[se] you can't prevent this
Mabel Occidendum


Age: 23 | Height: 5'7" | Race: Ascended | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#1
MABEL

The dark was lovely, the moon bright, and the shadows were her allies as she clung to them in the sultry fall of day. The world crested but didn’t mourn, not like they’d been doing for so many days and weeks. And she followed the wake of chorus bees returning to their hive, the wavering dance, the flight of music, a soothing balm to her ears – as if her mother and siblings were singing again in those few days not faced by anguish.

But they couldn’t and wouldn’t again.

Yet, she still persisted and listened, their hums and tunes making no sense or melody, but she had naught to add in their wake.

And then reality hit her, very, very quickly, the whereabouts she traced; and her eyes flickered to the outset of the Oasis. The glade mocked her, in its genuine, gentle lull, in the once-proud lures, where she’d dove down beneath its veneer without a care in the world. Something that now set her entirely on edge, backing away from the pool, and lingering in the scrape of the earth, staring it down from the embankments.
Let's go to war to make peace
Let's be cold to create heat
Henry Walker
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Age: 31 | Height: 5'11" | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#2
HENRY
I was waiting for something extraordinary
but as the years wasted on...
Wings carry him over the gentle currents of a fresh, Flowerbirth breeze. Henry can only feel the cold grip of night, numb to the sense of hope and renewal that a new year offers. Still, he leans into it as it ruffles through his dark feathers. He's not quite looking down at the ground as he flies. Tonight he's incapable of sleep. Memories haunt his fractured mind, slipping in through cracks he can't mend. At least the moon understands his plight of trying to light up the darkness. The gaze of the eagle spans across the starry sky as he shadows it.

Another shadow dwells beneath him, however, movement catching his sharp eyes. It's a figure he recognizes immediately, and his heart instinctively races to reach out. He pivots in the air, the eagle's beastly form blotting out the light above Mabel as he glides over her head. He lands heavily onto the ground, but no playful squawk escapes him, no friendly call offered to her.

He lands there among the razed earth, stilling as he draws in his massive wingspan. There's a moment where he does nothing, makes no move towards her, simply blinks at it all.

Then he's himself again. The eagle gives way to the man, and he looks at Mabel without really looking at her. "You're alive," he says, chin lifting towards her; it's a gentle acknowledgement that, in spite of her fears, she triumphed. But he knows it doesn't feel like it. "I'm glad." He means it, but his voice lacks any real enthusiasm or heart.
nothing ever did
unless I caused it
Mabel Occidendum


Age: 23 | Height: 5'7" | Race: Ascended | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#3
MABEL

The cosmic dance of the bees grounded her, far more so than the blades of grass beneath her bare feet, or the rocks giving way to the small ripples and pulses of the Oasis. She kept the panic in her gut, where it ravaged and savaged and contorted into some toiling, anxious multitude, and away from her features – that yearned and longed to grimace. Her limbs began to backpedal, a flight mode activated, until there were more shadows passing over and she had to look, had to know, had to see what was going on –

Not a threat, in the way the water was. Henry, conforming from the eagle motions (the very one she’d taken, greedily, from him a season ago), and she stilled. Spine ramrod straight, held together by very little except pride and mutiny, and he was quiet, too quiet, eerily so, and Mabel didn’t know what to make of it.

Or the words that flickered and followed through. Her fingers played on the edges of her shirt hem for a moment, as if to give them something to do rather than bolt like the rest of her craved; and her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Are you surprised?” She had been in some way. Shocked they’d made it at all. Stunned when her arrow had slipped into monsters. Bewildered when the everything had come crashing down around them.

Glad? He was glad?

Her face must’ve formed the perfect air of confusion, and she backed further away from the embankments, until she could sit upon a rock and not be so obviously reaching for a retreat. Unaware of the loss hovering over him, of how he’d been altered and changed, the youth swallowed down a length of bile. “How was your LongNight?”
Let's go to war to make peace
Let's be cold to create heat
Henry Walker
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Age: 31 | Height: 5'11" | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#4
HENRY
I was waiting for something extraordinary
but as the years wasted on...
He hadn't meant it that way, but he's too numb to care if he's offended her again. "Yes," he frowns thoughtfully at his blunt tones, recalling many of the lives lost to LongNight's tortures. Too many to count, too many he hadn't even known, and yet he still feels the loss of them all sharply now. Now that he knows how it is to lose those important to you to the monsters and darkness. "Everyone always dies," he offers as explanation, voice gritted by bitterness.

Mabel finds a place to seat herself and he barely notices the flighty look in her expression. Well, notices is perhaps the wrong word. He doesn't make much of it; he's so used to seeing it there, she appears as she usually is. What is there to make of it? She should be trying to escape, she should be running. She's not wrong, she's right and she's smart enough to know she is, and he won't make a move to mend those raw, raging feeling of hers anymore. He has too many of his own now.

"How was my LongNight?" He echoes, sounding disturbed by the question as his eyes widen with anger and his jaw clenches. "Oh, it was great, Mabel," his words seethe out sarcastically, "It's afterwards that was not. I returned to my entire family dead and gone and there's nothing left of it, not even the house or the fucking goats. Nothing, like it never even existed." His words are heated and biting but he's trying not to go over the edge or yell like he wants to.

"Yours?" His voice cracks then, showing his pain and weakness for just that brief second.
nothing ever did
unless I caused it
Mabel Occidendum


Age: 23 | Height: 5'7" | Race: Ascended | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#5
MABEL

The slow buzzing of the bees in their drowsy state was overshadowed, overwhelmed, by the unexpected cacophony of Henry. For once, all her attention segmented straight back to him – at the differences, at the platitudes, at the quite feral unknown, regarding him as if she’d never seen him before in her life.

Not with the bitterness, the rancor.

Surprised that she survived might’ve been offensive – perhaps he’d seen her as weak – but there were no words to segment edgewise as he began. The anger and open hostility, not towards her, but the world in general, had her hands and fingers gripping one another tightly, woven together in her lap, jaw clenching, chin raised, as if that was all she could do besides facing the bellows.

She flinched; hadn’t meant to. A cautionary, instinctual reaction, blinking away the aggression, the biting, that she hadn’t intended to unfurl. Something sharp and hot twisted in her gut, and she realized it could’ve been anything: anger, sorrow, injustice, eyes narrowing until they might’ve appeared dangerous. A mixture, a conflagration of emotions; same as him, but she’d lost everyone some time ago.

It wasn’t so raw now. Not when she had a plan of action. Knew what she wanted to do.

“I’m sorry,” she offered, because she was. Sorry Henry had to go through that. Sorry LongNight had taken more and more and more, because of the Sparkbird and any other feverish onslaughts. Sorry there was nothing to return to. Sorry that another family had been claimed by the wake of its terrors, trials, and tribulations.

Mabel almost said naught at all about her own venture, and when it did come out, the tones felt hollow, barbed and bare against her fangs. “The barracks caught on fire, so we had to escape. Some stayed behind.” Gone; done in. “We ran to the jail and stayed there. Fought off the monsters that got in.” Survived.

On impulse, her eyes flickered back towards him again, away from the muted ground or the ripples in the glade. “Do you have somewhere to stay?”
Let's go to war to make peace
Let's be cold to create heat
Henry Walker
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Age: 31 | Height: 5'11" | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#6
HENRY
I was waiting for something extraordinary
but as the years wasted on...
Henry can hear the bees stirring around them, around Mabel's meaningless apology. His gaze drifts over towards their multitudes, where they float and roam slowly, harmlessly. "Yeah, me too," he mumbles, eyes narrowing as his brows lower over them. His heart feels hollowed out and tears swell at the edges of his eyes, but he draws them back with a heavy effort.

He lifts and tilts his head to her when she explains how things went on her side of things. He nods curtly when she explains how some of them stayed behind, understanding the implication but not doing much else with it. He tries to imagine it, what that must have been like. Didn't seem like much of a fair fight and he couldn't blame any of them for not being too ready for it. How do you prepare for the end?

Before he can say anything, though, she asks him a question and he raises his brows in surprise. "Yes, a spare room in the Domiciles. It's not home, but it will do," he sighs. There's no intention to bring this weight upon anyone else, only to carry it himself, alone and aimless. "For now, until I.." his voice trails, and truthfully he can't even begin to imagine rebuilding the farm. Not because of what it would take but because of what could never be replaced. Family, memories, the good and the bad... "until I rebuild. I have to."
nothing ever did
unless I caused it
Mabel Occidendum


Age: 23 | Height: 5'7" | Race: Ascended | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#7
MABEL

She felt like a bird for a moment – tiny and insignificant, maybe a swallow, a songbird, hiding and ducking between nettled branches and thorns. Mabel never had the right thing to say in these moments – carved out of her own grief into something mad and vicious, once dead and brought back to life by the grasp of her claws and faith in her Goddess. She’d lost too many too young, until it almost became habitual to watch the rest of her family perish, no matter what she did. “I didn’t have to use your shift,” she offered at last, eyes going towards the bees instead of him. “So Aamu and I went to King’s End with them.” On eagle and dragon wings, until they’d had their fill and plotted out resurrection.

It was wonderful she wanted to offer, but couldn’t, didn’t know how.

At the very least Henry had a place to stay – and she nodded, hands still wringing together. Edgy, flighty, wanting for nothing more than to ghost and peel away again, and remaining tied and tethered to her rock while the babble of the brook hastened by, while the melody of insects droned along in simple hums.

Mabel thought of what it meant to rebuild. Of her old farmhouse, largely empty save for her and Aamu, put back together again by the kindness of strangers and the ambience of striving, trying, and rising back up again. More and more and more. “Let me know if you want help.” Not that she’d be much good – but it would be something.
Let's go to war to make peace
Let's be cold to create heat
Henry Walker
Advisor

Age: 31 | Height: 5'11" | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#8
HENRY
I was waiting for something extraordinary
but as the years wasted on...
Henry eyes her when she admits she didn't have to use the shift he'd given to her, but he's not upset about it. Especially when she says she'd taken it to King's End. This prompts a small, knowing smile to his lips and he lifts his head, to look up towards the dark sky. "I'm glad you didn't need it after all," he says simply, adding on, "the eagle is a proud animal. Much better for exploring and hunting than... fleeing. How did it feel to you?" A release, he calls it, but maybe she got something different out of it.

His ghost of a smile leaves him as he gives her an answer on where he's staying. It's not home, and it's not exactly great, but it's a bed; a warm place to stay, quiet, left-alone. It's all he could really ask for at this dark time in his life. A place to process in peace.

"I'll need it," he sighs heavily at her offer, "but I am not sure... what I'll build in its place. I doubt I can even run a farm on my own. My father made that pretty clear..." he shakes his head, the buzzing of a nearby bee catching his muted attention. It floats closer. He puffs out a breath of air and watches as it hovers away from the pressure.
nothing ever did
unless I caused it
Mabel Occidendum


Age: 23 | Height: 5'7" | Race: Ascended | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#9
MABEL

At least she’d prompted somewhat of a smile; even if it was worn, barely there, on vestiges and ethers. And Mabel didn’t care to wonder why that even mattered. “I shot arrows instead,” she admitted; mildly disappointed that her knives hadn’t come into play. There would be other moments, she supposed, and resolved something in the back of her mind for another day. “It was lovely,” the youth continued, a firm nod hastened, intermingling with the light chorus of the bees, still unsettled around the limbs and boughs of the nestled trees. “It was nice to fly. To see everything.” To have that power in her clutches, in her grasp. She'd do it again without hesitation.

And then the grin was gone, and hers was too, eyes inclined more to the ground, ears catching hold of the melody the insects made, latching onto that, rather than the ripples in the water.

“It’s difficult to farm here,” the Ascended stated at first, hands clenching together, forging onward with the thoughts – having lost her family to the ineptitude of the land, the harsh soil, the constant striving and trying to pray their way to salvation. None of it had worked. “Is there anything else you’d want to do with it?”
Let's go to war to make peace
Let's be cold to create heat
Henry Walker
Advisor

Age: 31 | Height: 5'11" | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#10
HENRY
I was waiting for something extraordinary
but as the years wasted on...
Henry snorts at her revelation of shooting arrows instead, and he looks over at her with raised brows. "Are you supposed to shoot something other than arrows?" It's a bit of humor within the darkness he feels, and though his heart isn't in it, it still lightens the weight resting on him.

He relaxes and nods in understanding. "It's one of the best gifts I've ever been given," he comments, not caring too much what anyone thinks of his obligation to the Old Gods. It's not within his abilities to go back on it now, so he might as well appreciate what little he has left of himself.

Mabel's declaration of the difficulty of farming is an understatement. Henry's family had, by some stroke of luck, managed to keep the farm for generations. Now, though... he isn't sure if he could salvage any of it. "I don't know, Mabel," he admits, because he also isn't ready to abandon the heart of his home, "maybe I will ask Frey for guidance. Or... the Voice."

He turns to more fully face her now, lowering his chin. "Would you fly again?" He asks pointedly, "If you could, would you want to?"
nothing ever did
unless I caused it
Mabel Occidendum


Age: 23 | Height: 5'7" | Race: Ascended | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#11
MABEL

She fidgeted and squirmed under the semblance of the “joke”, discomfort evident in the reel of her wrinkled nose; destroyed plans, perhaps. “I didn’t have much practice with them before,” she admitted, eyes on the ground, one of her hands desperate to toy restlessly with the knife hidden on her form. She didn’t, but the thought was still there all the same.

Nor did Mabel have anything to say about the “gifts” of the Old Gods, of the Attuned natures, considering she’d recently used one, and appreciated the semblance in the same breath. Maybe all of them had their place in the world, and Henry had found his, and she wandered along the outside, looking in, glancing towards those already well-fitted and orchestrated to their means, to their measures.

She only lifted her eyes from the wisps of greenery, or the lonely chorus bee settling for one last piece of pollen on a flower, at his semblances of asking Frey or the Voice. A sterner edge settled upon her jaw, as if she fought along the realm of defiance, curiosity, or something lodged in between. Her parents had begged and pleaded to each and every Old God for their success, for their crops to rise, for the bounty to be plentiful and nourishing, and Mabel had watched as year after year after year, nothing much came to fruition. Her farmhouse still stood, but the rest of its world was barren. But what would an Old God worshipper do at the shrine of their Brightened goddess? “And what will you ask?” A question, rather than the act of bitterness and sedition threatening to spoil across her tongue. It likely would’ve ruined the next statement anyway.

Every proportion of her body stilled, gaze widening slightly. “Yes,” she claimed with no hesitation, no uncertainty.
Let's go to war to make peace
Let's be cold to create heat
Henry Walker
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Age: 31 | Height: 5'11" | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#12
HENRY
I was waiting for something extraordinary
but as the years wasted on...
Henry nods, remembering their little battle of wits and wills. "You prefer knives, if I remember right... Why?" It felt like ages ago that they'd last stood beneath the cover of night together, when he'd been trying to give her hope - or more than that; freedom. She could have used the shift to take her far away from here, from this desolate place. What a shame that she didn't, and what fools they all were for remaining. He suddenly scoffs at himself, though it's ill-placed and he offers no context behind it.

He notices the way her jaw fixes, recognizing that little fire within her. He takes no emboldened offense from it, giving her a piercing look of his own as if to say that he already knows. He's not their biggest fan, either, not some pious little boy with wide eyes and naive fantasies. But he also doesn't plan to set himself against them. Not entirely, at least.

"Of the Voice?" He raises his brows and then trails into a lackadaisical statement, "I'm sure she'd have more questions than me if that happens." Truthfully he doesn't know. He's barely holding on as it is and any lifeline would be great right about now. He wouldn't have the room to complain about where it comes from. "What would you ask from her?" He counters, but maybe he's just curious.

His expression softens at her immediate answer and he tilts his head to one side. "Do you want to fly with me?"
nothing ever did
unless I caused it
Mabel Occidendum


Age: 23 | Height: 5'7" | Race: Ascended | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#13
MABEL

Why? Because she’d been born into a world that required the serrated edge, the dagger in her hand, the restlessness etching and sketching a needlework of compositions and hellholes. Because the hilt of a keen instrument had never failed her. Because she’d cut away the bridges and torrents. Because she’d dug in and found something to hold onto, even if it was the jagged threshold of vengeance and hard won survival. “They’re familiar. I’ve known knives all my life.”

She rolled her shoulders and fixed her eyes on waving blades of grass once more, listening to the idle buzzing, the songs she didn’t have, didn’t know, couldn’t place. Maybe she wasn’t made of those entanglements anymore either.

He didn’t answer her though, and her gaze rounded back to him on a more narrowed scale. Dodging, reeling away, pressing it back upon her. But she had her response ready, on the tip of her tongue, always there. “I want more information about who murdered my sister.” Stare unblinking and fierce, to watch and gauge his reaction. “So I can do the same to them.” Honest and forthright – plans for destruction and revenge. And if it was to be a vicious cycle, then so be it.

But then everything else softened and she had a difficult time following the tracks and lines – a quizzical tilt to her head, to her brow, to the way he constantly offered himself over. She nearly told him he was better than that. But perhaps he wasn’t. “Yes,” came again instead.
Let's go to war to make peace
Let's be cold to create heat
Henry Walker
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Age: 31 | Height: 5'11" | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#14
HENRY
I was waiting for something extraordinary
but as the years wasted on...
Henry nods once, simply, at her answer. He's not partial to any one weapon, but then again he's also not much of a fighter. More of a lover, probably, but he's always tried so hard to be something more; more than a farmer's son, more than a boy attuned by Frey, more than.. he really is. Realizing that hurts, cuts a wound deeper than any knife could.

He meets her narrowed gaze without flinching, too numbed by his own pain and turmoils to be slighted by her coldness now. "I'm sorry... about your sister," he says, voice heavy and sighing. As he adds on this part, it also cracks with pain, "I wish I could do something to help you."

Henry presses his bottom lip inward, teeth grazing over the skin and tearing a bit of the top layer off thoughtfully. He doesn't mind this process, truly, even as he deliberates over it now. Thus, he moves towards Mabel with slow, steady steps. His gaze fixes on her, but there is no excitement or smile shared even though he wants to fly with her, too. He pulls back the sleeve on his arm, revealing the shiny scar she's left him there from before. "This time, it will be on our terms. No other reason than because we want to," he murmurs, holding it out for her to take. He raises his brows a fraction, "if you meant it."
nothing ever did
unless I caused it


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