(no subject)

[we_bring_hell]

Nothing is wrong. Well, nothing new is wrong. It's just that sometimes you wake up and hate everything, starting with yourself and extending outward from there.


She has snarled at Gideon, banished Gideon to the distant past, and is now sulking about being abandoned by Gideon. She was trying to work on the Lyctoral theorems, but her bile got in the way, and now she's chewing on her interdimensional communication mechanism.

She is considering burning characters into her living bones while her cavalier is away and without a healer standing by, because she may be 90% of Gideon's self-control but Gideon is 70% of her self-preservation.

The Mountain Goats is blaring; Transcendental Youth.

Comments

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow, for her part, is in a better mood too. The thestral was interesting, and Ingress was not unbearable. She is still head-to-toe in extraneous robes and fully painted, though; in the last few weeks, she has begun to be a little more relaxed about being bare-faced in private, even when they aren't fooling around, but she's every inch the prim and proper nun today.

Her gloves are off, though. And the music is no longer the same gloomy Mountain Goats music. It's different gloomy Mountain Goats music.

(Wear black when it's light outside
Wear black when there's no light)

"That was unnecessary, Griddle." She looks up from her work with a frown, but it's a habitual frown, not a sinister one.

[we_do_bones]

"You're the one who started giving presents," she points out, shrugging out of her heavy outer robe and wandering over to Harrow while digging in her shirt for two small, thin packages, which she slips onto Harrow's desk.

"Here."

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow frowns, a different frown this time. (This one means she doesn't have a good rebuttal for that.) She unwraps the first package and with some coaxing it pops back up into a lily. Harrow places it cautiously beside the bone vase that holds the necromantically preserved original lily and violet.

(But even Harrow's powers have their limits, and they are beginning to grey and crumble on the edges.)

She reaches for the other with another, third kind of frown. "Sentiment. Combined with craftsmanship. Hallmarks of an appropriate tribute."

[we_do_bones]

"I just thought you'd like them."

She reaches to touch the lily, and the two butterflies that flutter around it. A completely different sentiment from the phoenix and pomegranate of the other piece, but she still likes it.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow unfolds the other, and almost-but-doesn't-quite wince against the bright pop of color splashed on the somber tones of her desk.

"I do like them, you ridiculous creature," she says sharply, lifting her fingers to press against the corner of her eyes against suddenly welling tears.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon, less panicky now after these few weeks about Harrow's occasionally teary response to emotions, grins and leans down to nudge her thumb against the corner of Harrow's eye and smudge away some wetness.

"Okay, good."

[we_bring_hell]

"Now both of us have smudgy fingers and can't touch them," she says fretfully. "Really, Griddle."

She belies her words by letting her slim hand wrap around Gideon's.

"You're very brown," she observes.

[we_do_bones]

"Yeah, I guess real sunlight will do that."

And she's not the only one. Even Harrow has a little more color in her face and her occasionally ungloved hands, although most of her is the same milk tea color as always. She folds Harrow's hand in hers and slides a hip up onto Harrow's desk, disturbing her work but mindful of the delicate paper phoenix soaring up from its resurrection. "How's it going in here?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Tolerably," she says, clipped. "Ingress came by -- your idea?"

"She introduced me to a thestral."

[we_do_bones]

"I asked her to make sure nothing killed you while I was gone," she admits. "And nothing did, so good job, Ingress! What's a thestral?"

[we_bring_hell]

"A strange magnificent beast... a bit like a flying skeletal horse," she says. "It was... fearsome." She says this in rapt tones, the way a normal person might say beautiful.

[we_do_bones]

"Sounds horrifying and extremely Ninth," Gideon says. "Lan Wangji introduced me to a bunch of rabbits. They were cute and fluffy and not scary at all."

[we_bring_hell]

"It was," Harrow says, her tone turning Gideon's words into compliments once again.

"That sounds... was it pleasant?"

[we_do_bones]

"Yeah," she grins. "They were the softest. I've only caught glimpses of the demon bunnies in the woods before, I didn't think I'd ever see an actual rabbit. I liked them."

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow herself softens. "I'm glad it was good."

She leans her head against Gideon's solid, comfortable abdomen. "I'm sorry this space became uninhabitable."

[we_do_bones]

Her hand slides to the back of Harrow's head and holds her there, lightly, protective.

"It's okay. I was getting on your nerves, and you get to have time to yourself if you need it."

She pauses, clarifies: "As long as you're not actively injuring yourself because no one's around to help, I mean."

[we_bring_hell]

"Myself is the last person I want to spend time with," she says. "Unfortunately, it is unavoidable."

"You enjoyed Cloud Recesses generally? Furry creatures aside?"

[we_do_bones]

"Yeah."

She leans back a little, thinking, as her fingers play with Harrow's hood. "It was beautiful. Everything was so green, and there we so many people. More people than I've ever seen in one place. Did you know Lan Wangji was such a big deal? Everyone was just about falling over themselves to be nice to him."

[we_bring_hell]

"Yes, his brother is the leader of their clan. We are equivalent in rank, given the pretense of my mother's continued existence. It is not really that long since we began using our given names."

It sounds kind of awful, to her, and Harrow probes the queasy feeling that gives her gingerly, like a missing tooth. "The type of place you might like to live, given your head?"

[we_do_bones]

"Nah."

She shrugs. "I mean, they invited me to come back and train and I might take them up on it – always good to learn more techniques, you know? But it was quiet AF. And there were so many rules. And you would probably hate it there, so."

And honestly? She's not going anywhere Harrow doesn't want to be.

[we_bring_hell]

She relaxes faintly. "But Griddle. When I hear the words quiet and rule-abiding, irresistibly an image of you forms in my mind," she deadpans. She closes her eyes and lets Gideon take more of her negligible weight.

"Your fidelity is indeed big as a mountain, Nav."

[we_do_bones]

She grins, because Harrow's got her pegged. "Yeah. Also I already got in trouble with Lan Wangji's uncle."

Her thumb pushes back Harrow's hood, runs fondly over Harrow's shorn scalp.

"I told you. One flesh, one end, loser."

[we_bring_hell]

The brush of Gideon's thumb over her scalp is pleasing; the touch, the gentleness, the rightness in the resistance of the bristles. That feeling of rightness, absent all day, pierces her like an arrow, and she turns her head to her cavalier's hand, almost unconsciously seeking more.

"I would expect nothing less," she murmurs. "What did you do?"

[we_do_bones]

"We started out in a little town near Cloud Recesses, walked around a market. That's where we saw the paper cuttings. Went on a boat. Oh, hey, did you know Lan Wangji can fly on his sword?? He says he'll teach me how to do it."

She says, willfully ignoring the part about how he has no idea if it's something she can learn.

So awesome.

"Then he showed me around Cloud Recesses. I got to meet his brother and his uncle. His uncle does not have a sense of humor, by the way."

[we_bring_hell]

She meant what did you do to get in trouble?, but this is interesting anyway. "I did not. He offered to teach you their methods of cultivation?"