" CHOIR VANDALS "

[notch]

The sound of oblivion was melancholic. It humbled her, but she still ran from it.

Isobet knew the silence with explicit familiarity. Where at first she had been uncomfortable in its presence, antsy as any child would be, she had grown to find comfort in its company. Silence, after all, was far from evanescent. She could hear it always no matter how hard she threw her feet into the grass; when the thud and crunch dissipated, there the silence was, waiting.

She liked to think it waited for her with a smile. To think otherwise was to torment herself, so a smile it was, with outstretched arms into which she would wistfully fall. She liked to think they were friends at this point. It knew her secrets of which there were hardly any -- none, actually, but what mattered to her was that had she one or a hundred, those secrets would be soundly kept. The silence had eyes too that were gold with a welcoming glint. She told herself all of this so it would all be okay, and it was a ruse she was able to believe for a long time. Long enough, at least, to get herself here.

Wherever here was, she thought with a huff, and peered out of the treeline into the looming mist.

Nightfall had swept the clearing, and with it had come the fog. She could not see ten feet in front of her now matter how hard she squinted, and a terrible chill crawled up her spine. She must have turned the wrong way, not that she knew exactly where it was the sound of oblivion had chased her. She hung there by an old Oak in mild distress, her speckled and tragically beautiful face writ with blooming uncertainty. This was just like her, she knew. Get a wild hare about one thing and off she went! Tearing into nowhere particular as fast as she could, away from everything she thought she knew. Silly girl. So silly.

Nevertheless, her dilemma remained the same. She was lost and it was dark. She could not see through the fog or for the shadows. Her path was absent, and her heart was racing. Her only choice was to rest here for the night, but she could not even tell where that was.

Isobet was unsettled.

And, ever so softly, the sound of oblivion crept up behind her, took her by the shoulders, and sang.

reserved for Kezz

[Kezz]

MY ALLIGATOR BLOOD IS STARTING TO SHOW

Through the dark he laid eyes upon her, and in that moment, nothing beyond those wide eyes existed. Hollow lungs expelled breath contaminated by the depravity clinging to every fiber, every cell, as he ran his tongue along cracked lips. For it was as though he were staring into the casket of this starlit beauty, delivered to his door — his house of sin and bloodied gluttony. There was neither rhyme nor reason to the hunger in his barren cob-webbed heart, no explanation but that it was his nature to hunt, to possess, to consume. And as he stared through the gloom Gladriel found himself drawn closer, one step, two, no more — why, you might ask? Is a monster a slave to it's desires? Has it no self-control, no governance? He was a man without limitation, and that was the beauty of his self-sovereignty: rules, morality, fundamental laws were washed away with the blood he shed.

Gladriel might have exposed himself to her, but where would the fun be in that? True fear came not from others; it was born and harvested in the minds of millions. Let him linger in the shadows, face obscured from view so that they might instead envision their worst nightmare ( a dead brother, a victim of the past, the devil himself ) and let them scream whilst he took their throats between his gasoline-licked hands. This land was familiar to him; the tight cool air was a prescription to the heat which set his blood afire, it amplified his predatory senses, set his skin on edge. He inhabited these lonely slopes, picking the dead from his teeth — she would not be an exception.

"A single night upon the mountain can seem like an eternity."

notch i do apologise for taking 5ever. and i'm trying to find my feet with this guy!

[notch]

She could have been a diamond. She could have been yesterday's rain. She could have been a garden of nightshade, or a small hole in the atmosphere. Instead, she was this girl, the one you see now: she liked to sing even though she couldn't hold a tune; she danced, too, but only in stormy weather; and smiled when it was the most uncalled for. She was a mess of beautiful proportions, with the kind of untidy habits that would have made her grandmother turn over in her grave. No one ever looked at her and said though, "that's the girl my son will be bringing home." No one looked at her at all. She was a shadow colored gold in her own false sunlight. She was a whisper of light. A bubble of melancholy delight.

Some just called it oblivious, and perhaps she was.

Maybe for a fact she was.

She could have been anything though, and she still believes it, too. Isobet was not someone who stopped to think about tomorrow. She did not study the flight patterns of the clouds out of fear of a hurricane. She in fact did not fear much at all, which was more the crux of the matter than anything else. She was fearless in her ignorance. Fearless in the way she perceived the fog and then, so boldly, strode through it. She did not know what was on the other side and it struck her down rather direly to consider what might be. But that's what she was, wasn't it? She did not think to mind the consequences that could come. Didn't sense the predator lurking in the darkest corner of the mist. And because she did not think of it, he was not real. He could see her, but she could not see him. Did not even think him conceivable. His existence was but a figment, no more than the chill that traced lightly the dips of her spine.

But that chill, it lingered, suddenly.

"A single night upon the mountain can seem like an eternity."

And that chill grew words with punctuation and solidity, and slowly her head turned. It choked her. The syllables slithered into a silver noose that pulled with silken fingers at her throat. She swallowed. She tiptoed to the side, her eyes wide, wary. She felt that chill swell deeper and rise, but it was not to bloom in fear. "And how many eternities then," More, it was curiosity. More than that, it was a challenge, "have you lingered here." She held herself with swan-like aplomb, her mouth set in a faint line.

Kezz you're fine! C:

[Kezz]

ALL THAT WE ARE IS TWO MATCHING SCARS

He had never reached for glory, or fame, not like his brothers before him, or even his father. As a child he had lurked as he did still, but he had been a canvas yet tarnished, oil unlit, and so he had observed — watched as his father named Iscariot as heir, witnessed the lethargic obliteration of Fate and the open demise of his mother. But he'd strayed - far from the burning edges of the desert - because in the shadows he had found something, welcomed it into his bones and there it had nestled deeper. He hadn't minded, in fact, he had nurtured it; they had grown together, malice and boy. From the sidelines he'd prowled, contempt roaring across his lips, discarding his bloodline for the animus that he'd cultivated for himself.

Gladriel tilted his head back as the target reacted to him, lupine eyes penetrating through the murk of nightfall to lick along her frame callously, finding fault in the way she quivered not. And within he growled — vocal chords vibrating with a choleric distaste, disappointment even. For a predator would be lying if they denied the hit obtained through their prey's visible terror. But this was all a game, was it not? Entertainment to feed his morbid predilection, and satisfaction could be found in the chase.

"And how many eternities then have you lingered here."

"Too many," letters dripped from his tongue like thick hot magma, "not enough," undulating into the mist, contorted by the perverted smile that wrung his lips, " — I am yet to decide." And he shifted, driven by the hunger to smell her, taste her, devour her whole. There was something in the way this girl carried herself that irked Gladriel; who was she to assume her safety, that he was not a danger, that she could simply ride the southern winds into his territory without a single flicker of apprehension. Out of sight still, his teeth bared — turning grin into snarl.

"Come closer."

notch ccccc: