#A DUET OF SHADE AND LIGHT ( v: beacon. )

[etruatcaelum]

[ @qrowings // for salem ]

"Let them go, they have nothing to do with this."

Salem does not remove her hand from the side of the wagon as she meets the frantic gaze of Ozpin’s most faithful spy. Terror hemorrhages out of him, soaking dark and red as blood into the leaf mold, as his vermillion eyes flick from her to the girls: one curled up in the wagon, fast asleep, the other sitting in a dirty, tearful heap at Salem’s side.

The blonde child—Yang, isn’t it?—scrubs at her face with a grimy fist, mumbling, “Uncle… Qrow?” in a voice muddled by utter exhaustion. And then, with another darting, uncertain glance at Salem: “What’s going on? You– you know my uncle?”

“Only by reputation,” Salem says, without breaking eye contact with Qrow. Softly, she adds, “You should take better care to watch over your children. There are far worse things in these woods than I.”

[etruatcaelum]

Summer wasted none of her time deliberating; she'd never liked cooking, for all she had a decent knack for it, in the same way she disliked doing the dishes afterward. If she could snap her fingers to make good food appear from the ether instead, she would, but alas—there was nothing to do but keep up a brisk pace in the kitchen, to reduce the amount of time she spent cooking to the minimum.

"…Mm-hm."

She threw a pan onto the stove to heat up while she crushed a few cloves of garlic and halved a lime to squeeze over the shrimp, then dumped everything without ceremony into the pan.

Humming, she drawled, "God forbid we live a little after death. Even Salem–"

Literally, in the witch's case, at least as far as Summer could make out from the elliptical tales she'd coaxed out of Salem since that night. Whether Salem had actually, technically, died in the strictest sense seemed beside the point.

Still: a snort. "—between the three of us and the nonsense Oz has got going on," she said, "I'd say either lifeless is about the same as life or Death has been sleeping on the clock. That, and corpse or it didn't happen."

A low hum of amused concession was all Arthur had for death and his revenancy for a moment. Faced with the kitchen itself, he really was going to need to make a decision on something to eat. And that was a bit more of a conundrum than he cared to admit. It was, he decided wryly, just so much easier when he was cooking for other people first, and himself second.

Alas.

While she made for the icebox, he made for the pantry, letting habit guide him more than taste. He wasn't exactly surprised to find himself gravitating towards noodles, but...

He hesitated a split second, frowning at the shelves. What, blast it, was he going to even make? For all the effort of getting here, he really hadn't gotten any further than the pasta idea, had he? Well, that would do, and so he scooped up the noodles with a hum, to emerge from the pantry as she finished speaking.

His wry smile returned at her victorious brandishing of the shrimp, dipping his head in concession. "Touche. Though in either case, revenant or dead man, I should endeavor to remain lifeless, I think." Both for his own comfort, and the ease of Salem's plans. Besides, eventually that death would be real. Until that day came, he saw no reason to stop being himself for it.

What else did he need...if he wanted to do it properly, then some flour, milk, and butter for the sauce, and...he should probably grab some chicken and fresh vegetables, if they had any. No point in making the sauce from scratch to use frozen vegetables. Peas and carrots at least...

[etruatcaelum]

[ @fatedmuses | qrow // taiyang ]

"I love a rum and coke in the middle of the day! It makes me feel like I'm on a tropical island!"

It's a minute before Tai answers. He's checking his scroll. The old recliner he lounges in creaks gently as he shifts his weight, clears his throat, and puts on a not-half-bad impression of the local weatherman as he reads aloud: "Thirty-six degrees and cloudy today on the west side of Patch, highs in the low forties and sleet expected later in the afternoon."

Real tropical. Really makes a sober guy wonder how much rum and coke Qrow's had.

Snickering, he tosses the scroll down on his lap and folds his hands behind his head. "I mean, damn, I guess they don't call Vale the icebox of the planet for nothin', huh? Hey, keep an eye out for morgens if you hit the beach today, I hear there's a shoal been causing some trouble for the local fishermen lately."

Not that Qrow will have heard about that, he thinks with a trace of resentment. Nothing much ever seems to come of those top secret missions Oz still has the guy running all over the world for, but they sure do keep Qrow out of the country more often than not.

"…Bein' serious, though," he adds as an afterthought, "me 'n' Yang were talking about sweeping the northwest beach tomorrow. Ruby wants to come with, too, but it can get pretty rough out there. I'd feel better if she had another huntsman to watch her back. You wanna join us?—assuming you're not about to take off on another of Ozpin's wild goose chases, I mean."

[etruatcaelum]

[ @ein-schnee-sturm | winter // salem ]

The Atlas military did not ordinarily dispatch extirpation forces so far to the north: the white desolation of the Coldfire Waste had little to offer besides ice, freezing winds, and grimm.

…and dust, which—to judge by the gutted machinery strewn about the wrecked convoy—was what they’d come here for. Ever outward, Salem thought sourly as she combed over the remains. It hadn’t been that long since their ancestors exhausted the old coastal mines and pushed inland to Mantle; they could not possibly have run out again so soon.

She vaulted onto the flank of an overturned truck, the only vehicle left intact, and shaded her eyes against the harsh glare of sunlight on snow. Nothing still lived in the wreckage—even the bloodstains had been stripped by the wind, hidden under scabs of frost—but…

There was a faint trace of living aura.

Grimm had surprised the convoy as it threaded the needle of a treacherous pass—scattered a few survivors to the winds—picked clean the bones left behind. The cold might have slain the few who evaded death upon the teeth and talons of the horde, but if the survivors had the good fortune to chance upon an exposed seam of thermal dust, or one of the old bunkers the Mantelians had built in these mountains during the Great War…

Well. No one could ever accuse humanity of lacking resilience.

Salem hummed under her breath, and spent another few minutes prowling over the wreckage until she found her trail; then set out briskly in pursuit of the one who’d come back in the morning, after the grimm had gone.

[etruatcaelum]

[ @caeloservare // glynda ]

There was almost nothing in the world Glynda hated more than the annual conferences hosted by the International Association of Huntsmen—not because she objected on principle to the idea of gathering professional huntsmen from around the globe to discuss best practices for dealing with grimm. Not even because she disliked attending, per se. No, the real problem…

“One would think,” she said vehemently, stalking onto the narrow balcony James had chosen to haunt rather than suffer mingling with the crowd inside, “that after eight years, the press would have found a better way to cover these events than by trotting out another retrospective on Mountain Glenn.”

Glynda slapped her hands down on the balustrade with a low huff of irritation, mouth pressing into a thin line. It was snowing thickly outside the hard-light dome, and rain cascaded from the awning overhead in a miserable grey curtain; the dazzling lights of downtown Atlas blurred into formless smears of color. She took a deep breath.

(It didn’t quite feel like home, but the scent of storm-washed pavement was the same everywhere.)

“…It feels especially ghoulish this year,” she muttered. “I’ve been asked a dozen times already to comment on this—Oniyuri venture, ‘as a survivor of Mountain Glenn.’” Her expression pinched further, and she shook her head with a long-suffering sigh. “Well. How have you been, James?”

[etruatcaelum]

[ @skidqrow \\ from here ]

She just scoffed, toggling her own untouched drink back and forth with her thumbs. “Of course I am. I’m the only one of us who did the smart thing and got out of all that before Oz got us all killed.”

What a stupid question. Her brother of all people should know that nobody was ever satisfied with the way things turned out. It burned under her tongue like a live coal to tell him why, but Raven swallowed it the same as she had for the last twelve years.

“Speaking of that,” she added, voice hard and low, before he could start nagging her to come back like he always did, “you need to watch your back, brother.”

[etruatcaelum]

[ @astr-team | aki // sienna ]

“Sometimes… what we wake up, can't be put back to sleep.”

One ear flicked in acknowledgment, but Sienna stayed put: arms folded, frowning as she gazed through the window. "Sometimes." Her mouth lifted in a sardonic smile, fleeting. "That's how it is with everything; life—it's all just flash floods and sinkholes out there."

The ear twitched again.

Sienna threw a quick wink over her shoulder. "I've been informed talk like that does not land the same outside the desert," she added, dry. "It's… don't think that needing water to live means the rains can't kill you quick as any grimm. Don't take anything for granted."

Prowling away from the window, Sienna draped herself into one of the chairs Aki kept facing their desk and propped her chin on her fist, contemplative.

"I appreciate you agreeing to meet me," Sienna said at last. "From all you've described—well." Her ears pinned back. "You could be forgiven for believing what the humans say about us. I–"

Restless instinct bade her leap to her feet and start pacing; she pressed her lips together and hiked her bad foot up to rest on her knee instead, hand on her ankle. Exhaled, slowly.

"—can't imagine you've paid much mind to the internal politics of the Fang since the Vale chapter shivved you," Sienna muttered, thick with disgust. None of it for Aki. Shaking her head briskly, she continued, "Well, Ghira stepped down at the end of last year to pursue state politics, and I was elected High Leader after him. It's…"

Again, she paused.

"I've heard," she said, with deliberation, "some rumors I don't like about our Vale chapter, over the years. Ghira always cut Hadi a lot of slack; I think, maybe, more than my brother really earned." She drummed her fingers against her boot, brows drawing together. "That's why I reached out to you, and a couple other formers; the… in-fighting, bullying our own for having human relations—I have zero tolerance for that."

But the problem ran deeper, if Aki's account of their expulsion was any indication, than Sienna had surmised.

"So," she sighed, "if it can't be put to bed, the Fang will have to cut them loose. Let them eat each other alive. But I am hopeful it isn't… unsalvageable, yet."

[etruatcaelum]

[ @astr-team | aki // from here ]

“I mean… yeah.”

Yeah, it made sense, and yeah, Summer couldn’t disagree with their read on the Branwens—or on Raven, at least. Qrow, she thought, lived in his sister’s shadow, but he was… okay, when Raven wasn’t around. Even when she was, he didn’t play ball with her our-team-leader-doesn’t-exist crap. She’d take what she could get.

“‘The weak die,’” Summer intoned, doing her best impression of the queen of edge, “‘the strong live.’ God, she’s like—” hand grasping as though to throttle the air in front of her; teeth bared, “–she is like so far up her own ass she’s gonna start puking herself up. But she can’t keep this up once we get out in the field.”

Right? Surely. Surely.

Rolling her eyes, Summer crossed her ankles and stretched out her legs. “Or maybe she gets eaten by a grimm, who cares.”

Well… No, she didn’t think she had it in her to let something like that happen, even if Raven kind of deserved it. Even if it would be funny for all the macho bullshit to end in Raven getting mauled by something really embarrassing—like a clutch of nevermore chicks.

Hey, a girl could dream.

“It’d just be a lot easier to handle if Taiyang grew a spine instead of ‘helping,’” she grumbled. “But. Whatever. What’s this about a thing with Shion? …are they okay?”

[etruatcaelum]

[ @livestosteal | arthur // cinder ]

“Why should I apologize for being a monster? Has anyone ever apologized for turning me into one?”

How pathetic.

Cinder didn’t know, or care, what had happened to sculpt this pompous, self-serving fool in the image of Atlas’ finest. She knew Watts had been one of the military’s top scientists before his disgrace, and that was enough: he’d made the choice to align himself as a cog in that machine, and proven too heartless even for them. Even still, he wore their trappings. The false niceties and lofty affect of the Atlas elite.

Maybe his hands hadn’t fashioned the collar she had worn, the monster in their gilded cage, but that his own self-interest had drawn him into Salem’s orbit did not absolve him of what he is. Just a man pleased to pull the blood-soaked levers of power until the day the monster he bowed to turned against him.

Her expression cooled. “What makes a man a monster is his choice,” she said, voice honeyed. Polite. “I don’t believe you have anyone to blame for you but yourself.”

[etruatcaelum]

[ @ein-schnee-sturm | winter // ozpin ]

“One can only imagine how many times I have been lied to.”

The young woman couldn’t have expected those words to pierce him like an accusation, but they did. Ozpin went momentarily still, fingers half-curled around the teapot’s handle, and glanced at Winter with faint unease. “Well,” he said, tone mild, “I certainly couldn’t begin to guess, Major Schnee.”

Recovering himself, he hummed under his breath and poured her a cup of tea. “Less often of late, one would hope.” Ozpin smiled tiredly as he settled into his seat, leaned back with a quiet sigh and a quieter hiss of the chair’s joints. It felt… rather ghoulish of him, but the news of Fria’s passing, and the magic’s passing to the correct candidate, had lifted a heavy burden from his shoulders. He felt as though he’d paused in the shade to rest partway through a long journey through the desert.

(Qrow had contacted him only weeks ago to provide somber confirmation of Rhea’s death in southern Vale; and so their search for Fall—the race to identify her and bring her into the fold before Salem could—was begun in earnest. The Brothers only knew where Spring had gone, if the girl Raven stole away still lived. Summer… if she was who Theodore suspected, the summer maiden stood to become a problem.

It would have been just his luck for the winter maiden to vanish, too, scattered to the four winds where she might not be found again for years, decades, lifetimes—yet here she sat. Winter Schnee. Providence, Ozpin thought wryly, did, on rare occasion, choose to be kind.)

“I realize how overwhelming all of this can be,” he continued, tapping a fingertip upon the rim of his teacup. “Even with adequate forewarning. I do appreciate your willingness to make the trip down to Vale to indulge an old man’s preference for meeting face-to-face, in spite of your no doubt very hectic schedule.” James would have told her just enough for Winter to have an inkling of how old; there was a mischievous glint in his eye. “Still… I assume you have your own reasons for doing so. Questions for me, perhaps. I would be pleased to answer them.”

[etruatcaelum]

[ @ein-schnee-sturm | weiss // blake ]

“I sold a lie amidst the cold.”

Blake didn’t say anything for a moment, just hugged herself tighter while she tried to come up with something to say.

Something less harsh than what she wanted to say, which was that faunus or not, the Schnee heir was nothing like her. Given the bow once more arranged to hide her own ears, it felt hypocritical to ask why Weiss kept their identity a secret—Blake knew—could guess—but she still wanted to hear them say it.

Your family’s company is directly responsible for some of the worst faunus rights abuses in the world, she wanted to say. How can you sleep at night, pretending to be human? Pretending it’s fine, as long as it isn’t you?

She thought about Ilia, talking about that school she’d attended in Atlas: how she’d pretended to be human so well that she even started thinking like one. I’d say those things with them—that faunus were dirty animals, that they lied, that they were degenerate–

Because I felt human, Ilia told her once, until they reminded me I wasn’t.

“I hid it because I left an organization the Vale Council designated as terrorists less than a year ago,” Blake says at last, levelly, “and I can’t afford the kind of scrutiny that would come with me being a known faunus. You don’t have a criminal record, and you come from one of the wealthiest families in the world. Why does a Schnee need to hide who they are?”

[etruatcaelum]

Salem quirks an eyebrow as she begins to tear bite-sized strips of meat away between thumb and forefinger. Drolly, “I didn’t offer in jest.”

In sympathy, and—loneliness, perhaps. Tonight is the first she’s spoken in several decades, and difficult though it was to thread the words together at first, it is… not unpleasant. That the knowledge she can impart will tidily remove a silver-eyed warrior from the tally of Ozpin’s feckless guardians is also an opportunity too sweet to let slip through her grasp.

Mostly, her reasons are selfish.

She demolishes the filet piece by piece in contemplative silence, licks the grease off her fingers, and says quietly, “I presume you’re familiar with Ozma’s tale of how humanity came to be. From Light, creation and choice; from Darkness, knowledge and destruction. That part is true—or at least it is what the Brothers themselves said.”

A derisive snicker scrapes up her throat.

“But you must understand that ‘creation’ is not good and ‘destruction’ is not evil; an engineer who constructs machines of war or a tyrant building his regime are both engaged in the act of creation, and the harvest is destruction. Fire burns, and warms, in equal measure. Creation and destruction do not concern themselves with right or wrong, good or bad; they are.” A sharp-edged smile. She says, “Grimm were the first creation of Darkness. What he gave to humans, he also gave them. Creatures of pure destruction, and knowledge. You might think of them as humanity’s shadow, or humanity as an elucidation of the grimm.”

Slowly, Summer settles beside Salem, taking the offered food. She is hungry, she realizes belatedly. She's been running on adrenaline and fear for days now, and she didn't need either of them now.

What a strange place the world was.

She listens intently as Salem speaks again, explaining how the grimm work. She's never really thought about them, as silly as that seems now. They were just monsters than needed to be fought and slain, for the protection of others.

She had asked her father once, why the grimm were what they were, but he had never had a satisfy answer for her. She suspects he never knew, either. Was just doing what he'd been raised to do. Just like she has.

"I'd like to learn more," Summer says. "About my eyes. About the grimm. Whatever you can teach me about this world. If... if you don't mind?"

She didn't want to intrude if the other didn't want her, after all.

[etruatcaelum]

[ @the-gray-maiden // for ozpin ]

Meeting student outside the comforting emptiness of the headmaster’s office always makes him uneasy—even if the student in question isn’t, strictly speaking, a student anymore. Given the circumstances, though, extending an invitation to the campus had struck Ozpin as an insensitive thing to do. So here they are: wrapped in heavy silence on a bench in the little park a few blocks away from the guildhouse where Lia had, not an hour ago, been allowed on the thinnest of margins to keep her license. For what little it might be worth to her now.

“I’m… so sorry,” Ozpin says at last. Not yet half a year gone by since the massacre, and he cannot fathom the violence it has done to her soul to be swept so immediately into this furious controversy. “Both for the losses you have suffered and that I could not do more to shield you from—that.”

He makes a feeble gesture toward the guildhouse, the words hollow for knowing that it isn’t over; there is still the police investigation, the council’s inquiry at Beacon, the punishing court of public opinion.

“…None of it is your fault,” he adds. “People often try to comfort themselves in the wake of tragedy by finding someone to blame; it’s frightening to admit that terrible things can happen for no reason.” Or for reasons more horrifying than anyone partaking in this firestorm could imagine. “It has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the fears of the public.” A pause. “If there is anything more I can do to help…”

[etruatcaelum]

[ @scareqrowbranwen | jaune // for ozpin ]

Sometimes—often—the responsibilities of this position weigh heavily on Ozpin’s shoulders. Every student who comes to his school lives in danger from the very moment they first set foot on the campus, and there is precious little he can do to shield them from it—save by putting shield and sword in their hands before casting them onto the front lines.

They are all so terribly young.

On rarer occasions, he finds moments of unexpected levity. Reminders of the… surprises, the unpredictability of humanity. Nothing new under the sun, perhaps, but every reinvention of the wheel does turn a little differently.

The elevator dings. Ozpin settles forward in his chair as the door slides open, chin resting atop his interlaced fingers, his smile decidedly impish before he paves over it with a sterner look. “Jaune Arc,” he intones. “Please, come in. We have a rather serious matter to discuss, young man.” Oh, the boy does look rattled. Best keep the theatrics to a minimum, then. “Do have a seat. How about we start with you telling me your side of yesterday’s… incident in Forever Fall Forest? I understand there were some sharp words exchanged between you and Cardin Winchester.”

[etruatcaelum]

[ @qrowings // for summer ]

"I can't live in a world where you don't exist"

“Funny, I couldn’t either,” Summer says, flippant tone stretched thin and reedy with pain. She pats his forearm awkwardly. Bites back a hiss as Qrow’s hands press down harder on the wad of fabric he’d torn off his cloak a minute ago to staunch the bleeding; hard enough to make her ribs twang.

Closing her eyes will just freak him out even more, she knows, but Summer can feel the cold light scratching behind her retinas, trying to get out because she can hear more grimm baying nearby and she isn’t allowed to just keel over and let others fight for their lives without her—she grunts, and screws her eyes shut. No.

She wheezes. Thumps his arm again with the heel of her palm. “I’ll be—fine. I’m not fuckin’ dying, birdbrain, now t-tie that off and get your head in the game before something eats you.”

[etruatcaelum]

u'll remember yeah, Summer types, but u wont sssdfZ—

"Raven–!"

There's a brief, pitched struggle over the scroll, which sends the crow flapping away with a put-upon caw and ends with Raven brandishing her spoils in triumph; the interrupted message, and the chaotic burst of random gobbledegook sent afterward, is swiftly followed by: "Fearless Leader says your WHIPPED 🫵🤪"

And then, seconds later, matter-of-fact: "shes biting me now."

@etruatcaelum asked: [ see ] sender sees something that reminds them of receiver and texts them a picture of it. (for qrow. lmao.) The picture, badly focused, is of a crow picking somebody's spilled ramen out of the gutter in front of a bus stop. Raven's boots are visible in the bottom left corner: ankles crossed, heel planted on the curb. She's captioned it, "this u?"

Well, that was just rude. He'd never eat ramen out of the gutter... okay maybe once, but he'd been drunk and it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Qrow sends back "😑 I'll remember that next time you need me to cover you"

It's an empty threat and the both know it.