"Please Believe There Is Still Time For You To Be All That You Want To Be. There Is Time."

SOMETHING CLAWS OUT FROM THE CENTER OF YOU, THE FOUNTAIN OF PHILOSOPHY NESTLED IN THE SUPERIOR VENA CAVA BLEEDS SHARP AND SICKLY. FLECHETTES OF PUTRID SERRATED BONE LIKE THE JAVELINS OF SOME FETID GREEK HERO CONDEMNED TO THE PATHETIC CLOACA OF HISTORY. BREATHE. DIE. REPEAT.

ONE BEAUTIFUL SUMMER MORNING THE CRACKS WILL HAVE HEALED AND THE TROJANS WILL STAY INSIDE YOUR WOODEN EQUINE BELLY WHERE IT IS SAFE AND DARK WHERE THEY WILL SPOIL INTO GENTLE OBLIVION, FERMENTING SWORD AND BONE INTO GRIT AND SLUDGE. IT WILL STAY LIKE THAT FOREVER. IT WILL.

"WILL IT EVER BE SOFT?" SOMETHING CRAWLS UP YOUR BACK. VERTEBRAE TWITCH INWARD, BENDING AND SNAPPING TO RECOIL LIKE WHEN YOU WERE BURNED WITH THE CURLING IRON. "YES." IT WHISPERS, "TENDER. LIKE A VIRGIN. LIKE VEAL."

14k Gold Hand Painted Mushroom on Mother of Pearl Ring

― Louise Glück, October

the longest week (2014)

Inspired by @myuni-moon, @willowedwisteria, @lovelornobsessions, @versadies <3333

Death has cast her gaze on your wretched body.

Each puff of breath you take burns in your tired lungs, your legs long since unable to carry you any further. You were so tired but you still—

You still wanted to live.

A choked sob catches in your throat, raw and painful. Your hands scrabble over stone and dirt and snow, desperate for anything but that useless, pathetic hope is crushed into a hundred pieces when a foot pressed down, hard, on your thin wrist.

Xiao's golden eyes peer at you with just a twinge of pity but you don't want his pity, you want his mercy. Mercy from a painful death and from the hatred you'd been a recipient to ever since you found yourself in Genshin Impact, wonder and excitement all but lost when someone wearing your face declared you an imposter and demanded your head on a platter.

Cracked lips fall open, a gasp tearing from your chest like tearing flesh off bones. Your tears blur his face into another unrecognisable person, ready to be your judge, jury and executioner for a crime uncommitted yet blamed all the same on you.

Hands, golden lined and colder than Dragonspine itself clasp around your neck faster than you can sob out more pathetic pleas. You swear you can feel Zhongli bending the bones from his grip alone, your windpipe slowly, achingly giving way under his fingers yet it doesn't compare to the sheer pain you feel at the hatred in his eyes when he stares down at you.

Only a sick gurgle escaped past your lips, just as ugly as what you've become.

"Thank you, darlings," the monster wearing your skin finally appears in all their splendid glory and followed by more "loyal acolytes", smiling so serenely you would've thrown up what little food you'd eaten had it not been for your current predicament. "Still not going to repent? To ask for my frogiveness? To shed this shameful skin of yours?"

This skin is mine! You want to shriek. You want to claw at their eyes and their stolen body to see if behind it all was blood and bone or just an empty abyss. This skin is mine!

"Xiao?"

His attention is immediately on them, even the pity now long gone. You are still staring at Zhongli's eyes and it feels as though the sun itself has turned its back on your. "Yes, your excellency? What can this lowly servant do for you?"

Your monstrous twin sighs, as though they feel genuinely bad. Lies, lies, lies, liar—

"Kill them for me. Make their last breath be a scream."

Zhongli's hands falls away and you are not even granted the privilege of one breath before Xiao's spear— the one you gave him— is lodged deep in your stomach.

You scream just as the beast wearing your flesh demanded— your scream is liquid horror; it is a sound deep from the corners of the abyss where monsters lurk and the sun doesn't shine; your scream lets him— lets everyone— know that by cutting you, they are cutting themselves; lets them know that that true sound is one that can be found within them, yet by their own hands they've blackened every vision oh happiness and joy you could have shown them.

Golden ichor covers the ground, your bruised body, your hands. You cough it up your raw throat and beyond the haze of painpainpain, you feel even more hands descend on your writhing body. They plea and beg and grovel to you and even beyond that, there is another shriek but you can no longer tell if it is your or somebody else's.

You meet Xiao's golden eyes, and they stare at you in muted horror and regret. You want to laugh but all you do is choke on even more blood as you're picked, as a maelstorm of healing hydro and anemo surrounds you.

Death has cast her gaze on your wretched body, yet she turns away from you all the same.

“The prince just fell in love with Cinderella because of her looks!”

Wrong. Okay, picture this–

So there’s the prince, okay? He’s like, smack dab in the center of the ballroom, and he is like, horrifically aware that this whole ball thing is a result of his dad falling into a panic about the royal lineage or whatever and he’s stuck listening to highborn girl after highborn girl, all lined up, introducing themselves like, “Oh yeah my family’s been a longtime supporter of the crown, and I think you’re cute, *cough* I’ve been told I have child-bearing hips *cough* Who said that? Anyway–” and Princey boy is just smiling through it, he has been the center of attention for entirely too long, he misses his emotional support horse, and is just internally like “Someone please kill me now.” And then… he sees her–This isn’t a love at first sight thing, this is a ‘what the hell is going on over there’ thing, because this girl has not gotten into the Debutante line for a solid 45 minutes. 

She’s just at the hors d’oeuvres table going HAM on the prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, and like, she’s polite about it, she’s happy to move aside for other people grabbing punch and canapes (and she’s really so sweet with the wait staff, it’s kind of cute because they’re like… definitely not used to being acknowledged) but it’s like, “Damn girl, did you not eat today?” and then the prince is kind of stuck with the uncomfortable thought of ‘how many girls starved themselves to fit into a corset for this.’ And then the Prince realizes he’s missed the past 4 Debutante introductions because he’s watching Mystery girl hork down crab rangoons. So he’s like, “Excuse me” and manages to break free from the never-ending parade of girls who will hop on his dick for status.

 And as he’s approaching Mystery Girl, it’s kind of hitting him that something’s not quite natural about her. Not fake, but not quite real. But at the same time this whole evening’s been just a whole circus of people acting fake as hell, so like, someone seeming a little off doesn’t seem bad, necessarily. And he sidles up to her like, “Hi,” and she’s like, “Oh–hey, have you tried the tapenade?” and she points to one of the plates, and at this point, he could hit her with the “You don’t know who I am, do you?” deal or the “Very funny, I see your play” deal, but at this point it occurs to him that, no, he hasn’t had anything to eat throughout this whole damn ball, partially because of being stuck in the debutante parade, partially because of nerves, and there’s something so disarming about the question that he grabs a crostini and she still seems so food-focused that it doesn’t seem possible that this is a play. So they both grab little plates and ditch the party.

She pretty much clears her plate in under two minutes and then has half of his plate, he’s cool with it, mostly he’s just absolutely fascinated listening to her.

See here’s the thing about Cinderella:

1. She doesn’t know he’s the prince. Like yeah, he’s been at the center of the room, but she’s kind of spent half the party eagerly looking around everywhere she’s allowed to go (”Have you seen rose garden? Have you seen the solarium??” further confirmation that she doesn’t know who she’s talking to) and the other half stuffing her face with food. 

2. She assumes she’s never going to see anyone here tonight again, and no one recognizes her, so she has no filter.

So she’s just talking about whatever with this guy. He seems cool. She talks about her friends, who are rats. She makes little outfits for them. Sometimes they bring her little gifts. She is already the coolest person the prince has ever met because of this. She pretty much offhandedly talks about whatever is fucked up about the kingdom that would take his advisors two hours of hemming and hawing and watering down to address. She just says it like it’s nothing, just funky little things she’s observed, and again, she’s not aware that he’s the prince, but it’s still pretty damn bold to bring up at a literal royal ball.

She… seems to have the majority of graces that lots of girls from Respectable Families™ have, but there’s something strange about it, something simultaneously broken and hardened, like the way you can see where ice has thawed and re-frozen. Also the way she talks about her family, and the way she avoids talking about her family– is raising several red flags, not in the “Oh this is another person trying to take advantage of me” sense, but in the “Oh fuck, something’s gone really wrong and you need help” sense and also lowkey a ‘damn is she even getting fed?’ sense. But he can’t say, ‘Hey, that’s not fucking normal for people to say that to you or treat you that way. We need to get you out of there,’ without sounding crazy himself, so for now, he’s just going to chill, make sure she’s comfortable, and keep enjoying the evening. She’s somehow befriended like 4 of the waitstaff so they’re willing to cover for them while they disappear for a little bit, and they get plenty of time to talk, but eventually it hits her that she hasn’t danced yet and she’s like “Come on! I bet we can make the prince jealous!” and he just bursts out laughing at that like “hell yeah, let’s make the prince jealous. He’s a real asshole.” Like clearly she’s having a good time, so who is he to make it weird? So they head back to the ballroom and they dance. And our girl, Mystery Girl, Cinderella, while they’re dancing, becomes acutely aware that everyone is staring. That doesn’t seem quite right. Like, yeah she’s hot, she knows she’s hot, but at least a good third of the party should still be focused on the prince, right? Where is that guy, anyway?

Oh.

Oh wait.

Oh shit.

And Princey Boy actually picks up on her realization and they whisper argue for like 3 minutes. “Why didn’t you tell me?! Now I feel like a goddamn idiot!” “I dunno it was nice being treated like a normal person” “Well me treating you like a normal person makes me a goddamn felon or something did you consider that?!” “Hey–Hey–it’s cool–you’re cool–I think you’re amazing, and if anyone says shit about you, I can shut it down.” “Well I don’t like that! That’s fucked up!” “I agree. It is fucked up, but I believe in you, and I think you should have a chance, and I’m here to back you up. I know power is fucked up right now. I know. But are you cool with working with me to change that?” And our girl Cindy pauses on that for a couple seconds, because.. she’s just spent hours with this guy and like.. she knows he’s a good guy, she knows he means well, so she’s like, “I don’t know how long I can actually work with you.” and the prince is like “Look, I know your home situation is complicated right now, but I really think we can–”

And then the bell starts ringing.

It’s midnight.

And then she takes off in a panic, and our prince just met the coolest person ever, and like, he’s pretty sure whatever situation they’re headed back to is fucked up, and all he’s got going to find her is a shoe. A shoe. 

— Henry Miller, A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953

♥︎ home cozy home !!

listen all i'm saying is if the villain au reader studied execution methods through history while they were still in their world the acolytes are fuuuuuuuuucked

very lovely thought <3333

there are so many brutal torture methods, much too graphic for me to want to write them out...

but one that's non-brutal that I never forgot was where they constantly drip a single drop of water on someone's forehead (like where the third eye is?)

just thinking about it makes me feel crazy, it'd drive someone (reader's acolytes) insane <3