#【❂】ɪ ѕᴇᴇ ʜᴜᴍɑɴѕ вᴜт ɴᴏ ʜᴜᴍɑɴɪтʏ ❛years 14-21 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

misfortuning · 4 years

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@ivakir │ ᴍᴜsʜʀᴏᴏᴍ ᴄʟᴏᴜᴅs ᴀɴᴅ sɪʟᴠᴇʀ ʟɪɴɪɴɢs

His tone was dubious; his expression is dubious; and although the witch speaks to reassure him with total confidence in herself, his skepticism only grows. It shows blatantly in an arched brow and quirked mouth, but according to her wishes he refrains from questioning further. It’s not as though he has many left in regard to the situation, anyway. In his opinion the first one covered all bases pretty thoroughly. Somehow, in a forest where seemingly no normal creature lived, she’d managed to obtain a chicken, finagle some boards and nails onto it, was preparing to work her mojo, and voila. She expects something good to happen? Alright. He isn’t the witch here.

So he takes a few prudent steps away and watches, curious despite the foreboding feeling he has about all this, as she begins work her spell.

...And doesn’t laugh when the chicken gouges at her hand and takes off into the underbrush. It’s a close thing—breath huffs through his nose, the beginnings of a grin touches his lips, but it’s quick to hide when her glare settles on him, turns into a frown as she accuses him of being the problem. Still, he’s been hanging around doing her odd menial tasks for a few days now, and he’s still hopeful that getting on her good side will lead to answers.

“It’s a relevant question,” he argues, moving towards the shaking bushes from which disgruntled squawks are emitting, “And I’m pretty sure if you’d left it alone in the first place, that definitely wouldn’t have happened.”

Pushing apart the branches from above he considers the chicken’s predicament. Although it successfully escaped the witch and found somewhat of a hiding place, with the boards still attached to it, it’s now gotten stuck in the cluttered undergrowth. The bright side is that it can’t run away; the down side is that neither can he easily extract it. Good thing there’s always the hard way.

With little regard for broken foliage, scratches, and the chicken’s feelings on the matter, the young man practically uproots a bush or two ‘rescuing’ the fowl. Eyeing the furiously struggling creature, he asks, “Where’d you even get it?”

#【❂】ᴍɑкᴇ вᴇттᴇʀ ᴍɪѕтɑкᴇѕ тᴏᴍᴏʀʀᴏᴡ ❛isayah #【❂】ɪ ѕᴇᴇ ʜᴜᴍɑɴѕ вᴜт ɴᴏ ʜᴜᴍɑɴɪтʏ ❛years 14-21 #【❂】ѕᴏ ɪт ɢᴏᴇѕ ❛threads #ivakir

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misfortuning · 6 years

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The first time he met the being he would come to call Noël, the blood of his family still lingered beneath his nails.

Autumn was falling, the slow curve of a star towards the horizon, giving way to winter. He’d left the small, too-frequented territory of Alta Lake State Park behind to search for more secluded grounds, found himself along the frosty edge of a seemingly endless forest. He dared to think he’d found a place where he could be safe, be left alone for eternity until his bones rotted beneath the forever falling leaves. He dared to hope he’d found a place where they would be safe from him.

(One day he would pick up a map and realize that the winter a boy named Soren died was spent in Wenatchee National Forest. He would no longer care for the boy, but he would feel a soft ache to remember the first time he met her.)

It was sudden, faster than blinking; perhaps, even, she had been there the whole time. Nothing but a screen of trunks and then—he still cannot remember exactly how she appeared, could not look at her for long the first few times without succumbing to a migraine, but what he does remember, he will never forget. A being, tall and lithe and long-limbed and alien, colors like a harvest moon sitting above dead trees and snow at midnight. At times he recalls antlers (or were they branches?), soft-glowing lights, many eyes yet also none. Then and now the details swarm his mind, get tangled and lost and overwhelm him, but he knows that none are inaccurate. She was beautiful and terrible, as all dying things are. It took his breath away.

When she spoke, he understood without ever clearly hearing the words, seasoned with amusement and mild curiosity and something else, something older. “So young. Little One, how did you come to be here?”

“I ran.” The answer was pulled from him before he could realize it, and even when he did it took a moment more for indignation and suspicion to rise up. “Hey—I’m not ‘little’.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not.” Her smile was like nothing he would ever see again. “Well then, what is your name, Little One?”

“...Soren. What’s yours?” he asked warily, defensive, though maybe not as much as he should have been. Once upon a time he might have been terrified at this encounter. Once upon a time, but no longer. He’d stopped thinking of himself as human for a few years now, and it wasn’t in his nature to be hypocritical.

With a laugh that shivered snow from tree tops, she made a sound like cracking maples, the sleepy flow of water beneath ice, slow rumble of a distant avalanche that sounded like winter thunder.

“I...what?” the boy asked. His ears were ringing, a headache taking root behind his eyes and above his jaw. Blinking hard, he found himself looking away, to a soothingly blank patch of snow.

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Something in her tone gave him the sense that she was talking about more than the name, but a low sigh blew away any emotion before it could be pinned down. “Poor thing. Poor I—we are poorly suited in this time. And so, tell me true: Will you help me if I help you?”

The moment she began speaking in rhyme, words at an easy rhythm, his ears popped and most of the pressure faded away, leaving only a lingering warning. The boy shook his head, more confused than ever. “What are you talking about?”

“I will take measure to ease your pain; in fair exchange, I want a name.” A smile was palpable in the air. “Not yours, but a name for me. Make it one, or two, or three. Fit it wrong or fit it right, it’s in my heart to love surprise.”

She...wanted him to pick a name for her? And in exchange she’d stop whatever it was about her that caused his brain to feel like it was slowly being suffocated? Sounds fair. At the very least it made sense to be able to call her something he could pronounce. So the boy thought hard, wracking his mind for anything that could fit; ordinary names were not for her. With the headache subsided and now prepared, he returned his gaze to her unimaginable form. Everything about her was winter, as golden autumn as she looked, but she was not dark winter; no, she was the warmth in the cold, a frozen flame that continued to dance merrily. She was like a Christmas morning—only Christmas made for a dumb name.

“...Noël,” he finally said, slow but sure as testing ice beneath his foot. “Do you—will that work?”

She seemed amused by his seriousness. “The name is yours to sing or call. Noël it is; will that be all?”

Reflexively he wanted to give her a surname of some sort, but in this inspiration escaped him. So he tried, “Um...for now?” and was rewarded with laughter like snow pushing icicles from a roof.

(Years later after separating and reuniting, when he was older and could recognize the signs, he finally gave her one. “Greensleeves.” She laughed as she had so long ago and kissed his cheek with her fingertips.)

“Very well, for now Noël. The final step and sealing price is nothing much: Just call me thrice.”

Everything about the situation was staying well over the line of bizarre, but she seemed to know what she was talking about, and he was the one standing barefoot on the cold-hardened earth in stolen clothes, unfeeling of the temperature save for the air he breathed. And so without question or pause he did as she instructed. “Noël. Noël. Noël.”

And with that, her form solidified. The chaotic, seamless collection of aspects blurred and blended together into a woman’s shape, close enough to pass for human but not enough to be one. She was believably tall but her skin retained an almost silvery sheen, like the moon or midnight snow, her hair a dark golden-blonde of the harvest and autumn leaves and richer than any natural color could hope to achieve. And her eyes... Her eyes were a spectrum unto its own. Hazel-green at a glance, but anything longer revealed flecks and streaks of silver and gold, hints of frozen sky and otherworldly twilight, an underlying depth like the sleeping hearts of mountains and a fleeting shimmer of sunlight through crystals.

She was anything but human.

She smiled, and it was keener than the first layer of winter. It reached his heart like water through cracked stones, fast and freezing and unstoppable.

#【ɪ ѕᴇᴇ ʜᴜᴍɑɴѕ вᴜт ɴᴏ ʜᴜᴍɑɴɪтʏ │years 14-21】#((he's not quite 15 here; it's probably some time in September so he'd be a little over 14 and a half #I finally made a drabbles tag so lets see if that prompts me to do more first meetings/important events djslkbhdf))#【❂】вʟɑɴк ᴘɑɢᴇѕ ❛drabbles #【❂】ᴡᴇ тʜᴏᴜɢʜт ᴡᴇ ᴡᴇʀᴇ ɪɴᴠɪɴсɪвʟᴇ ❛noël

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