lumenfall

[lumenfall]

linennaive

#✤ inspiration — all that blood was never once beautiful / it was just red

[lumenfall]

maturing as a woman is realizing you’re cooler than any and every guy you ever meet

#it's true #✤ musing — i am so damned not even death wanted me

[lumenfall]

prompts. for @lumenfall / Lady Maria

The thing lay still.

Its bulk of matted fur and mange-ridden skin had ceased even the tremors of biological hangover; a lifeless puppet strung loosely on the wires of its sinews, its nerves. Now it was all silenced and the fell beast pooled blood onto the polished tiles by his feet. The stench of its rot ate its way into the foreign priest's nostrils and it was the most he could do not to cover his face in disgust.

He stood victorious above the slain creature, an unsheathed saw cleaver dripping red by his side. Sharp breath came flat and fast after the exertion and left him again as plumes of silver steam. It was such a peaceful, chilly night by the lakeside. None who did not traverse these academic halls would fathom the slaughter that was ritualistically undertaken at the College of Byrgenwerth. He looked stupefied upon his kill, overcome by sensations hitherto unbeknownst to him. Adrenaline pumped wildly through his veins and sweetened the song of his success.

He had spilled his share of blood during his apprenticeship and was no stranger to battle. Though when he had killed, it was the frame of man he made to split. Not this. Warped and transmuted flesh, running fevers and overflowing with corruption. He could smell the traces of it, though. Quicksilver. His old faith flared. He was on the right path in this strange, barbarous country.

The students came scrambling then, like so many scavengers, and systematically took the beast apart. They siphoned its blood and harvested its organs, the few the Father's panicked frenzy of attacks had left undamaged. The strength of the beast had shaken him. The famished monsters that prowled the woods were no match for whatever hellmouth had vomited forth this creature.

Gascoigne saw now what the jeering had been about, the comments made so fast and quietly that his untrained ears could not make sense of them. The Yharnamite tongue was unrefined and coarse. His own spoke with much more flourish, more melody. Though he could speak the language of this forgotten and misbegotten child of Loran, he was loathe to hear it. The students stepped around him with wary respect and some muttered approval. But even so, in their weaving he saw the trap. He had been lured out here to face this creature, perhaps to test his faith, or his dominant arm. As a man of God, a God that they had not deemed certain for themselves, they seemed to take him for a simpleton. Or worse: a gentle man.

The cleric would not deign to punish his new peers with contempt, though he certainly felt his gaze cool down by degrees. From the balcony that spanned the higher tier of the atrium, then, a new and strangely accented voice rose to meet him:

❛ congratulations, you have survived! ❜

Father Gascoigne turned to see a group of strangers there. It was evident that they had been watching the proceedings, each ready to leap down and put an end to the sport if necessary. He spotted the glint of their weaponry at a distance. They were dressed not like students, though their attire was certainly a sibling if no twin. A tall woman leaned casually upon the balustrade, her arms crossed to support her weight. Behind her stood a towering man who seemed to carry a folded scythe strapped to his back, and another, a lithe man who lifted his chin curiously. She was the one who had spoken, though, and Gascoigne's eyes were trained on her.

She was so pale, she seemed to glow in the moonlight. If some poet stammered their way into an approximation of her likeness, they should call her marble-made, a sylph of contradictive gravity. Her beauty was apparent, almost oppressive, but it possessed itself with such austere severity that one could do nothing but give way. Her air was noble, regulated. Though he never knew them in his own homeland, here he saw one that he should gladly call aristocrat.

Her voice was airy and light, sweetly tinged by her foreign origins. There was a lilt to it he adored at once. She had made herself his ally by calling out in this companionate way. The priest could think of nothing witty to reply and so instead he lifted his weapon to hail her. He held the cleaver aloft briefly before swinging it low to perform a suitably polite bow, a humorous response to her remark. As though the battle done here was but a farce, put on for her entertainment.

Then he turned aside, almost shy. He wiped the cleaver on his trouser leg and folded it in again. It lay unevenly in his hand. Though he could wield it, Father Gascoigne would soon see to it that he found a weapon more suited to his strength. He had not come as a butcher but a preacher. But such were the ways of his Lord. He would have His blood, one way or the other.

#my god this is poetry #i've read it a dozen times and i'll read it a dozen more #thank you for being a bright spot on a dark day my beloved goesblind 💕 #✤ maria × gascoigne — what we made between rage and love and falling asleep / haunts me still #✤ keepsake

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““But I’m very near,” she said caressively, gaily. “Yet distant, distant,” he said.”

— D.H. Lawrence, from Women in Love (Dover Publications, 2003)

#it's true!! #✤ maria × gascoigne — what we made between rage and love and falling asleep / haunts me still

[lumenfall]

Sophie Mackintosh, from 'Cursed Bread'

#oh they!! 😭 #✤ maria × gascoigne — what we made between rage and love and falling asleep / haunts me still

[lumenfall]

#✤ inspiration — all that blood was never once beautiful / it was just red

[lumenfall]

“Secrecy flows through you, a different kind of blood.”

— Margaret Atwood

#✤ musing — i am so damned not even death wanted me

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Erwin Blumenfeld - Modéstia, Lisette, (Fotogravura). 1938

#meanwhile in the research hall – #bless goesblind she gets it right 100% of the time #✤ inspiration — all that blood was never once beautiful / it was just red

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ISABELLE ADJANI as Emily Brontë in: Les Sœurs Brontë (1979), dir. André Téchiné

#so very maria coded #the landscape the expression the garb #✤ inspiration — all that blood was never once beautiful / it was just red #cw: gif

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— Anaïs Nin, from a diary entry featured in Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary; 1939-1947.

#✤ musing — i am so damned not even death wanted me

[lumenfall]

“Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was just red.”

Kait Rokowski

#✤ musing — i am so damned not even death wanted me

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Susan Crane, "Clothing and Gender Definition: Joan of Arc", The Journal of Medieval and Modern Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, Spring 1996

#✤ musing — i am so damned not even death wanted me

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The Grave of a Suicide (Wilhelm Kotarbiński, 1900)

#✤ inspiration — all that blood was never once beautiful / it was just red

[lumenfall]

I want to live only for ecstasy. Small doses, moderate loves, all half-shades, leave me cold. I like extravagance. Letters which give the postman a stiff back to carry, books which overflow from their covers, sexuality which bursts the thermometer.

Anaïs Nin, from a diary entry featured in The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. I 1931-1934

#✤ musing — i am so damned not even death wanted me

[lumenfall]

Art nouveau key PNGs.

(source: MAK collection)

#✤ inspiration — all that blood was never once beautiful / it was just red

[lumenfall]

#i owe you my life goesblind 🙏 #✤ gramophone — the seats are empty / the theatre is dark

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#nightmare energy #✤ maria × gascoigne — what we made between rage and love and falling asleep / haunts me still