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Clipping a Raven's Wings
When Once We Were Mortal
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The Hunter, Dawn
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Subject: Dawn, The Hunter (Rose) She rides straight on into morning nonetheless, daring to turn her gaze out the phaeton window and up at the face of the estate house, now outlined with a faint glow from the ocean horizon beyond. Twin emeralds sparkle with the light of defiance (one day she’ll push things too far, just see if she doesn’t, and then all there’ll be left is a fistful of cinder and ash). Her flame curls are veiled beneath a shroud of deepest organdy, and as the carriage flies down the jungle course, floating like a phantom over the most hardened ruts, the scarf trails out like a streamer from her temples, its gossamer tails lashing at the door panels. The horses are lathered from the effort of racing for the gate – the coachman has seen to that, with the weight of his whip on the backs and hind ends of the chestnut pair. She hisses and spits at the driver, nonetheless, and while the sound would seem the only sign of urgency in her otherwise placid demeanor, another glimpse at those eyes reveals the great delight she takes in harassing the beasts – all three of them. As the phaeton finally bursts through the gate, careening to a stop just at the opening of the Gallica Path (and listing dangerously to one side, threatening to topple with the warning squeal of a set of beleaguered wheel springs), Rose wraps leathern fingertips over the window ledge for support. But just as quickly, she is out of the carriage and swaying towards the glass-covered lane, donning her cat’s eye shades and tossing the end of the organdy wrap over one shoulder before the dust has even settled. She pauses at the mouth of the corridor, wheeling about on one ridiculously high heel and propping one hand at the swell of her hip. The sun is coming up behind her, at the house’s back - that much she can tell from the otherworldly radiance dappling the ground and reflected in the dew-covered leaves that lead back down the jungle road. Another few moments, and she’ll be fodder for the carrion winds, likely blown out onto the water like so much charcoal dust, never to be seen again. Her features remain placid as ever, as though she were playing a deadly game, daring Apollo to drive his chariot over the rooftop and chase her down… And perhaps she is… With a molasses smile, so succulent and slow to form that it scarcely turns up the corners of her mouth, she gazes out at all she commands – until a bold, yelped "Ha!" turns her smile to a sneer, and brings the embers of bravado flickering to life in her eyes once more. A regal upsweep of her chin tips her nose into the air –she is Arrogance, personified, pure – and she turns again, sashaying into the darkness with a sort of lazy, feline languor… and just as the last gleam of oil-slicked latex is dulled by the cover of shadows, the dawn’s first light spills over the shingles, dancing down onto the tiles at the head of the Gallica Path, and reflecting most brightly the spot where black patent leather chilled the stones just seconds before.
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Subject: Dusk, The Deceiver (ßenedict) The titters' resonance increases, and a pale, fine-boned hand melts from the gloaming and, with a flick of dactyls dyed charcoal at their tips, casts silken threads across the face of Rose's mirror in the form of an intricate spiderweb. Caught beneath this new-sprung shroud, moisture begins to coalesce on both surfaces, trapping unknown particles along already filmy lengths, and distorts the reflection of an intoxicating countenance and the dubious simper presented to it by painted lips. "Won't she love the new decor, girls?" Benedict muses quietly, and as if to answer his question, the skittering resumes and intensifies - and the hundreds of arachnids responsible finally allow themselves to be seen, a near-tangible layer of eight-legged critters drowning the room's every furnishing in never-ending spider's silk. "Yes... Yes, she will." "She better." His expression turns malefic within the mirror's frame and his voice, a growl much too feral for a youngster of thirteen, drips with the deadliest of promises, and a flux beneath cypress lash reveals the narrowing of serpentine indigo eyes. After all, her new son's happiness should be at the forefront of Rose's thoughts - and perhaps it will be, once she learns of his adoption, though one question remains: who adopted who? And with that statement lingering among the chamber's now stagnant currents, he sweeps a delicate hand through untamable sable locks, tickles his simulacrum offhandedly, and ushers his only real family to retreat into obscurity before doing exactly the same himself. " I
love you ...
I'll kill
you ..." "But I love you forever."
• • • º ° ß e n e d i c t |< r a v e n °º•• • Subject: Re: Dusk, The Deceiver (Rose) Sidestepping a puddle of feeble radiance, where the dawn has filtered in past a crevice in the foliage and through the study windows, she dances onto gleaming patent-bound toes and executes a neat pirouette. The veil falls to her back, unleashing those tabasco curls to swing out then land back at her shoulders with the gentle lilt of worn springs. Those steps carry her dancing across the Robsart parquetry and up against the fireplace, and just as she sweeps her forearm up, and it looks as though she will brush her fingertips up the length of the tallest of the brass candlesticks there, the gleam of a latex sleeve dulls and fades, her hourglass curvature is an ink spot hovering on midair… dissipating… dissolving… her hand passes right through… and the shadows consume her (or is it the other way around?). Her humming can be heard throughout the house, seeping through the woodwork, steeping every fiber in the candied syrup of a siren’s melody, and threading the air with a lacework of notes, filigreed, like long, silky strands of spun sugar… It’s a familiar tune… Moon River, of course… dripping with sentiment, melancholy and haunting all in the same maudlin space … "Moon River… wider than a mile… I’m crossing you in style… some day…"
The lonely trill is evidence - the *only* evidence (unless you count the traveling vapor of rose perfume) - that she is passing underground, as the tones skip from clay wall to marble flooring in the catacombs beneath the house. Aside from that distinction, it would be impossible to say where she is with any measure of precision. The lullaby issues from every dust-ridden corner and whispers from the eaves, as though it were woven onto the air itself, and the volume is just as high above as below.
Each note becomes a drop of pure crystal as the shadow of her figure pushes the drape aside, and a fully formed Rose glides into the vault, towards the wardrobe. Tugging the veil from her shoulders, she drops it carelessly to the floor, where it lands in a frothy pool of cobweb and fine powder. But she can hardly be bothered to notice, so intent is she on her song, her eyes lazy-lidded, her viper’s smile pursed in a luscious moue of contentment.
"Wherever you’re going, you’re going my way…"
Her hips roll slowly from side to side, in time with the imaginary melody… such a bittersweet confection… A curl to the left and she’s out of one heel, a swing to the opposite side and she steps clear of the other, and both are kicked heedlessly aside. Tugging with her teeth, she frees herself of one kidskin glove, then peels the other away. Both go in the same direction, of course - to some random corner of the floor, there to be forgotten - as slender fingertips rake up through her curls, like ivory needles piercing silk.
"Two drifters… off to see the world…"
With a muffled grating, she eases the zipper down over the slopes and dips at the front of her catsuit, revealing a long, deep triangle of alabaster, dappled with the shadows from swells and hollows, as her bosom strains for freedom against the thin layer of latex. There is, too, the hint of a tuft of cinnamon peeling at the top of the zipper pull, and still, her hips turn, agonizingly slow… She is a liquid serpent, swimming through a sea of oil, languishing like some depraved, sensuous animal in its sheen…
"There’s such a lot of world… to see…" She pivots in place before the mirror, her eyes still half-shut, her palm sliding to the inside of her suit and over her belly… bare skin whispers on bare skin, and the sensation brings an enigmatic grin to her lips… In the looking glass, or what can be seen of it through the heavy film of spider’s silk, her hourglass curves are nowhere to be found, only the occasional splash of light, illusions rife with music and fire sparking in the paned surface. "We’re after the same rai-"
Of a sudden, the song is choked back, clipped off like the end of a beauty queen’s nail caught in some slamming door on a course for the runway… Just as abruptly, but with none of the pain, Rose’s eyes snap open… Her other hand has strayed onto the mirror’s surface, and there she stands, gently winding a fingertip through the tangle of mesh and sighing her fascination…
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