raphaeni

[raphaeni]

"Ah, that's the fun part, isn't it? I don't know what you're looking for either." He shrugs as a result, making a gesture towards the empty air. "It's just a rumor. A tall tale. I don't know if it's real. But there's something down there. I just don't trust Amaunator or his worshippers enough to go look myself."

Raphael looks her over, gauging her reactions not just to the temple, but also to her family, of course he knew she could not have known the things he knew. Her sheltered life found her now hidden away from any news of mortal man. It was his own fault, in the end.

"If it is mine by right, then I have no reason for concern, your brother can gladly inherit that debt for me, and if something tragic happens, I will take it... but I think they are of better use alive. I never was a fan of the way mortals collect debts. In Hell, a simple punishment suffices."

Shadow Thieves. Yet another thing to look into. Of course he makes no indication of whether he knew about this or not, but word could travel fast to his ear. He leans over the table, looking at Salome, at the flower in her hair, and his hand reaches out, and touches her face, the skin burning hot, but not enough to burn anymore.

"I will not demand gratitude. That comes from the heart. You seek to pay me back in obligation. I am used to that. I will take whatever keeps your pride in tact. But why, after everything, do you think so little of me?" He comes just a bit closer, looking down at her.

"If a stray arrow came, how deep could it go? If a rogue spell hit, no, even if a bolt of lightning came down from the sky and struck you, you think I would let it hurt you? Do you think so little of me? Even if it lasted long enough to hurt, you think I would not bring you relief? Even if it harmed you, you think I would not heal?" He shook his head.

"We shall deal with these things one at a time. Let us start with Amaunator first."

“Y’haven’t even told me what y’want me t’look for,” Salome replies, brows furrowed, as she shifts aside the bouquet in her lap to steal a look at her hands, through the magic of glamor. The cinnabar patches having long conquered over the olive there, except for a few sparse areas of her palms. “I can’t plan ahead if I don’t know what I’m supposed t’be keeping an eye out for.”

There is another flicker of a look at her hands and a fleeting, distant glint of something almost melancholic in her yellow eyes before she plucks free a bloom from her bouquet and threads it behind her ear. Still, and perhaps always, a stranger in a strange land, it would seem. Even if those lands seem to have changed and expanded in recent times.

“I—“ she starts, but the words struggle to find their bearing. Salome’s arms coming to rest on the table — the golden bangles upon her wrists coming to a sudden, clamorous stillness with them — before the fingers begin to thrum. Attempting to bring what she’s thinking to the forefront of her mind. “Y’asked me what I would have of you, Raphael, not what I would force of you.”

“In my family, my brother inherits upon my mother’s death. He inherits everything, not my sister, even if she was t’firstborn, and nothing comes t’me. If he were t’pass, the inheritance goes to t’firstborn son by marriage. Y’became that, when our marriage was officiated.” A swallow and a sigh later, Salome continues, but not before a rolling of her eyes at the old traditions. The rolling of a wrist, as if she’s acutely aware that she’s explaining nothing new to someone who has lived through the majority of Faerûn’s history, but all for the sake of clarity. “If they have lost their wealth, so be it. They deserve that and worse for t’lives they have ruined, not including my own. If y’have no interest in anything, then it is even less of an entanglement t’bother with, but I thought it a way t’thank y’for all that y’and your family have gifted me. But I am terrified, still, no matter how finely dressed or well protected I may be, of a stray arrow or rogue spell.”

Afterwards, Salome sits with the explanation of his rejection, attempting to make sense of it. Her hands tight around the stem and base of her glass, brows tight, almost temporarily lost to everything else occupying the world about her, including Raphael himself. Revulsion being the final emotion of many that rapidly traverse her features as she silently goes over the records that she remembers.

“Nothing, really? Did your source know of my mother’s work for t’Shadow Thieves? That must be that all that must be maintaining them now. My idiot brother at work, clearly.”

[raphaeni]

"Surely your dead god has some remaining brain to tell the difference between a tiefling and a Hell-borne devil, yes?" Raphael responds in turn. He looks her over, watching her ponder what 'he must want' from her. Let her guess. She would not be the first, after all, and would not be the last.

"I told you, did I not? I have no knowledge of whether this thing even exists. If you find nothing, then you find nothing. This isn't a demand. It's merely an inquiry."

He smiles when Salome states in simple terms her desire for her family. Ensnare them. Send them to Mephistopheles. Alive, dead, turned into brutish animals. Offering money, offering power. He smiles and smiles and inside him some bitter thorny vine tightens around his insides.

Don't worry, little bloodstain, Amaunator will know you are still a mortal and not a devil. After all, what other group would behave like that? What other group is so needlessly violent?

Raphael keeps that thought to himself.

"Your family has no money." Raphael states. "The estate yes, the lace business, yes, but no money. They've had debts, and income that has not recuperated their losses." He did not come here not knowing, he did not come here unprepared. He knew what would be asked of him. He knew very well what would be the case. Humans love to use him. A spouse is no different. "I believe they still have their estate. But it's a dollhouse. All surface level and outward appearances. It's empty inside."

"As for their offices, Athkatla is the city of coin, if you don't have that money, you don't have that power. They are the dolls to their dollhouse, just there to look pretty, there to make sure they don't get kicked out." There is more he has yet to understand of their situation, but he knows if anyone can't verify his claim, its Salome. He wonders what she will think of his words. If she will believe him.

"Suffice to say, your tempting offer of empty coffers and puppet seats are of little interest to me. Perhaps you should understand the situation better... and then make me an offer that I could simply never dream of refusing."

Work for it.

He takes a sip of wine that has finally arrived at the table, and idly glances away, out the windows of the restaurant.

He can’t wear it openly, or at least not for long, and thus the moment passes. The affection that is so openly shared between them tumbles like a rock into the pit of Salome’s belly as the Devil she not only knows, but could paint with her eyes closed, returns quickly to his barbs. The rolling of golden eyes obscured by the blooms still held close to her chest.

It is her adherence to tradition — one of the few things that give meaning to the bleeding of the days in Avernus — is what he means by “insistent rambling.” The “nagging,” on the other hand, is the desire to engage him, involve her partner, in something relative to who she is. Where this pathetic, assuming little spouse of his comes from and what has built her up from bones into what sits astride the table now, trapped halfway between amusement and annoyance.

Raphael didn’t investigate these claims more than a century ago because the tales did not interest him then as they do in the current, or because he simply lacked the leverage to do so until now. He will not admit this — he is too proud to admit much of anything — but every time he attempts to draw blood with his words, Salome knows truth enough.

And she can’t help the laughter, wholehearted and full of mirth, as it spills forth from her at that one curious admission. Salome’s chest suddenly heavy with the weight of it all, and her pearlescent fangs vivid in the candlelight before downing the remainder of her Firewine. “He better learn t’have love for t’Devils! What am I? What will become of his remaining faithful in Elturel?”

“So this is t’price of my gift? A whole shrine full of lost knowledge to study, so long as I retrieve an equally lost trinket for my husband?”

But then Raphael trips her up, asks a questions she isn’t expecting and doesn’t have a well-prepared answer to. For all of her planning, and the decades worth of anger that’s fueling it. How do you tell someone that you’ve come home only to, perhaps, destroy that which grew you? Isn’t it enough to take her to the dress shop? To let her breathe the Amnian air after so long in the Hells?

Salome sighs, as if she has been placed in checkmate. Closes her eyes and presses unglamoured hands to the warm mahogany table between them as she hums a note or three of something improvised. “What I would have of you here? Truly?”

A pause, and a wetting of her lips.

“Ensnare my mother and brother with something out that cunning mind o’yours, and send them t’your father as gifts. Living, dead, turned t’swine, I don’t care. That is what I want. What remains in their coffers is yours, as are their multiple offices throughout Amn, Calimsham, and Tethyr. I have no desire for any of it, but y’can make ample use for contracts.”

[raphaeni]

"You assume so much for someone that thinks so little." He remarks rather coolly about the situation. "I will admit that Amaunator has never interested me much. Dead gods are hard to find interesting. It was your insistent rambling and nagging that made my mind wander to this place."

"If you assume that I need it, then why did I not come here 120 years ago? Back when it was fresh and ripe for taking? Back when the Bhaalspawn first skulked those halls and purged those helpless few? I looked into it because of you. There is no denying that... No other way around it." This much was true. He would not have looked into it otherwise, but looking into it meant looking into others, looking into Salome, who she was, her origins, her family...

Raphael didn't bother invoking her ire, he seldom saw it worth his time, and he seldom felt a desire to engage it. So he did not seek out Salome's family. The one of which she flees from. Yet now she goes to them with teeth sharpened and claws curved and eyes glowing faintly. Time had changed her.

"I will have need of you. Amaunator was a god of Eternal Sun. Lawful as he was, I don't trust he had much love in his heart for devils... So I may have need of you to go there and get me something. But if you find nothing, that is fine as well. Just to know it is real will satisfy the curiosity inside me."

"Surely you did not come here to just have me shuffle you around Athkatla. What will you have of me? What shall I do here with you now that we are here?"

Oh, her husband does love his allegories so. And who is Salome to deny him in the moment? Instead, she rests her chin upon a slender hand — skin to the very mark of their marriage — and listens despite the metallic clamor that accompanies the movement.

“It’s t’Amaunatori whom are regulated t’less than savory aspects of t’Dawnmaster’s worship,” she offers, clicking her tongue against her teeth in a fashion not atypical of an Athkatlan. Fingers, too, playing along the sides of her wine’s glass, to help with maintaining focus. “It would be neither t’first nor I suspect t’last time I would have seen a child’s body, or prepared one. My aunt has lost young children, as has my sister.”

She could elaborate, but chooses not to.

Instead, Salome muses on the praxis of worshipping a deity that is apparently dead, and where the line between belief and practice bleeds together into the distillation of what becomes tradition besides. What keeps a deity itself clinging on like a dybbuk when memory has not only faltered, but entirely perished. A god’s name — its scope of power, too — barely even a whisper from the other side of a house they no longer recognize as home.

What gives her fingertips that warm, yellow glow when she calls on Amaunator, silently, for so many things. Lathander, she suspects, but a heart doesn’t enjoy being challenged so.

Her eyes following Raphael’s as they linger low, beneath them both. The glint of his teeth at the conclusion of his tale. They are above it now, she suspects.

“If it is true,” Salome repeats, almost mockingly. This is how he expresses his skepticism, attempts to draw others into his scheming with such a simple lure. If her tail was long enough she suspects it would twitch just out of the nature of him. In lieu of it, she admonishes him the same as he often does with her: with a simple wave of a hand.

“Y’have need of it, His resting place. Or something, perhaps someone, in it. I’m your wife, not a client, you don’t have t’lure me into your plans when I am wont t’come willingly. Out with it.”

[raphaeni]

He suppresses his desire to roll his eyes, but he doesn't stop her, not yet, he considers himself to simply be ignoring it, if anything just to not let himself feel like she won. Raphael listens to the discussion between her and the waiter, and he feels the shift of the man's feet, the vibration on the ground of the people wandering in and out of this place. He feels it, through his feet, against his shoes, against the floor, something below that...

"It's an old shrine. And the stories it can tell you... so long as you mind the century old corpses of children in there."

Raphael doesn't think such a statement will sound shocking, surely not coming from his mouth, but perhaps shocking to think of happening in an Amaunator shrine. He was strict, but he was no cruel god, he did not demand blood, or sacrifice, or slaughter. No, he was the Eternal Sun, and he knows he need not tell her anything she doesn't know about Amaunator, because she knows better than he does. Mortal men's gods are of interest to him, in the same sense that a restaurant owner sees what other restaurants are selling.

"About 120 years ago, a group of people came here, to Athkatla, and came across a queer sight. A temple, to a forgotten god, littered with dust and the young and bitter people that lived inside it."

"It is not illegal in Faerun to worship a god after he dies, but often the dead god does not deem ways to grant wishes anymore, to grant clerics and paladins their strength and magics. It is seen as senseless to worship them. But it happens anyway. Because god can live on in people's hearts much longer than they can live on this planet."

"This shrine is underground, near the sewer system, sealed into a wall. Athkatla built up around them, and the people were buried below, but they did not fear. They did not bemoan it. They had been forgotten for a long time. They had lost their names, their goals, their livelyhood. They would be born, they would grow old, and they would die. Their soul would recycle itself akin to a plant sprouting, seeding, and wilting. All in the name of their dead god."

"Eventually, they forgot their dead god's name. So blindly they worshipped an unnamed god, because they had no other option. For centuries they lived, grew old, died, only to be reborn, and repeat this for millenia. Alive, but unable to live. Eternal."

"People forgot Amaunator. It's only natural, after all, and so did those who worshipped in his temple. So why did they continue to live? They had forgotten their own god... surely the spell would be broken."

"It was their rage that kept Amaunator alive, like a ghost, like a thin void, he remained, while everyone thought him dead, his thin shapeless form lingered here like a ghost. Their anger was so strong, so much stronger than any faith that still remained for him, that he could not leave that shrine."

"When the outsider group began to uncover this truth, the people there finally came to terms with what they must do. They had to let their hatred go. They had to forgive their dead god who would not have tortured them so if only they had let go of their rage. That day, they all died. That day, Amaunator died with them. Their bodies eternally rest there, unable to rot, unchanged by time."

"It is the finally resting place of the Eternal Sun."

A flash of a smile. "An exciting story, is it not? So long as it's true, that is."

“It is hard not t’be —“ she admits, with a grin wide and almost grotesque in its newfound nature. The unnaturalness of her canines glinting on the faltering remnants of sunlight in this ensconced space they find themselves sharing. “Under any other circumstances, I would be spat on, or simply dragged back to t’estate of my parents like a misplaced heifer. Instead, I have a title, and peerage. I don’t have t’cover myself according t’safety, but at my own preference.”

A statement Salome accentuates with a flourish — the wave of a hand — towards a loosely tied amendil about her hair. The golden embroidery along its edges the same hue as the remnants of that pastry she savors, and licks clean from her fingers, almost starry-eyed. Imagining all indecorous ways that she can and will thank him for spoiling her so, when they return to the private sphere of their lives —

But, oh, across The Bridge? She understands the implications of this, and can’t help but ask. There is a difference, after all. Her family never managing to raise themselves beyond new money and its precarious standing; that had been the entire point of Salome’s existence, and that her siblings. “Temple or Gem District?”

Then, the stopping of a waiter — the halting with a gentle hand — to ask when their wine is arriving. It is late. Could they not keep her husband waiting?

When she turns back — begins to laugh at herself — Salome’s vision is instead awash with what she loves most. Marigolds, calendula, chrysanthemums, and sunflowers, and her hands cannot help but immediately snatch them to herself. The tickle of pollen in her nose, and its accompanying sneeze. The fuzz of the trichomes along her fingertips. She has missed this. Avernus grows no wild flowers, nothing outside of Zariel’s gardens, and she feels diminished without them.

She longs to spring from this chair. To embarrass her husband with a flurry of affection she knows he will chafe under, but she can barely stand it. So Salome instead wills the lower half of herself to calcify; to please mind her manners for once in her life, stay put, and simply listen. This is in defiance of every single nerve suddenly coming alight at the mention of the Eternal Sun and his work. Raphael wouldn’t. Or would he? Her head canting — eyes squinting — even as still plays with the leaves of the bouquet in her lap. Say it, she almost mouths. Speak plainly.

The things she will do. The mountains she will move.

“Are y’gifting me an entire shrine, love?”

[raphaeni]

Sitting at Raphael’s desk, petting an imp, smoking one of his cigars (for some reason): you come back, you even visit the material plane, and not once do you come to see me. I see how it is.

"You always look so good with something long and cylindrical keeping your mouth busy."

Raphael's hand touches Astarion's, cigar between both their fingers, and he takes the thing in his mouth, bringing his head close to Astarion's face, and he breathes in. The cigar is mild, not the usual harshness that Raphael actually prefers. These cigars are for clients after all, most of them can't handle something harsh, that's why so many of them leave all the dirty work to him. The wrap of the cigar is damp from Astarion's mouth, and Raphale lets his mouth linger there.

He blows the smoke in the air above Astarion's head.

"Trust me, my love, if I wanted to disrespect you, there are much easier ways to do it." He responded in kind. "I told you, did I not? I don't come to anyone. Everyone comes to me. All you need to do is call for my name."

[raphaeni]

"Not a drop of wine yet, and you are already drunk with such power." Raphael murmured with a small shake of his head. He offers her no praise or censure for her newfound bravado. His eyes flicker down at the desert that she offers without word. "Oh please, why would I deny you your moment?" He is gentle with the back of his hand, having gotten used to cooling his body down, so his hand did not singe her skin as he pushed her away.

It's hard to tell by now if he has gotten better at it, or if she is simply becoming more resistant to the fire.

"Join me?" He says so with almost a laugh. "Not looking like that." He states, although it's hardly her own fault, she hasn't been able to buy anything for herself, she had mainly been weaving things for herself with the looms and yarn winders, and other devices that were littered around Sai's corner of the dungeon.

"No... We'll get something across the bridge." Raphael instead decided. Something to suit her figure. Something to remind the people here that this time things were different. "After that, you can accompany me." He solves the problem in his own mind.

Raphael takes the bouquet that he is holding, and rests it on the table before him. "That is because you are free." Raphael responds in kind.

"There is a temple to Amaunator in Athkatla, somewhere deep underground. There was a horrible little society around it, full of people unable to die, praying to a wounded god, hoping to put an end to their madness."

"Someone came along some years ago, and put an end to that. The temple stands empty now. But there are some things they left behind. Tomes. Ruins. Skeletal remains. The works." Raphael looked down at the street below them, out the window.

Yet, this is not the young girl who was left for dead in an Athkatlan river more than a lifetime ago. Salome could — but won’t — choose to dwell on the lost time, or fixate on memories that could have been with her kin. Why wish for such things when all they desire is her eyes stripped of their light forever?

And it is far more potent to remember their power. Even when doing naught a thing, could any other in this city — in the whole of Amn itself — claim the prestige of their House? The thought made her small heart race with a kind of delight she was not yet used to, but could certainly learn to love. Fingers quickly adjusting about his wrist whilst she is in thought before finally allowing them to wander to her baklava.

Raphael is the progenitor of this, in a way. Of her radically improved countenance, and a viperous sting that brokers no regard for whether or not she is recognized in her homeland. And Salome thinks, if he were to allow for a genuine hairline fracture along that polished facade he wears for business — even for a mere second — that his amusement would be all the more evident.

“Am I t’be joining y’fully tonight? Business and all?” The question itself is laced tightly between incredulity and sincerity, but she means it with all seriousness. If only because she can’t imagine where she wouldn’t be a detriment over an asset. Meanwhile, lithe digits have already begun to make short work of her dessert — well before any meal — and under the guise of a crooked grin, Salome wonders how her husband would react to her selfishness, if she kept the whole of it. She doesn’t, however, and offers up the other half to him. The honey sticky on her fingers.

There’s something; it’s not nagging, or even persistent, but she says it anyway.

“This is the first time being here, in the place I was born, where I feel that I am actually free.”

[raphaeni]

[raphaeni]

“Your favourite Incubus” - Haarlep

[raphaeni]

Hellish pleasures, heavenly sufferings.

Haarlep, Raphael

[raphaeni]

I don't trust anyone who hasn't acknowledged their capacity for evil.

[raphaeni]

She slips back into the embrace of Amn as easy as breathing. It's pulse seems to be in tune with her own, no matter how far away she was from it. Some things are born bone-deep in a human. To be raised in something, born to it, walk the streets with a head full of memories, and a heart full of aches and pining.

Not that he would know what it's like.

Sometimes its fun to pretend.

He watches the server talk to her, although conversing with devils was often similar enough, he supposes he spends too much time in his house, and the servants there are timid and shaky, as they have much reason to be. The server in Amn was happy to push fancy wines and extra dishes, to convince Salome that the sunset is beautiful and the table is good.

The complaining goes back and forth but eventually a consensus, or perhaps, a surrender, is reached, and the baklava is prepared and presented, the scent of cinnamons and roasted pistachio and walnut, flaky with butter, drowned in honey syrup and sticky to the touch.

"Fine by me." Raphael remarks, though he does glance down at her hand that touches his wrist. "Don't waste too much energy, there's a perfectly good inn full of people to argue with as well tonight."

“I’m not complaining —“

She was.

The table placement hadn’t been to her standard, with the sun making it nigh impossible to see her husband’s face. And could they perhaps bring her a piece of baklava now, with cream, perhaps with it an additional plate. And no, they did not want the overpriced house wine that was syrupy sweet and curated to the palates of tourists.

There is something to the idea of simply being understood for who she is. That every nuance of gesture and tone is universal here and not somehow novel, or that a rare decision to wear makeup won’t cast her as an exotic beauty. No, she simply is.

Raphael did not have to bring her, but he has chosen to, and she is beaming once she does perch at their table. Though it barely lasts as Salome drapes herself across the table, reaching for his impatient hand with the usual clamor of her silver jewelry.

“Any time, anything… Me'ahev, I want my baklava.”

[raphaeni]

@sfaradi

"Must you complain at every restaurant we go to?"

Raphael drums his fingers on the table, completely accepting of his fate, flowers held in his lap of marigold and flowers that symbolized Amaunator, the Eternal Sun. It sits there in his lap as he watches Salome speak to the workers, something about the setting sun glaring off the glass, and the way the chair felt -- whatever else he heard before he tuned it out.

He hadn't taken her to the human world since they had became bound together. Not that he expected that it was necessary, but it had been a while, and he figured he ought to invite her out of hell sometime. He couldn't really tell if she seemed happy or not to be taken to Amn, but he expected some sort of reaction. She missed some of the food, and so he thought it fit to take her. Of course, it also suited his needs, since he needed to be in town for a client.

"Let me know what hour you'd like to eat at. They might still be open by then." Raphael remarked, looking her over, if her devil tail grew out more, it would probably be wagging.

He smirked at the thought.

[raphaeni]

truly, we have all had a meal.

[raphaeni]

Good to see that people are finally talking about that adarlingmess person. They've been creeping me out for months now with the way they talk and act and behave about Raphael and how incredibly homophobic they would get.

Turns out they're also insanely racist and con people out of money, so that's out of the bag as well.

[raphaeni]

by FYF7 [ X ]

[raphaeni]

don't see many others drawing this thing so I'll do it myself...

Raphael

[raphaeni]

"You defend yourself back then. You defend yourself now. Whether such a burden should be placed on a child's shoulders is neither here nor there, now is it?" He replies. "Was it not their intention to marry you? To become your owner? They intended an outcome. It failed to come true. They anticipated no other outcome. That is the difference between them and me. That is the difference between them and you."

There is no real recognition on his face, a slight flick of his gaze from her to her elbow, the very same clinging shape and darker color unfolding on her body. He doesn't acknowledge it. How many mortals come down here, twisted into a similar form, a bastardization of the creatures of Hell?

"I see no evidence of fate being a culprit." He responds curtly, and continues his meal, holding his glass out for a servant to silently step forward and fill his glass. The servants stand around them like skeletal statues, not moving unless prompted, save for the trembling new one.

"The debtors are servants as a form of punishment." He hisses. "I am the one administering the punishment. You want me to extend them mercy out of convenience to you? Do you think any of these people extended mercy to their victims?" Raphael points to the servant standing there. "Go ahead. Perfume them. Dress up your dolls. Do what you like."

“It was this or letting the lion’s mouth close. Simply put,” Salome quickly counters, glancing up from the effort of pulling free the flaxen colored silk laces from her left sleeve’s rings. The intrusiveness of her mind granting a fleeting delight in the form of her husband’s permanent silence, if only there was the self-destruction present enough to use them. “Do y’long to hear me say otherwise? To pretend I’m a saint? I made a selfish choice then, t’same as now, because I enjoy living. T’only difference is that a child shouldn’t have t’make that choice, and I know that somewhere in that mind of yours, even y’know that.”

“Besides —“ she adds, drawing out the word’s final syllable to match her steps as Salome — annoyance clearly evident — tugs her arm free of its confines. The crisp white linen of the camacia pushed back as she halts her forearm in the line of Raphael’s vision. The squamous, vermillion hued patch of skin expanding outward from the crook of her elbow all but obvious. “That four letter word y’don’t believe in? Seems to have other ideas for us both.”

This isn’t the lone occurrence — small bodily reminders that even the Hells have settled on her being a discordant entity needing to be brought into harmony with the rest — but she’d rather them remain private. Or as much as they can be.

“One servant out of your dozens t’be consistent for me, and y’act as if I’m petitioning t’courts for t’whole of your life’s work.” She reaches, and tears free, a small piece of her berches then. Savors the taste of the poppy seeds on her tongue as she regards the tapestries above them and wonders when she will next see the ultramarine streets of her mellah. “Perfume would suffice better than any of your crass choices, or besiyata dishmaya, I will make them matching garments myself.”