she was beautiful—my-hoa.

a june face, warm and inviting with eyes that spoke of a life that knew nothing of suffering. she’d been drawn to her and her mother: liferafts in a sea of indolence and apathy. she’d not spoken to them, then, for fear of darkening their spirits or for making them think her strange in a town where all already did.

she does not fear anything now. she does not fear grasping at what has already been ruined.

verona scoffs, and it is the only sign that she hears anything over the rush of the tidewater.

sariel—is quicker than most.

she thinks to a thousand and one sermons that guide the sheep no farther than the pastures where she’d found them. she thinks to sariel, who mistakes her meaning but understands implicitly that she speaks of grander things than a mere garden. she confuses herself for a rose. verona does not correct her, but instead regards the roots as she crushes the petals in-hand: “false foxgloves suit your garden more.” suit you more, she thinks as she leans part way out the window and knocks over a few of that girl’s things in her carelessness.

the wind catches her hair, and her hands press lightly into the white frame of the window.

she knocks over another trinket, another bauble as sariel stands behind her. she hooks a foot over the edge and steps through the window as though it is a threshold. she stands, heels resting on the very edge as the priestess looks down the cliffs and giggles at the sight of the rocks just below. it would hurt no more than it does to remain a hapless witness.

her skirts whip through the air. one misstep, one push—that woman did not have the capacity for such cruelty. the sea creatures would not catch her. verona takes a step forward, hovering somewhere halfway between.

her voice gets lost in the chorus.

“don’t be silly. there are no songbirds in sootopolis.”

sariel duong

nothing exists on this earth without them knowing.

in land and sea and sky: the divine saw every pebble and creature that live in their grace. from hallowed grounds, they weigh the sins and virtues of their children. those fashioned in their image know of a sainthood greater than hers, for it is said that these monsters that be did not take from the holy tree. but, the humans that wrest knowledge from it: believing themselves just, and exacting students of the celestial.

subservient, are the gods that would've been:

her own escapes into the sea, and she searches the shore for it now with a quiet hum.

the tide ebbs and flows and the ocean crashes against the stone outcroppings just beyond the beach. oceanic winds whip at her skirts, sending white and sand into the air. her heel digs deep into the kelp strewn across the sediment and her smile shrinks every time that she does not hear a withering yelp in apology. there is nowhere that it can go without her knowing.

there is nowhere that it can run without her finding.

carnelian softens to syrupy cordials as she spies the withering creature, and smiles as she thinks of the gods and of herself as she begs a question of who she can only assume is another mistaken soul that believes that they owed these monsters anything but their contempt:

"careful. it knows violence, my dear."

Galayne Valois

there is little difference between dawn and dusk and she greets the horizon with a bow.

here, a mourner—an observer, a trespasser, this way comes. its eyes gleam. gold, then ichor and honey. black, though there are no night that truly is. more parable than story, she thinks of the shapeless monsters that haunt the texts that they read to children. her thoughts wander, irreverent, to a conclusion: that, perhaps she ought be fearful, but knowing that she is not afraid of the dark.

the creature looks to her, jagged edges and pointy teeth.

calls to her, to say that there are things that still sleep.

and she laughs in song, priestess allowing her singing to slip into a soft hum as she steps through the ash and across the stone as she ignores it a while longer. it stays past its welcoming. dark hair curtains soft features that she turns towards the rising sun. she copies the wind. follows it over salt-slick stone, and allows the refrain to fall into her chest like water in her lungs. she regards the creature at once, takes its hand when it does not offer it and discovers the weight of a man that wears its skin.

fingertips trail against where she thinks a wrist would be. presses her thumb into a lifeline.

feels for a pulse, and finds nothing.

she does not know what she expects. the birth of a star, a supernova—nothing. the stillness of space.

"where is your heartline?" as she turns its hand in search of a palm, verona digs her nails into shadow to rip the light from beneath sinew.

"i cannot tell where it leads, little one."

Cillian Quinn

she's never seen an angel.

the old texts say that they are messengers from god, sent down from the heavens so that they would warn or comfort in equal measure. they say that they are shaped in his image. born, if only to mirror that of those that they seek to remind of his grace and of his anguish at their suffering. the divine serpent—she has thought this since she was a fate-touched child:

they are harbingers of disaster. of ruin.

but, none speak of angels the way that she imagines them: those that crawl out of the inky depths of the ocean, those that remake the earth as they will it.

she does not understand why it is that people mourn them, then, here: a graveyard for the seraphim.

she traipses between the headstones.

her fingertips dance across them. dusty, cold and worn. loved enough to be buried, but not enough to be mourned. she thinks of the names that'd been lost to time. "in land, and sea and sky, hallowed grounds, the tempest oceans," she murmurs beneath her breath. she thinks of the endless blooms, plucked before their time to be left here to rot with the rest of the scavengers that feast on that which decays beneath the surface.

she hums, and her heels crush offering after indifferent offering. her voice sweet like smoke.

"and in the gates of heaven; bless us with your holy protection from the temptations of evil—"

Lydia Magnusson

there are no songbirds in sootopolis.

every turn on the world's axis is marked by silence. a setting moon catches the light of the sun. a sky's exit wounds change to stars, then clouds, then nothing. the waves wash over one another and crash softly against the stone. wingull and pelipper fly overhead, cawing but not crooning, and the stones warm beneath her.

a soft melody joins the dawn chorus.

bare feet drag slowly across white marble, toes drawn to a point as she dances alone in the caldera to the memory of a memory.

in her waking dreams, she is spun into the hands of loved ones. here, at the dawn of a new day, verona hums a lullaby. her eyes closed, as she steps across the river styx: blood, clinging to the white skirts of her dress, and out of the reaching grasp of the ghosts that haunt this place. sticky iron clasps onto her ankles as the fabric twirls around her legs like a flower unblooming.

she sings sweetly a funeral dirge for this open casket of a city. a mourner, this way comes, and the incense smoke curls from the obsidian dish set at her feet.

fermata, the birdseye. the rains washed the stone and the bird quiets but does not stop.

cherry syrup hardens to sugar.

crystallizes, beneath the curtain of lace as she regards him with a watchful eye and an outstretched hand in open invitation to continue a performance meant for no one but herself. and now, she supposes: for him.

Cillian Quinn

when she closes her eyes, she sees it.

bones are bleach white, flesh picked clean by the scavengers that lurk in the abyssal waters. the sleek blue decays into an unctuous mass, undesired and forgotten until it becomes nothing but the memory of gravity. she sees the gorebyss and their scales, then of the violence through which their beauty is earned.

she thinks of the caverns that lie beneath her city and privately mourns that even there, in the most inhospitable depths of the ocean, that the most dangerous creatures become meek at human intervention. if she closes her eyes, the only memory of her would be the pink caps of seafoam as the tide crashes against the shore. she thinks of this now, as she watches quietly into the open mouth of the harbor.

as the boards creak beneath her weight when she takes another step forward.

would she will fall softly into the sea like a wailord after death, or would the currents tear her apart?

she giggles at the thought.

maybe.

she hears the tether of the ropes strain against a mast. she hears the distant clang of a bell. she catches the light of a nearby lighthouse. as the ferry makes its final sojourn of the night from lilycove to slateport: for a moment, verona is there.

then, in an instant, she is gone.

cyrus floros

this house is postpartum.

it sits vacant, its children absent but the symptoms remain: its old bones, heavy with salt-spray and age, sag as it tries to make room for something that isn’t there. floorboards creak with insomnia. water weeps from every faucet and a heaviness permeates the air, choking out what life remains. what survives in the stillness is a soft, but low hum of a melody: a simple, two-part lullaby haunting a girlhood bedroom, as fingertips draw slowly over little trinkets that adorn the walls.

this mother called her daughter flower.

the humming softens, as she skirts the course of the room. verona draws the curtains and lets in the light. a window latch releases, then opens it. she watches as the sun draw its arc and warms herself in its embrace. the winds flow, carrying out with it what remains of jasmine and citrus. priestess does not turn as she hears approaching footsteps.

painted lips draw into a ghost of a smile, carnelian eyes glossy beneath a curtain of lace as she regards her without looking as she often did. the woman that stands in the doorway is as much an intruder in this place as she. absent her child, she is not a home.

she tucks inky black behind her ear, her hands crossed one over the other as she watches the waves crash against the shore. as she thinks of my-hoa's skull splintering against the stone.

"your roses have died, my dear," she murmurs, reaching just below the windowsill to pluck a bud from its stem.

the roses endure.

she did not see when she died. but, she sees the split in the skull of the woman that stands in the doorway now. a hollowed-out body, vacant eyes: she'd always thought her quite pretty. she thinks she's even lovelier now.

sariel duong

[nospaces]





[googlefont=Quattrocento Sans:400,700]

[newclass=.silpc]border:solid 2px #363636;background-color:#303030;width:550px;border-radius:3px;overflow:hidden;color:#999999;text-align:justify;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-top]background-color:#272727;padding:10px;height:20px;background-image:url(https://image.ibb.co/dMFuMc/flower.png);background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:bottom right;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-top-1]float:right;background-color:#2b2b2b;border-radius:100%;height:20px;width:20px;font:bold 10px Roboto Condensed;line-height:20px;text-align:center;margin-left:3px;cursor:pointer;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-top-2, .silpc-top-3]float:left;margin-right:3px;border-radius:3px 3px 0px 0px;font:bold 9px Quattrocento Sans;line-height:10px;padding:10px;background-color:#2b2b2b;letter-spacing:.65px;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-top-3]padding:8px!important;height:11px!important;line-height:11px!important;border-radius:3px!important;background-color:#232323!important;cursor:pointer;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-url]border:solid 1px #272727;border-top:none;background-color:#2b2b2b;padding:10px;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-url-2]border:solid 1px #272727;background-color:#303030;padding:9px;border-radius:0px 3px 3px 0px;font:bold 8px Roboto Condensed;line-height:8px;letter-spacing:1px;margin-left:20px;padding-left:19px;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-url-2 div]float:right;margin:-9px -9px -9px 0px;padding:9px;font:bold 8px Quattrocento Sans;line-height:10px;width:10px;text-align:center;color:#eeeeee;border-left:solid 1px #272727;cursor:pointer;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-url-2 b]color:#eeeeee;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-url-1]border:solid 1px #272727;height:32px;width:32px;font-size:14px;line-height:33px;text-align:center;background-color:#333333;float:left;margin:-2px;border-radius:100%;cursor:pointer;color:#eeeeee;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-bulk]padding:10px;height:500px;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-img]border-radius:2px;background:linear-gradient(to bottom,#ffffff,#999999);float:left;height:500px;margin-right:10px;width:150px;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-img img]height:500px;width:150px;mix-blend-mode:multiply;border-radius:2px;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-tabs]border:solid 1px #272727;background-color:#333333;border-radius:2px;margin:0px 0px 10px 220px;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-tabs-1]position:relative;z-index:1;height:48px;width:48px;border-radius:2px;background-color:#333333;border:solid 1px #272727;font-size:20px;line-height:49px;text-align:center;margin-bottom:10px;overflow:hidden;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-tabs-1 div]letter-spacing:-5px;font:bold 35px Roboto;font-weight:800!important;line-height:30px;padding-top:22px;width:55px;font-style:italic;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-tabs-2]padding:19px;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-tabs-2a]padding:19px;height:170px;overflow:auto;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-tabs-2a::-webkit-scrollbar]display:none;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-pkmn-name]padding:8px;font:bold 8px Roboto;line-height:10px;height:10px;letter-spacing:1px;background-color:#272727;text-align:right;background-image:url(https://image.ibb.co/dMFuMc/flower.png);background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:bottom right;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-pkmn-img]margin:-22px -44px 0px 0px;width:40px;padding:6px 2px;height:32px;text-align:center;background-color:#2e2e2e;border-radius:100%;float:left;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-pkmn-img img]contrast(80%);[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-pkmn-1]height:20px;text-align:right;padding:10px 10px 10px 0px;font:bold 10px Roboto Condensed;line-height:10px;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-pkmn-1 b]color:#eeeeee;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-mini]border:solid 1px #272727;border-radius:2px;overflow:hidden;margin-left:110px;background-color:#333333;height:258px;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-mini-top]padding:10px;background-color:#272727;font:bold 9px Quattrocento Sans;line-height:10px;height:10px;background-image:url(https://image.ibb.co/dMFuMc/flower.png);background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:center right;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-mini-top div]float:right;margin:-2px -2px -2px 5px;height:14px;width:14px;border-radius:100%;font-size:8px;line-height:14px;text-align:center;background-color:#2b2b2b;cursor:pointer;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-mini-top i]color:#eeeeee;float:left;margin-right:5px;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-mini-bulk]padding:24px;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-mini-left]height:180px;float:left;padding-right:20px;border-right:solid 1px #272727;margin-right:20px;width:90px;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-mini-icon]height:70px;width:70px;margin-bottom:15px;border:solid 2px #2b2b2b;border-top:solid 2px #eeeeee;border-radius:100%;padding:8px;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-mini-icon img]height:70px;width:70px;border-radius:100%;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-mini-info div]white-space:nowrap;font:10px Roboto;line-height:15px;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-mini-info div i]color:#555555;line-height:15px!important;float:left;margin-right:5px;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-mini-info div span]color:#eeeeee;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-mini-info div span b]color:#eeeeee;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-mini-right]margin-left:131px;height:180px;overflow:auto;padding-right:10px;font:11px Roboto;text-align:justify;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-mini-right::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb:vertical]border:solid 1px #272727;border-radius:0px;background-color:#303030;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-mini-right::-webkit-scrollbar]background-color:transparent;border:none;border-radius:0px;width:7px;[/newclass]



[newclass=.silpc .PT_table .PT_tabs]height:0px;width:0px;color:#505050;border: 0px;text-align:center;background-color: transparent;font:bold 10px Roboto;text-transform:uppercase;line-height:10px;margin-top:-14px;margin-left:-67px;position:absolute;-webkit-transition: all 0.2s ease; -moz-transition: all 0.2s ease; -o-transition: all 0.2s ease;cursor:pointer;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc .PT_table .PT_tabs_hover]height:0px;width:0px;border: 0px;text-align:center;background-color: transparent;font:bold 10px Roboto;text-transform:uppercase;line-height:10px;position:absolute;margin-top:-14px;margin-left:-67px;cursor:pointer;color:#eeeeee;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc .PT_table .PT_tabs_selected]height:0px;width:0px;border: 0px;text-align:center;background-color: transparent;font:bold 10px Roboto;text-transform:uppercase;line-height:10px;position:absolute;-webkit-transition: all 0.2s ease; -moz-transition: all 0.2s ease; -o-transition: all 0.2s ease;margin-top:-14px;margin-left:-67px;cursor:pointer;color:#eeeeee;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc .PT_table .PT_tabs_selected_hover]height:0px;width:0px;border: 0px;text-align:center;background-color: transparent;font:bold 10px Roboto;text-transform:uppercase;line-height:10px;position:absolute;margin-top:-14px;margin-left:-67px;cursor:pointer;color:#eeeeee;[/newclass]







[newclass=.silpc-ROCKET .silpc-img]background:linear-gradient(to bottom,#ffffff,#febc03);[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-ROCKET .silpc-url-1, .silpc-ROCKET .silpc-url-2 div, .silpc-ROCKET .silpc-url-2 b, .silpc-ROCKET .silpc-pkmn-1 b, .silpc-ROCKET .silpc-mini-top i, .silpc-ROCKET .silpc-mini-info span, .silpc-ROCKET .silpc .PT_table .PT_tabs_selected, .silpc-ROCKET .silpc .PT_table .PT_tabs_hover, .silpc-ROCKET .silpc .PT_table .PT_tabs_selected_hover, .silpc-ROCKET .silpc-mini-right b]color:#febc03!important;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-ROCKET .silpc-mini-icon]border-top:solid 2px #febc03;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-LEAGUE .silpc-img]background:linear-gradient(to bottom,#ffffff,#D49736);[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-LEAGUE .silpc-url-1, .silpc-LEAGUE .silpc-url-2 div, .silpc-LEAGUE .silpc-url-2 b, .silpc-LEAGUE .silpc-pkmn-1 b, .silpc-LEAGUE .silpc-mini-top i, .silpc-LEAGUE .silpc-mini-info span, .silpc-LEAGUE .silpc .PT_table .PT_tabs_selected, .silpc-LEAGUE .silpc .PT_table .PT_tabs_hover, .silpc-LEAGUE .silpc .PT_table .PT_tabs_selected_hover, .silpc-LEAGUE .silpc-mini-right b]color:#D49736!important;[/newclass]

[newclass=.silpc-LEAGUE .silpc-mini-icon]border-top:solid 2px #D49736;[/newclass]