#mythboundmuses: delirium

[nightmarecountry-a]

[RUFFLE] - sender ruffles receiver's hair. - from delirium

Truth be told, he nearly ducks it at first; the hand of an Endless coming at him unexpectedly is something anything with any sense would generally try to avoid, or at least he thinks so.

But Delirium only ruffles his hair, seemingly tickled by something he'd said, and the nightmare has a strange and somewhat jarring feeling of having done something right.

He pushes that thought away for later.

"Oh, I mean it," he says lightly, as if she'd never touched him. "You say the word, and I'll create something in a dreamer's sleeping mind so twisted it'll send them right into your waiting arms the moment they wake. A little group project. "

[formshaper]

❝ has anyone told you that you’re sort of a little bitch? ❞ [affectionate. Delirium @ dream. ]

There is a long pause. One might begin to wonder, in such a silence, if they had spoken out of turn.

Then, his tone unchanged:

"Yes."

[betterdcyz]

@mythboundmuses​​ requested for The Corinthian:  [ OFFER. ]  after noticing the receiver hasn’t fed in a few days / weeks, the sender offers to let the receiver feed from them. - delirium @ Corinthian. She doesn't really have blood as such so... He might be in for the trip of his life. (   *  ―  VAMPIRIC STARTER PROMPTS .  / accepting !! )        

          It’s different from blood—  it doesn’t even taste like blood.  It felt like or tasted like it had a multitude of stuff going on.  Like it couldn’t decide what it wanted to be.  It was so reckless of him to even taste a drop of her so-called-blood.  He pulls away,  and suddenly he felt weird.  His vision was like a kaleidoscope;  everything was moving,  circling around,  distorting and changing.  It was almost discomforting to see this with his own eyes.  ( Or his eye mouths. ) 

[acourtcfmuses]

“You think I actually wanted to come to this? I was just hungry.” Delirium @ dream

He couldn’t stop the hint of a smile at his youngest sibling’s words. Truth be told, he hadn’t wanted to come either, but he had made Death a promise that he was going to be more present in their family’s lives and apparently that included the great grandchildren of Desire’s birthday parties. Well, Jed’s, Rose apparently was too old for parties. It had been a long time since they’d had children in the family. “Look how happy Jed and Rose are that we’re here though.” He was still learning how to interact with mortals, but it did bring a smile to his face to see them so happy after everything. / @mythboundmuses​

[nightmarecountry-a]

“Come watch the sunset with me.” - Del (madness sunset)

It's easy to forget, in Madness, that there's anything else waiting for him outside of it. A duty and a purpose he was made for; his ravenous hungers; his shame, the hollow spaces inside him that Delirium's realm helps to fill. If Delirium were not his anchor in this place he would probably lose himself to it.

"Sure," says the Corinthian, words spilling into scarlet-black colour in the air, and he lets her lead him by the hand to somewhere upside-down and terrifying, dark as a film reel and just as fragile. Beyond them, or maybe inside them both, a star is collapsing: a sun turning in on itself, shaking apart, sinking low low low beneath a fathomless horizon--

The Corinthian watches it, this parody of a sunset that would drive a mortal mad, and wraps his arm around Delirium's shoulders to tug her in against his side.

[nightmarecountry-a]

i know my disposition gets confusing . - delight. mayhaps... when she is becoming delirium?

The nightmare smiles at her, polite and sharp. It doesn't know Delight well, isn't sure an Endless can be known well, but even something as newly-made as him can see that she is changing. Droplets of colour scatter from her sometimes, and her voice goes strange--but it's her eyes that the Corinthian really notices. They're different now, always changing, usually subtly--but the Corinthian always sees it.

"Yes," it agrees, inclining its head politely. "Do you know what is happening to you, Lady Delight? My lord Morpheus will not say, or cannot. I don't dare ask him twice."

[nightmarecountry-a]

[thought bublé (michael's younger brother)] how does he feel about del asking him to keep her company when she visits the dreaming?

FHCFKGJFG YOUR JOKE. AWFUL.

I think at first, it probably grates on him a little. He'll do it, because it's a break in routine and he likes Del's company, but there's a part of him that protests against it purely because she's Endless and also god forbid anyone ask the Corinthian to do anything for them.

Eventually, though, he takes to it: he likes that she wants him around, and he especially likes that she's fun to spend time with.

I think the second Corinthian would like her just as much, as well, though it would take him a bit to fully understand that she gets what it's like to have been one thing and then another.

[nightmarecountry-a]

tackle.  for your muse to tackle my muse to the ground. - del. [puppies.]

She's half his size but Endless, and just as amorphous as him - the Corinthian topples, laughter surprised out of him. Wheatgrass and flowers burst into colour underneath them; the Corinthian hooks an arm around Delirium's waist and wrangles her, growling good-naturedly, the two of them scuffling like pups instead of the powerful beings they are. From the Corinthian's pockets, weird glittering eyeball-looking things roll out; Delirium's skin and hair kaleidoscope under his hands; his own hands tingle and drip with kinetic sand under her influence.

Weird.

He doesn't mind it.

[nightmarecountry-a]

👄 + a very sour sweet from del

He doesn't even think to question what she's putting in his left ocular mouth: something bright and swirly and sweet-looking is all he registers, and thinks yeah okay looks fine shortly before a sourness like an electric shock explodes over his tongue. The Corinthian looks startled, then repulsed--then thrilled.

"Did you make these?" His other mouths are talking, because the one with the sweet in it is drooling uncontrollably like it wants to water down the taste. It's intense enough to hurt, and he doesn't mind it at all. "Tastes like a gun going off."

[nightmarecountry-a]

❝ i endured it for as long as i could. ❞ - del

It's rare that the Corinthian feels anything even remotely like a desire for vengeance. Even his attempts to get rid of Dream--that wasn't vengeance, it was business. A means to an end; a method of securing his freedom, getting rid of the only threat to it, and that was that.

This, though.

Delirium is the closest thing he has to a friend, and she was almost taken from him. If she hadn't been freed--who knows how far she might have retreated into herself? Aspects of the Endless are not invincible, and Delirium has already undergone... changes of some kind, before. She might have been taken from him. It's hard not to feel a little murderous about that.

"Yeah, you did," he tells her. They are moving through the Dreaming; the Corinthian doubts very much that Madness is safe for anyone but Delirium right now, and he likes having his mind in one piece. He has carried her physical form the whole way. "Don't worry. They won't lay a hand on you again."

After he is certain she'll be safe here, he's going to make certain of it, Dream's rules be damned.

[nightmarecountry-a]

I’m gonna have to let him hug me, aren’t I? - del

"Not if you don't want to," says the Corinthian pleasantly. "You can always just..." He makes a little pop sound, mimicking breaking someone's wrist.

[nightmarecountry-a]

❛   lean .   lean  on  my  muse’s  shoulder . - delirium.

They're sitting high up atop a strange, obsidian structure on the shore, gazing out at the waters of Nightmare together. Strange, half-formed nightmares breach the surface now and then, swimming clumsily towards the sandy shore, where they inevitably fall apart and become part of it. Every so often, the Corinthian sketches one out in the journal on his lap and lets Delirium bleed colour into it.

He is, technically, shirking his duty right now. He should be in the water finding a sleeping mind to hunt in, not trading stories and jokes with the Endless at his side, or letting her doodle in his stolen notebook.

Somehow, though, he doubts Dream is going to notice. And as long as he doesn't, the Corinthian can do what he likes.

"You make things too, right?" he asks, when Delirium leans into his shoulder. He doesn't shy away. "Beings, like your brother does?"

He pushes the notebook into her hands. The pen too.

"Show me one."

[nightmarecountry-a]

❛   tousle .   mess  playfully  with  my  muse’s  hair . - dellie [ she is standing on something to be able to reach. ]

"Hey." He leans away like a cat avoiding being pet, and pushes his foot against the box she's standing on to slide it--and her--farther away from himself. Vain as ever, the Corinthian runs his hands through his hair to smooth it back down, stopping only when he's certain he looks as neat and unruffled as he did before.

Then, as a show of friendship, he offers Delirium his hand to help her step down from the crate. She hasn't annoyed him that much, it seems.

[nightmarecountry-a]

“  you don’t belong in my world.  but i do want you here.  and if you choose to stay,  i won’t let anything hurt you.  ” - delirium [ ok but. what if Corinth went to Madness for a while. Idk. Your choice of vibes here. ]

Madness is both exactly and nothing like he had imagined it to be. The lack of order, the chaos--the Corinthian does not have to look very far to find something that appeals to him, hot and red and violent. He finds he can never find the same thing twice, but that doesn't bother him. It is a change from the Dreaming (though it reminds him of some deep corners of it), and that is all he craves.

"That's sweet of you," he says, grinning at her through a pair of particularly garish, heart-shaped shades that had replaced his usual ones at some point since their arrival. "But I can take care of myself."

She likes him. An Endless treats him like a friend. That's more than he can say of anyone in the Dreaming; maybe even of anyone in the Waking World, though few people survive being around him long enough to try making friends anyway.

He doesn't belong here. On a very literal level; he is not made for Madness. The separation from his own creator's realm doesn't hurt, not at all, but it feels a little like a string being tugged around his wrists now and then, calling him back. He could probably live with it.

"I like it here," the nightmare admits. He flicks a passing cut of meat towards Delirium and watches as it disintegrates into its base elements then reforms into a splash of colour and sound. It's dizzying to watch. "But if I'm going to be anywhere other than the Dreaming... It's going to be the Waking World."

[nightmarecountry-a]

[CHOKE] - Sender grabs the receiver by the throat. - delirium [she is playing. This is a platonic fun kind of choking. Don't ask me.]

It is a platonic fun kind of choking, which is a kind of choking the Corinthian has never had before, and that he wouldn't have expected he'd enjoy, much in the same way he wouldn't have expected to be sparring with one of the Endless in a particularly whimsical corner of the Dreaming.

He wheezes, gripping Delirium's wrist. Her bones, or approximation of bones, feel bird-like and breakable in his hands--but the nightmare only vanishes, blinking out of sight like a shadow at the corner of the eye. In almost the same instant, he is behind her again, reaching for the back of her neck like scruffing an unruly cat.

He's having a great time.

[nightmarecountry-a]

❝ i tend to babble when i’m nervous. ❞ - delirium

They walk arm in arm like a genteel human couple taking a stroll; a preening nightmare and a jittery Endless, wandering through the gardens and forests of the Dreaming like it were the most ordinary thing.

"I'm getting that," says the nightmare, sounding amused. "Lord-Shaper's is not the most reassuring presence - even to his siblings, it seems."

Morpheus had only been there for a few minutes, just long enough to greet his sibling and apologise for his imminent departure - and to regard his nightmare with a look that plainly told him, without words, to behave while Delirium was present.

"Well, he's gone," the Corinthian continued smoothly. "Nothing more for you to be nervous about."