Rules of Revelry
— Be kind to those who gifts you fruit and honey, the trees had given their bounty but the roots held things you cannot refuse.
— If a child gives you a crown of flowers, a bracelet of daisies if you are as kind to yourself as you are to the ground that holds, you can bend down and tell them your secrets.
—They will giggle and laugh, because they are beings from someplace else and their duty is to make you theirs. Slowly, until they own your secrets and you'll see your name in a goblet of wine.
— The crows you see overhead is not a warning, but a welcome to the land. You will hear them croon and you will find trinkets in the brim of your hats.
— The ravens are different, for they are there to welcome Fall. To whisper to the falling leaves and sing to the little bones underneath the gardens. They are there to welcome, always, and they bare their teeth to those unwelcome.
— Pine cones and pine needles make great fires. Throw a cone into the hearth and you'll see life brimming from it's sap.
— When it is Spring, you will see the deers prance about in the forest. Sometimes there are things hanging from their antlers— lovely things like chains of delphinium and baby's breath touching their ears.
— Sometimes they fall off and you can take them. Just don't take them too far away from their home or something else will follow you.
— Summer is different. You bend down to the shores of the river and the fish are grown too big for their own good.
— You will see their eyes shimmer underneath those waters. Glittering like pearls or glowing like forgotten amber. Be sure to catch them.
— Fall is where you'll hear the singing. In Spring, you'd hear a subtle hum that followed the deers and the touch of something from the petals. In Fall, there is someone singing, like a siren of the mountains.
— His voice had brought down nations, and the men who had followed his voice had always come back different. There is a fog in their eyes, a shake in their bones and they go to the forest at the middle of the night. Their remains found hanging over the branches of old trees.
— Festivities is what they call that voice. That celebration of wedding and funeral bells, the cries of birth and grief, the joy of life and living. Good seeds from forest fires. Bones of archaic things that makes you wish you were there to witness.
— That was only a good thing.
— Winter is where you'll find those half-decayed corpses of animals that doesn't exist. Ivories from the first breath of a renewed life. A sacrifice to be made so that Festivities wouldn't raze Winter's heart to the ground.
— You must build a shrine. It doesn't quite matter where you'd put it as long as it important. The one who will hear your prayers will find you amusing, and think to entertain you.
— Festivities loves gifts, and even more so gifting them. He loves many things from wine to little bundles of dried up flowers, old liquor and the freshest of meat, old clothe stitched with tears and flesh and iron, bearing the weight of decades in it's hem. He loves them, and he will cherish them as much as he cherishes those who greets him.
— (He was cherished, too. Because those who were touched by death and tragedy were changed in a way that cannot ever be the same. They yearn for relief, pray and sing for it, and they sacrifice what needs to be sacrificed in order to achieve it. He was loved and he was heaven because all living things always loved to hope.)
— Festivities is a gentle wild thing and he will tear you apart the moment you forget who you are, but he will grieve for you for the way only gods could.
— Only go into the forest in the Spring and Summer, but not until the sun is drowned out by the beat of the void. There are things there that weren't always monsters, and have never been monsters or could've been monsters at all. As obsolete as the moon, as hazed as the rustling of pelts and the swish of ashen feathers.
— (Mabon loves Festivities. Samhain and Yule, too. Ostara and Litha spoil him, and Imbolc and Lugnasadh and Beltane kisses his hand. Festivities welcome them like a lover who cannot be loved.)
— If you find gifts on your windowsill, usually after dawn, be sure to return the favor and leave honeyed fruits at the edge of the meadows.
— They tell you you shouldn't give your name to the Faefolk, but you cannot change your name to the One Who Feasts. He already knew you from the moment you cried the first time, and every achievement that left you grinning.
— Festivities loves you like tragedy does to peace.
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biblical
Dasha “Dahlia” Tymoshenko x Samson Cohen (original characters)
NSFW CONTENT! MINORS DNI!!! 18+
cw/tw: asthma attacks, casual femdom, emotional blindness, religious topics
“You don’t have internet access?” Is the first thing Dahlia, Dasha, asks when she steps foot into the dusty apartment of his, and Samson thinks it’s all quite biblical.
She’s out of place here. In her pastel colour and her monotonous voice that only has a hint of an accent, the Cyrillic carefully excised from her speech as to not scare the sensitive American ear off. She’s out of place in the dusty apartment with velvet seats and wooden tables, relics of the 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s, knitted napkins all over the furniture. Nothing’s changed since the last owner, a lovely lady had died in here. He found her body on that very antique couch he spends his life upon now, found her last will which proclaimed him as the future owner of her apartment. He buried her with the utmost care, stood at her grave when her kids forgot about her. Moved in, without changing anything at all. Not even the light bulbs. It’s always dark in this apartment, always gloomy, the windows caked in grease.
“I don’t have internet access. I don’t have a cell phone or a laptop either. Only a landline downstairs.”
“How do you check your mail?” Dasha asks, and her nose is wrinkled in disgust when she looks at him.
“I don’t.”
“Well, how do you get your contracts?”
“I don’t.”
Her face is the same mask it always is as she allows the dancer’s bag drop to the floor, a cloud of dust dancing through the rancid, stuffy air.
He slowly steps around her, his bare feet planted into the carpeted floor.
“Would you like some tea?”
Her nose is still wrinkled in disgust when he appears in her field of vision. It wrinkles some more when his heavy breaths slice through the air. Damned asthma.
“No.”
“Why.”
“This place is disgusting. It reeks of death.”
Dasha’s voice is pleasantly monotone. No emotions to throw him off. Just the harsh truth.
Samson feels his lungs burn.
“I’d wash the mug really well.”
Dahlia doesn’t emote. Her eyes are still, fixed to his face.
“I still won’t drink from it.”
But she follows him as he backs away into the dusty kitchen, her thin neck sending cold chills down his spine, his eyes drawn to the protruding collarbones beneath her skin.
The big window barely lets in any light, like a church’s mosaic, greasy, privacy film on both sides.
There’s still a grocery list hanging on the yellowed fridge from it’s previous owner, the woman long dead but her presences still lingering.
He stops.
“You can sit here.” He points at a wooden chair. Imported. German.
He doesn’t use that chair. He only uses the other one, the left one. The right one, which he offers to Dahlia, is unused.
She eyes the wood, unimpressed. Eyes him. Tilts her chin up.
“Lick the seat clean.”
He doesn’t understand any jokes. He doesn’t understand any sarcasm, doesn’t understand most quotes or sayings, everything that isn’t said directly to his face throws him off. But Dasha doesn’t have a habit of veiling her speech.
And judging by the way she stares him down, she really means it.
“What.”
“I said, lick the seat clean. Are you hard of hearing?”
He’s not. Samson is a lot of things, but he’s not hard of hearing. It’s just strange request, really. The instructions are clear, but not the reasoning behind them. Still. He can’t bring himself to disobey.
Holding his long, black hair back, Samson leans down. His tongue presses flat to the wooden surface as he licks a long stripe down up the seat. Then another one. Then another. And another. Until the entire seat is damp with his spit, and his tongue holds a strange, earthy taste.
Then he leans up again. Looks at Dasha, expectantly.
Her sculpted eyebrow twitches. Her rosy lips open slightly.
“Good.”
She sits down. Crosses one leg over the other. Watches him, as he turns around, fills the kettle with water, prepares two bags of tea, pulls out two antique cups, two antique saucers. Fine china. Museum worthy.
While he waits for the water to boil, he turns to look at Dasha again.
“I will rinse your cup really well,” he says, again, like he’s pleading her to drink the tea he’ll make.
She doesn’t answer.
His hands shake a little while he pours the water into the cups. But Samson’s life was spent mostly around old ladies, old people, who taught him how he was ought to prepare tea. Not too sweet, placed onto the saucer alongside a petite spoon, a cube of sugar and a small cookie.
His cookies are dusty. Stored in a glass jar by their previous owner, they’re surely decades old, but he doesn’t have any others at hand.
Dasha watches him as he places her dainty cup of tea onto the table, then steps around the table to sit down.
“I don’t want you to sit at the table.” She says, slicing through the silent, hands folded in her lap.
“Okay.”
He can stand. That’s fine by him.
“I want you to kneel. Right here.”
Her foot points to a spot on the tiled floor.
That’s fine by him, also.
“Okay.”
He’s not graceful like she is. Most of his movements are robotic, like he’s pretending to be human, rather than is one. So getting down to his knees is a strange task. Very unfortunate. He manages, somehow.
His cup of tea, completed with the saucer, stands on the floor, beside him.
“Why did you obey?” Dasha asks, her face devoid of any of those confusing emotions he sees on other people.
“Because you wanted me to.”
She’s silent, lips pressed into a thin line.
“Hair back. I want to see your face when you talk to me.”
Immediately, he places the mug in his hands to the floor. He reaches for his hair, tucks it behind his ears, flips it as well as he can behind his back, before looking up at Dasha again.
“You’re very pale.” She comments, her nose wrinkling a little again.
Somehow, Samson wants to apologise.
“Your eyes are grey. Devoid of colour.” Dasha remarks again, like she’s dissecting his features, cutting lines into his face with a scalpel. “Absolutely no marks on your skin. And your nose is straight but also not.”
“I’ve been told I have a roman nose.”
“I didn’t ask.”
Samson licks his lips. Looks up at Dasha, fumbles with his fingers, before gaining the courage to pick up his cup of tea on the floor. Feels his skin itch, that he can’t hold the saucer in the other hand, but it’d also be strange to do so, in his current situation.
Dasha forces him to look up again, her foot underneath his chin, tilting it upwards.
“Describe your body.”
“How.”
“What do you look like underneath your clothes.”
“I don’t know.” Samson answers, truthfully. “I don’t like being undressed.”
“Are you hideous?”
“I think so.”
“Are you scarred?”
“I have a bad surgery scar from having my appendix removed.”
Dasha’s face contorts.
“That’s disgusting.”
Samson finally allows himself to take a sip of his tea.
Silence hangs heavily above them, as he drinks his tea in small, calculated sips. Dahlia doesn’t speak. She doesn’t emote, doesn’t try to make him feel comfortable.
“Don’t you feel uncomfortable living here, knowing there are corpses decomposing downstairs?”
Samson places the cup away.
“There hardly are any. I don’t get many customers.”
Dahlia purses her lips.
“So you’re a failure?”
Samson feels his fingers twitch, feels the overwhelming need to hide behind his hair.
“I am, yeah.”
“Don’t agree with everything I say.” Dasha says, her voice receiving an annoyed tint.
“Sorry…”
“And don’t apologise.”
“S-Sorry.”
She fixes her shirt. Tugs at the non-existent creases, fixes her perfect bun. Samson feels like his body is floating whenever he looks at Dahlia. Endorphins and dopamine poison his system, he feels giddy and void of any and all emotions at the same time.
His eyes lock to Dasha’s silky ballet flats, immaculate skin peaking out.
“Do you take pride in your work?” She asks, suddenly, and Samson’s head shoots up to continue looking at her.
A strand of black hair slips out from behind his ear, and Dasha’s eyes fixate on it.
“I do.” He doesn’t let her ask a followup question. “I personally ensure all coffins in immaculate shape. I hand-press the silk and I’ve been told I embalm the bodies to look alive.”
“So how come nobody comes to you.”
He doesn’t have an answer to that. He has a feeling it’s because of how he looks. How he acts. How he stares at people, unblinking, heavy breaths and trembling fingers. He’s a great professional in his field, all sorts of certificate upon his walls, but none of that seems to matter.
“I’m a failure.” He repeats her words, and Dasha clicks her tongue.
“That’s a broad statement.”
“You’ve said it yourself.”
“Why are you a funeral director,” Dasha interrupts him.
She’s true to her word; she doesn’t touch her mug. Her tea slowly grows cold.
“I like it.”
“Why.”
“There is something calming about it. I like helping dead people, helping them pass to God.”
“Do you believe in God?”
“Oh yes.”
“Why.”
That question throws him off.
He was raised by nuns in a small polish village, believing in God was something that he never questioned in his life. Going to church every Sunday is the only stability he has in his life. Getting to pray to God, a small sip of wine and the wafer dissolving on his tongue.
“Don’t you believe in God?” He asks, his breaths growing heavier with every second.
“No.”
His black hair slips from his shoulder, slips out behind his ear, covers half his face again. He scrambles to fix it.
“Samson is a biblical name.” Dasha says, as she watches him closely. “Someone gave you a biblical name.”
“The nuns at the orphanage did.”
“Did they give everyone a biblical name?”
He thinks for a moment. Thinks back to the polish village and the boys around him, to the nuns, dressed in black. Thinks back to the massive wooden sculpture of christ on the cross, the cold winters, the cruel words. Feels his chest tighten.
“Only me.”
Dasha’s eyes grow glassy, light hitting her green scleras.
“Why didn’t your parents name you. Why did you grow up at the orphanage.”
“They did name me. But they died in a car crash, the nuns gave me a new name. I’m the only one who survived.”
A cold, strange smile appears on Dasha’s face.
“Do you feel guilt? Knowing you’re the only one who survived?”
A fit of coughs rips through the air as the asthma attack finally envelops him fully.
The familiar panic of suffocations courses through his body.
“Answer me.”
He coughs, gasps for air frantically patting his suit for the inhaler. Dasha’s brow quirks.
“Why are you coughing?”
“A-Asthma…” He wheezes, choking, panicking, as he finds the thing he’s searching for, desperately tugs it out of his pocket.
Suddenly, Dasha is holding out her hand to him. Open palm and straight fingers.
He’s confused. Before he can think about it, he hands the inhaler to the woman, watches, as she lifts the small construction to eye level. Turns it in her hands.
“How funny that this little thing is the only thing that keeps you from choking.”
She traces the sides of it with her fingers, she turns it from side to side, toys with it.
He cough again. Wheezes for air as he reaches out for the inhaler with both hands. When Dasha doesn’t hand it back he feels everything inside him drop.
“M-May I?” He gasps, and she looks at him, her eyes half-lidded.
“What do you want.”
He rocks, impatiently, in one place on his knees, everything too much, the burning lack oxygen ripping through his lungs.
“I need to use my inhaler.” He gasps out, a sharp pain shooting through his chest.
“What if you won’t?” Dasha asks, none of her voice suggesting it’s a question. “What if I won’t let you."
“But I’d die.” He reiterates between coughs, his knees hurting from being planted into the kitchen floor for such a long time.
“Good.” She nods. “Wouldn’t you like it? You’d finally be able to test one of your coffins out.”
His lungs feel like bursting now.
He can feel his face grow red and hot as he struggles for air, his respirator high above him, held up by Dahlia’s angelic hand. The light hits it, forms a halo around it.
It’s all so biblical.
“Answer. Me.” She tilts her head. “Do you feel guilty that you’re the only one who survived? Do you feel guilty that you’re here and your parents are dead?”
Dasha eyes him down and he feels his vision blacken a little.
“I d-do! I feel guilty!” He coughs, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, palms meeting the floor as he doubles over, clutching his chest. Usually his attacks are never that bad.
He knocks over the cup and the saucer, sends the tea spilling all over the floor. Inhumane sounds leave his lips, echo against the cupboards, fill the kitchen as he feels himself loose the edge between life and death, his inhaler still in Dahlia’s hands.
Speech has left him, strength is leaving him, as he accepts his untimely demise, but before he’s able to do that, something tugs on his shoulder.
Dasha pulls him in to her chest, hoists him up, places the inhaler to his lips and presses down onto the top of the inhaler, shoots the much needed medicine right through to his damaged lungs.
“That’s it. Breathe.” She tells him, quietly, places a hand to his damp forehead, as he takes four long puffs from the inhaler.
Slowly, his lungs seem to expand. Everything around him gains clarity, as he gains the strength to reach with his both hands for Dasha’s tiny, dainty one, hold on to the inhaler and to her fingers, press them closer to his mouth.
“You’re a wreck.” Dasha states, mouths the words over and over again as she rocks him, against her chest, her hand icy cold, corpse like, as it presses to his forehead.
Finally clear oxygen rushes to his brain, rushes through his body, finally he can breathe again, and he gasps for air in desperate, greedy breaths. Tears spill down his cheeks, his nose runny and he’s sure he has red blotches all over his pale cheeks.
But Dahlia holds him. Both her arms locked around his chest, his arms limp, legs sprawled on the floor, his body a dead weight as he tries to gain some control over his limbs, but fails miserably.
His eyes flutter close as he relaxes completely. His mouth grows lax as he gives himself to the woman holding him, completely.
For what seems to be hours, they’re enveloped in silence. He’s enveloped into Dahlia, his hands hurting to hold her in return. He doesn’t remember the last time someone shook his hand, let alone held him. Touch starved, it messes with his brain, with his already delicate breath, with his fragile sanity.
He’d like to stay like this forever. For this woman to be in control of every single aspect of his life, to control the air in his lungs, to blur the lines between life and death. Even if this is their third time meeting, he has never been so sure of anything in his life. Never did anyone show him as much tenderness in his entire life.
He feels so overwhelmed, so good, so overstimulated by the physical touch, that even if she’d ask him to razor his hair down, he would. He’d be sobbing and wailing, but he would. He’d give up his life for her. He’d give up his God for her. He would.
She is the most beautiful creature he’s ever seen.
He’s her slave.
“Your lashes are so very long,” Dasha remarks, slicing through the silence once again. half lidded, brows furrowed. “Far too long.”
“I’m sorry,” he slurs out. And Dasha furrows her brows further, but she keeps quiet.
Despite still having a look of disgust upon her face, she brushes strands of his long, black hair out of his face, tucks it behind his ears.
“You’re not pretty.” She draws a conclusion, finally. “Not at all. You’re unpleasant to look at.”
He imagines his own corpse, pale and slightly yellowed, be placed out on the metallic desk in the basement, getting ready to have its blood replaced by formaldehyde and other chemicals. He imagines Dasha, Dahlia, standing above him, washing his body and combing his hair, dressing him in a suit, then transferring him to a coffin. Running her icy cold fingers down his cheek, making sure he’s perfect for his wake.
Blood hits his cheeks, warmth courses through his body. Awaken something within him, which he had never felt before.
“I’m sorry.” He apologises again, and suddenly Dahlia tugs at his hair, full force.
“I told you; stop apologising!”
His eyes lock to her fist, mesmerised, black strands of silk spilling from between her fingers, and Samson can’t fight the urge to smile any longer.
His smile is ugly, uncovers too much of his yellow, crooked teeth, it never hits his eyes, it’s too wide. It forces Dahlia’s nose to wrinkle worse than he’s ever seen it. She’s repulsed. She’s revolted. She startles when she sees it. She can’t seem to find what to say, her eyes glued to his mouth.
“You’re hideous.”
“I love you.” He replies.
Her eyes widen.
She holds him.
Like they’re La Pietà. Jesus and Magdalena. Samson and Delilah.
It’s all so biblical.
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