prismatica | two, two, two posts in one; 4/6

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two, two, two posts in one; 4/6

[ hey, it's a prismagram post from 1stQadrMargaFan! you know, that one c-plus/b-minus-list influencer who's always posting magic tutorials, fashion selfies, food pics, and random animal encounters. (well, not so much recently, but... yeah.) ]

Hello, First Qadr!! Thank you all so much for your comments and messages over the past couple of weeks. I can't believe I went three entire days without responding to anything! 😳 But I always read everything you send me, and I will try to answer you all as soon as I can. 🧡🧡🧡 But now I must make an important announcement! ✨ Starting today, this account will be going on indefinite hiatus ✨ I will keep comments open, but I won't be posting any more pictures or videos. This is just a personal issue and there's no need for anyone to worry! 🦋😸🍇 I want to say thank you again. Your support over the past several months has meant more than I can possibly express!! You're all breathtaking, with and without your Moonheld and Moonblessed traits! Let's all keep doing the very best we can to look out for one another! 👋🥰

[ a few minutes later, there's another post, from another account: laurea. this one's video. long antennae and parts of the colorful underside of a pair of butterfly wings are visible on the subject (who doesn't appear particularly jazzed about them). ]

Hello.
Ah... this message is primarily for my fellow Moonblessed. For those who don't know me, I am Titus Alexius.
I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately, and... I think that we ought to, if possible... that is, to the extent that it is possible...

[ deep breath! ]

I think we should stop moonlacing.

[ and now the hurried qualifiers. ]

We need to do a little, of course, to survive. Obviously we should all feel free to do that amount. But beyond that minimum, we should most likely refrain.

[ he hunches his shoulders and looks down!! ]

This will certainly be a great sacrifice... and terribly difficult, especially during the moon cycles... and no doubt quite unpleasant in many ways as well. For some of us more than others. But while the effects of chroma generation initially seemed exclusively beneficial, with the very worst of them still being harmless, it is now more than clear that there are others that are neither predictable nor safe.

[ now he shuts his eyes. ]
...All of Port Sylvel paid the price for that. And many perished in the subsequent battle as well. We cannot bring them back, but we owe it to them not to let it happen again.

[ another deep breath. then he opens his eyes and looks back into the camera. ]

At least that is what I think.
I would like to know what all of you think.

[ there's a slightly awkward pause!! ]

...On that note, I am also looking for work.
I am willing to do anything, though... physically demanding work is probably best avoided, unless you don't mind its being accomplished poorly and only after a likely unreasonable length of time.
Nothing that requires moonlacing, either, though I suppose that much is obvious.

...
And that is all. Thank you!

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I'm on my way.

[ Which he is, Murasame flying overhead and waiting on lampposts and street signs and the like until he's at the window, tap-tap-tapping that he wants in when Shino is still coming along to knock-knock-knock on the door. If the demon bird is let in first, he'll say hello, waddle forward, announce that Shino's here, then fly to find a perch inside the apartment. If he's not, he'll just keep annoyingly tapping on the glass with his beak, waiting for his person to show up and let him in, as one does.

Shino, for his part, knocks at the door because it's polite, but he's worried, on several levels, and for several reasons. Nothing's been easy the last few months with how things have been happening, or what ends up leaving him feeling powerless... but he's known for all of his remembered life that he is, in essence, never enough to keep the world safe.

Not even for the ones he loves.

Especially not when his health and body had for so long been so weak. ]

Titus?

[ when shino knocks on the door, he'll find that it's already open; titus decided leaving it unlocked didn't go quite far enough, so he left it ajar as well. (he's not familiar enough with the genre film to know that doing that kind of thing usually implies shino's going to find a dead body somewhere inside the apartment!!)

a black robe, white cape, and pointed black hat with a metal decoration are strewn on the floor, since titus took them off and dropped them as soon as he got home himself. while making the post, titus had been sitting up properly in a chair near the window with the device propped on a table in front of him, but now he's on the floor, leaning against the couch, hugging either murasame (if the bird allowed it, after being let inside and asked) or a pillow. ]

Shino...
Hi...

[ with the door giving in under his knock, he steps inside, slipping out of his shoes because a lifetime of habit won't generally disabuse him of certain responses. (even if he ignores this one sometimes on purpose.) he's only not concerned at the open door because he, too, doesn't know film genres and hasn't quite found himself into the dramas that some of his friends enjoy watching here, so when he sees clothing strewn about the place, he more takes inventory and concludes its divesting certain layers of armour.

not much of a point, but he's not surprised to see titus where he's on the floor. he is surprised to see murasame in his arms, because its always weird seeing part of your bonded soul being interacted with like that, knowing it's incredibly dangerous for the both of you; but the look on murasame's relatively expressive face, for a bird, is of longsuffering due to his understanding of shino and titus's friendship.

people shino cares about fall under his umbrella when convenient to also care about them, when it's not at a loss or danger to shino. thus, murasame only squirms now that shino's here, because he didn't give a flip about the conversation read on network and is exactly the sort of being to say "live, then live, die, then die" with a perfectly straight face and no moral quandry.

demons. what can you do? ]

Titus.

[ shino comes close without touching, mostly because of how titus had been talking on the network. he's obviously checking the impulse, abortively reaching out before stopping, then dropping down to sit himself within reach of his friend, facing him and more or less at his side. murasame croaks out a greeting of shino's name before resignedly half closing his eyes, letting titus continue to hold him; it's one of the weird things that this isn't a form of moonlacing, since they are technically of the same body and soul. then again, murasame is never influenced by the moons, either, aside form his usual tendency toward dormancy during the "new" moon. ]

It's been hard lately, hasn't it? Will you tell me about it?

[ honestly... physical comfort is all he wants right now. to be close to someone, to feel their warmth... to feel safe, protected, perhaps even cherished. and yet the thought of touching anyone now terrifies him. even if understands intellectually that his own individual actions are unlikely to awaken another majestas... that probably, hundreds more will not die... that nothing he does is likely to make any difference at all, for good or ill... well, he can't quite get that to sink in emotionally. or viscerally.

but murasame has his own warmth, and is being kind enough to indulge him. and shino is here, which certainly makes at least some difference. ]

...I... went home.
And then came back. I woke up on Iris moon again, a few hours ago.
There's...
It was only a few days, but a lot happened. I...

[ he shakes his head. it's happening again, that thing he still can't quite understand, when it gets harder to breathe and his heart races and he feels dizzy... even though he knows he isn't injured anywhere. (he's also crying again, he notices, but... well, that's nothing new either. the moon knights gave him water when they found him, but he should probably drink something else before long...) ]

I don't know where to start.
So many people were killed... right before my eyes, and...
I don't have any time left, and...
I just want to see Marga.

...

[ He wishes he could tell Murasame without words to endure this, but the demon mostly stares at him with a somewhat put upon bird expression and endures anyway. No one's choking him or hitting his head with a window frame, he's doing swell. Less so Shino, all the more distressed because Titus is in distress. ]

Hey, hey, of course you do. Titus—waking up again like that, all the stuff from back home, that's confusing anyway. When you have all the rest on top of it... it's hard enough for the ones I know who only had a few more memories come back with them.

[ He reaches out again, presenting his hand, palm up. He really, really wants to hug him, but it's an action he's not sure he can take, not quite yet. ]

Breathe with me for a while, okay? I can talk if it helps, tell you about the trouble Murasame's gotten into, or the shows my friends have dragged me into watching that make no sense at all. Or we can not.

I...
Yes. I want to hear about all of that. Please tell me.

[ he stares at shino's hand like it's an oasis in the desert and starts to reach out, but... well, he hesitates. of course he hesitates. then he swallows hard and looks back at shino's face. ]

...Is it all right?

[ it's a meaningless question, of course; titus, not shino, is the one who's afraid that moonlacing (or, more generally, being selfish enough to experience any degree of comfort or joy) will probably, somehow, inevitably end in horrific tragedy. though he isn't consciously aware of the entirety of that fear, he does understand that it isn't entirely rational... but even so, no one else is capable of not fearing it on his behalf, or of unconvincing him of his convictions, however messily arrived at those convictions may be.

he asks it anyway, though, and decides that (at least for now) he will believe whatever answer shino gives. ]

Yes.

[ He says, no hesitation. ]

It's all right.

[ Because living is not a crime, and burdens that they have here were not ones they created. This world was dying, and now it fights to live. They're simply one of the various catalysts for that process, in Shino's eyes.

So he keeps his hand there, waiting, and he starts talking about everything that is nothing at all. ]

Murasame tried eating someone's lip balm because it was in a fruit shaped container, and then he got it half stuck in his beak so I had to pull it free and buy the guy a new lip balm, and the worst part of all of it is he said it tasted bad, like that's an explanation! He also tried to join me when I was full swan, except crows don't float like swans do, so he had to sit there on my back and I had Lunatian's tracking me down all day getting photographs and making cooing noises because they thought it was cute. Even worse, a couple of them said aren't they in love?!

[ Murasame, still in Titus's lap either way, makes a scoffing sound. They're not IN love, they simply love each other. Isn't that obvious? What else do you do but love the soul, demonic or otherwise, that shares your body with you? Pfft. ]

There are ponds I can never go back to... ugh, but at least that made a weird sort of sense. Shi Qingxuan and Xie Lian watch this show called Rainbow or something, on the television? I have no idea what's happening in it at all. The main character is this person called Rainbow and she may or may not have twelve uncles, seventeen aunts, two twins which doesn't make sense at all, a clone, or was it three clones? They all work as medical officers in other cities, and are a lot more calm than she is. Oh, she's also got an evil step brother who might also be her cousin? Or was he another uncle... I forget what the plot line was supposed to be, she has one dramatic thing happen in her life after another. Was it about getting a job? Wanting to be a drummer? There were two episodes where she wanted to be a drummer, maybe that's what it is...

[ Soap operas, as it turns out, are way too complicated for him to follow with anything like sense. ]

Edited 2020-05-11 00:52 (UTC)

[ as he does so, he kind of... exhales weirdly (due to nerves)...
but he takes shino's hand.
vise grips it, in fact—but after a moment he consciously loosens his hold. then he exhales weirdly again, but this one is a half-sob...

then he takes a careful breath, and exhales once more, slowly but no longer all that weirdly.

as he listens, the pressure with which he's squeezing shino's hand goes in a cycle—gradually increasing toward white-knuckle levels until the next time he notices that he's doing it, at which point he deliberately eases off and the cycle begins anew. but as time passes the cycles slow and lessen. ]

Oh... ah—
I watch that show, actually.
Or at least, I was watching it for a while, when I would remember to.
If I recall, the reason she had two twins was that one was fraternal, and one was identical... [ makes perfect sense ]

Is that Shi Qingxuan as in Wind Master Shi Qingxuan? [ tbh he assumes so because how many shi qingxuans could there be? ...but he asks anyway, because after all, he doesn't actually know how many shi qingxuans there could be. ]

[ He says nothing about the pressure on his hand, simply returning a squeeze every so often. He understands needing to hold on. He's like that, too, enough so that he's patient with it in ways some who know him from work at the Moon Knights might be surprised by. Less so, if they'd seen him at his work with the daycare. ]

Was that the case? That'd make more sense... though don't you usually call them triplets by then? Must be some kind of Prismal thing...

[ At the question clarifying who he's talking about, he nods, lips quirking up in a lopsided grin. ]

Yeah, that's him. Have you tried praying to him? He's got so few of us who do here he pretty much always responds, and I bet he'd love to come talk about Rainbow if you sent him a prayer asking for him to.

[ Shino that's not what praying is usually about okay ]

I don't think so... That is, normally I suppose they would be, but... neither of Rainbow's twins were twins with each other. In fact, somehow or other, they may not even have been related. [ he frowns...... the more he thinks about this, the more it seems like it might not actually make any sense

but anyway, shi qingxuan. ]

Pray...?
He is a deity?? I thought he was a magician!

Yeah, he's a Wind God... maybe even the wind god for his pantheon? Also sometimes a Goddess, humanity's weird like that.

[ Which is an understatement: both of them here, and Shi Qingxuan himself, have seen some of the oddities and inconsistencies of humanity... or the worst of it. Shino doesn't think that's what Qingxuan has particularly seen... but he can't be fully unaware, can he?

Rainbow's plot is one he doesn't even attempt to understand. It's enough that it simply Is; it needn't make sense in addition. ]

Well... that part does not seem all that strange to me. I myself am... more or less the same existence as Lady Scheherazade. I am male only because of a defect in the process.

[ this comes 100% out of the blue, but tbh at the moment titus can't at ALL remember what he has or hasn't told his various friends about scheherazade. of course, in no case had he revealed their true relationship yet except to cagily refer to her as his mother, but... yeah.

anyway, his grip is quite a bit calmer now, and he adjusts so that their forearms rest more comfortably against once another; the hard, cracked surface of the gem embedded in his own will be easy to feel. ]

[ Shino has a fairly decent memory, but also, he's had a chaotic time trying to keep his knowledge of this world straight, let alone anything else. This does jive in explaining a few things, though his look is thoughtful: ]

Kind of funny to think of being a guy as being a defect.

[ He's saying this with a twitch of his lips. ]

Then again, I was raised as a girl, so life's like that, sometimes.

[ Arm to arm is a bit of an odd feeling, honestly, but not more or less than dealing with strange bodies or that time he tried to crystalise before he stopped the process. His eyes drift toward Titus's arm as he speaks. ]

Does it bother you?

You were?...
You know, it is things like that...
She made it sound like I could not really understand gender and men and women and everything because I didn't live long enough, but I honestly wonder whether everyone else understands it that much better than I do. [ the longer he lives the more he feels like the whole thing might actually be fake

hmm. does it bother him, though? ]

...Which part?

Mm... I was born sickly, and the thought was, if they raised me as a girl, maybe they'd fool fate or the gods or whatever and I'd live to be an adult.

[ A slight shrug of his shoulders. ]

They were wrong.

[ No bitterness now, not after near dying and actually dying and taking a demon into his body, the same one still cradled against Titus now. It simply is what it is.

As for the whole thing on gender and sex or whatever he's talking about, his brow furrows. ]

Understand what about it? It's not like it's the same everywhere, and men act like women, or women like men, and all different things. They're just people when you come down to it. Women are just more likely to kick your butt for being dumb when they're right.

[ .............................. absolutely he believes this because of his sister. She's shaped him a lot in that regard, considering he doesn't bother relating it to the thirteen years he was raised as a girl, knowing he was a boy the whole time. ]

Which part, what do you mean? If there's a part you mind, then that, but if there isn't, then there isn't. Either way, you're Titus.

[ titus twists so that he's a little bit closer, facing shino a little bit more directly. ]

See, that is what I thought! [ well, not necessarily the part about women kicking your butt. but also not necessarily not that part. (would marga ever kick someone's butt? hmmm.) ] I don't know. I suppose I thought... or maybe she thought... that there was some kind of... deep ineffable truth that other people grasped intuitively. Well, and maybe there is, to some extent. But there are other things where I realize how much more there is to understand, and that I was ignorant... whereas with this I think I am not really wrong to think it doesn't matter all that much. Or, well... it matters when people want it to matter, but otherwise not. ...Does that make sense?

[ murasame agrees with him! right, buddy? murasame? ]

Which part as in, being male, or my arms.

[ He more or less tracked that whole line of thinking? More or less. Enough to nod and go: ]

Yeah, I think so.

[ Because his end opinion will be the same: it matters when people want it to matter, and otherwise, it doesn't. Like it matters to him not to be called girly, because he's not a girl, and that whole period of his life was like one elaborate act he put on and didn't even properly survive. ]

Uh, probably the arms, though I'd guess the being male if the person you're a not identical twin of is a woman. I'm not sure how different it really is... do you still look pretty close to her?

We look very much alike. I am a little bigger and taller, and my hair is cut much shorter... I suppose she looks a bit more youthful, though I am a poor judge of it.

Anyway, it does bother me. But it is a little difficult for me to explain. I don't think that anything important would change if I were female, and I do not really wish I were, but... I am self-conscious about it. When people mistake me for a girl and then discover I am not, I always feel like they are disappointed... or that they're criticizing me.

Part of it is probably that I always feel worried that there is no one else who's the same as I am. So knowing that I am different even from Lady Scheherazade's other clones...

Ah, I cannot explain it well. I get upset, that is all.

[ He subtly leans his arm a little more into and against Titus, a form of reassurance that would matter to him, so he manifests now, without speaking. Murasame has stayed fairly quiet through all this, but he intrudes now, in his own way: snorting and turning his head so one yellow eye locks on to Titus's face. ]

Stupid. Why expect you to be anything but what you are? Stupid and human.

[ He falls silent, fluffing out his feathers and making a grunting sound in his throat, perpetual glare even more pronounced in the moment. Shino keeps himself from using his other hand to reach in and press down on Mursame's head to keep him from talking more, but his demon's not super chatty anyway, and his opinion is usually delivered with an economy of words, if he bothers at all.

Shino frowns, but he gets it. Really, he does. ]

It's irritating not to feel seen. It's not your fault people make assumptions, but why do you have to bear their disappointment, too? Not that it's always nice if they're not disappointed... depending on if their interest was creepy to start with.

[ All from personal experience, though less here, ironically. More at home. ]

But it's nice when you feel like there's somewhere you belong, that you aren't alone. That kind of thing, right? Like you're not the only person having to deal with whatever it is in the world.

I suppose it's because a part of me feels that they would be right to be disappointed. Even though I cannot really imagine being personally disappointed over something like that.

[ he nestles a bit closer... it really is reassuring. he feels so much calmer now that he's beginning to notice things he'd been too keyed up for before, like how tired he is, and how hungry. ...but he's not nearly ready to stop sitting together like this just for something as negligible as sleep or food. ]

That's it exactly. Being alone... and being different from everyone else in the world...
I hate that more than anything.

Yeah... me too.

[ Deeply, deeply hates it. He's glad for more of Titus's weight against him, the feedback of moonlacing one of the positives, sure, but the comfort of proximity one that matters to Shino, and always has. ]

I...

[ He trails off, then leans more into Titus, because there are things even almost a year here haven't made okay. Haven't solved. Have, in some ways, made worse. ]

I don't know that there's anything I fear more than living and being alone, with no one beside me. So... I hate it, too. The idea of it, or defending what you are, when people assume what it is you've gotta be.

Living alone...

I never even thought about that. All this time, what I've been terrified of is dying... but it was because I wanted so badly to keep living together with the ones I love.

Mm... It's what we all want, right? Not to leave the people we love. Even if we know one day, we're going to have to anyway.

[ He half closes his eyes, staring down at his presently untattoo'd arm. With Murasame still in Titus' lap, there's no reason it would show his seal.

One way or another, he is always going to have to leave the ones he loves. In this world, or in his own. ]

It's the kind of fear worth having, isn't it? The one that says we've loved anyone enough to not want to lose them, or let them lose us.

Maybe so.
You know, I...
I promised Marga that I would stay with her forever. I won't be able to do that now... but...

At least, as long as I am here, I can stay with you.

[ His hand tightens it's grip on Titus's, and he leans in a little more, a pointed presence, like the demon crow playing huggable play-thing in his lap. None of them get to ultimately know for sure when they leave, or someone leaves, or if they can be there for the people they care about in the ways they want to. No matter which child it is they've taken in, what family they built for themselves.

But they had those relationships. They've made those families. And that's precious and powerful, all things considered. ]

Me too. I'll stay with you too, as long as I can, so don't go trying to throw away the family you've got here, okay? That'll just make me angry, and I'll have to kick your butt when you wake up from going crystal.

[ A small, sideways smile, because it's earnest, deadly earnest, but also a small tease. The kinds of threats friends aren't ever supposed to need to follow through on. ]

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two, two, two posts in one; 4/6

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