heavensauras

[heavensauras]

ofsybaritic​:

location: terra, the enchanted forest

the construct was a behemoth, all grey structure and fleshless bright whale bone that had never seemed to decay no matter that this frankenstein had been floating in this space of the outskirts since her introduction to concordia, since her rebirth into an earth sprite, and even quite possible upon the creation of this island. though syrah liked to preen envisage this location was made just for her, a pernicious garden of eden that responded so well to her nurturing touch, it was obvious that this was just an accommodation with she being the allowed party. if the garden did not want her it would have made such information known. each piece of precious greenery refined to sharpened purpose. like it were redone in her image given that the previous caretaker was only a mere apparition, no one sat in that seat despite the care done before she had arrived and so she attributed it’s tending to the earth monarchs. 

a barrier formed at the crown, curling like talons like fingers, a hoarder safeguarding it’s possessions. or the macabre impression of ribcage storing all the plants inside with their eye-catching design of appearance to organs. without the pumping of a heart and yet it pulsed with vitality anyway. sometimes approaching this malformed greenhouse caused a shiver to roll down her spine like fingers brushing against it, even she so few afraid grew haunted when it came to this place yet it picked her and she it. syrah didn’t know if parting with such a thing was possible not that she’d want to. 

“  thank you for accepting my invitation. I was surprised. “  will you stroll into my parlour said the spider to the fly. syrah’s words were divulging, honest, while her tone gave away nothing of how she had felt or was currently wearing. a pearl colored steaming tea vessel, with faint serpentine lines swirling in no certain direction sat in the center of the glass precariously mounted on a steel frame keeping it rooted to the ground; a tray decorated with several cut sandwiches and a bowl of vivid fruit set to the side. syrah wouldn’t want her company to go hungry would she? that’d make for a terrible host. the two tea glasses shaped like flowers held within lace gloved grip before being transferred to the table. “ I hope you didn’t mind me calling you here for a social visit, I get awfully bored here on my lonesome. “

She gave herself a final once-over in her home’s floating mirror — a blown-glass piece Aura had worked weeks on, still with a few ripples in its surface, but the best she’d done thus far. Hair freshly blown out by warm gusts of wind, cheeks flushed rose with the aid of a crisp breeze, she deemed herself presentable enough to float down towards Terra’s enchanted forest, at the request of the eldest of the kingdom’s subjects, no less. An invitation to tea with Syrah had Aura’s winds set towards the earth kingdom, perched with legs crossed atop the cotton-candy cloud she often floated upon. Caelum had whispered her heart’s language in a way no other kingdom could have, but if she were to spend time visiting another, she’d surely pick the one chock full of jewels, silks, and champagne fountains.

Even in her humanity she’d been an insatiable thing, drawn with gluttonous eyes to the diamonds that glittered the brightest, the wines that boasted the most zeroes behind their price, searching for distraction and indulgence in the bottom of a crystal glass. There was no reason that life in paradise should be any different; it was a philosophy that Syrah seemed to share, one that had Aura pulled towards the intoxicating earth sprite over her sixty-odd years on the isle thus far. Her head lived so comfortably in the clouds; any escape that offered to lift her higher was welcome even on the best of days. On an unprecedented one like this, she couldn’t make her way to Syrah’s greenhouse quickly enough, her seams threatening to burst with nervous energy and misinformed first impressions.

Aura let herself into the grotesque structure, its form always having roused a hard swallow in the back of her throat and a flinch in her stomach. Not quite yet in Syrah’s view, she drifted inside with careful movements, plucking and pocketing a small handful of berries she didn’t recognize, paying close attention to ensure her friend didn’t catch a glimpse of her petty thievery. It was the quaintest of souvenirs to bring back to Caelum and share with her fellow sky sprites later, to pass an evening under the stars with whatever dizzying effects the berries might possess. 

Rounding the corner, hovering at just the right height to remain slightly above her host’s eye level, Aura greeted her friend with a smile and a squeal. “Surprised?” she echoed, a hand flying to her heart. “You should only be surprised it took me this long, now that the humans are here.” How incredible and fresh it felt, to hiss the word human as if they were of another kind entirely.  “What do you make of this bunch? Is this what they’re usually like? I heard one of them passed out and still hasn’t woken up.” She’d made no efforts to verify the claim. Pulling herself up before the table, she took a glass by its stem, pouring a generous cup from the steaming pot and taking a long swig. “What is this, by the way?” she only thought to ask as she placed a half-empty cup back down before her.

[heavensauras]

MIMI GRANT AURA | SKY SPRITE | SHE/HER | EIGHTY-SEVEN | BISEXUAL

defining traits

( + ) charming, personable, flirtatious, optimistic, confident, creative

( - ) cowardly, flighty, sensitive, dependent, haughty, begrudging, fake

biography

She was born Marie Grant, but she was always their little Mimi — a fitting name, for it was most of what she’d she’d grow to care about; me, me, me.

Her father was a widower; her mother bore the shame of a divorce behind her. Together they began a new chapter, but their love was one that found them later in life. By the doctors’ words, conception at her age was nothing short of a miracle. Mimi was their miracle, and they raised her to know it. She was destined for things beyond the ordinary, they affirmed. Lackluster crayon drawings of stick figures were framed like masterpieces, hung with pride in the hallways. Songs chirped off-pitch received thunderous applause. With mediocrity exalted, there was no need to try, so she never chose to, and they’d never dare force her.

Shielded by a set of parents whose love was strong enough to cripple, her heart was kept safe for a long, long time. The world was such a hard, cruel place.. They only wished to soften parts of it for her, to offer her comfort in the form of pretty white lies — that the family dog left to live on the dog farm, or that she really could go to princess school when she grew up. Any tear she shed was quickly wiped away, and soon forgotten as her attention was redirected somewhere shiny and new. She’d never solved a problem, never faced a consequence. When trouble found her, she had but one maneuver — to pull out her perfected pout, let the tears fall, and pray someone who knew better would save her. They always did, and she never learned a thing.

The Grants had been at the cross section of hard work and good luck after emancipation, among the few Black families in Georgia fortunate enough to acquire property. Her father inherited a small farm outside of Atlanta, and it was on that farm she was raised, gazing out her bedroom window at crops of peanuts, pecans, and blueberries. Of course it had been assumed that any child of theirs would lend their hands to the farm — but an hour of her work, hasty and careless, often required an extra hour of her father’s, as he doubled back and corrected her mistakes. Soon enough, she was no longer asked to chop wood for the stove, or weed the fields. It was better for all of them that way, and the indoors had always suited her better. She found joy in sneaking sprays of her mother’s perfume bottle, slipping into her coat, trying on her ring, and dreaming of a life that was soft and warm and easy and beautiful, dreams her heart had latched onto long before her mind could find the way there.

She could count on one hand the number of times she’d been out to the barn; the scent alone was enough to keep her far from that edge of the property. The day the flames brought it to the ground, she’d been safe in her room, trapped only in the daydreams of a sixteen-year-old girl while her parents, trapped inside. 

In hearing of their deaths, she learned what it meant to be shattered. She’d never cried a tear that one of them hadn’t wiped away, and for weeks, she cried an ocean. Taken in by an aunt, her mother’s sister, in that house she was no longer a miracle, but a burden — another child to feed in a family of six already.. and one who couldn’t make a bed, or scrub a pot, or fry an egg. Gone were the days where her burnt toast received glowing reviews; what she faced instead was a barrage of sharp critiques her sensitive heart didn’t know how to process through any means but tears.

Most days, something would leave her crying — a memory of mom and dad, a snide comment from her aunt, a suspicious whisper exchanged between cousins as she passed in the hallway. She grew accustomed to fixing her mascara in bathroom mirrors, wiping black smudges from under her eyes each time she lost control. That new waterproof formula surely made more sense. She bought her first tube, and it lasted through the tears — but no one had warned her it would sting as she slicked it over her lashes, or how putrid the smell was, or how she’d have to scrub her eyes until they burned red to take it off. All that work, for what? Just in case she’d cry? And if she didn’t, then for nothing? If given the choice, she’d always defer discomfort, and so every day she’d make a bet with herself she knew she’d lose as she reached past the cry-proof tube for the easier choice — and every day she found herself wiping away those telltale black smudges.

The Grant estate fell to her as she came of age, and she made quick work of selling the farm. She’d never be able to sustain it, and her parents surely wouldn’t want the land wasted. It was the right thing to do, she reasoned, to put it in the hands of a family who’d cherish it. How convenient, then, that the sale of the property would also pad her pockets comfortably. Had she been a practical woman, she’d have had the funds to live a modest life without worry. Of all the names she’d been called, practical was never among them. Her heart bore a hole in the shape of a family, incomplete without the support she’d always known. Perhaps money couldn’t buy happiness, but it could fund a distraction. The city called to her, and under Atlanta’s lights she found an overpriced apartment and drowned her sorrows in silks, champagnes, and unadulterated excesses, spoiling herself too silly to even remember to be sad.

She never lost the blind confidence that she’d succeed at whatever she chose to try; her parents could be thanked for the cliche. As she saw the way men and women alike fawned over those beautiful girls in the photos they pinned up, with their ruby lips and coquettish grins, she decided that was what she wanted to be, too — a model. She was beautiful. She knew it as simple fact, even took it for granted, and like a fool, she assumed beauty was all it took. No one had told her, before she stepped on set for her first booked shoot, that it really was work — that it hurts to hold those poses in high heels, that the lights are scalding and the hours are long, or that the photographer’s job is to tell you everything you’re doing wrong until you run for the back door in tears.

She darted for the alley out back, desperate for fresh air and a moment to dry her eyes. It was there that she met him, an executive for the cosmetics brand she was surely busy disappointing, with his tie in a perfect Windsor knot, a cigarette on his lips, and his eyes mesmerized. By her. “They don’t know what they’re talking about in there. Just look at you — you have this aura about you..” She didn’t know what it meant, exactly, but as his thumb brushed away a tear from her cheek and his, she knew that all she’d wanted was to be looked at like that, to have someone wipe her eyes and call her something spectacular. It brought a smile back to her lips, brought color back to a world that had faded to monochrome black-and-grey. He wanted to help her, and if she was good at anything, it was being helped.

They abandoned the shoot hand in hand, down the alley and to a neighboring bar for a drink. One mai tai turned into another, her flirtatious giggle bouncing off the lounge’s walls as she slipped easily back into the familiarity of being fawned over. In the coming weeks, a relationship would bloom between the two of them — one that could’ve been plucked right from those sixteen-year-old daydreams she’d lived so comfortably in. She abandoned her overpriced apartment, making a home in his instead. By day she lived a life of leisure and ease, gossiping at the beauty salon and shopping at exclusive boutiques while he holed away at his office. Each night was a new society event they’d light up together, and in the beginning, the role of arm candy had been the cushy lift her ego had needed. She took naturally to being shown off, and he’d introduce her to society folk with glowing compliments, telling charming anecdotes as they sipped from champagne flutes. 

It would take years for her to realize the way he recycled all of those compliments with every woman he met, that she’d heard his dull, predictable anecdotes so many times they might as well have been her own. She’d set out to be loved. Instead, she’d become another pretty thing on his shelf, mistaking possession for adoration while the void she sought to fill remained hollow and empty. She wanted out, but what would happen when she cut the cord? She’d be back to fending for herself, back to a world of mascara-stained handkerchiefs and an empty apartment? What little courage she had was far from enough to have the difficult break-up conversation. Instead, she and her cowardice sought to push him away, to force him to leave her. She was sour where she’d once been sweet, bitter in the places she’d once let him savor her, a brat with demands the size of the world — and he paid her so little mind as a person that, so long as she shone like the diamond he’d polished her into, he didn’t care what frivolous nonsense she spouted. She got away with it all, and it only further infuriated her. 

She’d find the guts to break it off soon, she’d keep telling herself, moving the goalpost with a nervous gulp every time she failed to muster the nerve to follow through. She’d do it after their dinner date with the Thompsons.. No, after the gala the following week.. No, after their weekend in Palm Beach. She was sure of it.

She said little to him the day they boarded the yacht party, making a point of icing him out in favor of the starlets and models whose light she hoped to absorb. As the storm carried them away, dizzied and terrified, she thought only of her own survival, and as she pulled herself from the wreck on a deserted island, he was nowhere to be found. Perhaps she should’ve felt anxious, should’ve ran the island’s shores in search of him, but all she could feel was relief that she’d never have to have that difficult talk with him at all. He was gone, and the only guilt she felt was about her lack thereof. When her fellow survivors asked about the man she’d boarded with, about her shocking indifference to his disappearance, she’d tell them, “we barely even knew each other,” and she knew there was enough truth in that lie for her to believe it herself, too. 

It took but one look upwards at the sky kingdom for the blurry memories of him to fade to black.

The sky sprites were everything she’d ever aspired to be, had everything her fantasies were built from. They were the answer. She’d been a fool to think that human pleasures could ever make her feel whole again, that there was a solution to her problems out in the cold world that had created them. No, she’d always been meant to live somewhere softer, amongst the clouds, where there were no sharp edges on which to prick herself. She found her family in the skies of Caelum — a group that knew their worth, who saw that she did, too, and loved her for it. Amongst them, she ascended, and Aura was born.

She took naturally to Caelum, her ego as large, fluffy, and delicate as the clouds she lived amongst. She wanted nothing more than to fully embrace the powers of the heavens, but none of the sprites had told her just how difficult it would be — that it required diligence, perseverance, training. It was work, and each gust of wind she tried to summon left her more flustered and frustrated than before she’d begun. It was easier to simply not — to sit back and let the other sprites show off, basking in the fruits of their labors rather than embarrassing and exhausting herself with her young, fledging magics. 

It was a cruel trick of the universe, she’d lament, that the barrier had sealed her away before the world could see the way she now sparkled. From the little cloud she liked to rest atop of, she’d sing of the injustice of it all, how she dreamed of the day the island’s walls would fall for long enough for her to fly back to the real world — and as they finally do, she remains frozen on that very cloud. She simply has so much to teach these new humans, she’ll reason with a laugh; to leave now would be a disservice to them. But what does a sprite whose powers can be outmatched by an angry wind have to teach? Not a thing, but she’d never dare let the humans know she’s done little more than twiddle her thumbs for sixty-five years, while her equals can move mountains. Instead, she purses her lips and bolsters herself the way she always has, convinced by pure will alone that, before her first audience as a sprite, she will dazzle.

headcanons

A majority of her powers are very, very weak. She’s generally unwilling to exert the energy it takes to strengthen or use them. Her strongest are all relatively superficial — manipulating the sky and wind’s colors, summoning glittering stars, and floating, either on her own or while lounging on a cloud. During the times all of the sky sprites are doing things together, like lifting a plane over to the Wrecks, she’s usually faking it — like when you’re moving furniture, and there’s that one person who’s just pretending to hold the corner of the couch, without actually carrying any weight. That’s Aura.

Because she usually gets around by floating, she’s grown relatively clumsy on her feet over the last sixty-five years. Her leg muscles are weak, and will often buckle under her. Naturally, she finds it quite embarrassing, and will almost always choose to float, unless she has no choice.

She’s more likely to forget before she’ll forgive. She’s often flitting from one thing to the next, and will more often than not simply forget about a disagreement she’s having because her emotions are so caught up in another one. She’s a very resentful person, and her old grudges will often manifest in pouty comments whenever she happens to remember how someone wronged her.

potential connections

found family: Her Caelum family!! Aura has never felt more at home than she does in the sky kingdom, so I’d love to explore where her relationships with her fellow sky sprites have gone.

fellow passengers: I’m also super interested in seeing how she’s gotten along with the others from the 50s yacht! Maybe she met them that day, or maybe she already knew some of them from previous society events, etc. Would love to explore how that group bonded together after the accident, and how those bonds have changed as everyone went their separate ways and joined their kingdoms.

enablers: She’s notorious for doing The Least while simultaneously being The Most, so I’d love to explore the connections with sprites who inadvertently enable this kind of behavior by helping her out with things when she asks/charms/flirts/pouts/wears them down.

frenemies: She’s incredibly social, and generally friendly to most.. but she also looks down on most, and absolutely talks shit behind every one of her friend’s backs. Gimme some on-again-off-again friendships that Aura absolutely fucks up on the regular!!

migraines with aura: Ok this is just an excuse for some dumb wordplay and I’ll OWN IT!! You know the “aura” that comes just before a migraine? Like a warning sign that you’re about to be in a world of pain? Gimme someone that thinks of her like that lmao, that she’s an absolute headache.

human interests: The responsibility of turning a human is probably something that’s too much for her right now, as she barely knows how to take care of herself, but I’m sure she’s very curious about what she’s missed in the outside world and is eager to befriend and gossip with the new arrivals. And, of course, she wants them all to think she’s ethereal and otherworldly and all that.

flings: She’s a fickle-hearted flirt at her core, and she craves attention like Tinkerbell. I’m sure she’s had various flames throughout her time on the island.

[heavensauras]

The Constellations of Summer, Francesco Levy

[heavensauras]

“What a pity she is not a princess — one day she shall be an inspiration for fairy tales.”

— Katherine Mansfield, 1911 (via pinkballerinas)

[heavensauras]

Chasity Samone

[heavensauras]