idolpro | Shrike's Heart (#4)

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!heart games

Shrike's Heart (#4)

The woman before you is beautiful—fair of features, with lovely golden skin and luxurious long black hair, petite. You have the immediate and distinct impression that she's just let go of your hand, and she steps back, and smiles.

It's not quite a happy smile.

"I'm sorry," she says. "There's just nothing I can do, as things are. But the way is there; it just needs to be lit."

You open your mouth—maybe to say something, or to express confusion—but you have to cough, and taste something metallic, spattering black blood onto the ground in front of you. Then you realize—blood seeps from opening wounds in your arms, your chest, your stomach, your face. It rims your eyes and trails from your nose and you feel like you're dissolving—

—and you fall through the ground like it's the surface of a lake, and go down, down, down.

> Wake Up

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[ Inside the box are—photographs, a whole stack of them. Some of them are candid photos of members of avante en garde, and a particularly large number of you, largely smiling widely; there’s a lot of photos of Sekhmet, too, cooking food, trying things at the café, resting post-workout. She even seems to have caught Persephone smiling once. There’s one of dancing with Cobalt, and of Wednesday showing her music; drinking with Cardigan and Amaranth.

There’s Harpy making breakfast, and Shishiou playing the piano; Gold making a baking abomination; Nitro and Nemesis cracking jokes together. Kaguya pouring two cups of tea. There’s even one of Kohime sitting on a branch.

Not a one of them seems creased or dirty; they all seem like they’ve been very well taken care of. ]

Edited 2020-02-29 06:36 (UTC)

[Oh.

He wasn't prepared to see Harpy and Nitro again.]

[He... slowly sits down, absorbing each photo one by one. Soaking in the memories of that time in their lives.

God. He missed them.]

[...Dammit. Griffin places the photo back in the box, and closes the lid. He will protect this box WITH HIS LIFE.

It seems like a shame up keep it hidden away, in the dirt. He takes it with him, along with a bucket to get some water.]

[ You tuck the box under your arm, fetch the bucket, and go poking around in search of the water. There's a slightly worn path through the bushes and grass, and it leads you to the edge of one of the canals, under a tall shade tree. The water flows slowly into the main trunk of the canal, with a gentle rushing sound; above, the sky is just slightly overcast, like it might rain later, and it makes the green of the plants look all the more vibrant.

It looks like someone has carved something into the trunk of the tree at some point, a long time ago.

At the bottom of the tree is a roughly rectangular oilcloth bundle. ]

[There's so many secret bundles?

Just gonna dip that bucket in for some water. This is so charming and peaceful that, like, it's easy to forget the miserable war that lay ahead of her life.

Anyway. Since he's here, might as well peek at the carving, and what's in the oilcloth.]

[ On closer inspection, some of the carvings seem to be scratches measuring two sets of heights over time, one of which gets way taller than the other; there’s also some that look like a character-based language. One is two sets of names carved; one name says “Lark” and the other... has been scratched out so aggressively that it’s illegible.

Inside the bundle is a stack of books; several seem to be poetry and one is on philosophy. Into one of the poetry books, someone has tucked a sheet of paper with some lines of self-written poetry, some scratched out or with numerous edits. ]

[Ohhhh my god he's gonna read the baby poetry]

[ there's a lot of half-baked attempts at metaphor, scribbles of bits of imagery for later use, that sort of thing.

"rain falls softly? softly-falling rain? rain = tears? washes away blood?"

"wisteria, purple blossoms, an eternal spring, gods he's probably poems from way better poets than me but I'm pretty sure anyone he's gotten poems from he actually hated. falling petals = season change. something something tending gardens together"

"sky blue, water blue, sapphire? blue like serenity, like joy. blue for love, promises, eternity."

"note: do research about lions? something about pride? you might see the beast at night as a monster, but it's majestic in the day I don't know where I'm going with this metaphor please help" ]

[ohhhhh my god

It is infinitely endearing to see someone else struggle with writing these metaphors because he's definitely got a notebook like this too

Let's see if he can carry the bundle, the mahogany box and the bucket of water back to the garden]

[ universal writing truth: words are real hard

the box isn't that large, and the bundle can helpfully be carried by the cloth, so it's not really very hard at all to carry it all back to the garden! ]

[Hooray! He feels like a big strong man who carried all the groceries from the van in one trip.

Time to water the plants~✿]

[ you sprinkle a bit of water on the plants such that the soil is nicely damp and will probably stay that way for a bit. between your earlier weeding and this, the flowers seem to be perking up a little bit! ]

[Nice! He's not as bad at this gardening thing as he thought.]

There ya go. That oughta keep you for a bit.

[Now, let's bring these little bundles inside, where they belong.]

[ add that to your resume

you head inside, to the sitting area you started out in, with the sword on the wall. there's a hallway both to the left and to the right. which way? ]

[Left I guess?]

[ You find yourself in a hallway decorated sparsely, with the same minimalist but elegant approach to decor found throughout the whole house. There's a handful of doors that seem to lead to things like linen closets, a laundry, and so on, and at the end of the hall are what seem to be three bedrooms.

One is nearly empty, with just a bed, like someone used to live there; one seems to be the master suite; the third seems lived-in but not terribly full of personality—a made bed, an empty desk, a bookshelf containing a couple books for study. ]

[So... if he had to guess, her brother and her mother respectively, right? Then - he's gonna go in the third room and look around.]

[ This room is quiet and kept very tidy; no one is in here, but it seems like someone has recently left a bouquet of paper flowers on the desk folded from writing paper. The pillow on the bed is slightly askew, like there's something under it.

All the books on the bookshelf are readers, history texts, military stuff. ]

[He's going to put the poetry and philosophy books on the shelf too, because that's where books belong.

As for the mahogany box... he sets it on the desk with the paper flowers for now. Curiosity has him looking insert the pillow first.]

[ it's another book, but this is another volume of poetry, as if someone's been reading it after she's supposed to be in bed—a collection of measured-syllable poetry by respected masters.

it's been pulled out a little bit, like someone read through it, recently. ]

[Aw, Shirke... he reads through a few pages too, and like a true novice, has to count the syllables on his fingers.

If this is bedtime reading, then he won't disrupt it. He tucks it back afterwards, and looks for a pen to write with on the desk.]

[ There's a brush pen and an inkwell, at least, tucked into a corner of the desk. There's still some writing paper, too; it looks like whoever made the paper flowers folded them from a chunk of it. ]

[Oh god, he's never used a brushpen before.

First, he takes the photos out of the box and displays them around the desk. A few maybe on the bookshelf, bedside table, just to make it home-y.

Then, on a piece of paper, he draws a simple portrait of Shrike - the human figure isn't his forte, so it's more stylized than it is accurate. But it's embellished with roses and birds.

Then on the back of one of his photos, he writes - counting on his fingers as he does:

I'll live in your heart
And I will be unafraid
Because it is you

signs it, and places it by her bedside table.]

Edited 2020-03-01 06:16 (UTC)

[ It feels a lot home-ier already in here. The bedsheets, which were a pale blue before, feel like a much more vibrant color, somehow, once you've finished placing the photos, and adding your personal handiwork.

...was that plush bird always on the bed? ]

Shrike's Heart (#4)

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how dare you!!!

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