that gracefully, gratefully grasped her aerial frame.
Subtly curled lashes clutch swains' attentions to linger
upon a pair of wintry blue jewels - her eyes.
It is said she was a gift from the Gods themselves -
refined beauty, an alluring conundrum,
the prosopopeia of the feminine existence.
Even the most angelic and divine of presences
may sustain the density of anguish;
and on such tender shoulders?
A maiden once rich with holy poise
left - fell from this Earth with only an alabaster feather
and an air of generous woe to enshrine.
---
Ilya made what looked to be a protective wall of tomes, scrolls and ancient-smelling, hardback literature upon the train from Berlin to Istanbul. An unusual mingling of grunge-esque albums and classic composition rang in her ears, and she shamelessly sang along - off tune, no less - as she scrutinized the antiquated sheet of what was left of an epic poem dedicated to a maiden of Constantinople. With the assistance of anything Ilya could lay her hands upon throughout the libraries of Germany, she made a seemingly clear disclosure that there was a woman, lasting throughout history, of supernatural descent. There were aged and rotting paintings of a similar being; poetry and prose spoke of her beauty and frigid demeanor, as if she were some untouchable, eternal idol of every era. She was perplexed, interest piqued and nearly vibrating with a sense of discomposure.
Upon her arrival -- well, days after, rather -- Ilya had been gifted more gracious knowledge that lead her to what she believed was the living source of this icon. It was a well-known woman of this cultivating city she had her eye on, and even tracked commonly visited destination upon destination to run into her. At the moment, Ilya stood against the structure of a painted-brick building of an eclectic street, nearly every establishment 'tagged' with a unique mural of many a street artist's work. And it was as though the piece of that poem, folded and snug in her back pocket, was burning a hole in the washed denim of her jeans. She waited for a face, a sign -- anything.
"I do not want to be human - I want to be myself. They think I am a lion, that I will chase them. I will not deny I have lions in me. I am the monster in the wood. I have wonders in my house of sugar. I have parts of myself I do not yet understand."
Post by Avina Paccius on Mar 31, 2016 23:26:37 GMT -5
She loved nothing more than to mourn on the glory long gone of what use to be the ancient city the gods had bestowed their favor on. As she took her walk down the thickly-paved street, memories haunted her, with echoes that never truly died with their owners. Avina let the wind bathe her in the salt from the seas that have always remained on both sides of the city that could not.
It was an early morning, before the work rush. This was when Paccius had time to herself, time to be free to herself. Though it was already sprawling with people, you could find many a street with nobody to watch you. Tourism was not a commodity until noon...and so, approaching the shattered ruins of a basilica once dedicated to the goddess Venia...it was as if the warmth and compassion of this truly divine being still radiated from within the soul of the great structure. But of course, that was not true. Avina knew most of all that no god existed; only religion existed. Her past had seen these cuts made, and seen them deep.
Feeling the eyes of none, her blackened wings fazed from her flowing dress that resembled a floral sea of blues and greens and turquoises, and then the wind began catching at the dark feathers that rained the shape of her aerial freedom.
Lancing forward, the wind clasped against her chest and slithered to her shoulders, through her hair, and on to her wings. Avina took to the air, and found her freedom once more. She let her wings stop motion, and fall to the ground. Before the drop that would inexplicably end her life, she'd recuperate and rise once more.
"This is how father should have seen me..." she mumbled with not a tear in sight. Her haunting a could not touch her; not in the way they use to. She was the incarnation of grief. She was the remnants of a woman, no longer capable of any emotion that threatens to be labeled as 'happy', 'jealous'...only the roots of anger, daring, and amusement were left. It wasn't always like this...
And then she saw the silhouette of a female figure down below, and knew that if she could soar just a bit higher, Avina Paccius would be an eagle soaring through the sky above a wind-blown city. But then she got to analyzing...why would a human be near the Patrician District (or what's been modernized of it) at nearly six in the morning? It did not take long to raise a welt of suspicion in the trouble woman...and so she held her head down in an arc, and dove towards the woman with her wings flattening as she dropped altitude. As she fell from the sky, she could feel what was the closest thing to fulfillment and happiness she would ever feel again...
Last Edit: Mar 31, 2016 23:56:25 GMT -5 by Avina Paccius
Ilya had paid no mind forward to watch the sky for a possible arrival of the person she was looking for -- and honestly, she should have with what brewing ideas she felt in her gut after her studies. It was only when the flat, ash locks of her hair began to sway with a breeze that wasn't from the weather, that she craned her neck to peer cloud-ward. A mass welled in the pit of her throat, and it was as though her stomach was suddenly churning a dense combination of nerve and exhilaration -- this woman, this angel of a woman pried a substantially important part of Ilya mediocre detective work by appearing before her with an immense pair of wings. WINGS.
Ilya pressed her frail frame against the chilling architecture, eyes never leaving Avina; it was almost surreal seeing her, the creature she had spent months studying, digging for knowledge of her in the most archaic of literature with trembling hands. Avina was real, and she was here, flesh and feathered. She rested her hands against the ruins, fingertips tracing the cracks and indents of the stonework as she ogled -- and she would ogle for minutes and minutes, what felt like an eternity, before releasing a single pairing of words in a breathless tone:
"Oh, shit."
Articulate, that Ilya. Utterly elegant first words.
Last Edit: Apr 3, 2016 23:24:53 GMT -5 by Ilyα Cяσw
"I do not want to be human - I want to be myself. They think I am a lion, that I will chase them. I will not deny I have lions in me. I am the monster in the wood. I have wonders in my house of sugar. I have parts of myself I do not yet understand."
Post by Avina Paccius on Apr 1, 2016 22:37:54 GMT -5
She was human. A mortal. Weak with the curse of flesh's age. She would have attacked me had she been immortal, the angel deducted.
The light was dim, so the shadows cast a mold that was false akin to what this human really looked like. Avina wanted a closer view. Her wings had closed and changed into nothingness within the bones of her backside. The free-flowing dress that danced along with every stir of the wind gave her a seductive confidence that she never knew she could have...or perhaps that was an illusion, and what she felt was a lesser sense of emptiness.
The angel held out her hand to the tourist (she clearly wasn't from around here; most women wore hijab and abbayas...of course, Avina never did and she lived here her whole life).
"An amazing feat, really..." Avina feigned embarrassment with a shy tilt of her head. "I'm Julia. Who are you?"
Jack is an average, unassuming guy. He stands bashfully, avoiding eye contact as he looks around at everything except the person he's speaking with. A closer look. however, will reveal more.
Beneath this carefully neutral appearance, Jack's body is lean and efficient. He's slow to anger and behind his bashful demeanor is an assertive individual observing his environment with an almost predatory nature.
Post by Jacksoπ Flεtchεr on Apr 1, 2016 22:54:15 GMT -5
In between intermittent mouthfuls of candy, Jack glanced around, taking in the sights and such, memorizing things. He wasn’t headed anywhere in particular, really. In fact, you might even say the young man was thoroughly lost. You see, he'd never been to this part of the world. Jack traveled a lot, mainly for work, but now he was trying his hand at sight seeing, trying to travel for fun, too.
Somehow he ended up where Ilya was, though the young man didn't see her at first. Jack kept darting his eyes around, turning his head this way and that. Earlier, he'd laughed at the idea of grabbing a map, figuring it couldn't be too hard to find his way, right? Well, he'd been wrong, that was abundantly clear now. It had occurred to him that he could probably just teleport home or back to where he'd started but Jack was just too stubborn to take the easy way out. At least, not while he still had candy left, anyways.
Eyes up now, the young man gaped, staring so hard that his eyes practically bulged from his head. Jack just couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Well, he could believe it, he just didn’t want to. An angelic being was, like, totally floating down and stuff toward some woman. The young man felt like he'd stumbled into a movie, wherein the dying heroine receives a visit from heaven or somesuch.
So, the angel's wings, like, melted into her? Whaat. It was like magic or something. Though he could tell words were being exchanged, Jack decided to approach. He wouldn't interrupt or anything, but when he got the chance, the young man would ask "Um. Am I interrupting something? Sorry, but I'm totally lost."
Ilya cracked the most wickedly amused of grins at the introduction, breaking the spell, daze of perplexity -- and she wasn't buying it, the winged one's opening, but she would save her incessant dredging of minute-lies for a later time. Although this 'spell' was broken, Ilya was still affected by her physical beauty; the prose spoke truthfully, and Ilya bored her clouded, curiously-narrowed eyes into Avina a point longer before accepting her hand with both her own. The Scot still held wee pleasantries of her homeland, that was certain, as she jounced her hand in a firm shake.
"Julia," Ilya echoed, pleased, her head bobbing to and fro in a lazy sort of nod. "Ilya -- me. I mean, I'm Ilya, and not a caveman." A single clear of her throat before continuing, "And I -- er, you -- you've got a nice face, ayup." A pause. "Shit, what am I saying?"
"Ilya Crow. I think your--" And her words were cut short, thankfully, by the arrival of Jack. She had never been more indebted to set her sights on a stranger, sincerely, as it shut her running mouth up for the time being. She flickered her glance between the two, as if expecting Avina - the presumed local - to grace Jack with a reply, and perhaps she hoped so to take advantage of a moment to catch her breath.
Fuck, her breath was taken away by this woman -- how wholly and loathsomely cliché. Ilya would cringe if she weren't practically glued to the ruins. She knew her beauty was something of an accession to her supernatural form, but Gods. She settled by watching Jack, staring like a doe.
Last Edit: Apr 3, 2016 23:13:35 GMT -5 by Ilyα Cяσw
"I do not want to be human - I want to be myself. They think I am a lion, that I will chase them. I will not deny I have lions in me. I am the monster in the wood. I have wonders in my house of sugar. I have parts of myself I do not yet understand."
Post by Avina Paccius on Apr 2, 2016 0:02:42 GMT -5
Julia did not bother to address this teenager's mishap with even a giggle, though her time observing people had told her she must. She only drunk in her appearance. Clean, smooth, professional (though her sentence fluency almost contradicted this)...her clothes were appealing, Avina must admit. But even then, she was a distraction. A witness...
"Are you always so tongue-tied?" she deftly asked Illya (who wasn't a cave-man). But before an answer could be flung back at her, Avina turned slightly, and caught a shape moving erratically in the slopes of her eye's corners. Turning to illuminate it, she saw he was...well, a he. She despised of the fact that he was eating at all. The everlasting hunger that rotted away her once-vivid emotions had nowhere to escape to but to her stomach, and soon the Angel had found a demon inside herself. And so she would abstain from food for long periods of time. Diminishing her curve, breasts, and bringing out bones, truth, purity. It was the source of her strength. It was who she was; without the hunger, who was she?
The sapphires that rested below her brows, sharp yet bulbous and alluring — her eyes — met with the young male's at a distance. Or so that's what she saw. She held her ground as well as her gaze, and was not quick to rebuke her posture, and trade it for a more feminine and inviting avatar. Wind gushing around the walls that still lingered today, from the times of her childhood, her chocolate hair swirled, rose, and fell behind her. Pale skin, thinning, with eyes that showed the hunger for far more than food and love, she suppose she could be rather...tedious[.i]...to look at. Especially because she was beautiful in a way that Avina could never see.
Her hand slithered below the belt of her dress and dug into the folds of the braided leather and withdrew a dagger birthed from bronze and impregnated with lapis lazuli stones. And that was the way Jackson would find her.
Jack is an average, unassuming guy. He stands bashfully, avoiding eye contact as he looks around at everything except the person he's speaking with. A closer look. however, will reveal more.
Beneath this carefully neutral appearance, Jack's body is lean and efficient. He's slow to anger and behind his bashful demeanor is an assertive individual observing his environment with an almost predatory nature.
Post by Jacksoπ Flεtchεr on Apr 2, 2016 0:39:16 GMT -5
Well. No one had said anything to him, so Jack just sort of stood there. Awkwardly. His posture was fairly relaxed but the tension in his neck betrayed how uncomfortable he felt at having been acknowledged with obvious looks but no one had bothered to say anything to him. Maybe he'd interrupted some sort of back alley rendezvous? The very thought made him uncomfortable because the young man was definitely starting to get the feeling that he wasn't going to get those much needed directions after all
Jack rubbed the back of his neck, glancing off to the side awkwardly. One of them, the one against the wall, was staring at him. Like a doe? The other, the one who'd descended from the sky or some shit, the one who'd had wings but didn't have them anymore, was also looking at him? Was it something he'd said? Was it his clothes? He was just wearing a simple tshirt and some jeans, for crying out loud.
Shifting slightly, Jack decided to just wait until they said something. Yes, that seemed the safe thing to do.
And suddenly, Ilya could cut the silence with a knife, almost literally. It was dense and it felt heavy, the quietude, and silence in itself was something amusing for no particular reason for the woman. She nearly piped out another artless chime of laughter, if it weren't for noticing the intimidating and quite pretty piece of weaponry Avina pried from her person. Gods, is she about to witness a killing? Groovy.
Rather than the most plausible thing to do in this situation -- you know, flee, or at least make the effort to find an escape route while a violent stabbing occurred -- Ilya stepped forward and tipped a non-existent cap to the man.
"Cheers, mate," She greets awkwardly -- and she looked awkward in that moment, knees shackling unsteadily and shoulders raised in disregarded tension. "I have absolutely no idea how to navigate here, honestly -- but you don't really look like you've got a destination, either." She coughed into her fist -- to fill the void of pause, rather than an actual fit of a cold. "I, uh -- well, I'm known to make stupidly incorrect assumptions, but whatever, am I right?"
Gods, Ilya was awful at breaking the coarseness of the air. Admittedly, she was inept at most social interacting beyond taking orders and discussions on the weather.
Last Edit: Apr 3, 2016 23:15:54 GMT -5 by Ilyα Cяσw
"I do not want to be human - I want to be myself. They think I am a lion, that I will chase them. I will not deny I have lions in me. I am the monster in the wood. I have wonders in my house of sugar. I have parts of myself I do not yet understand."
Post by Avina Paccius on Apr 2, 2016 1:35:35 GMT -5
And she watched as the two humans would come together in socialization. It tugged at her tolerance. Moving aside and eying this male curiously, and this Ilya amused...
The dagger was scrounged back into the leathern circlet that cinched her waist. As the sun rose higher, it began to appear as a welt on the sky that ran like liquid. Avina diverted her attention from the conversants to the star, and wondered if the sun ever wished it could die, from all the grief this futile world has given it. "We aren't so different," she mumbled as the sunrise was watched precariously by Lady Paccius.
Turning back to them, once the calf had corked it, she asked her, "Why are you here?" If she were a feline, her eyes would be narrowed. But in a way, they always were. Any neurotypical who was keen in the ways of psychology could tell that Avina was the epitome of aesthetic life. Her smiles were always fake. She felt nothing (can somebody say Hitler? Wait...of course you can, duh...that was a stupid question). But those who could feel could hurt. It was what made them weak.
Yet, if Avina is so strong and cold beneath her mask, why is it that she still feels the pain of the past? It lingers, and never accepts that the past is the past. Remembering sent her stomach to a spasm, and she found that she was clenching herself, hurled over. "Urrrr...I'm-urr-sorry," she winced. It took a few moments to come to. But this is physical pain, she thought. But you know where it came from, another voice retorted.
"You were looking for the never-aging lady, weren't you," The way Ilya held herself. The way she couldn't hold eye contact no more than a quarter of a second...she was looking for me, Avina Paccius had realized. She hoped that she could convince this bitch that she was crazed, and sunk in her own delusions. But...then there was the young man to deal with. And Avina knew that if she asked him nothing, but gave him a stare–yes, that's the stare–her wings would be shrouded and dissolve...and there would be two mad freaks standing here today. She stared at him with her head angled as a puppy might do, and let her eyes bulge. Big eyes, and confusion were trademarks of innocence.
Let's hope he isn't as smart as he appears to be...
Last Edit: Apr 2, 2016 1:44:16 GMT -5 by Avina Paccius
Jack is an average, unassuming guy. He stands bashfully, avoiding eye contact as he looks around at everything except the person he's speaking with. A closer look. however, will reveal more.
Beneath this carefully neutral appearance, Jack's body is lean and efficient. He's slow to anger and behind his bashful demeanor is an assertive individual observing his environment with an almost predatory nature.
Post by Jacksoπ Flεtchεr on Apr 2, 2016 2:18:59 GMT -5
She might've thought he didn't notice the dagger, but he did. Oh yeah, Jack totally noticed. The young man had chosen to ignore it though, figuring it had been intended for defense against him, an unknown stranger, which seemed reasonable. They didn't know him after all. Now that it had been put away again, Jack did have to admit that he felt just a lil bit more comfortable. Like he wasn't about to be stabbed in some random ass alley in the middle of some random ass city some several thousand miles away from the comfort of his couch.
The relatively normal woman managed to peel herself from the wall she'd been flattened to and spoke to him. Yay! The silence was broken! His hopes sank almost immediately when she professed to not know the area very well herself and that she probably couldn't help him much. That meant Jack's only recourse might be the woman who'd pulled a knife on him.
"Uh, no. You're not wrong. I'm just wandering about, trying to take in the sights with no specific destination in mind. I'm pretty bad at being a tourist though, apparently." Jack shrugged and held up his hands helplessly. "I got lost, almost immediately. I'm Jack, by the way." He chuckled nervously at the unfortunate nature of his situation and gave her a friendly smile.
The knifey one spoke some stuff to the nice one. Something about an ageless lady or somesuch. It wasn't really any of Jack's business, so he didn't care a whole lot. But he also didn't have anything better to do right now. So it was something, he guessed. Oh shit. She was looking at him weird again.
"The best thing to be when traveling aimlessly is lost, Jack," Ilya retorted, mirroring his smile with a delicate and uneasy one of her own. She took another step forward so the three were standing at the points of a non-existent triangle, so she could keep her eyes set on them and gauge body language like a meter of mercury. It felt better when her back wasn't facing a stranger, and perhaps that is why she liked the confines of a bar-top so much. The barrier was physical, and thick enough for comfort. Gods, she missed tending.
"The never-agin' lady?" Ilya then repeated, focus resting on Avina's eyes. "Truthfully, yes, if that's what they're calling you now -- and really, Julia is one mundane alias."
Ilya noticed immediately the change in Avina's outward behavior; aloof, and plainly threatening to something more fraudulently soft. She made no comment on the matter regardless, but took to taking mental notes on account of her ardent studies of wordless language. An unconditionally pretentious piece of work, that Ilya -- but a pridefully pretentious piece of work at that.
"I'm not here to slay you and harvest your feathers for pillows or anything. That would be dreadful, and you'd kick my ass." Every word that tumbled from Ilya's mouth made the definition of her brow furrow more expressly. She hadn't a single clue why she spoke so casually to someone so historically renown, but it was something she couldn't help -- effortless bumbling was one of her strong suits; strong suit, or better yet, one of her many flaws.
She pried her gaze from Avina, stiff in the curve of her neck, and surveyed Jack like a subject; a peculiar, awkward and yet fetching subject. Okay, Ilya. Rest your fuckin' hormones, mate, and focus on why you came here.
Last Edit: Apr 3, 2016 23:17:41 GMT -5 by Ilyα Cяσw
"I do not want to be human - I want to be myself. They think I am a lion, that I will chase them. I will not deny I have lions in me. I am the monster in the wood. I have wonders in my house of sugar. I have parts of myself I do not yet understand."
Post by Avina Paccius on Apr 4, 2016 19:57:00 GMT -5
She had waited while the typicals made their idle conversation. Avina saw no point in this unless it built up to something, or had a merit worth taking. The breeze fiddled with her hair wildly, and was rising. A storm is coming... she thought bluntly. She shivered from the wind that soared in through her wing-holes cut in her dress. In the back of her dress.
"I suppose you can't unsee what you just saw...yes, that is what I'm known as nowadays. I never drift too far from my culture," she didn't even bother to smile. The girl was smart, she'd know what that meant. And as for the male who oddly appeared like a teenager..."Perhaps you should run off...I don't imagine we have any business, do we?" Avina's words bit deeper than she intended, but whatever she could do to stress her command.
Jack is an average, unassuming guy. He stands bashfully, avoiding eye contact as he looks around at everything except the person he's speaking with. A closer look. however, will reveal more.
Beneath this carefully neutral appearance, Jack's body is lean and efficient. He's slow to anger and behind his bashful demeanor is an assertive individual observing his environment with an almost predatory nature.
Post by Jacksoπ Flεtchεr on Apr 4, 2016 20:38:26 GMT -5
The young man scratched his chin. "I s'pose you're right. I'd never thought about it that way before, but it makes sense, I guess." Jack looked at Ilya again, differently this time. She was a strange one. No one had ever said anything like that to him. Weirdo.
And then the other two started talking about weird stuff again. Jack just stood there with a blank look on his face. No one had bothered to answer his earlier question, but from what he could gather the angel seemed to be the ageless lady or whatever Ilya seemed to be referring to. She seemed to have been searching for this.. Julia lady or whatever. Why, he didn't have a clue. Maybe she was famous or something? The young man wondered if he'd be famous some day, or if he already sort of was.
Jack assumed the rude lady was trying to order him off. Well. He didn't like being ordered about, or commanded to run off like a frightened dog. Playing dumb seemed appropriate. "Business? What business would a body possibly have with some random angel?" He asked innocently enough, adopting a confused expression that was made all the easier for him to assume thanks to the fact that he really didn't know what was going.
Wait. Was Ilya staring at him strangely? He glanced down at his clothes, wondering if there was, like, something distracting down there or something.
It's true, Ilya was a strange little woman -- critically strange and equally curious of the both of them. Jack gave off a peculiar affect, a vibe, and Avina was a two-thousand year old descendant of an archaic empire, and furthermore, she sprouted bloody wings from her shoulder blades as brisk as a weed between two forgotten slabs of concrete, for Gods' sake. It was a gold mine for an inquiring mind like Ilya's -- she felt blessed in that instant.
"Business? Like, real estate or insurance? No -- not really that. I don't know if angels like -- ah, having a tea at a cafe, or even better: a night on the town. Someone your age ought to like a good aged bourbon, mm?" She ought to learn how to shut her lips when she felt a long-winded speech coming on. She looked to Jack once more, hooting out a stiff laugh at Avina's hostility towards him.
"He is lost. It would feel tragically irresponsible if I let him continue to wander; I mean, he isn't threatenin' you, am I right?" She paused to collect her thoughts, like child compiling coins from the bottom of a fountain. "Look at that face, Avina. What a harmless lookin' visage, this Jack character -- maybe he could buy our drinks. This is all in good company." Ilya gestured a wild flailing of her hands in Jack's direction at his mention, appearing both uncomfortable and mischievous. What an unusual combination. She felt recklessly brave to vocalize Avina's name.
"No business, just company. All I would like is your company, and to talk about what I've found of your history if that is not too invasive." Ilya spoke sincerely, wanting nothing but to cotton to their possible congregation; she had no intention to dissect Avina's past like a university project -- and she truly felt Jack was both clueless and inoffensive. She watched the angel's reaction in her body language and listened for her words, anticipating a promising stab or twelve to the jugular.
Last Edit: Apr 4, 2016 21:31:27 GMT -5 by Ilyα Cяσw
"I do not want to be human - I want to be myself. They think I am a lion, that I will chase them. I will not deny I have lions in me. I am the monster in the wood. I have wonders in my house of sugar. I have parts of myself I do not yet understand."
