OPEN | prompt three | PAIN

[wrens]

prompt three | P A I N dressing-room style. start your own thread. tag others. wash, rinse, repeat. open to all.

 

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noah | 9witches

[breathed]

Who knows? Remain silent long enough and they might prefer to simply stare. Push anything too far to one extreme and it becomes a wonder.

[misshapen]

[ Copper stares at Noah all the time, but it's not a terrible sort of stare — judgmental or repulsed or fascinated. It is an apologetic stare, but also one tinged with longing, if not for Noah himself (a matter subject to debate) then for his strangeness, his other. A man does not choose to become a monster (even though Noah had volunteered, the terms hadn't been so clear), but to Copper, monsters are lovely, elusive things. (And so, by rights, is Noah.) ]

Wonders are meant to be good.

[breathed]

They are meant to be, yes, [ Noah agrees, each word deliberate and carefully chosen. ] I wouldn't say anyone ever sets out to make something terrible. And if something becomes terrible, then it wasn't made to be a wonder — rather, it's called one after the fact. But wonders that are made to be wonders — I can't argue with you, there.

[ But, of course, that's the catch. Good intentions do not always translate to good ends. But those intentions cannot be faulted, or so Noah has come to believe. He places no blame upon Copper, nor the Veidts, for his condition, and harbors no bitterness or hate. (There's no use in such things.)

And even as what he is — a monster — he isn't alone: the one thing for which he is truly grateful. Copper looks after him, sits at the edge of his tank, keeps him company when most simply goggle, and there are times when he wonders exactly what the shape of love is before shoving those thoughts away as nothing if not useless.

He is the monster, kept by his creator as opposed to cast aside, and he dares not disturb that balance for fear that it might break. ]

[misshapen]

[ Copper looks after him, sits at the edge of his tank, yes; in a way, she can't help it, he is an extension of her — a manifest of both her powers and her most strongly-held desires made manifestation and flesh. Oftentimes Copper wonders if she did it all on purpose, if her want for things that she could never hold had misshapen the magic she lay upon Noah, dooming him to a fate that Copper believes isn't quite doom at all. (Still, there is guilt; still, there is worry. Her desires had been for herself alone and she'd saddled them onto someone else instead.)

Her legs are dangled over the lip of his tank into the water, feet moving idly back and forth. They stop as she leans forward over her own knees, her posture hunched and precarious as she tells him (both adoring and sad): ]

You're a wonder.

[breathed]

[ As the ripples pause, Noah looks up, eyes wide and unblinking as he stares at Copper. With a single movement, he propels himself slowly up to the surface, his head breaking the surface of the water.

(He grows more and more used to himself like this, to the point that it scares him whenever he remembers that things weren't always this way. It's in human nature to forget, he supposes, but then again, he isn't human anymore. He doesn't know if he ever will be, again.) ]

Thank you, [ he says, in place of do you really think so or any of the other responses that immediately come to mind. ]