HELLO MY OLD HEART / painting

[bubblegum]

[Keona.]

[align=center]blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly

It's fact no one pushed Keona into her somewhat closed attitude.  Perhaps, being so small, so frail in form, with useless eyes, she locked herself up.  She walled herself up.  She grew determined to prove something.  What?  Strength?  Independence?  Everything and nothing.  Keona wouldn't answer something too personal, without careful measurement.  Not without consideration; the question itself, the answer, the relationship.  She may be honest with herself, or as well as she can be, but not always with others.

The facts.  She's not helpless.  Not nearly as much as one might think a feline the size of a leaf may be.  Not anymore.  And she's mastering her strengths, learning and curious.  Eager to know, without giving away too much of her quiet, uneasy self.  Self-conscious.

The privateer certainly grew in assuredness over the moons, yet the barebones of the fur pricking feeling... She doubted she'd live without.  Maybe that was okay.  It only grew strong in certain situations, when too many eyes fell upon her.  The notion hardly existed in her mind, as she trotted across the shore, leaving tiny indents in the sand, shaped like four, little paws.

Quietly, she discovers Goldie.  Alone.  On the beach.  Some of her crewmates, she'd found simply watching the shore.  She often sat at the water's edge to listen herself, to feel, hear and smell the ocean's nearness.  Consequently, her pale hues soon drifted in that direction.  Her perked ears caught movement however.  Goldie must be doing something.

So she listens.  While sculpting sand castles became a habit in her youth, or tracing patterns into the sand, Keona knew next to little of painting aside from the sound.  The slide of a brush against a canvas.  The fae simply sits nearby, listening to both the ocean and the brush, content in a strange experience.  For sharing the ocean's beauty, in different ways.

✯ — keona sibéal ní faoláin. female. privateer of the typhoon. blind. rusty spotted cat.  ref. bio.

[wormwood.]

Worm had, for a very long portion of his life, hidden things away from himself and lied to himself about his own emotions, just so that he wouldn't end up falling apart. When he had been a cub, he had often convinced himself that things were fine, and even though his parents mistreated him, and his pride shunned him, he was a happy little kid, that didn't have rage bubbling inside him, mixed with sadness and coldness. Eventually his own emotional dam had broken, however, and it had all come to a head when he had tried to kill his brother. He regretted it deeply now, but in the moment, it had just seemed like the most natural thing in the world. After all, Poetking was the cause of him not being king of the pride, and was the reason that his parents had hated him, and the reason that Worm hadn't had a single friend as a child besides his brother. Of course, in all, it had honestly been Worm's fault that all of his animosity had focused exclusively onto his brother, the one that he had sworn to protect. He was the one that had chosen to ignore his own feelings, hiding them away and letting them merge into a mangled mess.

Now he liked to think that he was more honest with himself about his feelings and how everything effected him, but... his emotions were honestly such a mess these days that he hated being honest with himself about them. Not only had these violent urges come up recently with his new hellhound body – although the urges were focused intensely on only Pittians, which he supposed was better than clanmates – but he has been filled with so much sorrow as of late thanks to all of the recent deaths in Tanglewood, as well as the sickness that was plaguing someone he considered a member of his family, Leroy. Thus far facing these emotions head on had been rough to say the least. It usually ended up with him staying curled up in his house at Tanglewood, sobbing to himself and struggling to hold himself together before he headed out once again. Still, being honest with himself also meant that he experienced happiness and feelings of love so much easier than when he had been a child. When he had been a young cub, he had hardly ever mentioned to his parents that he loved them, and his focus had been mostly just on Poetking's life, and on his own constant training for fights and kinghood. He had hardly shown any emotion, mustering only the smallest of smike occasionally for Poet. But these days... he had a family, a son, he had been in love, he tried to take on every day with as much of a smile as he could muster. It was actually... nice.

It was sort of ironic, that he had come upon Goldie painting the shoreline, considering quite recently he had done some painting of his own back in Tanglewood. He hadn't just wanted to paint on his own though, and it had been because of Feza's endless enthusiasm that he had actually ended up painting pretty much the whole of Tanglewood, since he considered them all some part, even small, of his family. Feza and some of the others had been impressed by his efforts, but he had been sheepish, waving the praises off and pointing out the errors in his own creation. He was far from someone who painted often, and he had just wanted something to commemorate Tanglewood. It hardly deserved to be called a masterpiece in his opinion, especially considering that he hadn't exactly known how to paint certain members of the group thanks to their species, and had just sort of improvised. This was where he and Goldie differed, since when Worm approached a bit behind the captain and saw what she was doing, he was immediately enchanted with the quality of the work in progress painting before him. Sure, Goldie may have thought her work was far from perfect, but Worm found himself caring little about brushstrokes as he approached with a smile.

Coming up beside Keona, he was careful to make sure that his presence was known, gently nudging her as he moved to sit beside her, so that he wouldn't inadvertently jump scare her or have her stumble over him. With both Delilah and Perseus back in Tanglewood being blind, he had a bit of experienced dealing with the ailment, and he didn't want anything unfortunate to happen to his smaller new clanmate. Once he was settled in the sand, he tried not to wag his tail too much as he barked, not wanting to spray sand particles around because of his own appreciation of Goldie's art, "Your painting looks really nice, Gold. Do you do this often?" He had spoken with Sam a couple of times before about the captain of the Typhoon, but they had never gotten down to anything as close and personal as hobbies, so for all he knew this could've been the first time she had ever picked up a brush, and she was just some sort of natural.

[glow=black,2,300]YOUR CHANNEL IS UNREACHABLE[/glow]

[Florence]

[align=center][div style="width: 500px; text-align: justify; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; color;"]Choosing to be alone and being forced to alone were, in Eth's mind, two entirely separate entities brought together only by a single thread of longing. From the beginning, her fate had spelled out a lifetime in solitude in which she would pay silent reverence to the hundreds, if not thousands, of gods that were worshipped every day. Her own identity had been cast aside, willingly sacrificed so that she might be a better handmaiden: unbiased as she swung her metaphorical sword of justice and charged others for being unworthy of life. Before the Typhoon, the winged serval had not spoken in months. Before the Typhoon, her only contact with any other living soul was sentencing them to die. And gods, she had wanted something different.

She was breaking some unbroken rule by being here, among mortals that had not received their own judgement yet, mortals who would one day cross a threshold while she was stuck, forever making decisions about others fate while having no say in her own. But her time to worry about what punishment was to befall her had passed. She was more interested in living a life that she had been initially denied. A life that had stripped her of a name, of a family, and of a personality of her own. Her neck bristled.

Eth thought that there was a fair bit of irony in her situation. The girl who represented the scales of justice and balance would one day be brought to justice herself. It saddened her to think that a crime so petty as wanting to live would one day sign the warrant for her death, but she had already accepted that she would indeed die for this taste of freedom, however fleeting. Did she find it strange that she was essentially at peace with herself? Perhaps. But a creature cast in death's image should never fear death.

It was faint commotion – a voice, mainly – that brought her back to reality, faraway golden eyes sharpening as she lifted herself to her feet and went to investigate. She recognized only one of the members present, the leader who went by the name of Goldenluxury. She was painting and, briefly, Etherealgate envied her ability to create rather than destroy. "How you always painted?" The serval inquired, glancing only momentarily at the other two that had joined the Roux. As much as she longed to introduce herself, she felt as if it were wrong to do so until she heard Goldie's answer. It was polite to listen, just as it was polite to fully engage with what the other was doing. Now was not the time for petty introductions or the like. "It's very pretty," She added on suddenly, thoughtfully.

(i have not written in a hot sec i'm so sorry for this Mess)