[He smiles wider, and laughs a little, thinking her reaction is nothing more than being confused at his proclomation. If this is some wayward inside joke (it is -- please don't worry about it, Annie), then he doesn't seem keen on sharing it. Besides, as far as he's concerned, it's his legitimate title when it comes to fishing.]
I told you, it's my fishing title. I'm King.
[King of fishing. Noct Gar. This is a royal title that he can say with pride, without the feeling of something weighing heavy on him.]
I used to fish all the time, back home. I haven't been able to do it at all ever since... well, you know.
[ God she's so confused and emotional right now, and it's hard to hide that in your own dream. The tentacles, who have thus far had continued to mock her with her own wasted youth, have ceased parading their Annie replica. Setting her down discarded in a dark corner. Where they've gone, who knows.
Water begins to rise around their feet, it's very cold and its contact with the warmer air causes it to mist eerily.
The cavern falls away, like an organ retracting, exposing the purple atmosphere of an alien landscape; opening up to the desires of the goddamn king of fishing. The stars and the moon have a subtle greenish grey cast, but if one ignores the strange color shift it is almost lovely. ]
[Water sloshes under his boots as the scenery changes. He looks up at the sky hanging above them, and for once the thought of night and darkness and all things that would devour his world does not overtake him. He's standing here with Annie, ready to cast a lure into the water, to see what mysteries he can pull out from beneath. This is all that concerns him in this dream, this innocence of his pulled to the forefront and given both form and fishing rod.]
Perfect. Thanks.
[He digs in his pocket and pulls out a lure. It's bright and yellow and vaguely shaped like a chubby chocobo. He hooks it to the end of his line, though his gaze flickers over to Annie in the meanwhile.]
[ She stares into the darker parts of the cold water. Wondering what ugly malformed thing he's going to pull up from there, or god forbid get pulled down by. She shivers slightly, crossing her arms over her chest, frowning.
He's going to stick his stupid fishing pole in her heart and see what he can dig up. God. Fuck. Christ. ]
I guess so.
[ They're here. This is what they're doing. She approaches to let him show her how it's done. ]
[He looks pleased at her response, grinning a little, then waits for her to draw near before showing her how to cast the line.]
Release the line after it's just barely over your head, like this-
[And so he does, and the fishing line flies out in a gentle arc. Far, far out, despite making it look relatively easy. A distant little plop, indicating the bright yellow chocobo lure hitting the surface of the water.]
-and when something pulls that lure underwater, you probably have a bite. That's when you reel it in, but make sure there's not to much tension on the line or it'll break. If it does, then you've lost my chocobo.
[He reels it back as an example, until they're back to where they've started. He turns and offers the rod to Annie.]
[ She opens her mouth to protest that if he doesn't want the chocobo lost, then he shouldn't give it to her. Because she's a disaster like that, quick to break and lose things in her whirlwind of bullshit. Quick to lose people. But there's too much of that under the surface so she just takes the rod with a huff of breath.
The dreams of blood and body parts and alien monstrosities, she's used to. This is beyond bizarre to her, and she'd wonder for a moment if this really was Noctis at all and not just her imagination, if she didn't know how many times he's been here with her before... ]
Release the line over head like... [ She gives the rod a solid flick. Fishing wasn't one of her skills, but the gesture of sending out a rod was straightforward enough. It flies out over the purple water, over silvery dots of starlight to land out in the darkness.
The little chocobo sinks into her, disappearing from sight. ]
[He watches the lure sail through the air and land in the dark water. He can see the rippling from where they stand, illuminated by a strange, alien moonlight.
Noctis places a hand on his hip, watching. This is the part where his friends had often rolled their eyes, or yawned, and shifted around on their feet time and time again. This is the part that required patience, because whatever lived under the surface was not always hungry, and therefore not always prone to biting. He could wait. If given all the time in the world, he could wait hours upon hours. A great escape from whatever else was expected from him. A moment of quiet, until something either erupts from beneath, or doesn't.]
I think you can handle it. We can handle it. Right?
[He almost shrugs his shoulders, moving his ridiculous bangs out of his eyes. His hair merely falls right back into place.]
And if it gets lost, it's lost. At least we tried.
[ What is it they've tried. What is this we. Her hands tighten around the fishing gear, staring out into the water, filled with dread, anxiety. What is she going to drag up, what is she going to expose, and can she stop it? Can she just refuse to let this happen? Her shoulders tense.
This is his idea of a quiet escape and she's sweating it out like she's being chased by a monster.
No appreciation for the slow, elegant movements of the mist, or the soft musical sounds of midnight insects meshing with the lapping sound of water at the shoreline. She's too busy dreading whatever is swimming circles in the darkness. ]
[Moments pass into nothing. Noctis looks at Annie, making out her profile. Tension at her brow, and in the way she holds the rod.]
...Hey.
[Here, he doesn't need to reach out with his thoughts to garner her attention. Here, he only needs to will it; already in a dream, their minds are intermingled, and it requires hardly no effort at all.]
We don't have to, if you don't want.
[A hand reaches out, offering to take the rod from her. He had wanted to see what lurked beneath, what made up the core of Annie herself, but even this Noctis -- young and eager -- will not want to see her drown in her own anxieties. He's curious, but he's not cruel.]
[ She gives him a startled look, like she'd forgotten he was there, but of course she didn't. Her hands loosen, letting him slide the rod from between her damp palms, and she stares at him. Feeling the weight of her own cowardice, and resentment for that burns up from her stomach, a pit of it that hates after all this time she can still feel like this about herself. She'd saved the fucking Earth with this, this world and its creatures, its powers.
She thinks about the blissed out Annie that had danced in the shadows of the cavern. That one had braver about it, but still a fucking coward in her own way--
Her hands open and close, not knowing what to do with herself. ]
You can do it.
[ As usual, he's going to have to be the stronger person, for the both of them. ]
[Noctis only nods and takes the fishing gear from her. He still stands close, the line gently swaying as the water ripples out once more.]
Don't worry about it. [He breathes out the reassurance. He can't fault her for not wanting to be the one to pluck out whatever the hook sinks into. And yet if Noctis catches absolutely nothing, if the chocobo lure doesn't move an inch lower from where it floats now, he'll not consider it a loss. Only time well spent in the solitude of a broodmate's company, under a dreamscape of stars.
He looks at her, and offers a smile. Some modicum of comfort, if she'll have it.]
[ She swallows, feeling sweaty and nervous still, and his stupid baby faced smiles make everything a million times worse, like turning the heat up on the boiling pot she's sitting in. Hot with shame for her cowardice and ugliness.
She watches him in silence, just frozen in place for a few moments, but then she comes closer, edging in towards him so she can watch the line from the same perspective as him. This isn't her kind of hobby, this being quiet and still and waiting in the cool darkness that cold-blooded things preferred best... But she's got nowhere to run. Can't hide from herself, and no amount of noise inside of her has woken them up so far, so all she can do is watch and wait.
She slides off her wet boots and leaves them to thunk at the shoreline, and instead lets the icy cold water run over her feet, lowering that feverish sensation that had crept up on her... It sloshes around her ankles in the same rhythm that it disturbs their extended line, and that hypnotizes her little. The inevitable tattoo of it.
She might've even been on the edge of falling too deeply asleep to dream, had the line not stirred, jolting her into attention to realize that something has indeed decided to bite, to be seen.
She holds her breath to watch him try to reel it in.
It fights him, as any living thing unwilling to be reeled in would, but its clearly nothing so large as his prized Devil.
What comes sliding out of the water is a pair of eels, twisted around each other. Or part of each other, it's difficult to really tell. One is deformed, encrusted in barnacles and too many the eyes. The other is silver and its scales flash every color in the moonlight, it too has too many eyes and openings and fins.
She creeps closer to look at it. This token of herself he's lured up from the hidden parts of herself.
[It doesn't put up much of a fight, though it does twist and coil and drip, as Noctis pulls the line out of the water to reveal what it is he's caught. It is simultaneously ugly and strangely surreal. Eye-catching, to be sure, in ways that he can't understand. Nothing should have that many eyes, he thinks, and no two things should intertwine the way these eels do.
Yet they're a strange compliment to each other, and he can't bring himself to be disgusted with his catch. He couldn't ever be disgusted with what he finds within Annie, for they're so bound together that it might as well be a part of himself as well.]
What do you think they are?
[It seems the most reasonable thing to ask, as he turns a little at an angle so that she can see them better. The one with the silver scales reflects the moonlight back with each minute movement.]
[ The two creatures -- maybe one creature -- have an Ouroboros-like quality to their winding, flexing bodies, unable to tell where one thing ends and another begins, flesh into flesh into scales into fins into mouths. Their sinuous writhing is almost erotic, but the entirety of this coiled, braided thing is mostly just freakish and peculiar.
Their many eyes roll in every direction; eyes in every human color.
Annie examines the catch as it spins on the end of the line; sleek rainbows in one direction, crust and infection in the other. The lure isn't so much in one of the mouths as entangled in the flexing heart of their knotted bodies, and as they wiggle they bring more and more of the fishing line into their puzzle. The clear string shines in looping patterns over their alternate scales. ]
Dunno.
[ Nothing. Nothing at all, just her ugliness and her grace enlaced in an unending struggle, both of them tangled in the influence of the fucking king of fishing. ]
It likes your chocobo though.
[ The token entrusted to her, which they've taken for themselves on her behalf. ]
[His eyes flicker from the two eels to Annie, and for some reason the simple answer of not knowing what creature this may be, what it might represent, is an acceptable one. He's come to fish and to observe what he pulls out from under the surface of the water -- not to dissect and question, like it would even matter if he did.]
Yeah, it sure does. It's the only lure I've got right now, so it's going to have to let go if we want to continue.
[He says it as if Annie may have some influence on whether or not they'd want to untagle themselves from his line, from his lure. Noctis takes a few steps forward, intending to release the creatures back into lake.]
Go on, now.
[He bends down, letting them dip back into where they came from, where the water seems a bit deeper. The silver one slides back in first, and he gently shakes the line, motivating them to swim away. If that's what they decide to do.]
[ Her mouth opens. What had she expected him to do, really? Eat it? Mount it? But there's still... something sweet in watching him cut it loose again. Something important in watching it swim off with his lure, his childish little toy. What can she even say.
She just comes over at Noct's elbow to watch it swim off with his lure. ]
[It's a faint little protest, as his lure disappears along with the eels. Bright little yellow chocobo, fading beneath the water.]
Well, too late now. I guess you did warn me.
[He still has a hook, and while that might not be quite as enticing, maybe he's assuming too much. These are not his normal catches, and perhaps they'll still be drawn to whatever breaks the surface of the water.]
[ She tucks her hands back into her pockets, feeling strangely calm for one of her dreams. ]
What else is even gonna bite? It took your toy and fucked off.
[ A lazy sly smile, a shrug. ]
Go for it.
[ Somehow she doubts that there's anything else to be afraid of... And she's right. The rest of what they drag up with just the fishing line is mostly junk. Knots of complex slimy algae in interesting colors, chewed up and broken bones, old plastic toys with worn paint, old hypodermic needles, rusty jewelry, moldy textbooks. Junk from her past, disintegrating beneath the depths. ]
[It's still of interest to him -- even when he sees it's nothing quite as baffling as writhing eels caught on his line, even if it's just junk, it's hers regardless, and he treats each one with a kindness and the quiet regard that it deserves. Each one hinges on his hook and is reeled in without issue. Pulled out of the water, remarked upon, and examined in a few moments of quiet consideration.
And, eventually, each one is returned to the heart of the water, allowed to sink to the bottom from where it came.
[ She's long since zoned out, honestly, sitting in the shallows a little bit behind him with the cold water running over her skin. She looks up at him drowsily when he speaks, and answers without really thinking about it, ]
Whenever you want, it's fine.
[ A standing invitation to come poke around whenever, even if she'll shout about it in the waking world first. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
somnifacient) wrote2017-03-25 01:39 am
no subject
I told you, it's my fishing title. I'm King.
[King of fishing. Noct Gar. This is a royal title that he can say with pride, without the feeling of something weighing heavy on him.]
I used to fish all the time, back home. I haven't been able to do it at all ever since... well, you know.
no subject
[ God she's so confused and emotional right now, and it's hard to hide that in your own dream. The tentacles, who have thus far had continued to mock her with her own wasted youth, have ceased parading their Annie replica. Setting her down discarded in a dark corner. Where they've gone, who knows.
Water begins to rise around their feet, it's very cold and its contact with the warmer air causes it to mist eerily.
The cavern falls away, like an organ retracting, exposing the purple atmosphere of an alien landscape; opening up to the desires of the goddamn king of fishing. The stars and the moon have a subtle greenish grey cast, but if one ignores the strange color shift it is almost lovely. ]
Fine. Then.
no subject
Perfect. Thanks.
[He digs in his pocket and pulls out a lure. It's bright and yellow and vaguely shaped like a chubby chocobo. He hooks it to the end of his line, though his gaze flickers over to Annie in the meanwhile.]
Did you want to try, though?
no subject
He's going to stick his stupid fishing pole in her heart and see what he can dig up. God. Fuck. Christ. ]
I guess so.
[ They're here. This is what they're doing. She approaches to let him show her how it's done. ]
no subject
Release the line after it's just barely over your head, like this-
[And so he does, and the fishing line flies out in a gentle arc. Far, far out, despite making it look relatively easy. A distant little plop, indicating the bright yellow chocobo lure hitting the surface of the water.]
-and when something pulls that lure underwater, you probably have a bite. That's when you reel it in, but make sure there's not to much tension on the line or it'll break. If it does, then you've lost my chocobo.
[He reels it back as an example, until they're back to where they've started. He turns and offers the rod to Annie.]
Here.
no subject
The dreams of blood and body parts and alien monstrosities, she's used to. This is beyond bizarre to her, and she'd wonder for a moment if this really was Noctis at all and not just her imagination, if she didn't know how many times he's been here with her before... ]
Release the line over head like... [ She gives the rod a solid flick. Fishing wasn't one of her skills, but the gesture of sending out a rod was straightforward enough. It flies out over the purple water, over silvery dots of starlight to land out in the darkness.
The little chocobo sinks into her, disappearing from sight. ]
It's not my fault if it gets eaten.
[ She finally protests. ]
You know what kind of shit is in there.
[ Or... well. He should be able to imagine. ]
no subject
Noctis places a hand on his hip, watching. This is the part where his friends had often rolled their eyes, or yawned, and shifted around on their feet time and time again. This is the part that required patience, because whatever lived under the surface was not always hungry, and therefore not always prone to biting. He could wait. If given all the time in the world, he could wait hours upon hours. A great escape from whatever else was expected from him. A moment of quiet, until something either erupts from beneath, or doesn't.]
I think you can handle it. We can handle it. Right?
[He almost shrugs his shoulders, moving his ridiculous bangs out of his eyes. His hair merely falls right back into place.]
And if it gets lost, it's lost. At least we tried.
no subject
This is his idea of a quiet escape and she's sweating it out like she's being chased by a monster.
No appreciation for the slow, elegant movements of the mist, or the soft musical sounds of midnight insects meshing with the lapping sound of water at the shoreline. She's too busy dreading whatever is swimming circles in the darkness. ]
no subject
...Hey.
[Here, he doesn't need to reach out with his thoughts to garner her attention. Here, he only needs to will it; already in a dream, their minds are intermingled, and it requires hardly no effort at all.]
We don't have to, if you don't want.
[A hand reaches out, offering to take the rod from her. He had wanted to see what lurked beneath, what made up the core of Annie herself, but even this Noctis -- young and eager -- will not want to see her drown in her own anxieties. He's curious, but he's not cruel.]
no subject
She thinks about the blissed out Annie that had danced in the shadows of the cavern. That one had braver about it, but still a fucking coward in her own way--
Her hands open and close, not knowing what to do with herself. ]
You can do it.
[ As usual, he's going to have to be the stronger person, for the both of them. ]
I can't.
no subject
Don't worry about it. [He breathes out the reassurance. He can't fault her for not wanting to be the one to pluck out whatever the hook sinks into. And yet if Noctis catches absolutely nothing, if the chocobo lure doesn't move an inch lower from where it floats now, he'll not consider it a loss. Only time well spent in the solitude of a broodmate's company, under a dreamscape of stars.
He looks at her, and offers a smile. Some modicum of comfort, if she'll have it.]
You can be my moral support.
no subject
She watches him in silence, just frozen in place for a few moments, but then she comes closer, edging in towards him so she can watch the line from the same perspective as him. This isn't her kind of hobby, this being quiet and still and waiting in the cool darkness that cold-blooded things preferred best... But she's got nowhere to run. Can't hide from herself, and no amount of noise inside of her has woken them up so far, so all she can do is watch and wait.
She slides off her wet boots and leaves them to thunk at the shoreline, and instead lets the icy cold water run over her feet, lowering that feverish sensation that had crept up on her... It sloshes around her ankles in the same rhythm that it disturbs their extended line, and that hypnotizes her little. The inevitable tattoo of it.
She might've even been on the edge of falling too deeply asleep to dream, had the line not stirred, jolting her into attention to realize that something has indeed decided to bite, to be seen.
She holds her breath to watch him try to reel it in.
It fights him, as any living thing unwilling to be reeled in would, but its clearly nothing so large as his prized Devil.
What comes sliding out of the water is a pair of eels, twisted around each other. Or part of each other, it's difficult to really tell. One is deformed, encrusted in barnacles and too many the eyes. The other is silver and its scales flash every color in the moonlight, it too has too many eyes and openings and fins.
She creeps closer to look at it. This token of herself he's lured up from the hidden parts of herself.
Ugly, but... not all ugly. ]
no subject
Yet they're a strange compliment to each other, and he can't bring himself to be disgusted with his catch. He couldn't ever be disgusted with what he finds within Annie, for they're so bound together that it might as well be a part of himself as well.]
What do you think they are?
[It seems the most reasonable thing to ask, as he turns a little at an angle so that she can see them better. The one with the silver scales reflects the moonlight back with each minute movement.]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlORvzRRh24
Their many eyes roll in every direction; eyes in every human color.
Annie examines the catch as it spins on the end of the line; sleek rainbows in one direction, crust and infection in the other. The lure isn't so much in one of the mouths as entangled in the flexing heart of their knotted bodies, and as they wiggle they bring more and more of the fishing line into their puzzle. The clear string shines in looping patterns over their alternate scales. ]
Dunno.
[ Nothing. Nothing at all, just her ugliness and her grace enlaced in an unending struggle, both of them tangled in the influence of the fucking king of fishing. ]
It likes your chocobo though.
[ The token entrusted to her, which they've taken for themselves on her behalf. ]
omg ;-;
Yeah, it sure does. It's the only lure I've got right now, so it's going to have to let go if we want to continue.
[He says it as if Annie may have some influence on whether or not they'd want to untagle themselves from his line, from his lure. Noctis takes a few steps forward, intending to release the creatures back into lake.]
Go on, now.
[He bends down, letting them dip back into where they came from, where the water seems a bit deeper. The silver one slides back in first, and he gently shakes the line, motivating them to swim away. If that's what they decide to do.]
no subject
She just comes over at Noct's elbow to watch it swim off with his lure. ]
I don't think it's giving it back.
no subject
[It's a faint little protest, as his lure disappears along with the eels. Bright little yellow chocobo, fading beneath the water.]
Well, too late now. I guess you did warn me.
[He still has a hook, and while that might not be quite as enticing, maybe he's assuming too much. These are not his normal catches, and perhaps they'll still be drawn to whatever breaks the surface of the water.]
Wanna see what else we can get?
no subject
What else is even gonna bite? It took your toy and fucked off.
[ A lazy sly smile, a shrug. ]
Go for it.
[ Somehow she doubts that there's anything else to be afraid of... And she's right. The rest of what they drag up with just the fishing line is mostly junk. Knots of complex slimy algae in interesting colors, chewed up and broken bones, old plastic toys with worn paint, old hypodermic needles, rusty jewelry, moldy textbooks. Junk from her past, disintegrating beneath the depths. ]
no subject
And, eventually, each one is returned to the heart of the water, allowed to sink to the bottom from where it came.
And also, finally:]
Thanks for letting me fish for a little.
no subject
Whenever you want, it's fine.
[ A standing invitation to come poke around whenever, even if she'll shout about it in the waking world first. ]