★  WHEN MY HEART IS MADE FROM GOLD AND FORGIVENESS SEEMS TOO BOLD

ooc: okay note to myself so i don’t forget: this is a human au
Also oh my god again im so sorry this is so terrible, i would have written more but i’m falling asleep for some reason smh

Here’s the thing: for the first fourteen years of Hazel’s life, she had spent most of her days behind a closed door. She could still remember exactly what it looked like, too. It had a brass knob that was corroded but smooth, its once-shiny surface littered with dark splotches. It rattled in its embedding, and squeaked when turned. There was a hole in the center of the knob where the lock used to be, but had somehow been dismantled so it could only be bolted from the outside.

It was a simple lock; Hazel could have picked it if she wanted to. She wasn’t short on learning time, and there were no other locks or bolts holding the door shut. She could remember sitting in her room on her small twin bed, bed sheet wrapped around her ankles as she cradled her knees in her chest, thinking of all the ways she could break it down.

Hazel used to think about breaking that door for hours - would spend hours staring at blank wooden panels, thinking, imagining. Countless times she would find herself unconsciously inching towards the old slab of oak, the sting of impact already sparking in her heel.

But she never did it.

Because it wasn’t really the lock keeping her in her room. It was the knowledge that whatever was waiting for her on the other side wasn’t nearly as safe as what she had on her side. All she faced was punishment, and that wasn’t worth it. She still received three meals a day and when it rained, she was dry. That was ten times better than facing Mother’s wrath for the satisfaction of opening her door.

So...yes, doors had a very significant role in her life. Closed doors made her feel isolated and lonely and gave her horrible flashbacks to the first few times Mother had caught her trying to open the door as a little girl. Because of this, Hazel kept her new bedroom door open.

Today she was getting around to moving some of the bigger things in her room, like the filing cabinets that had somehow managed to shift halfway across the floor. She wasn’t looking forward to it, but it would be worth it once she finished. There would finally be even floorspace!

The soon to be sixteen year old hummed to herself as she slapped her hands over and across the back pockets of her faded overall shorts, wiping off the dirt she might’ve picked up from chasing Arion around barefoot. That colt was going to sleep like the dead, hopefully. Hazel couldn’t stand another night of his insistent clopping every two hours.

Hazel had just set her hands against the filing cabinet, prepared to scoot the seemingly four hundred pound object eight feet to the nearest wall, when a short, deep voice startled her out of her wits. A mortifying squeak slipped off her lips as she jumped, whirling around to face the boy in the doorway.

Angry Boy? What was he doing here? “Oh...hi,” Hazel managed after a moment. Angry Boy was sort of the last person she expected to see, but a surprise was always a little more fun, she supposed. Besides, a destructive sense of curiosity ate away at her every time she saw him. Hazel wanted to know everything about him: what made him tick, what made him come apart, what made him happy, what broke him down in tears. But at the moment? She didn't even know his name.

★ — hazel — "speech" — six months — the ascendants — tags — ★
c) miithers

★  WHEN MY HEART IS MADE FROM GOLD AND FORGIVENESS SEEMS TOO BOLD

Though her time in The Ascendants had been short, Hazel felt she had met a fair amount of its inhabitants. It wasn’t a very large clan, but it was growing. At the moment, it’s size of population was...cozy. Comfortable. There wasn’t such an overcrowding that she had no privacy, and at the same time, she didn’t have to walk too terribly far to find someone.

As for the people themselves, it was clear that some of them put on a performance for the sake of sparing others their personal demons. Hazel definitely did - even if she was a terrible actress. She appreciated the polite concern and careful questions some (Margaery) asked. It was never so intrusive that Hazel felt completely vulnerable.

That being said, she was aware that people weren’t always upfront at first. And honestly? That was fine with her. She could handle decent conversation with people’s external persona. It wasn’t as if she had any room for hypocrisy, anyway.

However, some characters were simply puzzles. Bastille happened to be one of those. He didn’t have a “happy face” that he wore when presented with something new. He didn’t tiptoe around things, either. He was vague but straightforward, angry but quiet about it. He seemed like the strong leader archetype, but reluctant to actually take up the role unless it was forced upon him. He acted like he wanted to be friendly, but...there was something there. Some sort of apathy in his eyes that said he was protecting something soft inside. It peaked Hazel’s ultimate interest: she wanted to know what that soft thing was.

It was a stupid curiosity that resembled wanting to touch and hold a live flame. This boy radiated quiet danger that wasn’t quite burning, but simmering. The world and its colors wavered around him like asphalt on a summer day. The danger simmered low, waiting, like a predator waiting to pounce, like the breath of silence after a trigger pull but before the bullet struck. And Deus, Hazel wanted to lay her fingers over the simmering heat so badly.

The girl watched him with vibrant golden eyes, the barest movement pulling her eyebrow into an arch at his words. “Uh, no, not...really.“ Hazel stuck her thumbs into the belt loops on the front of her overalls. She opened her mouth, wanting to say that she’d been in her room trying to move things around so she had a proper space to sleep, but the more she thought about it, the more it sounded like she was bitter about being shoved in a cluttered room. Which, she wasn’t - not by any means.

“All I’ve seen of the territory is what was visible from the fields, so...there was a flower patch, a lake, and...” Hazel paused, teeth grazing over her lower lip and gaze falling to the floor as she thought. “Oh!” She looked up, eyes glittering with intrigue. “And a dark, uh, something, just through the trees over the flowers.” She had wanted to go see what the strange shapes through the trees were, but had been stuck cleaning her room. They were ruins, though she had yet to figure that out.

★ — hazel — "speech" — six months — the ascendants — tags — ★
c) miithers

★  WHEN MY HEART IS MADE FROM GOLD AND FORGIVENESS SEEMS TOO BOLD

Hazel could just about reach out and touch Bastille’s social awkwardness. In fact, she could almost see where it collided with hers: icy blue and molten gold fizzing in the space between them, confused and unsure of where to go next.

It was clear that he wasn’t leaping at the chance to show her around the territory, which led Hazel to believe that he either really, really hated social contact, or he just flat out never gave tours. Maybe it was both…? Nevertheless, Hazel wouldn’t mind if he didn’t want to. She could always go explore it on her own. At least that way, nobody would be around to see her trip over her own two feet and fall flat on her face.

“Ruins?” Hazel echoed, her tongue rolling over the word carefully. It wasn’t so much a gesture of discovering an unfamiliar word, but instead a show of her brain sifting through the possibilities of what the ruins might be of. A modern city, or an ancient one? Hazel hoped it was ancient.

She’d always had a flair for the mythic - especially Roman mythology. It tugged at a different part of her soul; lit up a hidden, secret part of her mind that was undiscovered and unexplored. Hazel could talk for hours about Roman mythology if someone actually let her. Mother always found her quirk unhealthy and borderline obsessive, but it wasn’t Hazel’s fault for being born with an odd amount of knowledge of the gods.

At the offer, Hazel’s expression lit up once more - and wow, her cheeks were going to start hurting if she kept smiling as often as she was. “Really?” She asked. “Yes, please! Only if you’re okay with doing it, of course.” Hazel practically glowed, her eyes sparking just a bit brighter and her aura pulsing a intense, fascinated hue.

★ — hazel — "speech" — six months — the ascendants — tags — ★
c) miithers

★  WHEN MY HEART IS MADE FROM GOLD AND FORGIVENESS SEEMS TOO BOLD

At his lopsided smirk of amusement, Hazel’s grin only grew a bit wider, peaking the corners of her eyes with sincerity. She was sure it was the first time she’d seen him smile, and it was something of a comfort to know that she wasn’t so much a burden here. She was capable of amusing a brooding boy, and that was plenty enough for her.

His sarcasm went unacknowledged with the exception of a deepening twinkle in her eyes and the subtle shift of giddy-ness to a small roll of her eyes in her expression. When he stood from the door frame, she took notice of his own chilling gaze sweeping across her room. Suddenly just the slightest bit anxious that he might judge her for how little she had accomplished over the course of the day, Hazel’s playful expression faltered, and her chest rose with a breath that she might have used to defend herself had he not taken it upon himself to lead the way out the door.

She followed him with her thumbs hooked in the straps of her overalls, eyes wide and wandering as she studied the blandly colored observatory. Goosebumps crawled up her legs from the heat transfer occurring between the bottom of her bare feet and the floor. Quickly, she found that the observatory was indeed like living in a basement: gray walls with gray floors and gray railings; old clutter stuffed in corners and papers with scribbled nonsense that were probably older than Hazel herself. Absently, she wondered if Starry would let her paint a mural along some of the walls - maybe even use some glow in the dark paint to paint constellations on the floor. Then they would be like night lights, and -

Oh, they were here. Hazel waited, falling back into a state of hesitation until he gestured for her to enter. Surprise frosted her expression, as she had only just met this boy - and yet, here he was, inviting her into his room. There was a strangeness to steppng into someone elses’s personal space; like she didn’t belong here, or she was intruding. Mostly, it felt invasive and rude, and she was about to turn around and wait outside the door when suddenly - books.

Hazel froze in a fascinated, transfixed sort of way, because this boy who seemed so angry and brooding all the time kept books. Real books that she could touch and open and feel and that told stories of far off places and mankind’s history. Deus, what she would give to have a personal library like this.

“You have books,” Hazel stated, her voice dreamy and full of wonderlust.

Mother never let her keep books. She said they were a reward when Hazel was supposed to serve a punishment. Many times, she had snuck out at night to find the old library, where she would read ancient Latin until the early hours of the morning and someone found her, curled up in a pile of poems and novels. In fact, that was part of the reason Mother started locking Hazel’s door in the first place.

Her eyes snagged on a particular spine, it’s gold lettering seeming to rattle and glow in the leather until she noticed it. It was Latin, she knew that much (Latin was the only thing she could read), and wanted so deseparately to touch it. But Bastille’s voice startled her out of whatever fixation she held, making her shoulders jump.

Ear tips burning with embarrassment, Hazel nodded. “I’m ready whenever you are.” She managed, taking a step towards the door with only a slightly forlorn look at the books.

★ — hazel — "speech" — six months — the ascendants — tags — ★
c) miithers

★  WHEN MY HEART IS MADE FROM GOLD AND FORGIVENESS SEEMS TOO BOLD

Hazel could feel his gaze searing the back of her neck. Distractedly, she reached up, sliding thin fingers along the skin where her hairline came to a fine point. Didn’t matter, though, because she was busy reaching out to the book closest to the door frame, already running the tips of blunt nails over the spine. It was rough and inexplicably smooth under her touch; leather-bound like the ones she used to see in the windows of her old village. Except this book wasn’t behind glass. It was real, and she wanted to read it.

Part of her was still embarrassed, still ashamed for staring so openly at the collection, but something about being in this room felt...comfortable. Safe. Safer, at least. Maybe it was all the space that had been used: the bed, the books, the shelves, the belongings. The way Bastille had gone straight to a certain spot and pulled out his bag. He owned the room, through and through. It was identifiable. He had settled here. It was like stepping into someone else's home and being able to feel how much time they had put into it, conscious or not. She both wanted and didn’t want to leave; she never knew what a room of her own, filled with her personality, felt like, and this felt like a sort of...substitute. On the other hand, she still felt invasive, and wanted to get out of his hair before she pissed him off.

But Bastille didn’t seem bothered. In fact, he sounded just the slightest bit curious.

“Er, yes. I do.” She said haltingly, snapping her hand away from the book. Her eyes, a bit wider than before, looked as if she were almost afraid that she had spoken Latin to him, despite having never remembered doing so. Arms stiff at her sides and fingers awkwardly tapping against her legs, her next words were shamefully rushed, the tips of her ears burning: “It’s the only thing I can read.” Then she stepped out the door, ready to leave.

“I - what? Really?” Hazel froze, carefully turning to watch him. Deus, she just couldn’t figure him out. One minute he moped and grouched, and the next, he was offering to take her to ancient ruins on the edge of the territory and let her read his books. She was almost suspicious. Still, her face brightened - the initial pulse in her aura giving away her excitement - and something lifted in her chest. “Gratias tibi. I’ll make sure they’re returned.” She assured him, hardly aware of the Latin slip.

Hazel really wanted to grab the first four books and hole up in her room all day, but her curiosity of the ancient ruins won in the end. So she started back towards the open air outside the observatory, ready to feel the grass between her toes and the breeze in her hair. Once outside, Arion found the pair immediately, and Hazel had to take special care to avoid the colt’s prancing hooves. He was already fairly large for his age, but she still had just enough strength to push him away from her bare feet.

“Ignore him, please.” Hazel said, amusement lacing her tone as Arion reached out with his teeth to tug on her hair. She swatted him away, setting her hands on her hips when he blew a distasteful snort at her. “Don’t sass me,” she told him. “that’s what you get for pulling my hair. Say goodbye to the carrots I found earlier.”

★ — hazel — "speech" — seven months — the ascendants — tags — ★
c) miithers