Black and white shadows

[Emily Littleton] It's a blustery Sunday, not at all sunny, overcast and cool. The weather has fallen away from the trend of summery days and temperate nights that had made for a lovely interlude to early spring.

Emily's apartment is still sparsely decorated, with vast expanses of uncharted wood floors and largely blank walls. The few boxes she's brought with her form islands in the sea of openness, reefs to be avoided by bare toes when navigating the space.

This afternoon, she is remedying this blank slate state. Two bookshelves, black-brown and simply shaped, stand against the long wall of her living room in even spacings. There is a chalk-line snapped against the white wall, at eye-height, lining up with one of the shelves. There is a collection of black-brown frames with bright-white mattes in a puddle of glass faces and sharp corners next to her laptop and a borrowed printer.

One by one, she sorts through folders and archive media full of pictures. There is also a wooden box, small and hand-decorated, that contains pictures from being the digital age began. Some with rounded corners, some turning ever more sepia-toned or ruddy as the blues and greens fade. The Orphan (for now [Choruster to be]) handles these with a particular gentleness, reverence.

Each frame gets filled with a memory, some pleasing and some sad. Some torturous, too, like the grainy print out of a newspaper scan (emergency vehicles at the bank of a far away river). Some are just scenery (the vaulted pillars of Holyrood Abbey reaching upward to a phantom roof that is centuries fallen); some are almost portraits (a brown-eyed boy, grinning, over a bowl of hand-made pasta). Each matte gets a penciled annotation (City, Country) in Emily's exceedingly cautious script.

One by one, they join the line-up on her wall. Marching from one edge to another, round the corner and across the next wall. Shoulder to shoulder, they form an unbroken line (save for where windows and doorways intercede [or where they bump up against a bookshelf, black brown as well] beginning again on the other side of the obstruction). Chronologically, building up to the blank spaces that are today, tomorrow, and every day beyond. At the end of this sequence is a picture of Chicago's skyline at dusk. It is small, black and white, and must have been taken in the winter for the ground is bright with reflected light and the lake water is black-dark and unfathomable.

It is too cold to have the window open, but Emily's is nevertheless. The wind pushes the lightweight drapes (plain white panels) aside, slides across the floor to rustle pictures, disturb the thin stream of steam that comes off her mug of tea. It toys with the fringe of the blanket that's draped over the arm of the rocking chair (still precisely where Owen had left it, not quite a week before). It cools the floor boards and justifies the weight of the sweater she wears. Even chilly, the air smells of spring, of new beginnings, and she welcomes it home.

Home.

This space is just beginning to feel a bit more like Home.

[katabasis] This is a ritual. This thing that Emily does: the card-shuffle of memory, the looking at images, conjuring up stories, half-lit by memory, nostalgia, by thought. This thing that she does is a ritual and it is meant to make this apartment she's in -- this flat -- feel like a place she can call home. It's meant, although perhaps she isn't so grave, so focused in her intent, to make these walls hers, it's meant to place her, to fix her to the map of the world. There's something deeply meditative about such repetition: take out, sort, unpack, sort, put away, sort. Touch this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this, and this, and then this.

And Emily is finding herself drifting, falling into meditation, a lightness which starts at the second innermost chamber of her heart and spreads outward. Emily will realize that she is chilled, and she will blame it, perhaps, on the window; she will think that maybe soon she'll have to close it, or take another sip of her tea. There's steam rising from that tea, and it swirls on a-sudden, takes on a ghostly hieroglyph, something very nearly winged, and in defiance of the wind, it gusts closer to Emily, lingers over her head, stays.

The wind is rising, and the edges of the shadows of the pictures Emily's set out are trembling. Emily can hear something coming from her bedroom, the door open, and she is not afraid of it. It sounds like something soft, beating against glass. That window isn't open, although -- although she can feel a breeze (a flurry, whisper, kiss: it's so gentle).

[Emily Littleton] It is a ritual, yes : homecoming, housewarming. It is a ritual, new, and unlearned and unpracticed. This is a something she has never done before, never pinned herself down to the immoveable map of the world in such a permanent way. A six month lease, more material possessions than she could fit in her car, more things that would fit in a case, a case that could fly away with her anywhere -- this is a new thing, a beginning, a strange ritual. A strange, strange ritual Life was.

And it's cold; this hardly surprises her. It's cold like Winter is reaching in across the sashings, the sills, and trying to pull her back. Back to the snowy nights, standing on the bank of the lake (frozen nose and freezing toes). Back to his Loveliness (departed now [gone and each day more forgotten]) and the oddity of that. It is cold, like the wind that blows down off the steppes -- without thinking her eyes drift to the pictures from China, snow scattered over fields that would be peonies in warmer months.

Predictable, yes, she reaches for her tea but that hand stills as she spies the odd sigil. The hand comes back toward her center, stalls and shifts to press down on the stack of photos that might flutter away. A glance cast toward the window, then onward to her bedroom door.

Slowly, she rises, leaving the memories to fend for themselves in the growing wind. Bare feet pad along bare floors, bringing her closer to her bedroom door. There is not fear, but in its place curiosity reigns.

A light breeze, though the window is not open. A flurry, a whisper. The Orphan (for now) furrows her brow, pushes the door gently open just a little more, and looks into the room.

It is furnished by little more than a low bookcase and a futon (single width) laid out on the hard floor. There is a stack of school books, here, things tucked into the closet there. Not even so much as a shade on the window.

[katabasis] The window is indeed closed. There's a shadow, webbing itself across her floor; cast by something outside. This something moves so quickly: it's dappled, luminous one moment, dark the next; a bird, feathers, beating at the window, somehow not breaking its neck. Emily's apartment is on the second floor, and she'll notice this: the bird is caught. Emily will notice this: the bird is caught in a net of rough brown, of serviceable, workman's ropes, tied to something above. The bird struggles, but the netting, the roping, drags its claws away from the window. When it stops struggling, when its feathers no longer whumpf, whumpf, whumpf in sudden flurries against the glass, then it will hang there until it starves, or until a cat find its, or until it gathers up enough strength to launch itself at the window and break its neck. Its eye is liquid, and unblinking, and circled by fire, by amber luminescence. It struggles, again; it throws three shadows.

There is sunshine without her window, see. There is some light to fall into the bedroom, which is cool and blue. If Emily pauses to turn on a light, it will not respond. The light will stay as silent as a grave, and as uncaring. The room is cool and blue, blue and cool, and it feels more spacious than it is. Take this moment: understand, distance is not always obvious. If Emily steps inside the room, vertigo.

The floor isn't falling out from under her feet, but it wants to. Vertigo.

[Emily Littleton] There is a thought, singular, in her mind when the bird stops struggling against its bindings : compassion. It is a thoughtless thing to step across the threshold of her room, to make toward the window in an effort to ease the bird from its burdens. To free it so that it might not expire from fear, or strangulation, or at the claws of a less encumbered predator.

That comes before.

Two steps, and she's across the doorway --

-- This is after.

The floor is level and hard and smooth: Fact. Yet it wobbles, shifts, and threatens to give way beneath her feet: perception. Emily stops her forward motion, extends her arms out for balance. The bird is caught. Emily is caught. Both feet find the floor and she steadies herself. It is now that she sees the bird's eye, liquid and dripping with amber light.

A small breath, caught in her chest. A closer, keener look. Her feet are squarely in the blue light, cast by the rogue sun's light, coming in from out the window. There is the flicker, flutter, rush of shadow that touches them, cool fingers to bare skin, when the creature struggles again.

A cautious step, now, the testing of boundaries. The intent is the same, to help, to rescue. But if the world is topsy-tipsy-turvy, she will have to reconsider. Go slowly. Go carefully.

For her world, now, is not always as it seems: Fact, and also perception.

[katabasis] The going doesn't get any easier. Emily might wonder if she needs a drink of water, if water will cool her throat, will cool her head, will cool her heart. Will cool her, give her clarity, whatever it is she needs not to feel dizzy, like she's far, far too high above a sudden drop, like she isn't about to be dashed. The going will be slow, but if she is willful enough, if she is determined enough, she'll make it across her room's floor, past the fouton, to the window and the struggling bird. If she blinks, her head will spin. If she turns to look at anything, her head will spin. Her head seems determined to spin her around and set her down, woozy, unbalanced, falling. If she looks at the hollow-boned thing, frantic in its net, she'll be able to focus, and when her fingers meet the glass of the window, the solidity of its latch, she'll know this is real, I can't be dreaming.

[Emily Littleton] She thinks on it -- when the last time she ate was, whether she has had enough to drink, what might have brought upon this spate of dizziness and vertigo. All of the simple, mundane reasons are accounted for. She has not been particularly lax about her well fare of late, not since she came back from being away. There is no reason, internally, for the weebledy-wobbeldy nature of the world.

Unless she is unwell. (It could happen.)

There is a stubbornness to this, now. It is an unspoken challenge. Crossing her own room should not be difficult. It should not take every ounce of focus, confidence, surety she can muster. This is a simple task: walk to the window. It is not a feat of great danger: walk to the edge.

Slowly, she goes. Slowly and with her eyes open and her Awareness piqued. And yes, there are moments where she closes her eyes (involuntarily), and her head sends her reeling, spinning. But that is her head, and this is her heart (resolute, still beating, pushing [stubborn] driven).

It is easy, too, to remember the panic and frail-featured fear she's felt, so many times, over the past several months. Perhaps this is why her feet push forward, step by step, and her heart is immoveable in its resolve. Why her head is wrong, and is not heeded. Someone had always been there to help her, flighty, frail-boned Emily; she was here now to help that hollow-boned bird.

The latch, once found, is opened. Emily eases the window up in its casement. There is no screen (it is that old), and no impediment now to the blue-afternoon light or the cold-winter wind.

[katabasis] The sunlight feels like honey (warm [beeswax, hot]) on her arms and on her hands. The air is vast: there's forever out there; there's beyond forever. There is space and it is sacrosanct. The sense of vertigo leaves her (dissipates; rises into the honeyed air, is set into the dark honeycombed radiance, fixed in wax, for later, later) as soon as she reaches out to help the bird. Her presence doesn't seem to have agitated it. Rather, her presence, the open window, seems to have drained it of its ability to fight, and it watches her with mellifluant eyes, watches her and stays so still that, until it cocks its head at her, she'll wonder -- is it too late?

Emily tries to untangle it without touching the bird, by touching the rope and net alone. To do this, she has to lean out of her window. Maybe she has to stand on something, maybe she has to perch herself there, framed, brace herself so she won't fall. The bird had seemed so close, but now that it isn't trying to get in and get out, Emily can see that the rope/net (what is it attached to?) is connected to something that juts out of her apartment building, and is a good foot away from her bedroom window. The more she attempts to un-do it without touching the bird, the more tangled up the bird gets, until it makes a sound, something low, resonant, in the back of its sleek throat,

something hopeless, pained.

[Emily Littleton] It is a second story window and one would think that a girl, having just been so overtaken by vertigo, would stop to think about whether leaning out was such a good idea. One would think. One. But not this girl.

There have been years spent in second and third story rooms, rooms with little more than radiators before the windows and no screens. No nearby trees. It is not an odd thing for this girl to throw a leg over the sash, to sit and straddle the opening -- half in, half out -- to get better purchase on something, on the sunshine, or the line that is just out of reach. There is a leg inside her bedroom still, to counter balance and to weigh her in, and arm inside to press fast against the wall while the other reaches onward, outward. Most of her is outside, and she is not strong enough to do this for long, but dexterous (yes), and practiced (it helps).

But if that will not do, she will not push the poor creature to further peril. If that will not do, no, then she will have to reach out, draw it nearer, draw it close, and hope that thin-threaded calm it has about it now will hold. Or it might flutter, flurry, frighten itself and her.

Two stories is a long way down, and the ground is still hard-cold and unforgiving.

But let's not think on that just now.

[katabasis] The bird (the dove [the messenger]) is calm until Emily touches it and draws it closer. Then it makes more noise -- musical, miserichord; fear-coos, anger-coos, agitation-coos. Unhappy trills, that would call the ghosts out've their loam-y graves, send them marching, marching again to stop that sound [break, your heart]. And it flaps its wings, the three-part shadow that they cast brush across Emily, tactile, and she can taste feathers on her tongue, or air. More air: it's all about air, right now; about the wind, kicking up; about the dove in Emily's palms, the net falling away, but not fast enough. The net, somehow tangling her hands with the dove, who flutters like she can't bear to be touched, whose talons are sharp, whose eye is rolling.

The vertigo doesn't return. Emily can ease herself back inside, although now her hands are tied. Or maybe Emily will flutter, flurry. Let fright work its way into her bones, knock her unbalanced. Maybe they'll both fall, dove and Emily. Maybe now's the time. Maybe the wind is picking up, and trees are bowing, buildings creaking. Maybe Emily's hair is tugged, loose if it's gathered up, wild if it's not.

[Emily Littleton] There's a flutter (panic) near her heart, in her chest, it's an adrenaline-high waiting to happen, wide eyed and breath all caught in her chest. It's a sudden tensing, just enough to catch her off gaurd. There's a voice that rises, wells up out of her, soft and pleading: Shhhh, now. Asking. Please, now.

And the wind that rises pulls at her hair, gathered low and loosely as it is at the nape of her neck. It is long enough, loose enough, to tangle in the net if wind is wild enough. And the wind that rises, is it cold or honeyed-sweet? It is Winter or sunlight, fear or hope?

The bird coos angrily and its agitation transfers to the Orphan, who has only just (re)declared herself a Child of God. Who is only half-returned to that place (station) of Grace, yet finds herself calling on Him in the quiet places of her mind. To give her peace, to keep her safe, to give her the surety and calm to help without hurting.

To know when to let go. To know when to withdraw.

The wind kicks up and Emily, entangled, tries to ease herself back in through the window. She is shaken, like the limbs of the trees not far away, and agitated, like the bird in her palms.

[katabasis] Difficult, but not impossible. The soon-to-be Singer, dove held [hearts drum (frantic: just like this)] firm, manages to ease herself back into her room. There is still no vertigo. Whatever dizziness she'd had, it seems to have passed; whatever loss of balance had plagued her, it's gone now, and she stands however firmly she handles the dove, who stops struggling once they're over the window sill's threshold, once they're inside, and stares at Emily. Its eyes are lovely things, and bright as stars.

This, then: the mundane room, the mundane young woman, the bird (whose shadow fans out, fins out; takes the shape, underneath, of another woman). The net loops around Emily's wrist, around its left wing -- an easy thing to undo.

[Emily Littleton] An easy thing, feet planted firmly on the floorboards of her own room, bird brought across the sashing, welcomed in (unintentionally?). Emily eases the bindings off its wings, loosing the bonds of the bird before her own. Her own, she reasons, she could always disentangle after the dove was free.

Dove, yes, that's what it must be. Though why the bird of mercy (of innocence [of love]) was trapped outside her window, she does not know. Emily speaks softly to it, again: You're safe, now. Not long, now. She works to set it free.

Its eyes are lovely, bright as stars. Hers are deep, a boundless blue. There is a moment when she looks in to that starlight, and smiles softly to herself.

[katabasis] Emily, it says, voice bell-like and clear, and doves cannot speak. Their tongues are a delicacy for a medieval feast. Their tongues are meant to sweeten other throats, not their own. Yet, Emily, it says, and there's an ache in the name. Oh, Emily. I am sorry, daughter. I am sorry, but are you ready? I am sorry, but are you ready? What will you use to write the lines of your palm? What will crease your face? Where, o my daughter, are you? And she will feel loved, beloved.

And, at the tail's end of Emily's smile, the dove lifts out of Emily's grasp, and this time the air that its wings stir kisses the awakened woman's eyes, chills her cheeks, and it rises in a blur of light, too luminous to look at, too radiant -- somehow it catches the last ray's of sunlight from the window, the sunlight that shouldn't be, and flames white with it.

But the dove is followed by its shadow, which finally lengthens, takes shape, rises too: its shape does not match the doves. It is a raven, black as a starless sky, and it dives straight for Emily's --

[Emily Littleton] Where, o my daughter, are you?

With its voice still honey-sweet in her ears, cloying and lovely, clover-scented and delicate, the bird rises from her palms. It is Luminous. Radiant. The girl lifts one hand to shade her eyes from the brilliance that illuminates, that blinds, that burns away ...

... And so the moment where the sunlight slips to shadow is almost missed, save that it is nearly palpable shift. That hand drops away, long enough for her to catch sight of the raven, long enough to register that there is something diving for her --

Emily blocks her face with her arms, cringes away from the inbound bird with its sharp talons and beak. (Are you ready?) Such a cruel shift, from glory to onslaught. The Orphan's frame tenses, awaiting the impact or the flurry or the pain.

[katabasis] 1

[katabasis] ooc: totally not ready yet. (steals back)

[Emily Littleton]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5

[katabasis] This time, the wind is Hellfire hot. The wind's scorching: as if the raven were a creature not of night, not of cool starless skies at all, but of pitch and smoke, as if it carried inside its dense, no doubt black, heart -- fire. And the wind comes from its wings, which cut, razor-fine, slice, razor-score, the arms she's flung up to protect her face. The raven veers upward, swings toward the ceiling, then circles back and dives at Emily again. This time, it gets some of her hair, tugs it, wrenches it right out've her head, tweaks it, pulls it, and when she moves, when she tries to get to the door, it circles that way, cuts her off, goes for her face again. It seems to be trying to get to her eyes, and Emily can hear, whenever its [white] shadow touches her, a woman laughing or a woman crying. When its shadow doesn't touch her, there is nothing. There is silence. Absolute silence, until, Where are your Words, Emily? Where are your precious Words? Is this what you are? Is this the face of my daughter, hidden, cringing? Why don't you cry? Where are your Words, Emily?

[Emily Littleton] There is a gasp when the hellfire winds find her, rip into her. It calls up the memory of the one that burned like Summer on a snowy street. The Mad One who burned away in purgatory while walking feet-to-pavement beside her on the Mile. It brings up the scent of brimstone, imagined, and the ache of too-real pains past.

But she does not cry out. (Neither in pleasure or pain will that be taken from her without a fight.) Not yet. Not in wordless, shapeless ways.

She crouches down, pulls tightly into a ball against the onslaught. This is protective. This is instinctual. These are things her body does before her mind, or heart, or soul can act. And as the bird circles overhead and makes to dive for her again (you will not take my eyes [gateways to my soul]), it taunts her. It chides her. And something in the Orphan (soon to be something more)...

... breaks.

Between the white shadows of laughter and tears there comes a set jaw, pinched expression, tense and tightening muscles. Anger. Beneath the silence is frustration, and that frustration with not knowing is a tightly kept thing. It threatens to erupt, lash out, burn through her like the heart of the Raven.

"What words would you have?" she calls back, angrily. This time, she does not bade it stop. She does not whimper for it to retreat. "Ask plainly," she insists, and the words are bright hot with irritation. No patience. No calm. They are clipped consonants and hard edges, easily heard from the street corner below. But she does not drop her arms away from her face; she does not trust the black-heart bird.

[katabasis] The Raven settles in the doorway, in the doorframe, but on the floor: a sleek, glossy creature -- a raptor's curved, vicious beak. The raven clicks [bone games (oracle tiles)] in the back of its throat and, apparently ignoring the mage crouched in a ball on the floor of her bedroom, begins to preen itself, beak sifting through feathers which are so dark they gleam purple when they gleam at all.

How easy it is, the raven says, snapping its beak closed, fixing Emily with one eye. The corbae family is known for being mischievous. In mythology, crows and ravens are judges, are underworld-messengers, are harbingers of death, of war, but they're also the birds who linger at gateways, who witness the mysteries of the world, who've flown further, faster, than any other thing. They've seen it all, and that's in the raven's dark eyes: an endlessness, in which Emily is small, in which Emily is reflected, is central. How easy it is, the raven repeats, to break your desire. How fickle you are.

Is this your face, then? I don't want Words from you. Aren't you going to use them, to hold them up like shields? Where is my daughter? Where is her heart? Where is the reverence in this?

[Emily Littleton] It stops attacking her and Emily's arms drop away from her face. She begins to uncurl (unfurl), cautiously at first. Aware the the bird might, at any time, change its mind and resume its hostilities.

Wait. Odd that. She caught herself thinking of the bird as if it were more than a bird, perhaps because it talked and walked and acted toward a purpose.

The mage canted her head a little to the side and regarded the endless-eyed messenger shrewdly. Silent for the space of several breaths (breathe in, breathe out), Emily's mind was diamond-sharp and churning quickly through a finite list of possibilities. Curiosities. There is a little shift to her mouth, less angry, vaguely wry, but not words. Just yet.

The girl began to pick herself up off the floor, eyes always on the bird, drawing herself up to standing. She looks down to where it stands now, but does not down (her nose) on it. (Note: There is a difference.)

It preens. She watches. It goads and chides and mocks. She watches.

"Words are not armory against what you've brought here," she says, but it's seeking. It's a question. It's an answer and a beginning. Still, she does not address the raven as a bird, no, but rather an odd-skinned equal. It confuses Emily herself, but seems natural at the same time.

"We've met before?" she asks, unsure of whether it would answer.

[katabasis] The raven gives her an are you kidding me look when she asks if they've met before. That appears to be her answer. Maybe she'll remember, then: the mocking voices that attended her, just after she Awakened; maybe she'll remember being cajoled, tricked; the rush of wings, the flicker of a shadow out of the corner of her eyes. Maybe she'll connect these things to this dark-winged creature, this judge. Maybe she won't.

Emily is looking at the raven, and the raven is looking at Emily. It has quieted, and in its quietness, it is just as lovely as its white-winged counterpart. The wind shifts, and the window closes, slamming against the casement, shuddering, and the air's redolent of roses, redolent of jasmine, of dust, of roads, of spices of foreign cities of dead things of wind wafting over caravanning roads.

What is armory, then. What has been brought here. What will you do when you step through this door. What will you do when you see another abattoir. What will you do when it is a difficult thing. What will you do, my daughter.

What I want, hah. Words, hah.

[Emily Littleton] The window slams shut and Emily glances over with a wince. It is a moment, unguarded, when she takes her eyes off her uninvited visitor. It is a weakness, perhaps folly, but it is. She cannot help that yet.

It gives her that look, and Emily sighs. The twist of her mouth is ever more wry. Yes, she remembers. Yes, she remembers quite well, thank you very much.

"You wanted progress and growth," she says. She doesn't say that it did not want words, then. It does not want words now. "I have studied and learned; I continue to study, to learn, to grow, to change. I have found a home," she says, the word resonant but not yet warm. Warming each time she says it, each time she dares to let it ring out as true.

I am come home.

There's a shift to the slant of her shoulders, less afraid and less cowering. And a faint shift to the line of her jaw, less angry, more proud.

"I did not run, that day in the park," she tells him, defiant, stronger. Willful. She did not run. She'd taken up the imbued gun that Nathan had given her, she'd reached out with what few preternatural senses she had honed, and she'd acted (no Words). And when the threat and the darkness and the worry subsided, she'd gone straight to someone she could trust for guidance. Emily was already not the child this raven had visited before.

"I will run, though, when I have to. And I will stay, when it is my turn to stay. And I will seek guidance when I do not know, and give guidance when it is my turn to lead."

Her arms crossed over her middle now. Not to protect, so much as to emphasize.

"But you do not want words, and I doubt you want promises. What do you seek?"

[katabasis] The raven hops closer to Emily. Tilts its head. Then it stalks forward, long strides. The talons -- its claws -- are as wicked looking as its beak. Look at the beak, go on: look at the hook of it. Imagine that beak, snipping a thread, snapping some lesser bird's bones, tying a dove in a net, letting it dangle, laughing, mocking, just imagine it -- it isn't too hard. Imagine that beak, gouging through skin; sundering flesh, dipped like a pennib in blood -- go on. Not too difficult. The raven doesn't appear to be about to attack her, though. The raven appears to be bright-eyed with curiosity, and that bright-eyed curiosity is the only bright thing about it. If she doesn't retreat, it comes right up to her feet. This close, its size is impressive. It looks at her, waiting. Wanting, of course: wanting.

The wind is picking up again. What is the wind picking up? The wind is picking up the roof. The wind is howling, not like wolves, but like the sea -- like a tempest, trying to escape its chains: like something unfettered, and wild, Virago, wild, wild, a roar, a thing un-muted, distant. The wind is in her room, and although she isn't buffeted this time, isn't battered, it does make it difficult to breathe. Does not appear to bother the raven, does not so much as disturb one hair on her head.

Eye
of the storm.

It's dark outside now.

[Emily Littleton]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10

[Emily Littleton] There is the click-clack of talons on hard wood floors, clattering and clicking as it moves toward her. Emily does not step away as it advances, but rather holds her ground. It is an odd test of wills, trial, Emily vs the Raven. Dark haired child, dark eyed bird, both with something burning bright and luminous in their chests.

How alike we might be.
I am nothing like you.

It is at her feet, now, and the tempest rages around them. It tosses about everything in Emily's small sparse room. Thankfully here are not the carefully gaurded memories, the photos, the frames. The only things here are the place that she sleeps, the blankets that comfort her in the night, the low bookshelf where her tech toys are sequestered. It is an empty place, and if the wind rails around it, through it, if the wind carries it all away...

... then she could start over. Wind-raked and hollowed out. Emily could always start over.

That took the fear out of it, for the moment. Here in the eye of the storm were the only two things untouched by the chaos and the gale. She looked down at the large bird at her feet, vicious and mocking, cruel and dangerous. It looked to her wanting. Wanting something. Wanting but not asking.

With a sigh, Emily's eyes closed. She knew what it was to want, to stand at someone's feet and wait, unasking, for an act of mercy. She was not a vicious thing (usually), had not been a dangerous person (but sometimes brought danger in with her). But she had often been foolish, been ready to over-extend where her safety wasn't assured.

The mage lowered herself slowly, reached out with pale arms knicked and slashed by the hellfire winds, and gathered the Raven up.

It was dark outside, now. Inside the winds raged on. And Emily stood up again, with the angry, mocking, mean bird in her arms.

[katabasis] The raven isn't easy to hold. It is heavy, coal-hot; it is not a pet. Not a songbird. No: the raven doesn't have a sweet voice. The raven's tongue is not to sweeten anybody's throat; the raven's tongue is for prophecy, is for murder, is for blood and visioning, for laughter. So: it's not easy to hold, but that isn't because it's struggling. When Emily lifts the bird, it nestles against her breast.

This is what it wants. This is part of what it wants. Emily won't feel pain, but when she looks down at it, this is what she'll notice: its head is disappearing into her teeshirt, every time it nestles closer, it glides into her flesh, passes through. It should hurt. There's something terrible about this merging, something strange -- but to the raven, when it nudges its head against her, stokes her heart hotter, stirs her, she becomes water, and it's just dipping itself in.

And pushing.

[Emily Littleton] It is hard to hold, and so it is held carefully. Not weakly, not falteringly, no. Held fast, but gently. Neither tightly (to bind), nor cruelly (to constrain). With Surety and Grace (I didn't know you had it in you...) She is purposeful about this task, focused on attending to it. It let her block out the wind that raged, that tore through her room, that encircled them and kept them close together in the eye of the storm.

The Raven does not have a sweet voice, it is not for soothing, it is not for mercy, but it has a necessary one. This is what comes first to mind when it nestles close against her breast. How terrible to be the voice of prophecy, and never to sweeten another's throat, ear, mind. To bear on your lips (beak) the burden of Truth, of death, of transformation and, wonder upon wonder, to still know laughter.

She looks down to the creature in her arms, which knows no boundary between her flesh and its. A gasp, fingers that tighten momentarily but do not crush (do not throw it away from her). It stokes her heart hotter, turns her to water, pushes, pushes, pushes...

... and Emily yields.

She wants to speak to it, softly, as she had spoken to the dove. But this is the not the bird that seeks words, seeks stillness. This is the creature that demands action, decisiveness, mocks and turns away from words.

If it wants to get under her skin, to sit just to the side of her heart (like the flurry of nervousness and adrenaline earlier), then maybe all she needs do is help it. Emily places a hand on the bird's side and pushes, gently at first, to collapse it into her in time with its next nudge, next ingress.

There is a nervous breath, a little shaken, as she is not sure what will happen next. But this seems the right thing to do, to take it in this creature so unlike (so alike) herself.

[katabasis] The raven is a scavenger, a predator. When Emily yields, then gives him aid, he disappears into her flesh, beneath her skin, just as if she truly were a water-Emily, a dark-haired, dark-eyed fascimile of flesh-and-blood, a vision, a cloud of fog; and she has swallowed him. The raven feels like heat, there; like heat, and hearth, and things in the darkness, and then he feels like (wings, shifting; rustling, folding, feathers) quietude. There is a feather on the floor of her room. The wind has slacked, but it's not gone yet. Emily can hear bells, can hear some song, something resonant, something with drums, unless that's just her heart: it could be.

When she moves, she'll catch a flash of white out of the corner of her eye, and when, not if, she turns toward it, she'll see the dove again, luminous flare of radiance, a breaking of light, shaped to look like a bird, its eyes as molten as a sunset captured in a bottle, and nothing of smoke around it. It says something to her, something quiet, something fervent, something like -

O my daughter, you. You

- a welcomesong. And what will she do with that, when the raven stirrs against her heart? When she can feel its feathers, edged? The dove casts a dark shadow.

[Emily Littleton] This is a place of things that do not quite make sense. Of how she, smarter than she looks, could welcome the Raven into her breast when she had not wanted it to cross her threshold. Of how the storm courld rage without touching her. How he could burn within her, watery Emily, yielding and fluid, and not burn her away to steam.

There are bells, caroling out, calling out -- it brings a dampness to her eyes, a brightness. There is a flutter in chest, near her heart, a rustling and seeking shifting. It steals her breath; it will take time to get used to.

Emily moves, to stoop to pick up the feather from the floor of her room. Her fingers have just lit upon it when the flash comes, tears her attention up and away (fingers kiss, but do not close upon that feather yet). The brightness burns, as the heat within her chest burns (as within, so without), she blinks, raises a hand to block it brielfy.

That upturned hand becomes a different gesture. Instead of blocking the brilliance, now, it is upturned and extended in greeting. A perch. A welcome. The dove casts a dark shadow; the Raven burns white-hot within her breast. They are reflected in one another, perhaps even balanced, and Emily is the fulcrum that would carry them both.

A welcomesong. It moves through her, pushing a lump up in her throat. The brightness in her eyes deepens, threatens tears.

There is radiance and darkness. There is wind and calm. There is a raven and dove.

And there is Emily. Arm outstretched. Heart offered as a hearth.

As a home.

[katabasis] Emily offers her arm to the dove, and the dove takes wing. The dove flies from the desk, or the table, or the fouton or the stack of textbooks and alights on Emily's shoulder, and it rubs its sleek, stars-burn-this-pale, stars-burn-this-bright head against her cheek, and then it, too, pushes itself inward, disappears, flies into Emily, and the dove feels like something blooming, something unfurling, blossoming, when it nestles in, tangles, because -- there she is, the dark-haired young woman, dark-eyed young woman, heart offered s a hearth, arm outstretched, there she is.

And there she is, on the floor of her living room, photographs around her, one frame knocked over. Her elbow hurts, as if she'd knocked it on something when she fell. Her hair pools around her, and her teeshirt is askew. Otherwise, she feels good. Otherwise, she feels better than good.

There is no wind. There is no absence of wind. Her window is still open, the night air is still chilly.

There is are two feathers on the floor of her bedroom, though. She'll see them when next she ventures into her bedroom: the white feather, just off the threshold of her door, knocked against the wall; the black feather, the larger feather, lying against the side of her fouton.