onceawake

[onceawake]

Jack Gilbert, from Collected Poems; "Waking at Night"

[onceawake]

[ @lyr1umgh0st ] ❝ There’ll be debts to repay after today. ❞ - for mair! | memes tag | always accepting

Mair huffs, her breath of air not even budging the hair stuck to her forehead, damp with exertion and sticky from whatever they'd been trudging through or fighting past. Did demons even bleed? Did it matter when they also fought combatants from this side of the Veil?

"There's always debts." A groan. "As long as they don't end up falling on us at the end of the day, I'm not sure I can bring myself to care much." Lies, really. Any one of her friends could lean close, give her big wide eyes about something close to their hearts, and there she'd be once again, clawing through the filth of this city all over again.

By the Maker, she could use a drink.

Mage slumped against the nearby wall, finding it blessedly cool, even filtering through the leathers that protected her back. With a laugh, she tilted her head against the stone. "The better ones are the ones that never get collected." Debts that weren't really debts in her ledger so much as some uppity bastard deciding Hawke ( or one of her friends ) owed them for the mere crime of existing. Plenty of those, inked over in a reddish-black by the end of the day.

Green eyes shift to fix on Fenris. "Don't tell me you're worried about anything catching up to us." Because they weren't in the Deep Roads anymore, and the only thing that could catch up to them were swords and arrows and both of those Anders could fix if it got nasty, and if not so dire — her own magic could knit it together.

[onceawake]

Mother and child training longsword in Chile, at the Centro Esgrima Histórica

[onceawake]

@lone-blade [ cont. ]

"Nope. I just said you're right." Of which he technically was — and, right now, quibbling about technicalities when a cult was busy chasing after 'blood of the Hawke' was not a productive way to spend their time.

"It hasn't just been seven years for you, little brother."

[onceawake]

sharrah in the brecillian woods more like picking up random fruiting bits of nature as a snack. don't worry about it. she knows which ones are edible ( the hard way )

[onceawake]

women keep coming up to me giggling and blushing and running their finger along the edge of my mighty greatsword like STOP theres literally evil afoot

[onceawake]

a half-hum answers her sharp statement, punctuated by a flourish of the hand ( mirrored by tiefling tail, flippantly ghosting through the air ). "you say unthinkable as if it were not an act sung about in half the knight-errant songs this side of the Sword Coast."

of little girls running away from home for love, for escape, for the act of slaying a dragon. dreamers' eyes fixed on the starry sky above with the ache to leave home.

almost, he knows, as common as the yearning to wield a sword-and-shield alike Ariabel or Isteval. "I'd wager 'escaping an unwanted marriage' is—" Arrai's words find themselves choked off, strangled by the spike driven firmly into his forehead — their unwelcome passengers making themselves known, flashing escapes and terror and spluttering seawater through both minds.

( dragging himself out of the shallow water, spitting salt and sand out, hair encrusted with the exact same, head pounding worse than any drinking night has ever left behind, collapsing with the burning wreckage coming down some distance away and highlighting the rising morn's horizon )

"you had me going for a second." no wriggling worm, indeed.

          there are myriads of reason why she chooses to conceal her current predicament                          yet, it all boils down to what she believes to be the obvious.     the memory of both her wrists caught in a strong grip , something else ( a hand , maybe ? ) smothering her face , forcing her mouth shut , rendering her quiet . animal panic overtakes her , and she is writhing , choking out half-formed protests . even days later , this incident still haunt her every waking moment , from the minute she gains consciousness to the one she loses it .

          BUT NOTHING RIVALS THE PAIN OF THE WORM'S ENTRANCE INTO HER EYE .  a scream wrenched its way out of her throat , her mind turning red , and red , and red , choked with fog and filthy air . the pain is beyond the capacity of a noble's lady imagination . up until that moment , roscille had no reason to have ever felt the sting of a whip before . that was for servants and lowborn girls who forgot their places . yet , her agony was such , it feels as if it could fill hours , though some untouched part of her brain knows it lasted only mere moments .  

         ❝     WELL , IF YOU HAVE TO KNOW … I HAVE DECIDED TO RUN AWAY FROM HOME ,   ❞         she finds herself answering , the question snapping her out of her trace . who knows if she would have retracted her statement , had the other not brought it up . nonetheless , she continues , having little to no qualm about revealing the reason why she was here and not back at her parents' castle . the very reason why she had been caught by those creatures in the first place .         ❝     my father wanted to marry me off . so i did the unthinkable and left in search of a safe haven . DOES THAT ANSWER YOUR QUESTION ?    ❞

[onceawake]

snaps out of my drafts

[onceawake]

"you are my mother and I love you, but you are my mother and you know so little about me, and you are are my mother and you wish I had been the one to die in our flight, instead of—"

[onceawake]

I think it would be incredibly emotionally fulfilling to hit someone in the back of the head really hard with a shovel

[onceawake]

sliding my memes tag onto the dash

👉👈

[onceawake]

nobody comes into the world a blank canvas. before you are given a chance to create yourself, the choices of your parents left a mark like a handprint. if you were handled with care you might find yourself able to incorporate it seamlessly into your self, your story, but if you were handled roughly, if you were ripped and frayed and forced to paint certain lines to survive, then you may not like what has been created for you, of you. but you can always paint over it.

nobody comes into the world a blank canvas. but whatever was there before you wrested control of the brush, you can paint over it.

you can always paint over it.

[onceawake]

also thinking about how Shokraas was named for "[the hope of] no war [in your life]" and was promptly snatched away from his mother anyway. and somehow a life as a Circle mage is still miles better than it would have been as a Qunari mage

[onceawake]

quotes from warframe part 3! mildly edited for either clarity or general purpose use.

"You are looking damn well, considering. Here's to us."

"May you live until you die."

"Ultimate power lies on the knife's edge between life and death."

"So many intersections. Planes and possibilities. Hazard and luck and intent."

"Whatever damage time has done, we can undo it."

"You have stepped from the path. Tread carefully."

"Always knew that mess was going to come back and haunt me."

"You are a blade. You exist to strike. You strike to win. The lesson ends."

"Accept your death and you may yet avoid it. Trust in your training."

"Even the most principled must bow to their nature when forced."

"Consider the sword. Protect or kill; it chooses not, for it only obeys the will of its master."

"And yet you were born to. So tell me… What made you stop? To reject your nature?"

"Those you have killed are always with you. We know you."

"The shoe will be on the other foot one day. Oh, yes."

"Heard the King put a bounty on your head. How does it feel to know you're worth that much to someone?"

"Thoughts of revenge come easily to a heart turned bitter and cold."

"Sorrow will devour you, bones and all!"

"It's good that I don't remember. It's good."

"You should read to me sometime. I'd like that."

"My pa always said: There's two ways to be rich. Get a lot, or want little. This big sky? All I've ever needed."

"It is said you cannot cheat an honest man. Untrue. To cheat an honest man one does not appeal to their greed, but to their pity."

"One cannot repair people, only love them. Let go of the fallacy, or be dragged behind it."

"One more second of that miserable bloody singing and I'll go to the edge and jump off."

"Oh, to be a Drifter! No ties. No responsibilities. Nobody to take care of."

"You don't know me. You have no idea what I'm capable of!"

"Those who brave the thorn may eat the rare fruit."

"Revenge may bring some relief at first. But as [name] found, it is often cold comfort."

"Sadness is the beast that devours itself. It spawns many children – lethargy, self-pity, self-doubt."

[onceawake]

two types of dalish locomotion.

sharrah climbs things. likes to be tall. likes to see the horizon.

aera slides off things. one hand on the cliff face, body providing friction and magic preventing scrapes and rips and leaving a sheen of ice behind

[onceawake]

still just chewing on this exchange in the back of my mind. cassandra. cassie. cass. girl. you're fun but also you have to remember the chantry led an exalted march that literally led to the elves being split between the dalish and the city elves, and the city elves being pushed into andrastianism at sword-point several ages ago, and—