a catchall through the end: fall and winter

[bluminescence]

WHO: Kaspar Blumlund + others
WHAT: some ota, some closed. auction date and effects prompts, whatever makes sense to put here
WHEN: throughout February-March
WHERE: varies
WARNINGS: mind the headers


autumn
plotting | event
bug eater farm ic inbox

Comments

memories (please don't reply)

[bluminescence]

one

cw: oppressive government things, otherwise a sweeter childhood memory

[ The dimly lit office is quiet, save for the ticking of the clock on the far wall and the soft scraping of a man at his desk. Broad shouldered and dressed in simple clothes, his blond hair was slicked so thoroughly that it reflected the hazy light of the round fixture above like pools of white gold. Hunched over the desk, white glowing fabric held carefully between rough and mangled hands. There is something lovely in their deftness as they quietly worked the mundane into delicate, beautiful flowers. Finer fabrics than his own, hot iron presses, and careful stitching, there is nothing of his work in the white and dark browns he wore.

Familiar grey eyes glow brightly from the corner. They dawn over the cover of an old leather book and belong to a young boy whose skin glows just as dimly as the man's. His hair is white and cut short; defiant front locks already beginning their curve into a curl. The boy takes long breaks from reading to watch the man with matching grey eyes work. Quiet, legs folded in where he sits on slate boxes, the only space free enough from the clutter of the room.

One flower falls, light enough to flutter and spin in the boy's direction. It lands before his perch. His father does not turn for it, but the boy only stares as if some invisible force prevents him from reaching for it. ]

two

cw: well intentioned traumatic parenting directed at a child (a potential slap)

[ A single stripe of light spills into the hallway as a tall blond woman exits the room. Her hair is done up in clean curls, her white blond hair carefully pinned out of her face. Powdered, plucked, and painstakingly filled in, her arched eyebrows curve over hawkish eyes that refuse to be softened under her subtle efforts at thickening their thin lashes. Her mouth is small but plumped by the even subtler addition of color to them. Light red eyes, their glow almost pink, sharpen as her expression sours.

Morten, she hisses through clenched teeth as she gracefully storms down the hallway. Her white gown flows with her, tight bodice intricately brocaded in golds and covering her pale skin up to her neck. The skirt falls in thin layers nearly to her ankles, white stockings minding the gap between linen and leather.

A young boy's face peeks the corner just as the woman disappears, softly glowing grey eyes wide and fixated by the gap in her door. Fear lives there too, but there is little room for it with the awe on his round little face. ]

three

cw: bittersweet love / violence / homophobia

[ The dorm was empty during this bell. Metal bedframes and simple mattresses lined either wall of the plain, square room of smoothed stoned. Kaspar, almost as broad shouldered as they may remember him, slips inside. The light of the hall is a blip in the dark, illuminating the immaculate and stark whites and grays.

With careful, silent steps a young Kaspar's dimly glowing form marks a familiar path to a familiar bed. His hair is slightly whiter, cut so short that there is barely a curl to be seen save those that shift atop his head as Kaspar brings a small folded note to his lips. Joy fills the flush on his face. As he leans to hide the square beneath a pillow, Kaspar runs his fingertips across the bedding and leans far enough to inhale the scent of whoever last slept in it. In his hand upon its retraction, a new note. This one, addressed with a small but beautiful flower sketched on its front. Underneath it, in Groscian, is his name, shortened sweetly and written delicately. Kaś.

A chime has him jump, tucking the letter into one leather boot before nearly running on clouds from the room in his haste. The hall light illuminates him briefly, lessening his glow before the door shuts just as quietly behind him. ]

four

cw: child being treated for serious injuries ( from fighting other children) / mention of implied needles/medical adjacent

[ The young boy needs no restraints, though the sturdy leather belts hang ominously from the chair he sits in. It is the only seat in the smooth white room, grated drain beneath it with floors sloped toward it. A handful of softly glowing men robed in white, surround the boy who doesn't wince when the heavy black arm of one machine is strapped to him, the glint of sharpness hidden beneath straps as red fluid fills the thin tubes sprouting from the other end. The boy's one good eye, light grey and listless, follows the color's path as empties into a gilded cannister. His gaze remains there as they roughly assess him.

He can't be over seven, far too young for the warrior's state of his pale skin and bloody, matted white hair. Littered with bruises, cuts, they narrate the violent story of the his defense and his far more brutal and unforgiving offense. The marks are easy to see, blood pooling beneath skin and brightening the glow of bruises as they blacken for every punch, stab, and kick endured.

His angry red knuckles, caked in his own and others drying blood, are a swollen mess. The men lift one arm to assess the smears of dark red that extend to his elbows, in smudges and splatters. Thinner lines of red, scratches, defensive wounds sustained from others scrambling for mercy. For his broken finger, a snap rings out as they break it again without warning. There is a contraption for that too, glowing as one robed man rights his bones with his own blood.

When the boy gasps quietly in pain, another man takes the chance to address the injuries there. Gloved hands force his mouth open by the jaw. The probing split his painfully swollen lip again to inspect his chipped tooth and the damage done by his own teeth to bloody the inside of his mouth.

The boy is silent, expressionless in the face of their rough and clinical treatment. It's hard to tell with one eye forced shut and both on their way to blackening, but his expression is distant. They are not comforting or gentle as they treat his wounds with loud machines, heavy black irons and smooth metals, unearthly powered by the blood and light of whichever robed man found his specialty in its operation.

Kaspar, in this moment, is not so much a person as a thing to be repaired, tuned, and documented in their reports. For the excess grime of the fighting to circle the drain. Eventually, the loss of blood is sedative enough that he passes out, and the world blurs at the edges before going black. ]

five

cw: war setting with no violence, just darkness and leaping from high places

[ Kaspar stands at the edge of a hole at the end of a dark tunnel. The soft glow of himself and the men around him do nothing to pierce the pitch black of the depth before him. The seemingly unending darkness threatens to swallow them whole.

Expressionless, he loads his rifle. Other men with glowing eyes in light shades of blue, red, grey, and yellow all remain squarely on him. Kaspar is the tallest among them all, towering a foot over most of them. Their matching white uniforms are stark against the tunnel walls; collars illuminated by the glow of their skin and cloaks obscuring their forms.

A circle of them take their stations around the same edge as Kaspar, summoned by a single hand gesture from him. Like Kaspar, their collars are gold and their harnesses strapped about their torsos. The lines of sturdy cables attached to them are manned by silver collared men.

Kaspar is sixteen and baby faced despite his strong jaw and broad shoulders, aiming Thyra quietly into the darkness for the first time. A breath, a shot, and Kaspar's eyes slipped closed as the bullet flies unseen. There is no sound, just the collectively held breath before Kaspar's fist raises in the air. A man behind him diligently translates the hand signals that follow into the heavy, black iron winch anchored into the tunnel opening.

Shouldering his rifle and securing it, Kaspar glances back to his engineer. The other man's glowing thumbs up is all Kaspar needs to tug once against his harness before spreading his arms and breaking protocol to free fall from the edge and down into the depths with eyes wide open behind his goggles.

Captai--! A man to his side cries out. But there is no stopping his descent now. ]

six

cw: eventual bloody and claustrophoc tunnel fighting / violence / death

[ The tunnel is dark as the men trudge along its winding length. Illuminated only by the soft, organic flickering of the single thin line of light installed into the hard stone above them, casting blurry shadows that dance in the corner of eyes. Every few meters, the twists and turns raise the number on the markers.

A line of men hug each wall, two by two, the glow of their skin an answer to the glow above as they move silently along the path. Until the lights end. Abrupt darkness ahead calls the tallest man among them to raise his fist in the air. It halts the entire procession, the few hundred men in the company behind him like lights strung along the path left between the two rows.

Near the front, stand the eager and well armed. Broader shoulders and bearing weapons as finely crafted as Kaspar's. The tension in the air thickens the farther back in the company, where the most simply armed men are also the most burdened with equipment and munitions for those without bloodletting weapons. The end, hidden around the curve, is capped by the taller rear squad.

In the stillness, only the brave or the stupid whisper amongst themselves in clipped Groscian.

What's he doing? ]

seven

cw: this one is tame! come learn about Groscia.

[ The chime of the Church bell echos through the smooth stone complex from small boxes like the one affixed to the hall filled with neat rows of slate tables and young faintly glowing men eating. The sound draws Kaspar away from the bowl of white porridge he leaves for the even younger cadets to converge on as he takes his leave. The bells are pleasant the first time they grace most ears. Before they become the yoke of monotony by sound alone, calling all in its range not only to service with early waking, but to work, rest, and slumber.

Kaspar slows on the path that winds from dormitory to Temple core, the full city coming into view. Flickering lights mark the sheer size of the massive interior mined out over thousands of years only to be filled in again with structures that spiral or line the walls with feats of marble, stone, steel, and other metals. Years of creation, upheaval, advancement and decline are written in the variations of design. Banners of white silks and golds hang from the complex that circles the uppermost ring of white marble and smooth gray stone. Intricate facades of gold, and the white statues of the saints speak to the age of this place. How out of place then, are the banners of the current Avus, hung from them with the looming figure of a dragon imprinted down its length. Hung at an angle, a reminder to any who dare look up from the deeper belly of the city. Everything is contained under the mountain.

Like the inside of an egg, the inner walls painted in glowing whites and golds, dotted like stars and full of life and movement. Streets and shops are visible in the ring below, humming to life with the early bells and the first train of the day pulling into the station. Everyone here glows in the dark, slightly dimmer than the hazy lighting of the paths, like bioluminescent flowers encased in lovely glass.

Rising from the very center of the large cavern is the massive skull of Orm. The truest, purest source of white light in Kaspar's existence. One single, menacing tooth could fit multiple grown man within its cavity. The bones of the skull produce a unending white glow, pulsing with the heartbeat of the whole nation. Kaspar follows his path as it hugs the high walls of the cavern in which the massive city sits. Old murals and reliefs, long forgotten by the current regime, scale the old stone in a broader palette of dulled colors than the whites, golds and silvers of the upper levels.

Kaspar pauses by an opening in the stone, an ancient archway. He glances this way or that, before stepping over the signs that indicate this pathway is closed off for a reason. Of course, he is staring too intently at something glowing softly in the darkness as he moves forward. His head audibly greets the stone archway, a few inches too short for him. ]