matermali: (178)
Vanessa Ives ([personal profile] matermali) wrote in [community profile] citynet2023-07-15 06:50 pm

audio | un: hidden

( cw; cannabis )

[ There is no softness to the voice that murmurs onto the network in the midst of the night when people should be sleeping. Those sweet souls are not her concern if they don't wish to hear. She offers no comfort, but a reminder of what's been lost—what can still be taken.

In doing so, the woman's raspy words creep out from beneath the shadows with a voice that drags—no, it crawls—over ceaselessly hot coals. In its shudder to whisper out a poem borrowed from home, there is a smolder always bordering on a choked gasp. But no hurry, no hurry. Where do you have to be? ]
Old Yew which graspeth at the stones...that name the under-lying dead; Thy fibres net the dreamless head, thy roots are wrapt about the bones.
[ To that, a pause that looms with omen. ]
The seasons bring the flower again, and bring the firstling to the flock; And in the dusk of thee, the clock beats out the little lives of men.
[ Now, a strange yearning nearly begins to dissipate the smoke that seems to scorch her throat.

Hush, take a moment. Take a breath; hold it. Feel the shiver of a fingernail at the nape of your neck, feel it trace the curve of your ear to borrow your attention. Only just. No, don't turn. Don't touch. Just listen; the whisper can still singe. ]
O not for thee the glow, the bloom...who changest not in any gale, nor branding summer suns avail, to touch thy thousand years of gloom.

And gazing on thee, sullen tree, sick for thy stubborn hardihood; I seem to fail from out my blood...and grow incorporate into thee.
[ For a time, it seems that may be all. Then, in the same hush she speaks with a more particular address: ]

I hear that we have been denied the ephemeral — to exist endlessly within a perverse mirror of God’s image. Here, nature should protest. Instead it menaces with its silence.

[ There is a silence of her own while Vanessa takes a drag to sigh out a thin stream of smoke into the evening air. Her voice now drops so low it grates and pinches too close, like gravel against tender feet. Tickling whispers are gone; they flee the weighted melancholy that persists. ]

We carry on within a dollhouse between worlds. Do not be tempted by its pretty trinkets, lest you truly be cursed to wander the demimonde forevermore.

[ Denial still rules paramount over the rumor of immortality, but the lack of bodies is an...unsettling implication. ]

...The graves lie empty.
zangetsu: (pic#15910533)

[personal profile] zangetsu 2023-07-20 02:03 pm (UTC)(link)
If I knew, I wouldn't be asking.

he seems to have pushed back against that dread, and found some equilibrium there. his voice has flattened out to cold neutrality instead of burning with the deep ichor of suspicion.

ichigo has never been unafraid. not of the hollows when he first encountered them, nor of the shinigami and arrancar and quincy to follow. his strength has lain more from walking forwards despite that fear. finding or forcing a way to act. and he doesn't always win, and he isn't always right — but the last thing anyone could ever say of him is that he's a coward.

however — there's a particular reason why a woman who isn't what she seems to be might strike an old chord with him, and while he's learned the truth of his mother's death and that it was never about him at all, knowledge has done little to erase the ancient and awful guilt.
zangetsu: (pic#15910520)

[personal profile] zangetsu 2023-07-21 02:54 pm (UTC)(link)
his eyes narrow, but he holds his ground as she stands up. even without his sword, there's a sense of confidence to how he holds himself. an awareness of his own body that's not often found in one so young.

if there is anything to sense in return — it is a tame maelstrom. a curious sense of equilibrium between a handful of supernatural pressures, come together into serenity at the eye of the storm of him. he's made peace with his patchwork heritage, and the only thing that's left is the sum of him.


Ichigo Kurosaki.

he puts his first name first, in the western custom. mostly because he doesn't want to have to jump through the hoops of explaining the proper order. he barely cares what his own friends call him, much less a stranger.
zangetsu: (pic#15926121)

[personal profile] zangetsu 2023-07-29 01:57 pm (UTC)(link)
well, she's basically the first non-japanese person that's gotten that pronunciation mostly correct.

he shoves his hands into his pockets, mulish — but he does fall into step beside her, in the lee of her looming shadow. what else can he do, really? he's committed now, and she doesn't seem any likelier to back down than he is. so, it's a stalemate until it isn't.

he isn't terribly inclined to fill that brief swell of silence. his sneakers are soundless on the neatly-manicured, carved-out path, and he's studying the way a rock skitters away after he scuffs his toe against it before he decides to speak —


Are you the one that brought us here?
zangetsu: (pic#15912427)

[personal profile] zangetsu 2023-08-07 12:48 am (UTC)(link)
her response catches him off his guard. not in any meaningful way — he doesn't stumble, or stutter, isn't suddenly beside himself with the uncertainty of having pressed her. but he shoves his hands more deeply in his pockets, shoulders flexing faintly. it's hotter than he likes, and he's wearing a black shirt because he's at that age where fashion still matters more than comfort, and he's also not going to admit that pinpricks of fear-driven sweat is making the collar of his shirt uncomfortable against his skin.

rather than ask another question, he opts for offense — always offense, with him — by answering one she hasn't asked, but must surely be curious about.


I'm a shinigami. In English, it could be translated as 'death god' or 'soul reaper'. Does that mean anything to you?

it's not all he is. but it's all he's willing to give away.