taste it feeling his rage as the proclamations of an emperor, making way for his will. Other lives swam before his eyes, showing righteous vengeance drawn to his hand.
He opened his eyes.
no subject
no subject
Thank you! :D
no subject
Yes more pls.
no subject
no subject
no subject
(Yes, you do. :3)