04-26-2018, 09:59 PM
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Strangely, Margy and Suite had an energy about them that made the room feel small, private, intimate when they were together. Very quickly Bastille could lose all sight of everyone else around them, as if they had somehow tucked themselves away into a private conversation despite the plentiful amount of strangers that surrounded them. Perhaps it was love. He did not believe that a love that intense and powerful could develop over a few days, however, and he was as certain as ever that they had known one another in the past even before Margy started to speak about her past, her daughters. She wasn't even speaking to him and Bast was... transfixed.
It wasn't just Grimm's hungry nature, the rampant, vicious surge that climbed through him the second the greedy little bastard realized that there was a good story about to be offered, memories to be hoarded. Bastille knew acutely how that felt; there were times where he felt possessed, mindlessly moving on autopilot to collect the precious tale that Grimm's soul so desperately wanted, times when he truly was nothing more than a host. And this was like that, felt familiar, and yet... there was something else there. He was genuinely interested in Margy, wanted to know more -- not only for Grimm, but for himself.
(That wasn't all there was to it, but he wouldn't realize the strange, new element at play for another few moments.)
His stare flickered from Margy to Suite and then to Lup, drinking it in, analyzing it for later. And then he was staring intently at Lup, ensnared by the word she chose -- folklore. Yes, Grimm was very much interested in her fables, in the strange blend between reality and imagination... surely there girls truly existed, but they'd been spun into something more, something beyond even their own lifetimes. They were stories now, spoken murmurs of the masses, and soon they would be Grimm's.
Oddly, Bastille felt a strange sense of deja vu as she spoke, describing these young girls in such morbid, gripping terms... His skin felt hot, and suddenly he was plunged straight into the middle of more memories than he'd experienced at once in a long, long time.
"Haven't you heard? They're telling the tale of a child demon, dark as night with eyes so cold they'll freeze you on the spot... Everywhere he goes, death follows. A strange tom brought him to a tribe, once, and the entire group perished within days, struck by an unusual sickness... Only the little devil survived. He moves from group to group, and when they don't throw him out in time, someone will perish. They're calling him Death's Call in these parts, but they call him many names..."
The same story, over and over, with slight variations: sometimes he was Death's Echo or Death's Shadow, other times Owl, occasionally just Death or Echo or any variation of the all the rest. Word of him traveled so quickly these days, and some of the stories were true and some of them fabricated over time, such was the nature of folklore. They spoke of the tribe that perished, the dead mother he was borne to, the femme and her kits who were gripped with disease after taking him on; the old tom, a father figure to him, who traveled with him from place to place until he too eventually succumbed to sickness, to Death's own personal plague; they murmured about unexpected deaths in each new group, freak accidents resulting in casualties and injuries, mobs chasing the young tom away from their homes before his curse could settle in.
He was either evil incarnate or walking bad luck; some places tried to kill him, others simply feared him, sent him sympathetically on his way. No one seemed entirely certain how old he was -- some claimed that he was a huge, lumbering beast of darkness, but most reported that he was young, a mere kit, so defenseless looking and yet so incredibly dangerous. The truth was closer to the most popular whispers: he was young, barely six or seven months, not quite a tiny child but still young enough to warrant the protection and care of a clan, if only one would take him. No matter how far he traveled, however, the stories seemed to follow, like an unfortunately shadow.
The withered old storyteller had stopped speaking, and there was a gradual hush. It took him a moment to recognize it, that tense lull -- someone had noticed him. When he looked up, the tom was staring straight at him, the story dying on his tongue as if he had realized the very boy he described was sitting among them. Cold blue eyes met shocked hazel ones, and without a word, he was on his way; clearly, this place was not going to work out.
Bastille wasn't sure how long he was trapped in a daze. He felt that memory override him, engulfing him as if he were there in the moment, but there were others, a whole stream of them -- similar settings, similar events, the hundreds of times he'd run into someone speaking about him, murmuring his story into the darkness... They didn't always catch him, and Bastille had seen glimpses of those times as well, but many times they did. There'd been so many flickers of running, of creeping away in the middle of the night once he realized he was found out, of escaping just before they could burn him like a witch. Months and months of memories, washing over him all at once -- and it took him a second before he felt like he could breathe again, before he could remember that that wasn't him.
That was what it was, he realized -- the addition piece pulling at him. It wasn't just Grimm, or Bastille's own fascination with Margy -- it was Echo, his memories pushing to the surface, smothering him. With a soft gasp, Bast came to himself, firmly stamping down on the floodgates as his unfocused stare suddenly snapped back to attention, vivid and intense and locked on Lup once more. His throat felt dry, his head throbbing with a subtle headache, and it was clear he'd miss some of her words. Not all of them, though -- he must not have been under for too long.
Vaguely disturbed by the strange occurrence, Bast forced himself to focus on Margy, realizing abruptly that Suite had said something there, in between -- something that he'd somehow missed. He only got the faintest of impression of her voice, and then he was coming to awareness in the middle of Margy's words, and he realized... he realized that he was waning in and out, catching bits and pieces, his thoughts hazy and sluggish. (Grimm would keep track of it all, he theorized; he must still be functioning in the background, hoarding his stupid little stories even when Bastille wasn't quite put together.)
"You said we," he said, abruptly, the first words out of his mouth, but he was staring straight at Suiteheart. Either because he knew, he knew who Margy was talking about, or because he honestly could not tell who had just been speaking, dazed as he was.
Strangely, Margy and Suite had an energy about them that made the room feel small, private, intimate when they were together. Very quickly Bastille could lose all sight of everyone else around them, as if they had somehow tucked themselves away into a private conversation despite the plentiful amount of strangers that surrounded them. Perhaps it was love. He did not believe that a love that intense and powerful could develop over a few days, however, and he was as certain as ever that they had known one another in the past even before Margy started to speak about her past, her daughters. She wasn't even speaking to him and Bast was... transfixed.
It wasn't just Grimm's hungry nature, the rampant, vicious surge that climbed through him the second the greedy little bastard realized that there was a good story about to be offered, memories to be hoarded. Bastille knew acutely how that felt; there were times where he felt possessed, mindlessly moving on autopilot to collect the precious tale that Grimm's soul so desperately wanted, times when he truly was nothing more than a host. And this was like that, felt familiar, and yet... there was something else there. He was genuinely interested in Margy, wanted to know more -- not only for Grimm, but for himself.
(That wasn't all there was to it, but he wouldn't realize the strange, new element at play for another few moments.)
His stare flickered from Margy to Suite and then to Lup, drinking it in, analyzing it for later. And then he was staring intently at Lup, ensnared by the word she chose -- folklore. Yes, Grimm was very much interested in her fables, in the strange blend between reality and imagination... surely there girls truly existed, but they'd been spun into something more, something beyond even their own lifetimes. They were stories now, spoken murmurs of the masses, and soon they would be Grimm's.
Oddly, Bastille felt a strange sense of deja vu as she spoke, describing these young girls in such morbid, gripping terms... His skin felt hot, and suddenly he was plunged straight into the middle of more memories than he'd experienced at once in a long, long time.
"Haven't you heard? They're telling the tale of a child demon, dark as night with eyes so cold they'll freeze you on the spot... Everywhere he goes, death follows. A strange tom brought him to a tribe, once, and the entire group perished within days, struck by an unusual sickness... Only the little devil survived. He moves from group to group, and when they don't throw him out in time, someone will perish. They're calling him Death's Call in these parts, but they call him many names..."
The same story, over and over, with slight variations: sometimes he was Death's Echo or Death's Shadow, other times Owl, occasionally just Death or Echo or any variation of the all the rest. Word of him traveled so quickly these days, and some of the stories were true and some of them fabricated over time, such was the nature of folklore. They spoke of the tribe that perished, the dead mother he was borne to, the femme and her kits who were gripped with disease after taking him on; the old tom, a father figure to him, who traveled with him from place to place until he too eventually succumbed to sickness, to Death's own personal plague; they murmured about unexpected deaths in each new group, freak accidents resulting in casualties and injuries, mobs chasing the young tom away from their homes before his curse could settle in.
He was either evil incarnate or walking bad luck; some places tried to kill him, others simply feared him, sent him sympathetically on his way. No one seemed entirely certain how old he was -- some claimed that he was a huge, lumbering beast of darkness, but most reported that he was young, a mere kit, so defenseless looking and yet so incredibly dangerous. The truth was closer to the most popular whispers: he was young, barely six or seven months, not quite a tiny child but still young enough to warrant the protection and care of a clan, if only one would take him. No matter how far he traveled, however, the stories seemed to follow, like an unfortunately shadow.
The withered old storyteller had stopped speaking, and there was a gradual hush. It took him a moment to recognize it, that tense lull -- someone had noticed him. When he looked up, the tom was staring straight at him, the story dying on his tongue as if he had realized the very boy he described was sitting among them. Cold blue eyes met shocked hazel ones, and without a word, he was on his way; clearly, this place was not going to work out.
Bastille wasn't sure how long he was trapped in a daze. He felt that memory override him, engulfing him as if he were there in the moment, but there were others, a whole stream of them -- similar settings, similar events, the hundreds of times he'd run into someone speaking about him, murmuring his story into the darkness... They didn't always catch him, and Bastille had seen glimpses of those times as well, but many times they did. There'd been so many flickers of running, of creeping away in the middle of the night once he realized he was found out, of escaping just before they could burn him like a witch. Months and months of memories, washing over him all at once -- and it took him a second before he felt like he could breathe again, before he could remember that that wasn't him.
That was what it was, he realized -- the addition piece pulling at him. It wasn't just Grimm, or Bastille's own fascination with Margy -- it was Echo, his memories pushing to the surface, smothering him. With a soft gasp, Bast came to himself, firmly stamping down on the floodgates as his unfocused stare suddenly snapped back to attention, vivid and intense and locked on Lup once more. His throat felt dry, his head throbbing with a subtle headache, and it was clear he'd miss some of her words. Not all of them, though -- he must not have been under for too long.
Vaguely disturbed by the strange occurrence, Bast forced himself to focus on Margy, realizing abruptly that Suite had said something there, in between -- something that he'd somehow missed. He only got the faintest of impression of her voice, and then he was coming to awareness in the middle of Margy's words, and he realized... he realized that he was waning in and out, catching bits and pieces, his thoughts hazy and sluggish. (Grimm would keep track of it all, he theorized; he must still be functioning in the background, hoarding his stupid little stories even when Bastille wasn't quite put together.)
"You said we," he said, abruptly, the first words out of his mouth, but he was staring straight at Suiteheart. Either because he knew, he knew who Margy was talking about, or because he honestly could not tell who had just been speaking, dazed as he was.
Honey, you're familiar, like my mirror years ago, Idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on his sword, Innocence died screaming; honey, ask me, I should know, I slithered here from Eden just to sit outside your door. [b][sup]▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃[/sup][/b]