Sic Itur ad Astra |
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
iiiiiiiii✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ iiiiiiiiiThus one goes to the stars. iiiiiiiiiSuch is the way to immortality. iiiiiiiii⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏﹏﹏⊹ ࣪ iiiiiiiii𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟 |  |
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Pathetic boy... searching for belonging with faces that are not your own.
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Pathetic boy... searching for belonging with faces that are not your own.
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
The clothes on him were very large, scarlet, and distinctively yet aptly themed for the ball tonight; a ball that he would not be attending, or rather more correctly, was not planning to attend the socialite portion of. The boots on his feet were really the only part of the outfit that seemed to fit him soundly, though they were around a half-size larger than he would have usually liked to wear. Figaro had been left behind in the dormitory this evening, the feline likely would not like what it was that the boy had in store for the "finishing touch" of his regalia of scarlet, black, and gold.
For the first time in his school career, the boy had a "date" with whom he would attend the ball. He had never found it in his fortunes to bond enough with any person enough to work up the courage to ask for anything other than favors or niceties, certainly never enough courage or strength to risk the chances of being rejected or labeled as "strange" or "weird" for asking for such a thing as joining him at a formal function. Though this date was less of one inspired by anything akin to romanticisms clearly delineated between either party, and indeed seemed birthed more out of necessity to mutually protect and defend.
Astra Norrick had learned many secrets about the boy that few others knew; she had joined the innermost circle of his affections and had indeed become one of few that he had the faith in enough to have the hope that she would not be one to vanish as well. She had a will to survive, to bite, to dig claws deep into the unknown and to divine the innermost secrets that lay sulking there--and of those that he had known at Hogwarts, she was the only one that had reciprocated and come to understand the things that had come to torment him as well. Piérre was loathe to fail to return the favor. He had her back now as well as she has his.
For this reason he was slinking his way through the dungeons as the sun sank below the horizon, fiddling in his hands a simple black patch for a moment before it was snuck into his pocket and replaced instead with a small and simple box not terribly akin to one that would hold a piece of jewelry. It spun in his fingers anxiously as the tails of the scarlet frock heavily flapped with his movements.
"Lumos!" He murmured to his yew wand, which slowly began to glow with a yellowish-white light to illuminate the moist stones and the dungeon walls. Pockmarked in places, scorched as well, cracked in others... Slytherin lived in an HSE nightmare indeed. Places were even collapsed, rubble stacked on the sides of the halls. Perhaps, if he shouted suddenly or at the right frequency--Fremit, maybe--it would all come down.
That was a chilling thought.
Slytherin's door was similar to several of the others in the catacombs, but distinctively designed and obviously unique among them--this was the home of the Ophidian, of the regally cunning and ineffably ambitious, after all. Biting his bottom lip, Piérre found himself rocking back and forth on his feet, brows furrowed in consternation. He fixed the black satin kerchief around his neck, rolled up the sleeves slightly, and considered the weight of the bottle at his hip, which stubbornly sloshed with its contents.
The blood, when it had been scraped in, had caused the potion to ripple with black and gold, shimmering in those tones until the inky substance determined itself to sullenly gleam bioluminescently gold through the dark. Rolling about in the flask now as it had been guided by the boy's hand, it slithered viscously as velvet in liquid form, the darknesses in it occasionally shimmering in its deepest depths a sapphiric and fathomless thalassic blue that seemed to capture all light in itself. It swirled bleak and tidal, harkening to dangers unknown, unseen... chthonic. It smelled of burning--pine resin, leather, a nauseatingly sweet and spiced clove, with a deep and foul note of sulfur. Evil in a bottle.
So he waited, shaking slightly with anticipation and worry. The tricorn hat was cocked heavily over the right side of his face, casting it into extreme shadow and hiding it from the greedy glow of dim torches and low-burning lanterns but illuminated from below by the faint glow of bioluminescent venom in the chrysoprase crystal secured about his neck. His eyes were cast low, still fiddling with the box in his hands.
Waiting for his fire-haired date. Hoping that...
Well, that he wouldn't mess up... again.
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
@Astra Norrick
Jesters do oft prove prophets. 𓀚
I am the brother account to Romeo Marchonné & Zyva Hel Fae Skógrwight
Sic Itur ad Astra |
What possessed her to do this, Astra knew not, but she found herself planning to attend an event starkly similar to the one which had instilled her fear and mistrust in Hogwarts balls and had even briefly caused severe thalassophobia in the then-eleven-year-old. This one pirate-themed, which did it some favors, but a ball in the lake nonetheless.
Piérre asked. Astra answered with a "yes." It hadn't seemed so daunting at the time, going onto a ship in the lake to something that would be filled with misfortune and mistakes and near-death experiences more likely than not. It had seemed like a normal Saturday night with her friend, not death in a ruffled shirt.
Still, she got ready with Mila, chatting and messing around like any other day, Hermes lounging as he oft did- Astra was really quite surprised he wasn't grotesquely overweight. Astra looking decidedly more pirate-ish than most other days with a period-appropriate shirt with maybe less ruffles than usual, Helena had said she tried to get the most tolerable piece from her own closet, and these flowy flared trousers that were light, breathable, and quite swishy, as well as the magically dulled sword from last spring's ball. And, who could forget, a flashy tricorn hat and nice boots with running capabilities and some golden bangles and a small golden chain. Because Helena said you can't be a treasure hunter without treasure, and apparently everyone in the family agreed according to her last letter.
"Well, ready as I will ever be," she sighed, checking her look in the mirror once more. The pocket that held her vial of calming draught laid perfectly inconspicuously. Not that it was illegal to bring potions, but that Astra was ashamed of her decision to have it, however necessary logic deemed said decision. "I am off, then. Be a good lad, Hermes." He meowed and dozed back off.
Astra exited the common room as quick as her feet would carry her, wand holstered. He was there, in the dilapidated dungeon halls right in front of her front door, looking almost small in his too-big clothes and with such a nervous air. "Piérre!" The viper stepped out towards the lion, already fiddling with a bangle out of nerves. She noticed his potion, a more obvious addition than her own, and it was obvious how her eyes made a study of it. Blue eyes holding unspoken questions and the beginnings of theorized answers flicked back to the other's face. "I figure I'm right in assuming you haven't gone and gotten the wrong size everything for the hell of it." Most actions with him had a purpose, she'd learned, which may have been a reason she was drawn to Piérre so.
stats : sta • 10 | eva • 7 | str • 8 | wis • 8 | arc • 6 | acc • 8
abilities : prodigal charms learner, terrible presence
inventory : wand, hand and a half sword (dull), vial of calming draught (small), exploding bon bons
interactions : @piérre marchonné
mentions : @mila woodland
perms : obtained permission from mila woodland to godmod her character
notes : so it begins \o/ | fit reference
Sic Itur ad Astra |
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
iiiiiiiii✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ iiiiiiiiiThus one goes to the stars. iiiiiiiiiSuch is the way to immortality. iiiiiiiii⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏﹏﹏⊹ ࣪ iiiiiiiii𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟 | |
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Pathetic boy... searching for belonging with faces that are not your own.
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Pathetic boy... searching for belonging with faces that are not your own.
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Sunken Treasure was the theme, so he should have expected that a general theme of piracy was what the outfits of many of the students would deliver. When Astra finally appeared, Piérre happily concluded that his guess was correct with frill and flow in spades that was neatly contrasted by the waspswaist appearance of the pants. "Astra!" The smile came, though the exclamation was not as loud as it typically may have been. His eyes tracked to the gold of the bangles and other jewelry, not terribly unlike a Niffler would when eying up something lovely to steal away, and then to the sword, and then back to the outfit again.
Astra's question about his choice in clothing size caught him off guard, and for a moment he blanked. "Hm?" A blink and then he remembered the box in his hands, returning his attention back to Astra. "Oh! Uh... yes." His cheeks pinked, the shaded side of his face lopsidedly turning redder than the other. The potion... "Part of the costume, actually."
He may as well be honest, mustn't he? "I figured maybe it would be a good idea to... get more in character." Semi-baked truth. Eyes flicked to one side before settling on the ground in front of him. Obvious tells for those that knew him. "And it was an excuse to practice a recipe."
Box. "B-but that can wait a moment, I-I have this for you." His fingers fumbled over each other before he opened the box on its hinge and then turned it to present it to the pirate queen.
Nestled in the jewelry box was a corsage with a pyrite (the poor boy was not the wealthy sort to have been able to afford real gold from the crafter) bracelet base decorated with false pearls but some very real flowering plants. Sea mistletoe's sharp leaves flared on all sides, catching and directing the eye towards the pale orchid, blue hyacinth, rich violets, and the central white peony. Pyrite filigree encrusted in places the leaves that needed a little touching up, strung with false pearls. If Astra was keen in Herbology, she may have noticed that there seemed to be another strange plant that was not professionally added to the design, but must have been added after the fact, a strange little seaweed-looking item whose leaves glistened as if it had freshly been pulled out of water. Gillyweed.
It seemed that Piérre had learned his lesson from last time, despite it having been via the hard way. Noticed you already had Gillyweed in Trunk inventory & would have given item to you if you hadn't, so feel free to also state you now have it on your person.
"Apparently it's a thing." He said simply. "Just like, to... give corsages to a date. Something pretty, but you have that covered already--withyourownjewelryofcourseImean." The last bit was rushed.
Something, something, foot in mouth...
Potion. "But, uh... potion..." It would have to be talked about eventually. "We... talked about... what I did over Easter Break, right?" When he had actually met his father for the first time, when he had learned a bit more about himself and those that were his kin than he probably would have wanted. "Well I went back over the summer, just so that I could get some pocket money." And a roof over the head, and a meal every day... "I thought it would be... funny." That was a way of putting it as well. "Somewhat apt. I don't know anyone else that would fit the bill of a pirate as much as him." The phial sullenly glowed through his fingers as he showed it off.
"And..." Self-consciousness reared its head again; a sort of deep-seated burning pain that mocked him with a sting of derision. "I don't want to go to the ball with... this face. I'm just..." Perhaps the psychological part of the new visage he bore hadn't quite sunk in yet. Perhaps it never would. "I'd rather masquerade at a ball and know I'm supposed to stick out as opposed to feeling stared at for... another reason. That's the point of these kinds of balls, right? To pretend?"
Was he trying to convince himself? Silly him for explaining himself when doing so shouldn't be something he did in this instance. Oversharing. Selfish narcissism... Perhaps the only reason he had wrought this plot was because he wondered. He found himself curious. Curious to know what it was like to be in his shoes. His skin.
To understand at least in some strangely personal way what it was to at least bear the face and hide his own. True masquing.
The potion was held there, his eyes fixated upon it as if he were contemplating the skull of Yorick. As like Socrates debating the grail of hemlock. Determined, yes; prepared, almost.
He shrugged lightly, still in a psuedo-trancelike consideration. "I always liked playing pretend."
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
@Astra Norrick
Jesters do oft prove prophets. 𓀚
I am the brother account to Romeo Marchonné & Zyva Hel Fae Skógrwight
Sic Itur ad Astra |
Astra didn't mean to call attention to the insecurities of her friend, but she had, and now she didn't know what to do to salvage it. The lack of complete transparency was to be expected, and Astra hardly voiced a syllable of fumbled apology before she was presented with a box and distracted with talk of a potions recipe.
Dark midnight eyes widened at the piece inside the box. A corsage, yes, that was the word. The arrangement of aquatic greenery on the golden and pearled base. "Oh! This is gorgeous," she said, studying the plants, specifically noting the presence of Gillyweed. If there was one benefit above all other to being a bad herbology student and best friends with @Siobhan McCarty, it was that she spent plenty of her time studying plants and could identify many of them now, even if she still had no idea how to keep most alive. The gifted ivy was doing well in the window, though, which was a small success, even if half the world had bad reactions to the oil of her leaves. "Oh, I don't- I totally forgot, ah-" The girl hardly noticed his fumbling over her own blaring faux pas of not having whatever was supposed to go with a corsage. She slipped one of the bangles off her arm. "Will this do? It's not mine, my cousin's, but he got it as collateral for a bounty a long time ago, he won't miss it. He doesn't even wear gold." Astra shrugged.
Ah! Tbe potion! Answers. Delightful. Astra nodded. They had, in fact, talked of his Easter break with his father, Gitano Luca Vero. Astra had not met the man and he was already very unlikeable to her. Her brow furrowed when he mentioned he'd been back, but she'd learned to hold her tongue a little bit. "He did sound rather pirate-y. At least thief-ish," she agreed instead of asking why on earth he went back, eyes darting upwards as if contemplating the swashbuckling nature of Gitano.
And the burn. Yes, that made sense. The burn was eye-catching, prominent on Piérre's delicate face. Even if Astra had gotten rather good at not staring, her gaze was still drawn there despite her knowledge of his feelings on the matter. "Yes, pretending. I think that's the point." That everything was alright. That there might be a night of peaceful entertainment. That they were not themselves. A small smile and a snap of her fingers, an attempt to banish the suddenly grim feeling that crept up her neck, to fall back into the natural unseriousness she felt only while with friends in the face of mounting anxiety. "Ready when you are, Cap."
stats : sta • 10 | eva • 7 | str • 8 | wis • 8 | arc • 6 | acc • 8
abilities : prodigal charms learner, terrible presence
inventory : wand, hand and a half sword (dull), vial of calming draught (small), exploding bon bons
interactions : @piérre marchonné
mentions :
perms :
notes : | fit reference
Last edited by Astra Norrick on 22 Oct 2025, 17:02, edited 1 time in total.
Sic Itur ad Astra |
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
iiiiiiiii✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ iiiiiiiiiThus one goes to the stars. iiiiiiiiiSuch is the way to immortality. iiiiiiiii⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏﹏﹏⊹ ࣪ iiiiiiiii𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟 | |
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Pathetic boy... searching for belonging with faces that are not your own.
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Pathetic boy... searching for belonging with faces that are not your own.
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Despite himself, the boy felt his features lighten childishly as Asa expressed her pleasure with it. It had taken a lot of finagling and haggling over what he had wanted the design to look like as opposed to what they were trying to give him. At her own fumbling, though, he quickly spoke up. "Nono, don't worry about it! I didn't tell you ahead of time, I only found out that it was a thing like last ni--" He was stopped short by Astra offering one of her own bracelets to him, and he instinctually clasped both hands together, unsure of what to do with himself as she spoke and as he flushed a deeper red. "O-oh..."
Gold? Real gold...? "A-are you sure? I don't want to steal..." You terrible liar. "Take something if it's precious to..." Tentatively, he accepted it, with a timidness as if the jewelry would bite him, and then slipped it onto his right arm, admiring the way that it gleamed in the yew wand's sparse lightglow. He saw his reflection in it, how it was slightly warped and distorted in its burnished mirror, the expression on his face--that of disconcertedness but earnestness. His eyes flicked away. "It's... I love it." It was a treasure now. His treasure. From Astra.
He nodded along with Astra's assessment of Gitano. "Thief-ish is a bit of an understatement, I feel." He considered the best way to describe him, found himself overwhelmed by a deluge of titles and accolades, and then tried to sort them from most relevant to least. "Wandering Highwayman-Salesman... Snake-Oil Dealer..." Piérre could only guess at the levels of lechery that the man had permitted himself to wallow in with mirth. He had very good feelings that he and his twin were likely not the only bastard children of his escapades. But those names were just names. He was something a bit greater than all of that. "... He really does wear "Luca" well..."
It was an experiment in the end. "All for show." He reassured Astra. It was, on certain levels, foul. "And only for tonight. A pirate's life for me. Captain Hook, huh?" He hooked his finger in emphasis, offering a feeble smile before considering the potion again.
"Ready when I am... right." He took a deep breath, bouncing a bit on the balls of his feet as he contemplated the polyjuice a bit longer. And what if he had brewed it wrong? Ended up some kind of twisted hybrid or disfigured half-polymorphed individual? Well at the worst it meant that he was going to be spending a while at St. Mungo's. At the best, it meant that he was going to miss out on the Murder Ball, and so would Astra...
Well, as far as he was concerned, it was kind of a win-win.
"Maybe it tastes like honey." He jested, letting the potion swirl sullenly again. It looked kind of like honey. In reality, it was probably wishful thinking, though. "Well... wish me luck." He inhaled through his teeth. He had made up his mind. "Bottoms up." And the glass was pressed to lips, the golden ichor passing lips as the magic was permitted to have its way with the willing participant in its whims.
The golden polyjuice did not taste like honey, the way that it looked as if it would taste. On the contrary, it blossomed into a powerfully overwhelming sensation of acidic citrus counterpointed by aggressively bitter black licorice. It was something that made him sputter for a second--not used to imbibing a strong drink, let alone a potion as potent as polyjuice was by its nature and the nature of the one he would transform into. If he had perhaps been advised, the recommendation would have most likely have been to "knock it back" and to "not attempt to taste it", as the texture transformed into a thickness that clung to his tongue, that coated it with a taste of ashen burning, of smoking pine, of tempering iron. It was bitter, a bitterness that made his mouth slightly pucker, and even when the concoction was finally out of his mouth, there was a heat that lingered like that of Dogsbreath potion--it scorched the roof of his mouth and made his teeth stand on edge.
Pitching to one side, he coughed into his elbow as his eyes watered with the fumes that infested his mouth and nose. Noxious, pervasive, ensorcelling. It clung to everything, introduced itself to every part of his lungs and bronchi and refused to let him go as his throat began to constrict slightly with a distinctive tingling tickle--as if he had taken a numbing throat spray. Blinking to clear away the tears in his eyes, his right side's monocular field of view began to turn blurry, spotty... and then evaporated into darkness accompanied by a sharp pain that caused him to reach for his eye in confusion before remembering as the tissue dissolved under his fingers and reintegrated itself to somewhere else that it was needed for the forced reconstruction instead.
It was at this point he turned away from Astra, allowing the transformation to continue in its uncanny fashion as shaking hands hastily slipped the black leather patch over hair that began to lengthen and drain of its chestnut in favor of a honeyed gold. Even his hands under the observation of his remaining eye enlarged ever so slightly, becoming strong and ever so slightly less agile. Gritting his teeth, bone began to shift and restructure--nose, cheekbones, jawline--his shoulders broadened, and deep-seated pain resonated for a moment as legs and arms elongated slightly to force the boy into a taller stance that indeed caused his formerly floppy outfit to fit like a glove, the body inside of it seeming to cause the outfit to trim itself to its form.
By the end of it, Piérre found himself letting out a tight exhale. The only fragment of the transformation was the faint and temporary throb in his right eye socket... and eventually even that vanished to be replaced by an ache of phantom pain. Broader shoulders would slump slightly as the voice exhaled, and the halo of blonde hair would finally rise as Piérre gained his bearings, blinking.
His heart was pounding, and strength seemed to course through every filament.
Like a child, he presented a hand in his left eye's monocular field of view so as to open and close it, feeling a particular mental dissonance between having known the back of his hand and now... not so much so. And yet, he knew this hand--the one that had taken him under the chin, whose fingertips had dug so heavily into his cheeks and lifted his face to force his vision to match that of the single piercing eye that he himself bore now. A hand that had taken him by the shoulder or that had snatched him by the ankle on both of their confrontations.
There was strength in this body. Strength simply waiting to be used.
And yet there was a strange, underlying exhaustion. Age. Frailty threatening to rear its ugly head in the midst of a neatly veiling virility. Piérre had never thought about it, really, so often had he seen this body performing feats of athleticism and agility whether it was on the stage or in their past scuffles... but Gitano Luca Vero was... aged. It was something that not even magic could conquer: the passage of time. Was this the only thing capable of laying low the devil that he knew? Even his eyesight from the one good eye, it was not as sharp as Piérre's own, nowhere near the clarity--an unremarkable but still present hesitation in the delicate joints of fingers; a resistance.
Mortality. A rabid hunger that fought that which could do nothing but continue to kill it.
"I-I think it wor--" Almost as soon as the words left his lips, Piérre clasped a hand over his mouth. The voice. Cerulean blue eye widened in wonder at the incredible and fantastic invocation of English in the wavering voice ever so slightly higher pitched than Piérre knew it normally would have been. A boy's exuding from the thicker vocal cords of a much older man. He turned slightly, allowing his good eye to be seen by Astra and hers by his. It was filled with a curious wide-eyed wonder. Childish.
But roiling deep within. Despite the glitter of an oddity that would have been known by those that did know the actual man, there was still a darkness in the masqued Piérre's eye. Something dark. Uncanny. Predatory. Somehow, even as the body language testified to the fact that there was a puppeteer that was pulling the strings of the limbs in this costume of a skin, an undeniable threat was present in presence alone. Perhaps not terrible, but off-putting. Something in the way that the face simply was, the patterns that it had grown to carry in it over the course of decades not terribly unlike the portrait of the young man which had rotted in his place when a terrible magic had been placed upon the canvas--like a confused predator, perhaps, but only sedated at best. "It worked." Came the whisper in the svelte.
The transformed Piérre backed away, both hands up to show innocence. Strange, he knew, that his own father would never act like this. Perhaps in this form this would be the most genuine kindness he would ever show to another human he did not "know". "This is... strange." He was still trying to get used to his lopsided field of view. This must have been what...
No. The ship that sailed towards that thought was scuttled before it could port.
"His vision is... it's throwing me." He rubbed both eyes before remembering the patch and then focusing on the one as if he could clear his sights any easier. "It's not as good as mine, that's for certain--and the eye--" It still hurt. A quiet sort of silent agony, but present--incessant. Something, it seemed, had never fully healed in regards to it--or something had gone wrong.
Finally he collected himself, still feeling how strange it was to imagine his own face pinching in the ways that Piérre's would have. He flared his arms with a slight drama. "This is him." Checking the outfit quickly--everything fit right, indeed. "This is... my dad. What he looks like. Not how he acts, perhaps... but I only wanted to use his face, not his attitude." The last bit was a low growl, something that did in Piérre's own ear sound like Gitano's voice. The disparaging tone, the lazy rolling of the tongue. That, it would seem, he did naturally seem to possess in common with him.
He blinked, fixing his eye on Astra's. The face softened. "It scares me. How much I look like him. When I first met him." But he was the only one that seemed to understand Piérre more than Piérre understood himself. There was something of a dark knack in Gitano--that he could see the things that others did not within only a few moments of being around them. Something that went beyond the simple Legilimency that he was certain the man had learned well. Gitano saw humans for what they really were underneath the frill and cordiality. He knew the shadows of the hero and the canyons in the fools, the frailties of the ambitious and the knots that bound those tied to them. He knew them. Thus, he knew well how exactly to use them. "But even I have wisdom to realize that the Devil has a pretty face and that I can use it."
The black glove was slipped over a hand, and offered to Astra. "I hope I am no Devil." The voice did not have the purr that it typically had. It lacked the vibrato that caused the heart to tremble like elastic in the chest. "But tonight, I should like to be yours." The silken smile crossed his features with eerie ease. Pretend in part, but in masque uncanny. In character of the night's festivities, but fearful that somewhere in his heart it was true. There was the Dawnstar, offering his hand. "May I tempt you to the Underwater Palace?"
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
@Astra Norrick
Jesters do oft prove prophets. 𓀚
I am the brother account to Romeo Marchonné & Zyva Hel Fae Skógrwight
Sic Itur ad Astra |
The closest Astra had ever come to witnessing metamorphosis was in year two of primary school, when they had three pet monarch butterfly caterpillars and a wilty milkweed plant in a little habitat up near the whiteboard for their life science unit. Only one of the poor bugs had made it out of his cocoon, and Miss Langston released him out in the field and he fluttered away.
Astra was pretty sure she found it dead during P.E. later that day.
This, this event- this metamorphosis- it was something entirely other. It was outside of nature, not meant to occur. Yet here she stood in growing horror as someone known shifted into someone unrecognized.
Someone larger. Someone older. Someone stronger, visibly so, nothing close to the birdlike build of Piérre. A silhouette strikingly different.
When he pitched to the side, hacking up a lung, Astra moved forward on instinct. But already he was taller, already his skin was roiling as a shaking hand travelled to cover a swiftly closing eye. She moved back, back further to the doorway.
A strange mixture of gratefulness and annoyance took residence in her ribcage- for that was where most feelings lived- when he turned from her. She did not want to see his face change; she did want to see his face change. The event was singular, and as an observer Astra was both inclined towards curiosity about the transformation, and about what sort of ethical code was being violated by her continued observation. She turned her head, studying the far wall instead of her friend as his very bones shifted into a broader figure.
Rude to stare. Yes, thanks internal monologue. She's well aware.
Watching the shift, as brunet became blond and small became large and young became old, had not prepared her for the vocal change, and she startled visibly with a little jolt as an entirely unfamiliar voice holding only a hint of the Britalian lilt she'd come to recognize began to speak.
No longer was the eye green, but a bright and brilliant sapphire blue. Astra's own eyes widened, darker irises tracking all over Piérre- Piérre in the body of Gitano. "It worked." "It did," she agreed.
A step forward, again, now that the transformation was over. "I can imagine. It's- I know it's you, but-" A laugh, a mix of confusion and delight, the awe of this powerful magic making itself known in the sound. "You don't look a thing like yourself." Obviously.
There were similarities in the body, yes, but Astra was focused on the differences. Blond hair, blue eyes. Well, eye. And a certain darkness which Astra had never known to possess Piérre emenated from the body of Gitano. By that aura alone, removing all personal bias, Astra was certain the man had done horrendous things.
She took his hand gently, almost a hesitation of sorts. It's Piérre's hand. She returned his smile. Even in disguise, she recognized it as her friend's. "Consider me tempted." Astra reached up with her free hand to adjust her hat. "Father, forgive me."
stats : sta • 10 | eva • 7 | str • 8 | wis • 8 | arc • 6 | acc • 8
abilities : prodigal charms learner, terrible presence
inventory : wand, hand and a half sword (dull), vial of calming draught (small), exploding bon bons
interactions : @piérre marchonné
mentions :
perms :
notes : | fit reference