GO DOWN THAT ROAD AGAIN | open

[BASTILLEPAW]

[align=center][table]
[tr][td]

[/td][td]

[/td][td]

[/td][td]

[/td][/tr][/table]

BASTILLEPRISONER AURELIUS

BY THE GRACE OF THE FIRE AND THE FLAMES

His vision was failing. No, perhaps failing wasn't the right word: it was flickering, steadily regressing, and had been for days. It'd been a subtle thing at first, little hints and glimses that he'd barely even noticed: familiar pelts flashing different colors, new paintings appearing on the walls, the shadows in his room falling in new patterns. Slowly, steadily, the past was creeping in on him, images from his memories superimposed on top of the present, ghosts every where he looked. When he looked out over the Circle, he saw ornate furnature positioned awkwardly amongst the sleek metal walls, couldn't always tell who was real and who wasn't until they got closer and he could see the transparency. He mistook Clanmates for those of the past and momentarily forgot their names.

He was losing his mind again.

He remembered what it was like, then. It was so much easier to recall now, with his souls so salient, tied together fluidly; Bastille didn't even have to try to bring forth those early days. He'd been able to see glimmers of the memories from the day he opened his eyes, but they'd been faint, unfocused; it wasn't for months until it was all so vivid, until he got used to the split vision. Pollutedsoul could remember confusion from his mother and siblings, the gentle explanation that no, they didn't see it. It'd happened so much slower, then: he learned not to talk about it before it reached it's peak. Learned to keep quiet about the itch in his blood, the drive to find something, the subtle whisper that he was forgetting something important. Someone important.

In the end, maybe it was not knowing that really drove him crazy. Maybe the unrelenting need to find her without knowing who he was searching for or why had driven him crazy long before his vision or memories could. Maybe the damage was already done before he died, and everything came back to him at once.

Bastille didn't get months. He got a handful of days, a little under a week, between the moment when he finally noticed what was happening and when the images were there in full force. There was no burning desire to understand. He knew who he was, what he had done, but this was worse, somehow: worse, because his other lives were slipping through the cracks, too. He saw glimpses of the places Echo had traveled, slivers of the gorge's waters rushing past, the cold amber of Indigo's eyes; he saw the plains and the dark descent of the cliffs, pelts melting into the fur of his siblings when he looked at Clanmates; he saw glimpses of that mansion, looked at the Observatory walls and saw the wallpaper of Capone's room, instead.

That morning he stood at the foot of the telescope and watched blankly as Starry bled out at his paws again.

He'd never seen his own memories -- his present memories -- juxtaposed like this, before. Maybe Zaniel had never gotten that far. Maybe Bastille was more broken than he was. He wasn't sure, but today things had shifted and flickers of Bastille were emerging in the memories, too. He saw bits and pieces of his mother's Clan flickering on top of the Circle, caught glimpses of earlier members who had left. And now here was Starry, bleeding.

Bastille lifted his head, once, and when he looked back down there was Stellapaw, sitting in a puddle of blood and looking at him with big eyes as if she didn't notice it. He stared back at her, throat tight, and didn't move. Just watched as the memory of her wavered and flickered, as she smiled at something she'd said and opened her mouth to speak. No words came out, the visions unable to offer him the lull of her voice, and he stared after her as she turned around and walked away. She disappeared into the press of bodies in the middle of camp, just as quickly as she had come.

Bastille tilted his head up to stare up at the closed hatch of the Observatory and announced to no one, [b]"We should open the roof." He needed something else to look at, needed the wide open skies where his vision couldn't play tricks on him. Everything was light and airy, as if he was floating steadily through some vast abyss, and he felt untethered; he needed a change of scenery in here.

[B]ASTRAL SERAPH — THE ASCENDANTS — [color=#e2e2e2]TAGS — [color=#e2e2e2]MOODBOARD — [color=#e2e2e2]PLAYLIST

[adomania]

[align=center][div style="borderwidth=0px; width: 55%; line-height:115%; text-align: justify;font-family: calibri;"]There was a stark contrast between what counted as visions, what counted as memories, and the thin line between them that made it almost impossible to tell which was which. Others had the virtue of knowing what was real and what wasn't, of what had passed and what was still present, but Myliu never had that chance. Everything was real to the boy, as real as the memories were to those like Bastille and as real as the air he breathed and the ground he walked on. Half of them were memories, although this was not something the child knew, and the other half was nothing but an illusion, brought forward by his mind for reasons that were beyond anyone's comprehension and far too difficult to solve. Everything he looked at was real, even if others didn't see it, and although others could convince themselves that something was fake... Myliu could not.

It was his state of being, and the voices and symbols and faces that hovered in the air, the fires that occasionally burned everything and made his eyes and lungs burn from lack of oxygen, the waters that cascaded down upon him and drowned everything and everyone until nothing was real... it was all real to him and would always be, but he lived with it like it was normal, like it was nothing. For him it wasn't. For him it was reality.

For others, delving into the past was a clear contrast between the two: the mindspace and actuality.

But Myliu had no way of knowing that. Myliu could do nothing but watch as the world turned around him, as people hustled around and faces melted into other faces, indiscernible from each other until it was a massive crowd of nothingness. The dead and the living both fought inside of his brain, and in some childish world he was convinced that the skull on his head helped him differentiate them all from one another, helped him focus and determine who it was that wanted to kill him.

Bastille was among the ones who he believed had no ill intentions against the child. He was safe, if wary, ground for Myliu. He didn't know just how similar they might have been, at least at that very moment, but he knew that the leader's voice had drawn his attention, although he knew naught what the man had said. He sounded tired... anxious, maybe? Myliu had never been good at discerning emotion, and this time it was no different, but he still cautiously approached to peer at him and try to understand.

"Help?" it seemed that everyone knew that word, and everyone always responded positively to it. Maybe Batille needed help? It was worth a try to offer it.

[VERSAILLESPALACE]

For Versailles, her memories are enough of a vision to ground her and hurt her and cut her binds all at once. She has no souls, no facets, nothing except the brooding entity that sparks occasional fires and misfires within her body, living and reliving what only past she has. She's noticed things have gotten rather odd as of late, memories of her mother resurfacing more and more when she'd once promised she would move on and forget - a promise she has clearly broken after all the nostalgia. She wonders if mother is looking down on her.

She can't help it - the smallest sounds keep reminding her of home, of better times or worse times, of mother and daughter against the world. Mother had raised her to be a warrior, hard of heart and strong of soul; mother had raised her to look at the world with narrowed eyes, looking for the best way to survive when they were not the largest predator in the forest. Versailles, be nimble. Versailles, be quick. Don't talk. Don't speak. Don't look.

Don't look.

That had been the last she heard of mother, running away from tragedy - it changes every time she tries to remember. It's a fire licking at her heels. It's water rushing to pull her back into the deep. It's stones tumbling down from overhead. It's a tree falling, falling to her death. It's the ground giving way from under her weight. It's ice splintering beneath her paws. It's hungry growls and angry groans and flesh ripping from bone. She can't remember which it is -

All she can remember is a last goodbye, an air-splitting cry, sobbing failure and desperation and self-sacrifice. All she can remember is the sound of her young pawsteps taking her as far away from the bloodshed as possible, then silence. The period after that, she'd spent traveling alone, finding ways to survive in the wilds without her mother's guidance. Even then, she'd broken her promise. When Versailles first came to the Ascendants, she'd promised she wouldn't need to remember mother, especially when she had met Bast - she thought she could push away her past and look forward like mother always wanted her to.

Instead, everything that has happened thus far had only made her remember more. Versailles wonders if it's a burden, a curse for leaving her mother behind when she should've broken that rule the first time she ever heard it - she should've turned back, should've stood her ground. Maybe then, they'd either both be alive... or dead.

She lets this thought jog through her head for the umpteenth time - she's always thinking, always wondering, always deep inside of her head that she doesn't even notice Bastille or Myliu until she hears the younger Ascendant's voice gently chiming in the air. Her golden gaze rises from where it had been watching the ground to land on both - to focus on her brother, Bast - does she have any right to call him that? Through thickening guilt, she wonders if she should even acknowledge the connection between them if that same connection doesn't feel... strong. These people, these Ascendants, they know him better than she does. She doesn't have the right, the history, the -

"Bast." Coward. She pushes the question to the back of her head and makes her approach, opposite of Myliu. She's already had a bad impression with the young guy once, and it's enough to shoo her back into her hole. For a moment, she stands and stares at Bast, stares at who she can see, and the air feels bitter with things left unspoken and unsaid. There's still so much tension between them, so much tension that Versailles can almost see it flickering in the air like embers. She thinks she's supposed to know him, she's supposed to be the one who knows him most - but she doesn't, and that's the end of that argument.

In the end, she parts her jaws to try and say something, closes them again, repeats the motion a few more times as she tries so desperately to come up with something to say... but instead, she finds herself retreating back into the shadowy corner of her brain, too afraid to take one step forward when she doesn't even know if it will take her anywhere. Instead, she sits down and offers him a shrug of her shoulder, head hung and eyes low. "Hi."

[MOONMADE]

[size=9pt]/ everyones writing beautiful long paragraphs for this but im....... not gonna do that

So maybe Moon seems like an insensitive dumbass sometimes-- most of the time-- but the lion has an awareness of peoples moods that's next to none. Having grown up around too much liquid courage and too big paws hiding too big claws, the wariness was beaten into him. He knows when not to mess with someone, how to pick up tension in the shoulders, in the spine. He sees it in Bastille now, and he quietens himself.

There's a feeling in the air; heavy. His paws suddenly feel like theyre dragging. He wants to turn tail and backtrack the fuck out of the room, but he's already in here and there's no going back now. He waves his tail at Myliu and Versailles, slightly cautious of the kid after the other night and just not talking to Versailles. There's no reason for it; just a general serenity he doesn't want to break with their back-and-forth.

"How?" Says Moon in response to Bast, staring up to the ceiling. He's only been here so long; he has no fucking idea how this shit works. "Tell me and I'll open it. Unless there's some Astral Seraph specific pawprint censor I gotta' get past."

[HEARTEYES]

[align=center][div style="text-align:justify;width:45%;font-family:verdana"]When Hearteyes was a kitten, her mother told stories of animals that held thousands of souls inside of them. Her siblings would climb all onto their mother, screaming, making up memories for their mother's body until she got annoyed enough to smack them all away. Hearteyes accepted these stories as fantasy, as some folktale passed from mother to child to make them stay in bed at night. Don't wander the forest at night, a cat with a thousand different lives may eat you up and make yours one of them. When she was younger, Hearteyes could not believe in things like that. She was taught that death was permanent, it was forever. Different souls couldn't just come back into a new body, they could not be reborn together.

This had lasted until she ran away from her parents' clan, and had joined The Ascendants. There were mythical beings here, dragons and kitsunes and vampires. Animals possessed magic, the ability to switch into different bodies, to speak to their clanmates from their mind. If her mother knew that her stories were the truth, that all those fairy tales lived in a group together just a few weeks journey from their den, she would keel over. Hearteyes still had no knowledge or concept of past lives and rebirth, but if one of her clanmates told her about it now, she would wholeheartedly believe them. Really, in this new world she was living in, anything seemed to be possible.

The small feline is drawn to the room by the sound of her clanmates' voices, paws veering off their path to approach the group. She isn't quite familiar with any of them, though she had met Myliu and Versailles at the border when she joined. She decides to sit close to Versailles, blinking quietly up at the ceiling. The air around the group is tense, for a reason she cannot quite pick out. She lowers her head to study the group of animals, pink eyes catching on Bastille's face. She has never met the Astral Seraph, and would not be able to tell with how distressed he looked right now, seeing things she could not see, stuck in a past she was not in. Bastilleprisoner did not look like an Astral Seraph right now - he looked decidedly mortal.

The albino glances back up at the ceiling, a frown drawing down her lips. "We could look around for a lever or something, maybe. There has to be something around here to open it." She suggests quietly, pink eyes turning to Moonmade, whiskers twitching in thought.

[★ HAZEL]

[table][tr][td]

[/td][td]

[/td][td]

[/td][/tr][/table]

with grace in your heart and flowers in your hair

Differences between reality and memory rarely blurred for Hazel. She could settle the past from the present, could sift through the rubble of her childhood and say that it was physically behind her. Her only time of trouble between the two came when Titanium was having her fun or when Hazel wandered too close to a triggering situation. Both happened more often than she would have liked, but...nevertheless.

There was a discernible quality to the occurrences: they were always an instant replay. Hazel had no control over her body or the situation during a flashback, which was objectively terrorizing. Reliving her past was a chaotic sense of being caged inside your own mind and convincing herself that it wasn’t real. Clearly, it wasn’t real — the transitions from present to past were far too choppy — but that didn’t make it any less horrifying.  It only helped convince her of her broken pieces.

Since her the earth had crackled to life underneath her paws, Hazel hadn’t heard much from Titanium, even in situations the girl would normally jump to exploit. It was...unnerving. She didn’t miss the voice in her head, but the largest thunderstorms were always prefaced with the longest stretches of silence. She didn’t want to know what Ti was planning.

At that particular moment, Hazel had been inching along the far wall of the observatory, trying to make it back to her room without being noticed. Unfortunately, that godforsaken tether between her and Bastille tugged insistently, dragging unsettling whispers across her ears and discomfort down her spine. She didn’t want to go near him; he was avoiding her, it only seem right that she do the same back. (That was called being petty but oh well.)

Regardless, the more her attention slipped and strayed to the bond, to Bastille, the more she recognized the itch under her skin. The want, the need. The detached daze he seemed to be floating in.

Hazel approached as he spoke, tail tip twitching at his words. To see the stars from inside would be...marvelous. Crowded, but amazing. She glanced at Myliu for half a moment, noting that they were unfamiliar before opening her mouth. “Opening the roof sounds like a great idea, so long as it doesn’t rain.” Hazel gazed upwards, eyes trailing along the metal paneling and wishing it were transparent. “I’d fall asleep under the stars every night if I didn’t like my room so much,” Hazel admitted, mostly to herself.

As people began to suggest ways to open the roof, Hazel let her gaze finally fall to Bastille again, eyes clouded. Her mind traveled to a time not long after she joined — of a certain excited feline with electricity that crackled around his paws as he woke them up in the midst of the night. “There is a way to open it.” She murmured, attention flicking to those who had gathered. “We’re supposed to open it once every two months for the full moon — for the Night of Stars. We don’t really open it outside that, but I don’t think Starry would mind us admiring the constellations for a night.” Her voice wavered over the previous Seraph’s name, but she carried on, hoping Bastille didn’t have a poor reaction to it.

HAZEL E CAELUM — KUIPER CORPORAL — MOODBOARD — PLAYLIST — TAGS

© MADI