shhshafiq-blog

[shhshafiq-blog]

marcelineyaxley.

“You make zero sense, catnip? What even IS catnip? Actually I take that back, you recognise my outstanding perfection, obviously, you’re capable of making SOME sense.” Marceline’s self-esteem fluctuated as much and as quickly as their mood did, the slightest thing could trigger a shift, but right now it was positively elated. “You look very pretty too – the colours go soooooooonicely. Not as nice as me, but still very pretty.”

“Oh, well, it’s a plant? It sort of, um, intoxicates cats, really, so it’s put in cat toys and stuff. Most people usually know it as the stuff in cat toys and what gets them high, sort of, anyway, the plant thing is just extra information for you. And, er. Thank you, I guess? That’s very nice of you to say.”

[shhshafiq-blog]

marcelineyaxley.

“How do you NOT want to buy them? What else could you possibly want to spend your money on? Aw, thank you, I know. It took me hours to find the right dress, but I think this one is perfect.”

“Um, things more useful to me, I guess? Books, tea, records, even catnip — that sort of thing. But your shopping habits seem to totally pay off. You look perfect too, definitely. It’s lovely.”

[shhshafiq-blog]

marcelineyaxley.

“The brides dress is S T U N N I N G, honestly some of the outfits here tonight are absolute to die for. I just want to buy them all, don’t you?”

“Not...really? They’re very pretty, though. You’d look lovely in any of them. You look lovely in yours, even.”

[shhshafiq-blog]

“Me? Oh, I didn’t realise— Yes, it’s a nice party, isn’t it?”

[shhshafiq-blog]

stasiarowle.

“Many layers yes, each more repugnant than the last. Only gets worse with age. I think they’re most delicious when left off the plate, to be honest.”

“But you said they were family?”

[shhshafiq-blog]

jaspermulciber.

When asked to jump, Jasper had replied with, “How far?” His loyalty to his family had been his chains, and he had paid for it. It had turned out to not be a jump, but instead a plunge, one that he took into the depths of hell, his wings scorched and melted off his back. The fall was far from heavenly, yet there was a divinity to it. A sense of crucifixion, as if he had hung on the cross. For his own sins rather than for the sins of others. There, too, had been a betrayal, when he had dared to whisper his inclination to escape the upcoming war. 

Such a desire had been spoken to the wrong person. If only he had done so to the person now facing him, perhaps things would be different. Perhaps he would have found the courage to turn his back on his family, perhaps he would have found the spine, the willpower, to escape from it all. 

But that wasn’t his story. There was no rebirth. His sins could not be washed away through baptism, though he dreamed of the shores of the beach, the salty sea cleaning his feet. In that vision, he was not alone, but still united with his best friend. 

Christmas time marked the birth of Jesus in his household, in the coming of a savior. But no one was coming to save them. Harry Potter may be Britain’s savior, but he only saved the side that had been titled good. That plagued Jasper, the label of being bad. Rotten, stained, marked for an eternity hell. Was this what it would feel like, he had to wonder, like this burning that now prickled at his skin, being confronted with Ayesha? His release had come only through the elders in his family, some sort of exchange of favors. He didn’t know for sure, hadn’t questioned it. 

Heaving a breath, he pivoted his right leg backward, creating space between them. “You – you should watch where you’re going.” What else was he meant to offer her, when there was nothing left in him, fragments of his soul missing, the very stitching of his foundation ripped at the seams? 

Then, quieter still, “You shouldn’t be here.” It was a nod to her social apprehension. Of the two of them, however, it was him that was most out of place. 

Fingers knotted at the bottom of a sweater, folding the fabric around knuckles with trembling resolve. One, two, three, four — the hem was worked steadily, carefully pleated into the neat accordion of a saree’s drape, anxiety being wrung out into the cable-knit strands of wool like the leaden shadows encroaching in her lungs were being bled into the soft charcoal fuzz of the sweater. The midnight darkness that had threatened to choke her retreated, allowing relief inside in tentative footsteps.

Ayesha took a deep breath. And another. And another. She had been practicing it for the past few months, this method of pulling herself out of her head with little more than the power of determination. It was far easier, she had found, when rescue came in the form of a reassuring, reliable hand reaching down to grasp her. To be at the bottom of a well, when the only shining light was the cold distant stars and the only hands there to pull her out of the dark were her own, was inconceivably hard. It involved torn knuckles and split nails, scraped knees and raw palms, to pull herself out of the pit with quavering fingers clutching its sides.

                                        She just hadn’t known that before.

                                               There had been no need for it.

Not like there had been these past few months: a combination of a rising flood of dire straits and a horrifying absence of the people who could help her wade out of it had left her fumbling in an attempt to reach the shore. It should have been that she could handle it now. That she didn’t immediately reach for the foreign hands to help her, as soon as she sighted them.

But some habits were easier forgotten than forgone. Ayesha couldn’t have stopped her movements even had she anticipated them; her fingers relinquished their grip on her own hem to seize Jasper’s sleeve instinctively, intuition and a lifetime of practice leading the digits into settling in a vice-tight grip the moment he took a step back. A single shaking syllable slipped.

                                                                                   “Please.”

Besides, forgiveness was DIVINE. Everyone knew it. There was no religious distinction, not there. There was something supposedly great about forgiving others their sins, about being a person big enough to forgive and forget, and to move on. At times like this, the concept reeked of over-simplification. Things just weren’t that simple. Morals weren’t that simple. For months now, Ayesha had been debating herself on what even counted, and still, she came up empty.

Yet, in that moment, it scarcely mattered.

DIAPHANOUS — that was a good word for it. The moment felt chiffon-fine, as delicate and silken and fragile as the prettiest of fabrics, like one slight tug could rip it to shreds; something that likely seemed far too pretty and picturesque from the outside – holiday-perfect, really – to consider the punch to the gut it was on the inside. And if her mind no longer knew how to react to him, her body was still well-learned in the art of Jasper Mulciber, gestures etched into the depths of her muscle memory that might linger there forever, as natural to her as the staccato beat of her own heart, stuttering in protest as her hand slid lower to grasp his.

“Don’t leave me.” The way the words fell from her mouth, helpless and wistful and jarringly reminiscent of a plea, flushed her pallor a tense rose. But then, it was the truth, wasn’t it? She could accept as much. She may not have made up her mind about what she thought about him, his actions, his imprisonment, his release and all else in the war that began and ended upon him, but one thing was clear: she could not lose him again. Not when the fist clenched around her lungs, squeezing the last of the breath from them, had loosened so much the moment her gaze settled on him.

It made her chin rise, a moment of defiance in an epoch of hesitation. “I don’t want you to go again.”

[shhshafiq-blog]

stasiarowle.

“It’s always worth a shot – especially if said hot drink happens to have a little kick to it. But some people are just immune, I think. Cursed to be onions forever – smelly and making people cry.”

“Does that also mean they have many layers to them and are delicious fried?”

[shhshafiq-blog]

jaspermulciber.

He shouldn’t be here. No longer was the boy full of laughter, vibrant with life. His soul was shredded and the visage of him matched. A mere echo of who had he once been, a whisper in the wind that could barely be heard in the distance. Not that anyone dared to get close. Oh, the boy had been loved, once. Before he became a monster. He sold his soul for his loyalty, and what had been Jasper’s reward? A prison term in Azkaban and his dearly beloved mother dead and buried. 

It was all GONE GONE GONE, he couldn’t see, blindly pushing his way way through the crowd until another form collided with him. He wildly turned, spooked like a caged animal, eyes flickering with a hot danger, the only warmth that boiled his blood, thrumming through his veins and reminding him of all his mistakes. 

Inhaling a sharp breath, Jasper believed himself to be dreaming. Stuck in a haze, a fog, a mirage of the past that was no longer within reach. He had not seen Ayesha since THEN. Since their youth had been stolen, and they had been taken captive by war that had laid siege to the castle that they had built for themselves. No treehouse could have kept them aloft high enough for them to have remain untouched forever. 

He wanted to reach out, grasp her shoulder, guide her out of the area like he always had. He knew she had to be out of her depths, drowning within the mass crowd, but Jasper himself was an anchor, and he did not want to taint her. Nor did he want to confirm his belief that she was a mere trick of his eyes. He wouldn’t be surprised. Many a time during his stay in Azkaban such figures had appeared before him, all a figment of his imagination. 

There was no poetic justice: of all people in the world for her to collide with, one she had never seen before would have been easiest. Somebody who did not and likely would not ever know her, who would see the encounter as an accident and move on. Somebody who would not see her pale further at the collision and reach out to steady herself against them, who would not notice the tremble in her hands and see it for what it was. WEAK.

That’s all her nervous disposition was. Nerves, just nerves. She just had to take a deep breath and get over them. And she would have too – she was getting better at it now, braver now that she was on her own – had she not opened her eyes and looked up at the person she had run into to apologise.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, I just need to get— OH.” But...it wouldn’t be. Shouldn’t be. Words may have died on her lips immediately, but it was her heart that stuttered in bursts, unsure whether to calm or speed. It was too soon for this, too soon for her to do anything but stare.

Because ordinarily, his sleeves would already be caught in the vice-grip of her fingers, eyes focused on his instead of the blur of bodies, ears already seeking out the mellow reassurance she knew would come. But that would be like expecting a ghost now; one never really knew their loved ones would come back as one until they did, and even then, it was the worst experience, a shattered half-existence that scarcely mattered. Abruptly, she understood why her mother had been relieved when Abba hadn’t, even though Ayesha herself wasn’t sure if cremated bodies could create ghosts.

Jasper, at any rate, had been the furthest thing from cremated: he had been buried in ice. Still, she could not expect anything. She barely knew him, after all. He was like two people in one body: the gentle soul she knew and the bloodied monster he’d been painted. Ayesha had no idea who reigned over the body now.

It slipped out before she thought about it, a quiet disjointed exhale of a word. “Oh no. Not this.”

[shhshafiq-blog]

kitpark.

“I promise she’s not going to scratch you,” Kit gently coaxed, attempting to pursuade the other to pet the cat that he was holding, his booth settled right near the entrance of the festival. There were at least a dozen cats and dogs that he had brought with him from the shelter for the occasion, all of them adorning Christmas sweaters to help with the chill. “She just may be a little bit grumpy because she didn’t get her cat nap in today, but that’s nothing a good cuddle won’t fix.” 

There was a distinct difference between kitties who were the distinctly disgruntled expression this one did, and actual people who were this grumpy: she reached out tentatively to scratch under the cat’s chin and it tilted its head up in silent acceptance. If only people could be that easy to please, the world would have been simpler.

As it was, she only offered to take the cat instead, giving both the cat and its caretaker an equally gentle smile. “I’ll take her,” she offered. “She doesn’t look scary at all, she just wants a nice cuddle, don’t you? Does she have a name?”

[shhshafiq-blog]

stasiarowle.

“I feel like the Rowle Estate could use some of these Christmas lights. Maybe it would make certain people less grumpy.”

“And hot drinks? The combination is irresistible to the grumps.”

[shhshafiq-blog]

It was too much. Too much. Too much. Everywhere she turned, the crowd pressed in, blur of colour that it was, chattering screaming burning bright. It made her skin itch with the tightness, like too little space to breathe and too much crowd to handle and belatedly, she knew she would regret the decision to come.

                             But right then, Ayesha took a deep breath, closing her eyes against the rising tide of nausea that threatened to wade in. And then— SMACK she walked right into another person.

[shhshafiq-blog]

Shrinking in a corner, pressed into the wall; do they know I’m present, am I here at all? Is there a written rule book, that tells you how to be— all the right things to talk about— that everyone has but me? Slowly I am withering— a flower deprived of sun; longing to belong to— somewhere or someone.

Lang Leav “Love & Misadventure (via allthegirlsanddboys)

[shhshafiq-blog]

There’s some good on this world, and it’s worth fighting for.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (via amargedom)