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13ceremonialskrp · 6 years

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STEP LIGHTLY, CHILDREN OF THE MOON

THE COVEN WELCOMES THE MIDNIGHT CEREMONIAL, KANA TAKEDA, A 27 YEAR OLD SCRYING WITCH

idiosyncrasy

+ authoritative, trustworthy, assertive

- dismissive, overbearing, presumptuous

proficiency

strength : she is gifted with a particularly strong penchant for finding things and people across great or short distances, through her mirrors and crystal balls– it’s how she’s come to find many of her coven members and how she manages to show up to places whenever she’s needed, or whenever is most unexpected.

strength : she has a way about her, something born of her spirit and the magic that has infused into every flake of skin, every flutter of eyelashes, every lilt of every syllable that cascades from her ruby-stained lips; there is an atmosphere that clings to her, a vibrating intoxication, the very gravity she wields as a weapon, hovering around her like an aura. it’s nearly tangible, threatening when she needs it to be, calming when others need it to be, a haunting presence she carries with her in each taken step.

ineptitude

weakness : divining the future has always been more difficult for this witch, the oncoming storm of events oftentimes becoming muddled or fuzzy in her crystals and reflective surfaces, and the harder she attempts to look into them, the more strenuous and painful it becomes. plenty of mirrors and crystals have broken or shattered under the weight of her pressure, her gravity begging to be given a glimpse of a future that plays coy with her.

weakness : she still filters her abilities through a netting of rage and coercion, still presses too hard to get what she wants from her powers, still fights with herself and her mirrors to wrestle the information she desires, and oftentimes it backfires on her in explosive, cutting ways. if a broken mirror costs you seven years bad luck, then kana takeda walks through her shattered hallways with millions of years left on her debt.

sanctions

penalty : most sideshow tricks kana employs don’t take much out of her, but heavier magics and spells require pieces of her soul not many would be willing to sacrifice; every time she gives herself to the magic, her powers breathing life and control over her, she loses a sliver of emotion, fades another step into apathetic despair, into a kind of death. she has died before and each new movement is simply another bill needing paid– eventually she will fade to the grey world altogether and be entirely lost.

penalty : her nights are forever plagued by nightmares, irregardless of how much or how little she sleeps, no matter what soothing tonic she swallows, no matter what spell she put herself under. dreaming will always and forever be a hassle for her, a curse marked upon the back of her neck by the dying fingers of her old coven’s high hand– the one she watched die in a heap of mud and grass.

memoirs

tw: suicide attempt

7. she stands on the cliffs with the winds at her back, the air tugging and pulling at her clothes like a begging lover, the uncharacteristically frayed robe and nightgown whipping at her body tightly, loud and wailing, the roar filling her ears despite the silence that infects her. the storm above her is some comfort at least, knowing that the sometimes the sky cries as well, knowing that sometimes the weight of water becomes too much even for mother nature, until eventually the dam cracks and rain must fall, tears must fall.

kana has been weeping for weeks straight now, the sorrow sinking in marrow-deep until it is all she knows, until it’s all she’s sure she’ll ever know; her hands empty, her life empty, the grey of the world whirling and surrounding her, a poison. it hadn’t taken long after the absence of their son for her husband to lock himself into his study and only come out on an ambulance stretcher, pills filling his gut, freezer-burn covering his eyes, his fingers, the stench of death wafting off him like a curse. she closes watery eyes and listens to the ringing of her eardrums, listens to the pounding of her heart howling against her rib cage, listens to the tides beat themselves against the shoreline, rising up to meet the challenge of the moon, hidden behind thunder. rising up to meet the challenge of her own personal gravity, her own personal hell, hidden behind exhaustion.

when she exhales and falls from the rocks, her shoeless, coatless form cascading downwards into the drink like a teardrop, the cold winds kissing her limbs, wishing her farewell, she prays to the triune goddess, prays for death, prays for the crashing sounds of the sea to swallow her down, down, down, and the crashing sounds of mirrors breaking to crush her, deep, deep, deep. prays for just one more chance to see her son again.

and receives none of it.

1. the mirror glistens cold in the midnight air and finally, finally, this she knows for certain: she is all storm and howling, she is all thunder and power, nothing delicate framed in the cut of her young cheekbones, in the dark of her eyes, in the way her reflection glares back into her like an abyss she no longer fears. her hair a maelstrom havoc from nightmares spent in drenches of sweat and stress, her nightgown torn askew, her soul torn asunder, a stain of red in her wake in the way all women burn scarlet at this particular age, and she decides white is no longer her color, no longer the bliss and innocence she will hide behind, no longer the shade of ribbons her nanny is allowed to tie into her long, black locks.

barely eleven years old, the witchling steps across the shards of the mirror her newly-awakened powers have shattered across her bedroom floor, and in the pieces strewn about, she glimpses her future, she watches her past, she opens the doors to ruin and inevitability, penning the course of her life without truly meaning to. divination shines through her chest and she likens it to a birth, begins screaming, begins breaking, the stars high above her shuddering in reverberating echoes and instinctively she knows: this is the last night of her childhood. from now on, she will adopt the vague apathy of her mother, the grey distance of her father, the frozen poison of her grandmother, and come next morning, she’ll learn why.

she’s sure it’ll have something to do with seven years bad luck.

2. strong magic floods through her veins, a direct lineage to the ancient sorcerers of old, back when the world was half shadow, half spirit, back when human and dragon could be fused into one, and kana believes she is a dragon, believes she is half shadow, believes this is the only explanation as to why she burns deep within herself, why she enjoys selfish magic so much more than anything ivory. she grows in her abilities as she grows in age, surrounding herself with blackened tales, banned guides, abolished spells, memorizing what she can, lavishing in what she wants, her family’s wealth and prestige affording her access to whatever her heart may desire. she’s the singular daughter of one of japan’s forefront fashion and design brands, her parents inheriting a luxurious empire from her grandmother upon the old hag’s death, kana raised amidst these stages and diamonds, limousines and velvet carpets, her appearance and technical prowess in the business granting her plenty of attention herself.

3. she’d assumed, wrongly of course, that somehow her accomplishments in both the fine arts of music and poetry, as well as the physical exertions of martial arts and combat training, would prove her independence enough as a woman capable of ruling alone, capable of reaching through the clouds and swallowing the stars themselves, capable of breaking the earth’s crust in the gravity of her heels, but not to her mother. nothing is ever enough for her mother. at eighteen years old, kana is given in an arranged marriage to a man eleven years her senior, the heir to an even bigger technological conglomerate, a man forever scented in cigar smoke and ink, a man with tired eyes and small burn scars on his knuckles.

she asks him one night across the stretch of silk sheets, the dimmed glow hovering around their bodies, where he’d gotten the scars, and he tells her that he used to own a pair of tiny dragons who’d scorch him all the time when he fed them. just like her. she snorts and looks away, but it’s the first moment she doesn’t outright despise him.

5. she glows with promise in the heart of her coven, a star in her own right, a sun on the horizon of life, her mother-priestess and the high hand naming her the maiden archetype, granting her the possibility of tutelage, of eventually becoming a priestess herself. she impresses them with her hold over her own abilities, her potency, her knowledge, her skill, the way she masters the basic practices, the way she convinces the world that she is a hurricane made flesh, a dragon brought home in the center of her chest. she harnesses her craft through anger and clenched teeth, through red lipstick and curled knuckles, through the half-shadow she drags by its ankles, the curses she breathes and the fire she bleeds, and she can almost feel everything she’s ever wanted in her grasp, all the power a sharded young girl could ever need, could ever have been wrong about in the pieces of shattered reflections across her bedroom floor. she’d never had any reason to be so worried– it would all be fine.

mirror mirror on the wall….

6. it is exactly the equinox of the spell, the midway point when she realizes she has been tricked, she has been fooled, she has made the gravest error of her life– or more specifically, she has failed in her trick of the others, the pin-needles all shifting suddenly towards her, the sharpened sting of betrayal and white-hot understanding flooding through her, icing her blood in a way entirely foreign to her. she’s been young before, been inexperienced before, been wandering and stretching and hungry before, but fear? fear is a monster heavy on her lungs in this moment, claws and jaws digging in and robbing her of breath, of sight, of atmosphere. fear is her reaction to being out of control, and in these two very separate thousand-year-moments, two beats that will forever define her and deform her from now on, she has never been more out of control.

the first moment is given to when they take the only thing she’s ever loved before away from her; the young toddler’s face seeping down into the immutability of stone, forever silenced and choked away from her, life shifting to earth; his tiny, reaching hands, his wide, teary eyes, everything melting down too quickly into permanent solidification, just before she can touch him.

the second is given to when she disappears into the maelstrom of hatred and boiling, tumultuous fury, when she lets her restraint finally, finally become swallowed up by the flames of her internal wraith; the darkness howling up from the unfathomable ocean of her soul, the likes of which had never been seen by her coven before. and would never be seen by them again, not after she’s grinded their bones into the earth they love so damn much.

betrayal tastes bitter, but not as bitter as the dirt and dust she crushes all the bones in their bodies into– all twelve of them writhing and gasping in simultaneous horror.

4. when she bears a child, a boy, her firstborn, she comes to the belief that he is the truest form of the sun incarnate, the belief that he is all light and all laughter, tiny hands and toes and eyelashes even longer than hers, and he’s the first boy she’s ever loved quite so much in her entire life. she was raised from one nanny to the next, but she’ll be damned if she lets anyone else so much as touch him for any extended period of time, insisting on raising him herself, insisting on hoarding all his first giggles and first steps and first words, dazzling him with the magic she becomes more and more involved with.

he is every golden memory, every reason to fall in love with life itself, every belief in the cosmos she’d never truly had before. he’s perfect and she occasionally has a difficult time believe he could have come from her.

8. when the men are finally able to revive her, rouse her from her drenched, unconscious state, she sputters awake like the lifting of a curse from her skin, coughing and hacking up mouthfuls of salt water, wheezing air into her lungs as though they’ve never felt so free before, as though she’s never felt so released before, her arms and fingers reaching and grasping onto anything sturdy enough to hold her. she is as wet as a fish, having been mistaken for a mermaid by a fishing crew and hauled up on deck in an effort to save her life, dressed in almost nothing, floating adrift in the middle of the sea currents that separate two countries from each other. she blinks at the faces of the men surrounding her limp, shivering frame, the sky as grey as she remembers it, and before one of them can manage to fetch her a towel or a blanket, she asks what’s happened.

“we found you in the water. you stopped breathing, we thought you were dead.” the man, presumably the captain, bellows in korean– which is all kana needs to know about where she is and where she’s heading.

“are we near a port?” she asks in perfect korean, having been trained in up to five different languages, beaten into her skillset until perfection.

“busan.”

busan. that’s it then. the veil of the world is drawn back for her in that instant, clarity finally descending upon her like a beam of light, a calling she cannot and must not ignore or refuse. the goddesses have seen fit to spare her life for a purpose and she knows what she must do, what she owes not just simply to them but also to the world at large– blood for blood. she has a debt now, a payment she must make in life for what she’s taken from it, for the havoc she’s wreaked, for the evil she’s lathered across her palms, spread over her flesh like ointment. the goddesses won’t allow her peace until she’s fulfilled her role, until she’s given back in the amount that she’s taken. balance.

busan.

#midnight #13:accepted #kiko mizuhara

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velmaemyers88 · 5 years

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Fire Emblem: Three Houses review — another peak for a franchise on the rise

Fire Emblem has become Nintendo’s fastest-rising franchise this decade, and Three Houses continues to grow the tactical series’ prestige.

In multiple ways, this feels bigger than any other Fire Emblem game. The story is epic with player choices having a giant impact on the narrative. You have more things to do outside of battle than any previous Fire Emblem offered. And this is also a significant visual upgrade for the series following its 3DS installments.

Three Houses is a major step for the franchise. This Nintendo Switch game, which releases on July 26, has a scope that exceeds anything the series has ever attempted.

What you’ll like

Important choices

Soon after starting, you have a major decision to make that will impact the rest of the game. You have to choose which house you will lead as its professor. Each one has its own roster of students, which also become your units in battle. Each student has their own skills, strengths, and personalities.

But you aren’t just picking a bunch of pupils. Each house represents a different country inside the game’s fantasy setting of Fódlan. You have an empire, a kingdom, and an alliance. All three of them have different political ideals, forms of government, and social structures.

You could choose your house for any number of reasons. Maybe you just want the one that has the most archers. You might be interested in a house because it has a character you find intriguing. You could choose one just because you find yourself agreeing with its ideology. It’s wonderful having such an important, intense decision to make so early in the experience, and it gives you a good reason to play through Three Houses multiple times.

Picking your house, however, is not the only important decision you’ll make. Without giving anything away, you’ll make other choices as the story progresses that will have monumental impacts on how the narrative plays out.

Above: Gotta make a choice.

Image Credit: GamesBeat

A giant experience

Three Houses is huge. While past Fire Emblem games put the majority of their focus on combat while maybe throwing in a few social activities to do between them, this puts a bigger focus on the stuff you do between all the fighting.

It has a calendar structure. You have a major story mission you have to complete toward the end of every month, but you have freedom to do other things on the preceding weeks. You can walk around the monastery where you teach, speaking with students and faculty, going fishing, practicing in the choir, or more. All of these activities help strengthen your bonds with other characters or improve your stats, so it helps improve your performance in combat.

Teaching and learning

You’ll also be spending a lot of team teaching your students. This is Three House’s most gratifying system. In order to develop into stronger fighting classes, characters have to be proficient enough in specific skills. For example, if you want an Archer to become a Sniper, they’re going to have to improve their Bow skill.

Characters will level up those skills slowly as they use them on the battlefield, but they can get much further ahead through teaching and study. You set goals for each character, assigning them up to two skills you want them to focus on learning. You can also teach them directly, giving those stats a boost depending on their motivation (which you can increase through activities, like giving them gifts or inviting them to tea).

Using these systems to work toward character goals is just as satisfying as any victory in combat.

Above: Professor Fire Emblem.

Image Credit: GamesBeat

Epic battles

Of course, fighting is still an important part of Three Houses. Like in past Fire Emblem games, this is a grid-based, turn-based tactical role-playing game. You move characters around the battlefield, trying to exploit enemy weaknesses while avoiding the deaths of any of your units.

While the mechanics are familiar, Nintendo has given these battle a nice visual upgrade. Although you are only commanding about a dozen characters, you can see armies clashing against each other once you order an attack. Your units aren’t solo fighters. They are commanders, each with their own battalion. And battalions aren’t just a visual flourish. You can buy and earn new battalions and assign them to the character of your choosing. Battalions increase their assigned commanders stats and give them access to a special move (this will do things like stun an enemy after the attack).

Three Houses makes fights feel like an actual battle and less like a skirmish between a handful of troops.

Above: To battle!

Image Credit: GamesBeat

What you won’t like

It’s hard to fail

As great as the battles look, they often feel too easy. I’m playing Three Houses on normal mode with perma-death turned on, so my character who die won’t come back to life at the end of a battle. I found this combination perfect in past Fire Emblem games, but Three Houses has given less of a challenge.

Three Houses introduces a rewind feature that you can use a few times for each battle. This lets you undo a single, dumb mistake. It can also help fix for an unfortunate turn of luck, like an enemy hitting you with an unexpected critical strike. But having this rewind can also give you too much breathing room. You’re less afraid of making a mistake since you know you can undo it. You also no longer have the weapon triangle, a series convention that gave different weapons a rocks-paper-scissors interaction of weakness and strength. This means you don’t have to worry about your sword user being weak against lances. The game still has weaknesses, but they’re much more forgiving.

The maps themselves also feel too open and simple. Without things like enclosed areas, traps, or rough terrain, it was often too easy to just put my beefiest units in the front line and lure enemies to come crashing into my army like a wave against a cliff.

This difficulty problem corrected itself a bit as I got deeper into the game, but I should have had a more consistent challenge throughout the whole experience.

Above: Tactics time.

Image Credit: GamesBeat

Conclusion

Aside from a complaint about difficulty, Three Houses is a deep and satisfying experience. Its layers of inter-connected systems will please strategy-minded fans, while its fun and likable cast of characters will help make the experience a memorable one.

Fire Emblem continues to be a franchise on the rise, and Three Houses just took the series to another peak.

Score: 92/100

Fire Emblem: Three Houses releases for the Switch on July 26. Nintendo gave us a code for this review.

Credit: Source link

The post Fire Emblem: Three Houses review — another peak for a franchise on the rise appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/fire-emblem-three-houses-review-another-peak-for-a-franchise-on-the-rise/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=fire-emblem-three-houses-review-another-peak-for-a-franchise-on-the-rise from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186544845317

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reneeacaseyfl · 5 years

Text

Fire Emblem: Three Houses review — another peak for a franchise on the rise

Fire Emblem has become Nintendo’s fastest-rising franchise this decade, and Three Houses continues to grow the tactical series’ prestige.

Three Houses is a major step for the franchise. This Nintendo Switch game, which releases on July 26, has a scope that exceeds anything the series has ever attempted.

What you’ll like

Important choices

Above: Gotta make a choice.

Image Credit: GamesBeat

A giant experience

Teaching and learning

Using these systems to work toward character goals is just as satisfying as any victory in combat.

Above: Professor Fire Emblem.

Image Credit: GamesBeat

Epic battles

Three Houses makes fights feel like an actual battle and less like a skirmish between a handful of troops.

Above: To battle!

Image Credit: GamesBeat

What you won’t like

It’s hard to fail

This difficulty problem corrected itself a bit as I got deeper into the game, but I should have had a more consistent challenge throughout the whole experience.

Above: Tactics time.

Image Credit: GamesBeat

Conclusion

Fire Emblem continues to be a franchise on the rise, and Three Houses just took the series to another peak.

Score: 92/100

Fire Emblem: Three Houses releases for the Switch on July 26. Nintendo gave us a code for this review.

Credit: Source link

The post Fire Emblem: Three Houses review — another peak for a franchise on the rise appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

0 notes

weeklyreviewer · 5 years

Text

Fire Emblem: Three Houses review — another peak for a franchise on the rise

Fire Emblem has become Nintendo’s fastest-rising franchise this decade, and Three Houses continues to grow the tactical series’ prestige.

Three Houses is a major step for the franchise. This Nintendo Switch game, which releases on July 26, has a scope that exceeds anything the series has ever attempted.

What you’ll like

Important choices

Above: Gotta make a choice.

Image Credit: GamesBeat

A giant experience

Teaching and learning

Using these systems to work toward character goals is just as satisfying as any victory in combat.

Above: Professor Fire Emblem.

Image Credit: GamesBeat

Epic battles

Three Houses makes fights feel like an actual battle and less like a skirmish between a handful of troops.

Above: To battle!

Image Credit: GamesBeat

What you won’t like

It’s hard to fail

This difficulty problem corrected itself a bit as I got deeper into the game, but I should have had a more consistent challenge throughout the whole experience.

Above: Tactics time.

Image Credit: GamesBeat

Conclusion

Fire Emblem continues to be a franchise on the rise, and Three Houses just took the series to another peak.

Score: 92/100

Fire Emblem: Three Houses releases for the Switch on July 26. Nintendo gave us a code for this review.

Credit: Source link

The post Fire Emblem: Three Houses review — another peak for a franchise on the rise appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

0 notes

hadesburns · 5 years

Text

kana takeda, high priestess

she stands on the cliffs with the winds at her back, the air tugging and pulling at her clothes like a begging lover, the uncharacteristically frayed robe and nightgown whipping at her body tightly, loud and wailing, the roar filling her ears despite the silence that infects her. the storm above her is some comfort at least, knowing that the sometimes the sky cries as well, knowing that sometimes the weight of water becomes too much even for mother nature, until eventually the dam cracks and rain must fall, tears must fall.

kana has been weeping for weeks straight now, the sorrow sinking in marrow-deep until it is all she knows, until it’s all she’s sure she’ll ever know; her hands empty, her life empty, the grey of the world whirling and surrounding her, infecting her. it hadn’t taken long after the absence of their son for her husband to lock himself into his study and only come out on an ambulance stretcher, pills filling his gut, freezer-burn covering his eyes, his fingers, the stench of death wafting off him like a curse. she closes watery eyes and listens to the ringing of her eardrums, listens to the pounding of her heart howling against her rib cage, listens to the tides beat themselves against the shoreline, rising up to meet the challenge of the moon, hidden behind thunder. rising up to meet the challenge of her own personal gravity, her own personal hell, hidden behind exhaustion.

when she exhales and falls from the rocks, her shoeless, coatless form cascading downwards into the drink like a curse, the cold winds kissing her limbs, wishing her farewell, she prays to the triune goddess, prays for death, prays for the crashing sounds of the sea to swallow her down, down, down, and the crashing sounds of mirrors breaking to crush her, deep, deep, deep, prays for just one more chance to see her son again.

and receives none of it.

the mirror glistens cold in the midnight air and finally, finally, this she knows for certain: she is all storm and howling, she is all thunder and power, nothing delicate framed in the cut of her young cheekbones, in the dark of her eyes, in the way her reflection glares back into her like an abyss she no longer fears. her hair a maelstrom havoc from nightmares spent in drenches of sweat and stress, her nightgown torn askew, her soul torn asunder, a stain of red in her wake in the way all women burn scarlet at this particular age, and she decides white is no longer her color, no longer the bliss and innocence she will hide behind, no longer the shade of ribbons her nanny is allowed to tie into her long, black locks.

she’s sure it’ll have something to do with seven years bad luck.

strong magic floods through her veins, a direct lineage to the ancient sorcerers of old, back when the world was half shadow, half spirit, back when human and dragon could be fused into one, and kana believes she is a dragon, believes she is half shadow, believes this is the only explanation as to why she burns deep within herself, why she enjoys selfish magic so much more than anything ivory. she grows in her abilities as she grows in age, surrounding herself with blackened tales, banned guides, abolished spells, memorizing what she can, lavishing in what she wants, her family’s wealth and prestige affording her access to whatever her heart may desire. she’s the singular daughter of one of japan’s forefront fashion and design brands, her parents inheriting a luxurious empire from her grandmother upon the old hag’s death, kana raised amidst these stages and diamonds, limousines and velvet carpets, her appearance and technical prowess in the business granting her plenty of attention herself.

she’d assumed, wrongly of course, that somehow her accomplishments in both the fine arts of music and poetry, as well as the physical exertions of martial arts and combat training, would prove her independence enough as a woman capable of ruling alone, capable of reaching through the clouds and swallowing the stars themselves, capable of breaking the earth’s crust in the gravity of her heels, but not to her mother. nothing is ever enough for her mother. at eighteen years old, kana is given in an arranged marriage to a man eleven years her senior, the heir to an even bigger technological conglomerate, a man forever scented in cigar smoke and ink, a man with tired eyes and small burn scars on his knuckles.

she glows with promise in the heart of her coven, a star in her own right, a sun on the horizon of life, her mother-priestess and the high hand naming her the maiden archetype, granting her the possibility of tutelage, of eventually becoming a priestess herself. she impresses them with her hold over her own abilities, her potency, her knowledge, her skill, the way she masters the basic practices, the way she convinces the world that she is a hurricane made flesh, a dragon brought home in the center of her chest. she harnesses her craft through anger and clenched teeth, through red lipstick and curled knuckles, through the half-shadow she drags by its ankles, the curses she breathes and the fire she bleeds, and she can almost feel everything she’s ever wanted in her grasp, all the power a sharded young girl could ever need, could ever have been wrong about in the pieces of shattered reflections across her bedroom floor. she’d never had any reason to be so worried– it would all be fine.

mirror mirror on the wall….

it is exactly the equinox of the spell, the midway point when she realizes she has been tricked, she has been fooled, she has made the gravest error of her life– or more specifically, she has failed in her trick of the others, the pin-needles all shifting suddenly towards her, the sharpened sting of betrayal and white-hot understanding flooding through her, icing her blood in a way entirely foreign to her. she’s been young before, been inexperienced before, been wandering and stretching and hungry before, but fear? fear is a monster heavy on her lungs in this moment, claws and jaws digging in and robbing her of breath, of sight, of atmosphere. fear is her reaction to being out of control, and in these two very separate thousand-year-moments, two beats that will forever define her and deform her from now on, she has never been more out of control.

betrayal tastes bitter, but not as bitter as the dirt and dust she crushes all the bones in their bodies into– all twelve of them writhing and gasping in simultaneous horror.

when she bears a child, a boy, her firstborn, she comes to the belief that he is the truest form of the sun incarnate, the belief that he is all light and all laughter, tiny hands and toes and eyelashes even longer than hers, and he’s the first boy she’s ever loved quite so much in her entire life. she was raised from one nanny to the next, but she’ll be damned if she lets anyone else so much as touch him for any extended period of time, insisting on raising him herself, insisting on hoarding all his first giggles and first steps and first words, dazzling him with the magic she becomes more and more involved with.

when the men are finally able to revive her, rouse her from her drenched, unconscious state, she sputters awake like the lifting of a curse from her skin, coughing and hacking up mouthfuls of salt water, wheezing air into her lungs as though they’ve never felt so free before, as though she’s never felt so released before, her arms and fingers reaching and grasping onto anything sturdy enough to hold her. she is as wet as a fish, having been mistaken for a mermaid by a fishing crew and hauled up on deck in an effort to save her life, dressed in almost nothing, floating adrift in the middle of the sea currents that separate two countries from each other. she blinks at the faces of the men surrounding her limp, shivering frame, the sky as grey as she remembers it, and before one of them can manage to fetch her a towel or a blanket, she asks what’s happened.

“are we near a port?” she asks in perfect korean, having been trained in up to five different languages, beaten into her skillset until perfection.

“busan.”

busan.

#bio | you keep what you kill

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