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[matermali]

( 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.

Comments

[possessum]

[ Wouldn't allow it. It's such a resolute thing, so unlike what Peter's known, even how he functions. And on some level he meets that assurance with kneejerk doubt, fear, even aversion.

On another level, that same desperate need to be assured persists. In the presence of someone (whether she's real or some figment of him and everything that's wrong in him) who speaks with such resolve.... whose words feel weighted by something, heavy and true. It catches hold of him, and perhaps he lets himself be caught. Perhaps he always has. If it's a spider's web he's fallen into, the boy doesn't struggle for long. ]

.....Yes. [ He breathes after several moments of staggered pause, not freed of his terror so much as quietly feeling a balm to it in the form of the woman's assurance. Like a cold compress pressed against a wound, stifling the ache. He believes her, even if it makes no logical sense to — she could be lying, or tricking, or she could be nothing at all. He could be having another nightmare, dreaming up this protector whose voice feels like so many old things.

But in this moment, the words are what he needs (and what they imply, which is protection). Peter swallows hard before admitting something to this spectre. ]

It's hard to know. What's... real and what isn't.

[matermali]

What we see of this city, what has been offered to us, is false. It is not free. The Devil leads us to complacency if we allow it.

[ What's real and what isn't.

How often has she uttered those words, begging for peace from anyone who could listen yet no one who could help? She can't even say she has found her own footing in such assurance of self, with this city doing everything it can to cast doubt on her beliefs, but she can be spiteful to her enemies. It is enough to clear her mind and keep certain truths always within sight.

Near enough to touch, but— That is the end of the path. First she must tread it. ]

You are real.

[ An easy truth. No matter what this city may do to muffle her senses, she knows humanity, and doubt, and pain; she knows monsters, and demons, and witches. Oh, they are all very real, and they are all here to now whisper to one another in the dead of the night. The truth of it teases her, tempts her. Does it sadden her? ]

I am real. ...You are not alone.

[ It feels important to say, and though Vanessa might offer the comfort to anyone else should they need, for the boy there is warmth rarely expressed (rarely felt) with words meant to shake off the chill of loneliness she understands so very well. Doubt has always been an enemy, and one the Devil unleashes at every turn. Doubt, isolation, fear... These are his weapons.

Vanessa will always do what she can to wrench them from his filthy claws; to shape them into her own weapons. ]

You ought to sleep. [ For the youth, Vanessa must concede to her guilt. ] Would you like another poem? [ Hm. ] Something sweet?

[possessum]

[ The voice gives more of those steadfast reassurances — outright places them down at his feet, and he can look down at them, see them. That this city, this nightmarish place, is false.

With that, there is no fake hope, no carefully-forged lies only to soothe. ...But somehow, she's given him even more of what he needs. For the woman then says what is real. Puts it into categories, truths split off, in a way he can understand. (Again, there is always the threat the words are some lie, some trick, and Peter would be so ripe and vulnerable for it.) But there's nothing in him that thinks that way, not now. Now, he can only be soothed by the way she tells him what she does.

The boy listens, breath held in for a long moment, forgetting how to let it back out. Then he does and it comes in a release of shuddery exhale, and his heart aches with its yearning of those words. He blinks against a fresh wave of heated wet. 'You are real. I am real.'

'You are not alone.'

He doesn't stifle the little sounds he makes on his end of the device, can spare no energy to. Wet noises, sniffles and quiet gasped breathing, evidence of the way the woman's words have affected him. Whatever she is, in the moment, he feels love for her like a child loving anything that feels safe so quickly. This ghost — frightening and rasping, uttering her strange and awful words, but now.... he wants everything she offers to him. To sleep. To be read to (he can't remember the last time anyone did.) ]

Yes. [ Peter whispers, feeling strange and soothed. The dream continues, but now it's not something so scary. ] Thank you.

[matermali]

[ Her patience for accepting such sorrow is endless, and any amount of burden she can release from the boy, Vanessa can only see as her reason for being here in this spot, saying these words at this exact moment in time. The surety comforts her as much as it does him, even as her heart continues to weigh heavy for the sake of his helpless predicament. The sound of his pain will now forever live there, tucked away and protected with the suffering of all the others.

Something light should be recalled; something that could carry a feather across a city with promises of hope. Tennyson comes to her again, this time lifting one's gaze to the night sky above instead of the graves below.

I have climbed nearer out of lonely Hell... ]

Beat, happy stars, timing with things below; beat with my heart more blest than heart can tell.

[ The words linger with a sigh while she exhales another thin stream of smoke. Then, for just a moment, her voice dips to the scratch of sadness she is trying to well to keep at bay. ]

Blest, but for some dark undercurrent woe, that seems to draw—

[ Her tone lifts with the following assurance, interrupting any doubt with a voice now so light and soft that it nearly disappears into the promise that's offered. ]

But it shall not be so...

[ Softly, slowly, only a whisper that could vanish into the night with his nightmares in tow. ]

Let all be well, be well.