VESPER
Vesper lifts his pale eyes as his mother appears, the movement measured beneath the sudden brightness of her arrival. Safrin’s thoughts are not thoughts as mortals understand them, not corridors of want and memory and fear, but something vast and star-born, layered with old devotions, beautiful cruelties, and the endless pressure of a gaze that has watched kingdoms rise, kneel, and rot back into flowers. Even born beneath her light as he is, Vesper feels the edge of that immensity press against him, though he lets it pass over his mind like cold fire without mistaking endurance for mastery.
His mouth shifts faintly, though it does not become a smile, and after a small sigh he lowers his gaze toward the altar again. The snakeskin gleams between them, lovely and late, and the dagger’s star-tipped point catches the candlelight as if it means to accuse him with beauty rather than sharpness. It would be easy to place a reason beside them and call it honesty: the Family, King's End, Jack, the long tangle of duties and wounds, and Colt most of all, whose name still feels like pressing a thumb against an old bruise. He knows better than to offer any of it as an excuse, least of all to a mother who has already seen the shape of his delays from angles he has not yet faced himself. Letting his head hang a fraction in acknowledgement, pale hair slipping forward before one ringed hand stills it, Vesper exhales softly.
"I am too," he says at last, his drawl quiet beneath the silvered candleflame. That was the truth of it, though, for all his composure, surprise remains the cleanest name for what has lingered in him. He had thought he would set it down cleaner than this, that shame and grief and want would obey the boundaries he gave them, but Colt has remained threaded through the seams of things, quiet and stubborn and more difficult to remove than he’d had any intention of admitting.
His mouth shifts faintly, though it does not become a smile, and after a small sigh he lowers his gaze toward the altar again. The snakeskin gleams between them, lovely and late, and the dagger’s star-tipped point catches the candlelight as if it means to accuse him with beauty rather than sharpness. It would be easy to place a reason beside them and call it honesty: the Family, King's End, Jack, the long tangle of duties and wounds, and Colt most of all, whose name still feels like pressing a thumb against an old bruise. He knows better than to offer any of it as an excuse, least of all to a mother who has already seen the shape of his delays from angles he has not yet faced himself. Letting his head hang a fraction in acknowledgement, pale hair slipping forward before one ringed hand stills it, Vesper exhales softly.
"I am too," he says at last, his drawl quiet beneath the silvered candleflame. That was the truth of it, though, for all his composure, surprise remains the cleanest name for what has lingered in him. He had thought he would set it down cleaner than this, that shame and grief and want would obey the boundaries he gave them, but Colt has remained threaded through the seams of things, quiet and stubborn and more difficult to remove than he’d had any intention of admitting.
Will I ever quit playing with matches?
Why am I making angels in the ashes?
Why am I making angels in the ashes?
☆ has a pale star tattoo beneath his left eye, and freckle-sized constellations move across his skin
☽ hair changes from bleached blonde to brown
☆ telepathic: Sunlit Shadows | The user can read the surface thoughts and emotions of those within a 60ft radius. Control is excellent. Note: "Thoughts and emotions" include anything written in a character's narration in a post.
☽ hair changes from bleached blonde to brown
☆ telepathic: Sunlit Shadows | The user can read the surface thoughts and emotions of those within a 60ft radius. Control is excellent. Note: "Thoughts and emotions" include anything written in a character's narration in a post.
