paenumbra

[paenumbra]

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐎𝐋𝐅'𝐒 𝐌𝐀𝐖 —  out on the ice, exact time and location unknown. with THE ROMANTIC;

they move through a darkness so absolute, calder can see it sticking to his clothes, his boots, to the trumpeted barrel of his musket — a membranous layer, akin to tar of his becoming. at first, his mind allows for the lantern’s tricks: bowing arms of black that disperse like winged things, and patches of obsidian which diminish with every determined footfall. the absurdity of searching for anything in the dark finds him, and he sneers against the razor wind. this is a foolish endeavor, a suicidal one, that ignores logic and celebrates all the inherent weakness of man. 

6 go marching into the dark — and all those cursed with heroism or fueled by fickle emotion must follow. how full the belly of this monster must be; how sweet its susurrus spell; how flawless its trap. off we march into the arms of death.

but calder knows this labyrinth well, even as it slithers upon him like devil arms come to claim; it is the same moonless winter that rages in his mind, ad infinitum. the dangerous voices tell him: this nightmare sprouted from you, a poison seed — whatever evil you can imagine will be done. the sound chorus repeats: water that froze that quickly can unfreeze just as fast.

the slog of his steps ends and the shadow looks down to the ocean beneath his feet. it gapes at him, a sleeping, sightless eye ready to swallow him whole. the darkness underneath the frosted lid slithers up like vines from the faults — binds his legs and arms, coils around his neck, then parts his lips like the tongue of an eager lover. suddenly, the blackness is in his throat an he cannot breathe.

the struggle is swift — a candle blown out in a room of his mind — and ends with a strangled roar of frustration. he throws his lantern against the ice, and it bursts into pieces that skitter outward in an arc around him. for a moment, he hears nothing but his own breath. even the bite of the cold subsides. it could end here. perhaps it ended a long time ago.

no.

“shaw,” he gropes in the dark. “god damn it, shaw, how about a little help?” on his knees, he fumbles blindly for the strewn pieces of his lantern.

[paenumbra]

𝐀 𝐆𝐎𝐃𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄 — WITH THE CAPTAIN;

he compares it to the crunch of brittle bones, the packed ice and sludge beneath his feet. the rhythm of their unison tread is as a ticking clock’s — constant, reliable, maddening. there is but one dark tower in this great white hell and calder grows no closer to it in his steady march. but his captain, his sign post, his cynosure, is determined to find something in the swirling nothingness, to find meaning in evaporating breath, to uncover an explanation in the fractal faults of a new, glacial earth. 

( there are voices on the wind ₵ ₳ Ⱡ Ⱡ ł ₦ ₲, a distant chorus, but you have always heard them.      how familiar.             how utterly uncanny.                   this howling void, swathed in blackness, absolute — )

he carries a musket at the ready, a pistol in his belt, but these instruments are of little use against the mounting dark. ( the lantern’s flame is as weak in spirit as you, no match for the legions that gather at the light’s edge! ) the man he follows would have him back in london, back to the womb of bastards whence he came. calder follows him aware that if the captain knew the deep scourge of his treachery, he would see him hanged without pause — ( yet you follow him still? )

he looks down to regard his compass only to find the arrow spinning wildly. dread lurches in his chest, his atrophied heart beating like dead wings. the darkness swells.

“captain. captain dowling. wait. look.”

[paenumbra]

𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖗𝖔!

❝ Not Chaos, not the darkest pit of lowest Erebus, nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out by help of dreams - can breed such fear and awe as fall upon us often when we look into our minds, into the Mind of Man.❞

🌙 — ALL ABOARD ! The HMS PROMETHEAN welcomes ( ENOCH MORCANT/CALDER GRAU ) to the expedition in their capacity of ( THE SHADOW ). They are ( 25 & CISMALE ) and might be painted as ( ALEX HØGH ANDERSEN ). When you strike up an acquaintance, address them as ( HE/HIM/HIS ). Their deeds on land precede their arrival — people say they are ( DOGGED, ADROIT, DETERMINED  ) but ( MORDANT, CAGEY, MERCURIAL ) when the tide turns. Their purpose aboard the Promethean falls in line with ( CARVING OUT A PLACE FOR HIMSELF IN A NEW WORLD, WASHED CLEAN OF HIS MURKY PAST; TO THE VICTOR, THE SPOILS! )

                                       ( PINTEREST | PLAYLIST )

“BECOME YOURSELF. THEN, GOD AND THE DEVIL DON’T MATTER.” — G.I. GURDJIEFF

Your mother didn’t want you and yet from barren soil, you have come. The fickle reeds in the thicket are your bones, and they were once dry and brittle — busted under spat and boot and steel-toe. The tar and sap of dead oak is your blood. It doesn’t flow but gurgles and thickens in the empty spaces, filling up the hollows in the bulwark of low birth. The word whoreson carves a chiseled jaw. Bastard, a stern brow. Orphan sculpts unforgiving hands, hands unafraid of clawing and stealing and wrenching. Your wingless back arches to breach the mud of becoming, and somehow, in the loathsome gloam of nameless things, you are crystalized: shadow and stone; a wraith; a phantom son. When the loam shakes loose, the softness has gone, and the sweet underbelly of boy atrophies.

The darkness is your mother, now, and she swathes you, cossets your cheek in dreamless sleep. The baleful lurch in your stomach that forces you to keep moving is your father, and you listen, you strain to heed its call. Against the cuff of your ear, they whisper to you, voiceless, in harrowing unison: MY SON, YOU ARE THE DEVIL-GLEAM OF STILL WATER. YOU ARE THE NAMELESS DARK MOVING IN THE DEEP. YOU ARE BORN OF THE BLACK BANKS OF THESE CROOKED RILLS; MAY THE SHADOWY ICHOR WASH YOUR BONES CLEAN.

— EXEGESIS.

Calder Grau sought out his father when all other avenues ended in questions and dead-ends. He found him to be a bastard like himself, but a respected AB with the British Marine Merchant (though he embezzled and thieved and dabbled in activities like mugging and murder). Calder introduced himself to his father, but kept his own identity hidden in hopes of learning the most he could about him from a safe distance. He soon learned that his father would, in a year’s time, join the crew of the Promethean as an able seaman. With that post came the promise of a new future in a distant world — a dream that spoke to Calder’s deeply hidden heart. So, he angled himself in a way that would allow him to get close to his father, to learn his work. If he could assist, prove himself, perhaps he would find work onboard himself — especially with a respected mariner’s seal of approval. His father was welcoming of the company as Cal played the gullible, accommodating fool — lavishing compliments and groveling when appropriate. Unwise to his identity or his motives, the mariner eventually shared an altering secret. A dark deal that left a trail of dead had landed him in possession of very valuable maps and documents — pages depicting ruins and treasures in the Americas and hidden deep beneath the icy firmament in the Arctic. It had been his intention to use the younger man in his exploits, to embezzle supplies onboard and, eventually, steal away in the night on a new, more rewarding expedition. Calder left Enoch Morcant dead, taking his maps and his name.

O VICTOR! CONQUER THIS BITTER EARTH!

There are telestic monsters beastlier than you in the water, and perhaps that is the call you hear pulsing beneath the swales of ice and beyond the faulted frontier. Iron pick to hoarfrost, you scrape and you pry, but it never gives. In the verglas is your own reflection: sunken eyes and gaunt cheeks. You are a hungry, motherless stray. The shadow of a man, the hollowness between dry bones. What comrades will follow you into the abyss and scale the frozen layers of hell? Or must you slip along the crags alone, a wraith in an empty, haunted kingdom?

— MOTIVE.

Calder hopes to find a few wayward souls like himself aboard to entice with his maps, but that hope is truly just a dull ache he ignores; he believes the venture is his alone to undertake, but, like most budding schizophrenics, he has delusions of grandeur that will likely kill him. I would love for someone to find out about this either by getting close enough to him that he slips in one of his elaborate lies, or because he thinks they might be interested in their own personal gain/redemption. I imagine this is exactly why he’s pin-pointed the Idol; who is truly that humble? Who has come so far from so low without crimson deep in the ridges of their palms? He sees his own reflection there.

THE SALITTER HAS GONE FROM THIS FAULTED EARTH; WHAT OF GOD IS LEFT IN YOU?

When the ship groans around you and the shadows pour in — when you’re deep, deep in the belly of that Goliath, so deep that the drowned rise up from the reef — that’s when they find you. The day-light slanting in from outside is weak and transient.. ghoulish tendrils draping your face and then retreating. All aboard, the souls of the damned! — and their mouths don’t move, but you can hear them screech. Like you, they claw at their linens and tear at their hair: possessed! Cursed! They are the lost ones! And here you idle among them in the awesome deep, sinking ever lower among the pitted, bloated bodies. They find you at night when the shadows pour in — with a voice like your mother’s.

— EREBUS (THE CRUX).

Calder Grau, a bastard and an orphan, is a high-functioning, but un-diagnosed schizophrenic. He grew up bouncing between orphanages and workhouses without ever forming any true, meaningful connections. This disconnect he feels towards humanity leads to a life of petty crime in his younger years and, eventually, the terrible evolution of something meticulous and dark. Years of having to adapt and adjust to new, unforgiving, and sometimes brutal surroundings led to a chameleon-like ability to appear at home and relaxed in any situation, but underneath the facade of aloof composure is a beast pacing along the edges of his cage.  

[paenumbra]

THE WILDCARD — @wilccard​

                   —   He bristles lightly at the use of his surname in this prodigal style, cast off the way it is from the sailor’s lips. Like a fleck of spittle landing on the ice. Vladimir is not the touchy sort, he truly isn’t - his pride can be measured up and send out in rations, artificially increased at the fore of every month - but even after two decades on God’s earth he’s still loath to hear his name. It always ricochets against his composure with a flat sound and a sharp sting to match; jarring, haphazard. Out of place. It makes a mocker out of his attempts, ostrich-like as they may be, to hide away the parts that do not fit. It’s not that Yamatov is not a British name: or at least not only that. Of course he senses, acutely and intimately, his own motley origins, of course he knows they can no more be helped than a bolt to the head. But it goes deeper than that - or wider, rather, further behind, like the fathoms spanned inside the sea but also throughout its existence. That name is an insignia, an armorial frill he does not, can not, recognize as his own—whilst also being the first one the world is ready to see. Maybe he would have, had he ever met the man that coined it to him, palmed in the shadows like a drilled penny, out of sight and out of history.

                  But he has to give it up to reason: coming from Enoch, his birth name would be far more unnerving. If Vladimir ever held any claim to the notion of mystery…. well, that was properly and rigorously fucked into to shame by whatever Enoch’s act was. He never knows where he stands with the seaman. In itself, that doesn’t tell you much, since he should keep a ledger with all the people he’s uncertain about (and the one he makes himself uncertain towards, in return). Most importantly, and far more heralding of trouble, is that no one else seems to know where they stand with Enoch.

                  Yet they are not at dagger’s drawn, and none of them fights shy of the other. That seems to be the pinnacle that can be expected - that puts him at an advantage, Vladya feels. So he presses it with a charming smile, that one he’s only worked up later in life, taken as a page from August’s gilded book. He lushes it up with another swig from the bottle they’d pilfered earlier on. “Mischief? Ah, no more than it might be expected. Will you give me a hand in shuffling some boxes about, Enoch? I’m keeping myself on the busy end in case the Captain needs a man to go back to the ship. I’m truly and properly disguised, and would make the poorest watchman as the Navy ever held.”

—

Staying well-cloaked at the center of God’s eye is not a craft, but an inherent talent of bastards. So, what manner of man is Vladamir Yamatov who hides in the light? When hackles rise at the sound of Yamatov, the reaction, however small, is not unnoticed by the wraith. He understands what it means to wear the mantle of another man’s name — and oh, how the epaulets dig into the places where wings should have grown. Were it not for the ring of his father’s shield, the labyrinthine halls of Elijah’s mind might have known silence, exorcised of Morcant ghosts. 

Elijah remembers the instant the coldness in him grew, settling low and heavy like laudanum in his veins — he had wavered like a lonesome, battle-worn tower over the sallow banks of his father’s last shore. How long the war had been, how sweet the dominion. Now, it seemed so long ago that he’d witnessed black rills zigzagging away from the chasm in his father’s chest, heard the moribund cry of “Betrayer!” He’d offered nothing in return, only watched, his heart a steady, justified thud in his ears. He had seen then that Morcant blood was black like tar, a vile ichor of damned generations spilling out in absolution. Was his blood so befouled? Would it run sluggish like pitch over the ice?

He crosses his arms and leans back against a teetering stack of crates (likely the ones in question). His watch has ended, and he is loathe to give up his time to more tasks. “Were the Captain to pick a man for work, it would not be you — not in your state.” 

Though he has kept clear of befuddlement since assuming his father’s post (it’s far too easy to unearth secrets beneath the spell of spirits), he gestures for the bottle in Vladya’s hands. “Confer a swig for every crate, and I could be compelled.”

[paenumbra]

( @kojoxasante )

the tent of wonders | past midnight, when the once-lively carnivale is bathed in abandonment

“This place is beautiful to me, even now.”

The voice startles him, the familiar cadence of its tone breaking a stillness as absolute as death. Kojo stiffens at it, for a moment, muscles in his back rippling like wings beneath the surface of his skin, jawbone clenching and unclenching. The sensation of claws puncturing his chest until they drew heart-blood, splattering the white of his rib cage like a constellation stained red. He tried to explain away the man who stood behind him, tried not to drown in the certainty that coated his mouth with the metallic taste of saudade; warm and silk-laden against the roof of his mouth.

He turned to the man he had banished to memory, standing across from him, a stark wound against the starless sky, tall and impossible. The man he had committed to memory as a ghost spoke and it was as real and fundamental as the sun and the moon and yet, dripped with wrongness to its core. You were supposed to be dead. Words unspoken as he attempted to offer the man a smile, lips straining deep red at corners of his face, vision blurring, and tunneling at the edges as he approached.

He wants to scream; I fought sleep with every breath looking for you, until one day I woke up and there was scar tissue where skin used to be. And yet, he remains silent, resting a calloused hand on Elijah’s chest, as to check their heartbeats still kept perfect time, as if he was afraid the man’s form would disappear into the night if he didn’t. As if touching Elijah for long enough, would mend the cracks that had grown between them.

He finally finds it in him to speak, voice cracking and catching along the howls that echoed in his chest. “Elijah,” he says the name carefully, as though his words could destroy the image of the man in front of him at any moment. His eyes remain downcast, for fear that he’ll be reduced to the boy he once was.

“What is one meant to say, to a ghost they never buried?”

—

His silhouette is unparalleled. Elijah knows it in this world as he will know it in the worlds that lie beyond. Be he a sun-bleached bone in a desert of white sand, he will be unmistakable — - be he a vein of obsidian on scorched, volcanic shore, Elijah will find him. Not because he is searching, but because there is a tether that exists, that has always existed, and its only purpose is to bind them; a thread of Clotho’s design, it is unshakable. The Fates have placed them here on this bitter isle together, and the stark realization settles on Elijah Grau like frost on the plain: your path is not your own, for it is his, too.

He experiences what others would call relief, yet he cannot gauge it as such. It is a flock of birds taking flight in his chest, a weightlessness that feels too much like falling, the sense of uncovering something he hadn’t known he’d lost. 

Kojo’s eyes are eclipsed, but even in the feeble dark, they burn brighter than the dying sun. Was he ever a child — before he gnashed his teeth against God, before he felt the ablution of blood-rain upon his skin? He looks like one, now. At the suggestion, Elijah’s mind sends him spiraling down, down, down hairpin stairs until he’s suddenly, unwilling, thirteen again. Rivulets of water slither like a knot of snakes under his clothes — like Father Lucas’ hands — and the cold that sinks into him is unforgivable. The orphans named this alley home, though it smells of piss and rot. It is where they hide from the slice of cold, from pangs of deathly hunger and the call of vulgar workhouses. It is where bastards are born, where some will die. 

It is where Elijah waits for Kojo each passing night, but what finds him is the ache of sleeping on cobblestone, the paralyzing fear that he may never know warmth again.

An outstretched hand blankets his chest, and Elijah allows it. Kojo is his hearth, yet left unattended, embers barely glowing. Gloved fingers twitch at his side as if begging to return the gesture, to test the Pyrrhic rhythm of Kojo’s heart with his own palm, but he is still. “It’s Enoch,” he challenges curtly, his steady, forward gaze awaiting contact from the one opposite. “Enoch Morcant.” He waits for protest that doesn’t come. 

“If I am a bloody ghost to you, banish me here in Godhavn. Let you and the world be rid of me.” His voice slouches up from deep in his belly.

“Or have all your curses died on your tongue?” He steps closer, collapsing the strong arm that bridged their vessels. A smirk dies young on his lips.

[paenumbra]

( @helenc​ )

she is drawn to him like a moth to a flame, curiosity colouring her with vivid, striking shapes that leave her almost dizzy — her feet are weak, her throat tight. a hand reaches out, her fingers separated. she acts as if she is to touch him, to feel his heat. then she retracts with a sharp tug, her white dress obvious even in the darkness, she could never be muted — not even as a small girl, wrapped in her fineries, pearls and heirloom. “forgive me,” she gasps, her lungs full of what-ifs. perhaps she was merely dreaming, caught in a nightmare of his face. a shadow, a stranger who had encompased her — engrossed her body and soul as she stood above his cot with little care for the intimacy created between people who only knew one another by gossip, pictures and whispers shared over ale. “i thought you were someone else…” something else. @paenumbra​

He does not dream. No, the shadow roams beneath the veil of moonless night. A wraith, he spiders across the black velvet of a cold, motionless sea, traversing the further dimensions without the anchor of bone or the snag of tooth. He is everywhere at once — skittering like hail on haunted shores — and he is nowhere. This in-between place is where Elijah was conceived, a deformed idea. This in-between place is where the telestic beasts surface, where their pluming breath signals for the rapture of man. The womb of unborn giants.

When torn from his well of formlessness, his breath hitches like a knife in his chest. The Lancer pistol beneath his pillow forgotten, he snags the twig of an offending wrist, dragging whatever follows down with it. His vessel is as quick and deadly as any chosen instrument. In the darkness marbled by water on the porthole glass, the milk of her eyes flash. Her skin is August’s burn in his cold grip — and she is familiar, but his mind is a mausoleum. 

In which crypt might she be buried?

“Who, the Chaplain?” he snaps on a graveled growl. “He’ll offer you forgiveness, but I’ve none to spare.”  The cracked seaglass of his eyes search her features.

[paenumbra]

( @paintedsins​ )

gold bores him. he prefers the copper rust, the green tinges, dirt and grit, time wrapping her hands around it. the glimmer of it still catches his eye, around the corner of what should have been a ghost ship at this time. 

there is a comfort to wandering the skeletons of the promethean, to haunt a beast while it sleeps. he fancies himself a dream-walker instead of a skin-changer, finds himself more close to the middle-ground of some lovely delusion. 

dirty gold suits enoch, snow thinks as he makes out the movements of the figure in the open room before him. the other does not belong in this bit of the beast’s belly, but neither does he; chooses to keep silent, watching with quiet curiosity. 

he lingers by the doorway like a hidden thing waiting to be seen, bone dug out of flesh when eyes finally find him. snow shivers at the name, counts the steps he takes towards him - one, two, too close to run, too far to touch. 

“oh, darling - what have i done? where would you like me to begin?” if his eyes are the arctic, then he is the snow that dusts it. “what do you think i have to give as payment, my dear?”

he takes a step closer, arms outstretched like an offering. the ship is a different beast from what stands before him, but snow thinks he would like to haunt it all the same. 

“if you were a god - “ he reaches out, almost as if to touch him. he falls just short, lets his fingers linger in the space, hanging between them. “ - if you were a god, tell me, what would you take from me? time that is not yours - “ eyes flicker to something behind him, where timepieces still tick, quiet, “ - or will you be more cruel in your askings?” 

He swallows knives. Trailing the lengths of Snow’s arms, he finds an almond-cut gaze awaiting him — and god damn it if it isn’t as reflective and unrevealing as a still pool. The nearer the seer draws, the straighter Elijah’s spine. Darling. Darling. Darling. The word is fingertips curling in wisps of hair at the back of his neck. His jaw tenses to quiet a shudder — mechanical lineaments rippling. “You could start with the truth.” His voice belongs to an ancient creature, shaking away layers of dirt and aligning rigid bones at waking. “But I know if you paid at all, you paid with lies.”

When the space between them is bridged, he lowers his chin and grits his teeth to powder. The white yolks of his eyes do not reflect fear, but gleam a challenge. 

Suddenly, he is underwater. Pregnant clouds gilded with light mirror a surface he will never breach. His heart, a stone, knocks upon the ocean floor with the finality of a dirge — the sound of heavy boots knocking on the deck. Everything is leagues away, fathoms deep, cast in shades of pale blue. But in his suffocating tank of experience, there is one who sees him. He sees, and he reaches out with willowy arms, snow white and unmarred ... but who reaches out for a monster in the deep?

               — - 𝔞 𝔪𝔬𝔫𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔪𝔞𝔡𝔫𝔢𝔰𝔰 𝔟𝔩𝔬𝔬𝔪𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔦𝔫 𝔞𝔩𝔩 𝔬𝔣 𝔥𝔦𝔰 𝔥𝔬𝔩𝔩𝔬𝔴𝔰 — -

The world stalls, then, wound about the spindle of the false prophet’s words. There exists a pin-prick of stillness, a hairsbreadth of silence which stretches between Snow’s final question and the crack of wood at his back. A captive wrist is but a sliver of birch in Elijah’s brutal hand, and Snow’s delicate frame is angled harshly beneath the bow of a barrel chest. What expanse reaching arms had deigned to traverse is collapsed, vanquished. 

Elijah breathes and splintered glass crackles in his lungs. 

“If I were a god, I would not ask,” he warns, muscles trembling like the limbs of a stray dog, all cornered and desperately wild. “But this haven —” He shoves away hard. “— is a godless place.” On the slick, bowing planks between them, he throws the stolen timepiece.  It skitters like a flat stone, the gold dull under a sunless sky. Eli had loved it for a fleeting moment. 

“There are but liars here.”

[paenumbra]

( @emmanuel-hurley​ )

They had grown closer these thirty days. There was something dark in this shadow of a man who was Elijah, and yet Emmanuel still plunged his hand into the blackness and the unknown to offer him a lifeline should he wish to take it. In those large blue eyes which almost begged to be made innocent and wiped clean of whatever muck dragged at his heels, Emmanuel saw a man searching for something. He wanted to be the one to help him find what he sought, to draw it forth from the chest whose lock had been cracked open through the combined force of their strength and leverage. Still, it was a balancing act. Elijah had whispered dark words to Emmanuel before, words which should alarm him. However, in spite of his exterior and the depth of his own feelings, inside the priest was a strength of conviction which could only be born of certainty of purpose. He would save this man if he could. Elijah simply had to let him.

“Have you?” He asked. “Then forgive my oversight. I am but shaken by the… insurmountable depths of the unknowable.” As if to explain, he nodded in the direction of the tent. “The Clairvoyant… offputs me, but my drive to pull all back to the embrace of the Lord drove me to questioning.” Shaking his head, he pushed a hand through his brown curls to tighten in them, the pressure grounding him. “A mistake. To err reminds me of my humanity. I strove to reach too close to the hand of God before he was ready to receive me.” What else could it be? If the Clairvoyant was real, then his words were sent to him by God and his Angels or Satan and his Devils. Either way, they spoke to knowing what Emmanuel had done. What sort of man he was even if he strove to atone. And if he was false, then God watched from His clocktower as the words ticked out of the charlatan’s mouth to show Emmanuel that perhaps this path of wishing to know was the wrong one. 

Or perhaps the Lord was resolved to test his conviction and thus find his desire for Divine forgiveness to be lacking. He would not allow it.

He looked over to Elijah, meeting his gaze and feeling a sort of barbing there. “Nothing of substance, child,” he answered. “Merely frightening insinuations which I mustn’t allow to weigh on my heart.” Elijah looked troubled and Emmanuel only hoped that it wasn’t his own state inciting it in the other. He wouldn’t impede their progress. So he spoke true. “I took to this sanctity of shadow to pray. Would you… like to join me?” He raised his eyes to the other’s face, as if hopeful that he would agree and consent to bow his head alongside the priest. To share in Emmanuel’s resolve to steel himself. Support and reminder both of all he must do. 

—

The belly of the ship had borne nightmares in the fomenting sea of his mind. There were dimensions of light spared by the porthole windows — casting shapes more sinister than any loathsome demon lurched awake within him — and they stalked the bowing hull. Those paces kept him awake — low, enchanted light skittering across the ivory bowl of his skull, or clomp-clomp-clomping black hooves in the corridors of his madness. What a wretched place for a man to be, locked in his head. He was his own enemy, an impenetrable bastion of paranoia of leering self-importance. There was no room for the voice of god in a chorus of devils. 

When all else were rocked to sleep by relentless undulations, he argued with the heavens, called the grey ire down onto the decks.

He snorted in dry amusement, no warmth in his gaze as it left the pleading eyes of the Father and steered toward the cynosure of the Carnivale. In that tent lived a deceiver, a venomous thing with a sorcerer's tongue, building kingdoms on the banks of an oleaginous river. 

“That snake is no nearer to god than I,” he growled, a knowing glance flicking back to Emmanuel. There was a tinge of envy buried deep in the sediment of his words, left uncovered. “He didn’t divine the unknown with God’s help,” — sharp sarcasm gave his words momentum. “He played to your insecurities, the way a card dealer plays his own deck. He can but witness the twitch of your eyebrow and know it’s an ace.” A few meandering steps drew him closer to the chaplain, and the wraith regarded him with cold indifference. Seeing a man of god laid low did not inspire Elijah’s confidence in the beatitude he preached. “The catch of your breath, the pallor of your cheek — it weaves a tale you’ve never told.” The corner of his lips twitched in a smirk of his own. “Those tells are prey, and you let him feed. That, dear Father, was your error.”

A bellowing sigh emptied his lungs, and crossed arms unraveled to hang loose at his sides — how tragic, the overlooking of a good joke. 

“I will observe,” he answered tentatively, taking to the shadows whence he came. “For I don’t believe God lives in fear or in shadow, if he lives at all.”

[paenumbra]

( @dowlings​ )

angles, we should say, are the chapter-turning of that which cannot be pinched between thumb and forefinger – such is the reason worrisome mothers and fathers instruct their offsprings to slow when rounding the corner, minding the bend lest they careen into a plot device not meant for their undertaking.

such are the things that gold-winged little maidens seem to forget. sybil takes to the next curve of the maze with the pace of a girl who had grown up in wide-open expanses, where nothing could be hidden nor found lest it was placed there for that purpose directly. in the bend, taken too-tightly against the blue canvas wall, her hair catches on a stray nail, and at the pull sybil lets a small cry of discomfort. it is a sweet sound, that gentle little whimper, a call to the beasts nearby to come closer: stretch now your jaw, there is a wounded creature in the brush. she knows so little of pain and it is time for lessons.  

she twists in an attempt to reach her snare only to have the movement knot the hair tighter, and in the low light she cannot see the hook, nor the eventual approach of a man from behind. “thank-you so very much,” is all she can tell the abyss, the breath of her little sigh becoming a low-hanging cloud in the cold air before her. when all is freed she takes the ends of her long hair in one hand, twining the ends of her fingers in brief inspection before she looks up. 

“oh.” the sylph spots the devil, and the whites of her eyes expand like so many molten swan feathers piling on the floor. what a frightening mask, her doe-heart says, startled. “i suppose you must be the minotaur of this labyrinth.”

her hands fist into gold skirt until her wrists look like nothing more than white sticks of wax in a gilded candelabrum, the material lifted as she drops from her knees, exposing the top round of her head. it is as delicate a movement as dew returning to the grass from a heavy head of bluebell or a first note from a warm harp. a curtsy for the monster of the maze. everything is play for the maiden who has never met an unmasked beast, nor learned that even gentlemen are but a pack of patient wolves.

“may i pass, good chimera?”

The world has taught him to live in the in-between places, cloaked in the astral, suspended or perched like a carrion bird on a wire. Betwixt the bars of his rusted cage, the golden light slants in — flickering, altering, morphing, challenging his amorphous nature — until the guise of man is filtered out. What lives yet is a projected monster with cavernous chest expanding, with crooked fingers unfurling like dead vine. When he catches the ends of her obsidian hair on his talon, it slips free like a silk ribbon. He lifts his chin and flares his nostrils beneath the cover of his mask.

She slipped the hook.

Elijah is indeed the reigning devil of storybooks long-ago writ, and like so many devils, he bends the shadows to his will. Better still: whatever finds itself in the column of his stretching shade will, too, submit.

“Yes,” he answers lowly, Arctic blue eyes flashing in false light. “— which makes you Ariadne.” 

The written word beguiled him. As a street urchin with bastard blood, he barely learned to read, and still could not write; Ephraim had always held that power over him. In the hairpin alleys where lost children gathered, outsmarting bitter winds, he had listened to the older boy’s tales — stories memorized from mammoth tones and endless anthologies — of righteous heroes with greatswords and godly armor and their pale Cretan princesses, of dark kingdoms marked by ruin and splintered by rivers of blood. Before Ephraim died, Elijah allowed himself to imagine cutting down the malevolent, horned demons that reigned in the blackened worlds — beastly tyrants who railed against purity and truth. 

Standing over Ephraim’s body, broken on the cobblestone, Elijah knew he would never be a hero.

Pieridae wings exhale as she lowers herself before him, her heavy gown tinkling like a music box — but he doesn’t step aside. He squares his shoulders and crosses his great arms.

“You’ve no twine to guide you home, and no Theseus to strike me down,” he warns with wicked amusement. “There is only peril ahead.”

[paenumbra]

( @wilccard )

— July 4th, 1845; TENT OF WONDERS / open to all.

                — The space they moved between was not built, but born. It seemed to materialize out of nowhere on the shore, a grand canopy in sweet and solitary contrast against the harbor. Their attempt, though of a  poeticism and no mistake about it, stood at odds with the . Those wooden cabins, scrammed together on a lick of land, and the sediments of lava, uncanny like God’s makings at the beginning of time. Despite the fact that Vladimir knew how many people worked to erect the tent rows - landlubbers and waisters and scores over scores of petty officers - it still looked very little like a joint effort. It looked very little man-made at all. In fizzing succession, the tents tailed on one another like a serpent, with scents, volleys of sound, and distinct flashes mixing in between each. And the blood-spring, the source of all this outpour, was at the Tent of Wonders.

              It was a striking thing. An array of wicked devices, stacked up like some daguerreotype in motion - there was no way to gain a sense on where you stood, or who else was beside you. They called it a maze; Vladimir found it missed the mark. It wasn’t one, not quite, not anything you wouldn’t have in the circular corridors of a London townhouse. But the light - oh, the light cut right through you. It made fine work of it. It was this strange, unearthly light he came here for, to see it twisted and warped by the projector. The mind recoils to see it - the mind recoils, also, from trying to figure out how the bloody damn it lasted the journey in top shape. Vladimir leans on the heels of his feet, strangely at place here, strangely unfazed. Before the moving shapes, he finally reaches the end of questioning - it moves one to the point beyond perplexity, beyond doubt. A wonder can silence you. A wonder can make you talk. On the cusp between both these states, he addresses the other merrymaker who entered the tent in his wake, disrupting the amber balance within. A change as heavily felt as someone sitting in bed beside you. “Have they called off the rum hounds? They let you amble on without trying to stick a glass on you?”

—

Arches of granite rose up from the shoreline, the smooth shoulders of waking giants frozen mid-rouse. Elijah allowed his mind to bewitch the scene, as it was wont to do, until he saw without seeing, until the tapestry of reality was threadbare and thin — before him, titanic beings pulled themselves up from the swales of moonlit sands, shaking loose root and earth. They wore the skins of ancient fauna, their eyes eclipsed and blind. In the shafts of blue light slanting through the clouds, they lingered over the village below in a soundless trance. Monuments, taller than mountains, blacker than the volcanic rock that birthed them, and swathed in a ribbon of night birds. 

And only he could see. 

When the tobacco in his bowl was ash, he put to rest the wilderness of his unbidden mind. It recoiled, a reprimanded hound, and he followed a meandering path of his own toward the teeming Tent of Wonders. For a man acquainted with madness, this pocket of revelry on the shore of Godhavn was but a brazen spectacle. The flickering enchantments were amusing, but Kircher’s folly didn’t quicken — not like the dark corridors in his mind. That labyrinth was unforgiving, and it awaited him whenever he braved the task of sleep.

He kept to the wall, surveying those who passed from behind the ghoulish mask he chose, only to have the toiling whir in his mind interrupted by a familiar voice.

“The hounds steer clear of me, and I steer clear of drink,” he answered simply, his eyes splintered glass beneath the shield of vizard. “There’s quite enough mischief afoot, wouldn’t you say, Yamatov?”

Or haven’t you seen the giants looming at the edge of the ocean? I have.

[paenumbra]

( terrorhqs​: )

THE CAPTAIN — how do you define guilt? is it scar or rosary?

THE CHAPLAIN — what do you hold most sacred?

THE CHRONICLER — what is a secret you never wanted to learn?

THE CLAIRVOYANT — who do you see in your future?

THE COMMANDER — which spurs your ambition most?

THE DOCTOR — what is the greatest joy to be found in living?

THE DEVOTED — how do you define loyalty? is it noose or halo?

THE DOE-HEARTED — what do you wish you still believed in?

THE ENIGMA — what lights your soul on fire?

THE EMPRESARIO — what is one material item you hold most dear - and why?

THE GODKILLER — who would you hunt to the ends of the earth?

THE HARUSPEX — where is the line between adventure and tragedy?

THE IDOL — what is the action that defined your fate?

THE INTREPID — how do you get people’s attention - how do you hold it down in place?

THE LOVER — who is the only one fearless enough to match you?

THE MARKED — do you believe ghosts are only spirits, or ideas?

THE NOBLE — what is the greatest ideal of your childhood?

THE PURSER — which cause would you stand and fall for?

THE ROMANTIC — what is one of the most overlooked wonders?

THE SCION — which words do you want for your epitaph?

THE SHADOW — what would you never forgive in a soul?

THE SOCIALITE — who - or what - would ever make you slow down?

THE SONGBIRD — which uses do you find for art - is it gild or bravery?

THE STOWAWAY— what are the things you could always get away with?

THE VETERAN — what - or who - is your oldest memory?

THE WILD CARD — how great is the gap between what people see and what they get?

[paenumbra]

( terrorhqs​: )

The following sentence starter prompts are based on The Terror (AMC). Please feel free to adjust pronouns (and anything else) accordingly.

In this place, technology still bends the knee to luck.

There is nothing worse than a man who has lost his joy.

I tell you, one glance from him, I have to remind myself I’m not a fraud.

You may be a warning of things to come.

I’ve come to repair our bonds.

Perhaps it is I who’s unable to truly bring him into the bosom of my confidence.

How any man achieves his post on an expedition is less important than how he spends it.

Explorers are made of hope. They breathe hope.

I can’t very well ask him to stop breathing.

You weren’t sleeping either? If only sleep were as simple as closing your eyes.

Either you’re a clairvoyant or I’m not doing half the job I think I am concealing my thoughts.

I learnt early: those who are quickest to tally your value often do it on your spots alone.

Perhaps I would have done better to have played your game and gulled the world.

Fear is a choice.

Ignorance is a choice.

I never want to feel ice under my boots again.

Then there will be the angels with songs lovelier than you’ve heard.

As a trusted friend once put it… This place wants us dead.

You should cherish that man.

That is how you already see us? In need of saving?

You’ve made yourself miserable and distant, and hard to love, and you blame the world for it.

I should have curbed these tendencies, rather than sympathized with them, because you seem to have confused my sympathy with tolerance.

At sea, a man can find spiritual benefit in the collective.

Your crisis is an opportunity for you to repair yourself. You are in the world’s best place for it.

The past tense is a very sturdy thing. It’s earned, but it does take for granted that one has survived.

Keep your pity. You’re going to need all the pity you have for what’s coming.

You can be whatever you need to be now.

I am a fake.

I challenge any biographer to tally up your acts of valor and then call you a fake.

It’s all vanity. It always has been. And we are at the end of vanity.

I’ll give you some advice: don’t indulge your morals over your practicals.

Do you believe a man has a soul?

What in the name of God took you so fuckin’ long?

This place is beautiful to me, even now.

Do you know sometimes when people are near passing I’ve heard they speak of a radiance like a million daybreaks all in one.

You abuse your freedoms.

There are some things we were never meant to be to one another. I see that now.

God sees you. Here more than anywhere.

I mean permission not granted!

There is wonder here.

You said you wanted the truth.

Look at your face.

That’s not how I see you.

I’ve never said it out loud before now.

I always felt I deserved more.

No one can convince me that optimism or confidence is warm enough.

What else do you require? Respect? Well, earn it.

This kind of darkness, do you see it among us here?

I don’t need to see it to know it’s here.

Mine your courage from a different lode now.

Are we brothers? I would like that very much.

[paenumbra]

𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐑𝐎𝐀𝐃𝐒 — with The Clairvoyant;

The Guests’ Quarters // Around dusk on July 4th ...

A golden timepiece, no doubt the persistent weight in many a tailored breast pocket before his own, was his most valuable find. It leaned into his palm like a polished stone from a rill, cool and clean and perfect. When he’d found it at the bottom of a highborn’s back-up trunk (among frayed nightgowns and busted britches), he’d stared into the glass for a long time. Looking past the ghostly fog of his own reflection, he imagined the countless, indifferent glances this watch had suffered in its time, and he felt a kinship blossom. Elijah — a man who had shaken the dirt from his bones so that he could be — would truly appreciate its countenance, its machinations, its faint tick-tick which would fill his noisy head at night. 

The gleam of milky light from the portholes reminded him of the hour; Godhavn’s gloaming was upon them. His shift would soon be over, so he figured he might as well make an attempt at appearances if nothing else.

After tucking away what he’d dismantled in his search, he made his exit. 

Odd thing, an empty ship. When peopled with milling guests and dogged crew, it seemed alive and thrumming — a tamed, gargantuan beast bidden by ropes. Now, the Promethean’s hollowness felt poignant. Its brittle, echoing groans were meant for him alone; a pleading cry. A message only he could decipher. A chill marched up his spine as he looked over his shoulder across the decks whence he came — it stretched on forever. At that moment, the wind snaked across the scarred wood and all around him with a purposeful gust, snapping him out of his dark reverie. When he looked forward, he saw he wasn’t alone as he’d thought. How long had he been there?

“Soothsayer,” he spoke lowly, heels knocking against the deck. “I’ve been meaning to ask about the source of your power — for you and I know nothing in this world is free.” With hands behind his back, he stopped before the man, regarding him with eyes as lonesome and haunted as the Arctic. “What have you done?” 

[paenumbra]

( @emmanuel-hurley​ )

Shaken || Father Hurley and Elijah

@paenumbra​

Curiosity killed the cat, they say. Whomever they are. This time, there was no satisfaction to bring it back as the priest stepped from the tent where he had let Snow demonstrate just what he could do with the powers behind him. Emmanuel was no closer to understanding, but he was fairly certain that it was best that he let the subject leave him if he could. The things the Clairvoyant had said… Emmanuel carried secrets deep in his chest that reflected the lines in his face and the dark circles that bagged below his eyes. Since the night it had happened, the Father had been plagued with nightmares which woke him in a cold and drenching sweat. How often did he change his sheets so the soiled ones could dry? More than he cared to admit.

The black velvet in the Spiritualist’s tone had stood stark against the glitter of his eyes as he made insinuations that rocked Emmanuel to his core. He had come aboard the Promethean in hopes that trading his life for God’s Will might save his immortal soul, the one he had damned out of cowardice and a lack of any discernible grace. Would he ever be able to scoop the charcoal from his soul? Or would it leave him stained black as an artist’s fingertips no matter how hard he tried to clear it away? He had connected to many on the ship, surely, and he was making a difference in some of their lives. Or he wanted to. He watched, waited. Always willing to listen was Father Hurley. Absolve your sins because he had the authority to save you but not himself. It was a cruel irony, he supposed, but his sin was vast. He still remembered the sound and how fast he had darted from the room. He had to get out. 

Tightness in his chest had him pushing through a crowd of people, his breath locking up and threatening to strangle him as if someone had taken a hold of the perfectly starched white collar at his neck and tightened it small. The world swam and the thump of his heart was loud in his ears. Suppose the Spiritualist suspected? Emmanuel had confirmed nothing and would say nothing of it again, but he was sure he couldn’t completely contain his stricken expression. He had needed to be away. After all, he had lambs to shepherd–some wolves in lamb’s clothing, but regardless of whether the lambskin was birthright, borrowed, or stolen, they were his–and it wouldn’t do for them to see him so distraught.

Slipping into a dim alley away from the roiling festivities, he pressed his forearm to the brick before resting forehead upon it. He had to breathe. 

He more sensed that he was no longer alone than saw it, as every tiny hair on his neck rose like a dog’s hackles. Rather than warning the other soul of danger, however, it merely poked at Emmanuel’s own anxiety. Whirling, an arm raised to defend his face if necessary and he stopped when he recognized the other man.

Elijah.

Like a shadow, Elijah seemed to appear without sound at times, darkening the world around Emmanuel and yet speaking whispers of his truths into the priest’s ear. There was something in him, something undeniably magnetic. It was as if, in this other man, purpose had become clear. Much burden rested on Elijah’s shoulders, much like his namesake. He must shrug off Baal and he reached for Emmanuel to hold him hard to this earth as he fought that idol away. And yet… would fire rain from the sky as God did his wonders for Emmanuel through Elijah? Or was he simply too wrapped up in the symbolic? Was Elijah coming forth to Emmanuel to precede the wrathful coming of the Lord? Or was he Emmanuel’s true chance for redemption? For Elijah needed saving, and Emmanuel had known it from the first night that had spoken for long hours.

What did he think of Father Hurley now that it looked as if he might need a bit of salvation in his own right?

“You come so quietly,” he remarked through the gasps he took for air. “I hardly noticed you at all.”

x.

If you want to lose your faith, make friends with a priest.

Elijah hated godspoke men. As a child, he’d reviled the crooked priests in his orphanage — those black-eyed “holy men” who turned tithes into their own treasure, who taught embezzlement and pride better than any hero or thief. Memories of those shambling orphanages of his youth had borne something formless and acerbic in him. Lies were his maker, murder his absolution. When all of life was penance, what did it matter how bloodslick his hands? — how atrophied his heart? Whatever God demanded his surrender was no match for the legion whose hooves had taken purchase in the gravel of his soul. 

Hell was here on earth, and they were deep in the devil’s maw. Surprisingly, it was a chaplain who’d become a beacon in a wasteland plagued in dark.

In the alley where he stood, he could see the soothsayer’s tent. Costumed masses churned around it, and source-less voices weaved with the wind in warbling harmonics. When he’d seen Father Hurley step inside, his heart had fallen a degree deeper, dragging the sediment of the River Styx. What business did he have in a charlatan’s booth? A pang of betrayal resounded within him, and he cursed himself for acknowledging it.

Since setting sail for the Arctic, Elijah had allowed Emmanuel glimpses of himself — revealing passages into his psyche that he had violently forbade others. It had been an accident, a grave mistake, but the tapestry had already begun to unravel. There was little he could do to stop it. There was once a black thread, deeply rooted, that guided him. Nestled in his nightmares and warped by day dreams, he could always spot it — dragging along the pale, ocean floor, catching on gnarled roots — a soundless wisp. This ribbon had pulled him through the maelstrom of reality, but not anymore. Since stepping on board the HMS Promethean, he had lost sight of it. 

Chaos reigned. And at the center of it was Father Hurley, challenging the forsaken kingdom within Elijah.

What madness had that silver-tongue whispered to him? What false magic had sunken heavy into his veins like poison? Elijah drew back into the embrace of the alley, watching as Emmanuel sought reprieve in the same slant of shadow. The man was visibly shaken. Where was his God now?

“I’ve been here all along,” he rebutted, allowing the light to touch his face. Elijah had a bitterness in him that found pleasure in seeing the Father shaken. It confirmed his doubt in God, his fervent disbelief in all spiritualists, and solidified the ashen ground on which he stood. It was also disappointing somehow. “So, tell me, Father.” A dangerous growl curled the word on his tongue. “What did the mountebank say to the Priest?” 

[paenumbra]

𝐀 𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐁𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐒 𝐖𝐀𝐋𝐓𝐙 — with The Doe-Hearted;

The Tent of Wonders // 10:13pm on July 4th  ...

These errant shadows are his home. Along the walls that bow and draw, they skitter and cling. Such transient, sinister things. 

He takes his time, winding ever inward. Fingertips snag and drag along the canvas and it billows in response. Elijah imagines himself inside the belly of an ancient beast, lost in the feverish halls of his dying mind. To his dark amusement, there’s an electric tinge of panic in the air — echoes of nervous laughter tinkling like wind chimes by the sea, and the hoarseness of desperate whispers ushering him along. 

A group of women cross his path. They cling to one another in throes of excitement and fear, décolletages flushed and heaving. When they notice him leering out from his own dimension of 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔡𝔬𝔴, they grow still. Beneath the obsidian half-mask and coiling ram horns he adorns, he feels like a God ( — or some rousing devil ); and the flock quivers before him. From somewhere deep inside of him, a growl manifests, rumbling in his chest like the promise of telestic storms. The sound inspires movement among the fawns, chases the hems of their taffeta skirts as they twist deeper into the labyrinth.  When they asked him to work in the maze frightening willing souls, he’d countered with an offer to man the ship. Volunteering allowed ample time for Elijah to pilfer through the guests’ unoccupied quarters and also appeared a noble self-sacrifice to the crew; so two birds. He only realizes now, swathed in the flickering images of the projector, that he may have missed his calling.

As he rounds yet another bend, the maze reveals an unexpected scene. Before him is a sylph, winged, glimmering like a mermaid’s tail in the bent, refracted light — from her head spills ringlets of dark, enchanted hair, though the ends are caught by a vicious hook. Elijah lingers as she struggles against it, his head canting to the side — such a pale little thing with helpless wings. 

“Let me,” he directs as his wretched hands reach to unspool her curls.

[paenumbra]

𝖔 𝖋𝖆𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗;

What finally led Calder Grau to his father’s door was a thorn wedged just beneath his skin. It had always been there, a dark spot, taking root, festering, just below the surface. The needling question of Enoch Morcant had been one he was satisfied to leave unanswered, an unmarked grave, overgrown and forgotten. But after he’d ventured down a hundred dark, dead-end corridors (the only corridors offered to a man like himself) and come up empty-handed, he resolved to pick up a shovel and dig.

Enoch Morcant was a seaman of ambiguous character, ranked as an AB with the British Merchant Marine. According to fellow mariners and neighbors, he was a “legless man” on land, replacing the slosh of the ocean for that of sour-mash whiskey. When he wasn’t propped up in a pub near the docks, he was selling pilfered goods in the alley behind it — ever the sly profiteer with unfathomable pockets! When Calder first laid eyes on the man, bile rose to the top of his throat and, despite the heat of summer, a chill rattled down his spine. What Calder saw before him was his past, his present, and his future; a sad mosaic followed by the swimming sensation of deja vu as the dim kaleidoscope of his low-born potential spun out in perpetuity. Before him was a bastard like himself, composed of the same dense, phantasmal soot.

                                  This fetid blood  w e i g h s  a man down                                                       to the  s e d i m e n t .

Upon introducing himself to his father, Calder refrained from revealing his true identity; it was no surprise, however, that Morcant rarely entertained conversation that wasn’t about himself. Besides — in an arrogant haze made thicker by spirits, another man’s barrage of compliments and questions seems harmless (especially when lubricated by a solicitous tone). Calder learned quickly that his father was intelligent like him, the way a stray dog is intelligent. He was all hackles, calloused footpads, and bright, gleaming teeth — with a keen knack for knowing where and when to strike unsuspecting prey. For decades, Morcant had wielded such bastardly tools in order to survive, but unbeknownst to him, his son had mastered the trade.

Over the next year, Calder angled himself closer to his father, learning all he could. Strategically, he picked his old man’s  brain to learn the comings and goings of manning a ship, watch schedules, rigging sails, tying knots, even the duties of a boatswain. With a prospect like the HMS Promethean looming and in need of a crew, it was his intention to find work on board, to use his father’s threadbare clout to his advantage. More than anything, Calder simply wanted to escape.

A month before the HMS Promethean was set to sail, everything changed.

“Have ya a pint.” Morcant shoved a mug at Calder, painting the scarred table-top with its contents.

“The sun’s barely set, old man,” Cal chided, taking the offering all the same. 

“You’ll not tell me how to drink, boy.”

“I’ll not carry you home either.”

A guttural grumble followed. Morcant’s face, awash in lantern-light, was ruddy and swollen from drinking. Dribble bubbled on his lip, a fine white and feral foam. Cal had seen him like this a time or two: his faraway eyes glazed in something sinister, fixing all in his path with a wayward leer, and his throat slick with dagger-sharp words.

“You wouldn’t cross me, would you?” It was a warning, a growl. Eyes, the same faulted blue as Cal’s flickered, attempting to steady on him.

“I’m neither Chaplain nor fool,” he teased. “Come, let’s have peace while we drink. I’ll not fight with you.”

The old man simmered audibly, settling back in his seat.

“I know your plans to join the crew of the Promethean, and I know it’s why you’re here.”

There was a spell of silence; Calder’s stiff confirmation. He revealed nothing, though, easily meeting a proffered gaze (too much like his own) over the brim of his glass. His father’s countenance showed vestiges of handsomeness, but that had been distorted by years in the sun, hard drinking, and an unresolved lonesomeness. Morcant took a deep breath through flaring nostrils — it was as if, all at once, he’d come to a necessary conclusion, but an uncomfortable one. He twisted, then, as if adjusting to the stab of a gun against his spine, but pulled out a leather-bound scroll case which he’d wedged behind him. 

The reveal’s fanfare was muddled when Morcant dropped the carrier on the table. Frayed leather string that held it fast let loose and a thick coil of documents flooded out: maps strewn with coordinates, a busted brass compass, ancient book pages, schizophrenic scrawl on fragile paper. As Cal’s mug and its contents clanged on the floor at his side, he pushed forward to take it all in, picking apart the pages in a trance. Some would look at such a collection and see folly: the culmination of madness, the pathetic reflection of a mind ever circling a drain. But Calder looked on with hungry eyes  and a ruinous bloom exhaled inside of him. 

“Where did you —” Morcant seized Cal’s wrist and twisted until he relinquished the maps; the antique pages fluttered dryly as they fell to the table. “You needn’t worry,” he promised on a low breath, acrid with yeast. “The man I stole ‘em from won’t come lookin’ for ‘em.” He managed to sound threatening and conspiratorial all at once: “I made bloody well sure of that.” Morcant believed he had a willing thrall in Calder; for no other reason would he dare share such intel. But susurrous whispers of admiration had woven a ragged noose around his neck over the last year, and Calder’s long-game had landed him in an even better position than he’d bargained for.

[paenumbra]

𝖜𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖘𝖆𝖒𝖕𝖑𝖊;

“Why did you decide to venture to the Arctic on this expedition?”

“Belief in choice shows your ignorance.” He is sat across from the gilded passenger with squared shoulders, wrapped in damp wool. Ice clings to the ends of his unkempt hair and his dissecting eyes mock the warmth of a hearth. A wilderness lives in him, but not an overgrown and thriving one. It’s a despairing and haunted tundra. He chooses his words as if picking ripe fruit from the vine; the nectar beneath soft casing is poisonous, the venom of a low-born bastard. “Lachesis has deigned it so, and here we are,” he answers, his voice the belly of a serpent on dry loam. The woman recoils, gathering hides of foxes tighter around her neck. “I assume you have your reasons,” she shoots back, her chatoyant eyes smudged with kohl and derision. “Then direct me in what you’d like to hear. Perhaps the story of a grubby seaman longing for heroic adventure? The loathsome account of a poor orphan brought up from the dregs of his birth by ambition alone, now steadfast onto upper decks? I suppose a story like that would please you, sustain your position? Maybe even warm your heart?” She gasps in tones of indignation. Calder — no, Enoch stands, the ice in his clothes crunching. “Like death, this voyage will equalize the souls on board one-by-one. You may bloody well rely on it.”