he affords her anger. he is not a self-righteous statue wearing the skin of a person, perfectly unperturbable. he is not the calculated cut of a scalpel, dissecting her every worst fear and throwing them onto the table to analyze her horror. 

he is just a man, thrown in over his head, ideals too big on his shoulders and a weight too heavy balancing on top of his spine. 

"you are not a bag of meat, nor are you kindling for the fire." not bait. not a throwaway body.

the implication of her own stupidity makes her teeth clack. 

"others are swayed by their patrons. by no means should MATIAS SILPH and PENELOPE LIVY be given the exception to the rules - in fact, their inability to control themselves in the face of sudden danger incenses me to no end - but they have their reasons for their show of ineptitude. you, on the other hand - " 

running to the flame. running towards something. is that why you hate him? because it wasn't away? because he wasn't running from it all? like you? 

"reacted before any of us could get a word in edgewise. if you'd have waited a moment, i could have told you not to touch the dragon's fucking hoard."

Michael Navidson

☉

"we're always adapting," she says and there is a pang in her words, a rip-tug-tearing at already-fraying bonds. her smile is sad and then it is wistful and then it is decisive. her fingers run along the interior of the celesteela. above, two origami warriors watch the trespassers with an eerie curiosity. 

aeris and sypha remain unaware of their onlookers, too wrapped up in their own worry for their mistress. 

"they hate me, theo. not all of them, but the ones that matter." she sighs. "it's a cruel world, needing to sacrifice happiness to do what's right. do you think it's the same here? in this world?"

THEO BECKETT

30 depending on the lunar phase, your character's moods may be affected for better or for worse.

☉

FAMILY

you are the moon, looking down in that roughshod, cobbled together house. the shingles on the roof, askew from last summer's storm, split at just the right angle, allowing a sliver of your light to fall upon the tresses of your mother's hair. 

her skin is waxen and pale, brows terse and knitted. pain wracks over her in waves and you dance dust motes over her head, a ritual with little power in this day and age, but still it wards away the worst of the shadows. keeps the scent of rot and decay at bay for those precious seconds. 

long enough for her to grit her teeth and grip his hand and to push, and push, and push. the blanket under her is sodden with red. there is a twisting, awful pain in her midsection and you touch her skin, the curve of her breasts, her bare, swollen stomach, and you hear your fluttering heartbeat. 

her own, weaker with each passing moment. 

your father has tears in his eyes. she told him she could do this, but their first two accidents had been life-threatening. a splintered apart marriage, crater in the house, a broken dream destined to fail, believing you could save them. such a burden on your shoulders and maybe that's why you twisted yourself around, stubbornly grasping at the umbilical cord, screaming as she told you no and thrust you into the waking world. 

blood soaks the mattress and she looks upon you fondly as you grasp for that vision of yourself in the moonlight. eyes wide as saucers, squealing mouth gone slack in awe, awash in that glow. 

you see the crown of her head, the sticky wisps of hair matted to sweat-laden skin, and your father's hand, brushing her hair back. the moon - you - fading from view as the sky shifts, tilting on its axis. 

you stare wistfully at the stars and hear a murmured ripple, a soft hiss, your voice sung in a language forged by ancients, and all the rest of it slips away. 

OCT 1 - DREAM DROP DISTANCE
341 WORDS

☉

ye, most of it is. 

her lip quivers.

he gives her the ultimatum she's been looking for - the way out. the solution. the promise of a future for them, unimpeded by the storm she brings. it would be easier to do this as she was - poised and composed. 

but now she flinches under the weight of his i love you. her eyes keep leaking and she has to wipe a small dribble of snot off her nose with the sleeve of her hoodie. how can she fix this? how can she put them back together? 

she knows how his pieces fit, but it's dangerous. it's too - 

"i'll tell you," she says, throat raw. she takes his hand from her chin and draws it away from her. around the bed, under the mattress, she tugs free a worn leather journal and holds it out to him. its front is spattered with brown stains. she smooths her palm over it, hesitates, and then holds it out to him. 

tugs it back slightly before he can take it. 

"it was a long time, king. a long time of you being unhappy." a long time of you blaming me. seeing her in me. "i didn't want you to...feel that again. because it's - " awful. 

she blinks away and stares down at the half-packed duffel bag. 

KING WAYLAND

☉

she lifts her head. ages have past. there is a weariness in her, the weight of two decades pressing on her heart. and all she wants to do when she looks at him is kiss him and hold him and pretend that everything is going to be okay. 

she thumbs the crown. tears stain her cheeks, drip off her chin and onto the relic spun out of time. her voice is hoarse when she finally finds it. 

the truth. 

"it's my fault. maybe not all of it, but enough." her mouth twists. "galar. elisabeth...

"fernando." a crack. teeth clenched, hissing, crown thrown aside with a sense of finality. who was i kidding? i can't stop this. i can't stop him. and that's my fault too.
because she asked for it. she wanted it. she went to him, willingly, and she begged for change. for mercy.

"how could you still want this?"

me?

KING WAYLAND

☉

twin dragonair surface beside her and she pauses, wringing out her hair. aeris looks dolefully at her and then exposes her back. she obliges, sliding into the water. it laps at her chin, cheeks, and then draws over her eyes as aeris' body slices through the water. 

her palms fit in the grooves behind the dragonair's oily feathers. bubbles trail from the corner of her mouth. they're under long enough for freya's lungs to complain and as soon as it does, they resurface. 

sypha's head bobs up and she trills lowly. freya follows her gaze in time to see someone dive under the water alongside a cloyster and an arctovish.

"call the others," she murmurs. sypha dives and freya urges aeris forward. the dragonair spins under the waves, waiting until the distance between herself and freya is long enough before her tail starts sparking. 

Victoria Beckett

aeris comes in with a thunder wave

☉

in the wild, the weakest of the brood are consumed or left for dead. most of her salamence were bred in captivity, hatchlings separated nigh immediately to prevent casualties, save for the few lineages they'd continued breeding in the traditional sense. lyune had never sired, but those she calls upon in battle are all victors. killers. survivors. 

she looks on in astonishment, bewildered he'd even consider asking such an asinine thing. the nuances of her life's work - her family's life's work - won't be turned into some quick-fix for some rocket degenerate in over his head. 

then perhaps a demonstration. 

"i said go."

and she stands, legs drawing free from saddle straps, balancing poised on the back of the enormous mega salamence. a low hiss in the back of her throat, a raising of her hand, and lyune begins to hum. in their circle, at her command, the rest of them thrum the sound of death.

"or die."

Kouji Matsubara

freya says no in her own special edgy dumb way

☉

lyune's rage is hot and vivid beneath her. melusine can handle lulu, but freya made the call because she's absolutely certain the salamence won't rest until the aggravating pest faces some retribution. he hisses at it as they near, incendiary cloud spurting from behind his teeth and into the air. 

stone is laden on melusine's arms. the noivern's bite finds purchase on her neck. she raises a thick arm, muscles bulging as the stone edge erupts like shrapnel.

Lulu Flint

salamence uses flamethrower
roaring moon uses stone edge

☉

they fit together neatly, slipping into a cadence they'd known all those years. freya had kept what distance she could in that time when king was away, but eva was a weakness. and slowly, freya had become a weakness for her. there, encircled, she feels safe. 

eva grips her tightly and her pulse quickens, as it has before, and freya's eyes half-close, blurry with tears. she can't explain how, not with words. words will hurt. so she has only the turning of her head, forehead to eva's collarbone, arms (somewhat awkwardly) wrapped tightly around her. blurring the rest of the spaces between them. 

breathing, feeling more than herself, for a time. until the passing of time gently reminds her enough. eva's needs outweigh her own; she can only push this so far before walking it back...

eva's breath in her ear sends a ripple of goosebumps and shivers down her side. she bites her lip, quiets the laugh bubbling up in her throat, afraid it will turn into a choked sob. 

"i don't know, eva," she says and withdraws, wiping at her eyes. "my right hook's gotten better. mm, maybe i'll use it on your shitty ex instead."

Eva Morales

☉

she knows thrall. she knows the draw of the otherworldly. all those dreams she's ever chased were never dreams at all - they were nightmares, masquerading in a fog of harmless pink. and what tsubaki describes puts her on edge, makes her tense. 

"you think you do, but you don't," she says flatly. "if the ultra deep sea is having this severe an effect on you, you'll need time off from the extraction sites. i need my aid's focus to be in this world. the one we're all attempting to save."

her fingertips dimple her temples. she sighs.

"tell me about your relationship with navidson. it's the first formal letter i've ever gotten from him. must have meant a lot to him, to send it to me."

Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki

☉

he sits down and makes himself at home. already, she's shut the door behind them, stalking to her desk to lay her palms on the table, back to him. she only half-listens to his prattles at first, still coming apart at the seams and trying to put them together before collapsing into a heap of frayed thread and moth-eaten textiles. 

the question he answers with his own makes her bristle. her chin snaps over her shoulder, one golden eye narrowing angrily at him. 

"by following a fucking protocol," she snaps. "by having the right priorities. by working as a gods-damned team."

she should stop. she should stop and think, but she can't think straight. not through the terror and the rage and grief. 

"you were a disgrace, navidson."

Michael Navidson

☉

the earth churns as the froakie falls and freya knows the battle is over. what she doesn't expect, however, is the blast of water that races from the froakie's mouth as it falls - a last ditch effort to take her dragonair down with it. 

aeris is shot from the sky. unconscious, she plummets immediately and freya rips her ball from her hip to return her before she can hit the ground. 

lyune snarls in anger and freya is quick to recall him too. she grins at cian's praise and laughs. 

"well done to you too. your frogs pack quite the punch. i'm sure alex will be happy to know the gym's in capable hands."

CIAN MAHER

freya wins!

☉

she doesn't have answers. none that make sense. not to him. and it's not fair that he can't understand, that it will make all of this so much worse for him. 

her knees draw up and she chokes out a sob.

"please stop trying to remember," she manages in jilted hiccups, nonsensical sputtering, knives at her back and one at her front, staring down and not knowing why. tasting his grief on her tongue, even after two decades. 

she searches again for the crown and draws it into her lap and she does not realize she has become a tangential dream, mirroring years un-past. in a body ten years older, staring with red-rimmed eyes down at this accursed gift, not knowing king is looking upon her. 

until he tells her to stop searching for a way out. until he tells her to stop trying to save them. 

KING WAYLAND

☉