The Rise and Fall PV Astrea

private thread with @Levi Drakos
opinion neutral

How long must it take for a chased dream
to become a nightmare?

In order to live through a Scottish year, one had to do away with the dainty seasonal constructs that came with storybooks. The weather did not neatly fit itself into the boxes so romanticised. Instead, a change in season slinked together with an evergreen chill, never truly constant as the days passed erratically. There were some mornings that continued on with only the rain to keep company between the vacated outdoors campus- long streaks of icy rain tethering the blackened sky to the waterlogged Earth in a constant patter of noise and mess- and others made slightly warmer with white glass sunshine and a reminder heard too often. This too shall pass. The possibility of reoccurrence never found itself in such a commonly shared phrase- not in the way as all things in nature seem to do.

Up the sun rises, down it sets. High tide, low tide. Winter, spring, summer, autumn. Repeat. From the arc of the celestial bodies in accordance with the Earth's dance about the solar system to water's wax and wane, it was not as consistent to disallow a margin for error but just constant enough to be properly observed. So observe did our Astrea, ever in and surrounded by change.

Spring took what was once alive, turned cold, and revitalised it, slowly peeking budding green leaves from under the suffocatingly thick blanket of winter's chill. A beautifully tragic thing, to be given return knowing of certain death. But alas, to assign nature's cycle with such humanity as lament would be a mistake. It was a way to pass the time, that was all. The universe cared little for the woes of its inhabitants. The world would be little affected by the thoughts of an unemotive child, a child not yet grown. No matter what, nature would go on in its timeless cycle of rebirth. The world would still spin, time would continue to tick on unaffected. The stars would continue to exhaust themselves, the endless rewriting of history would still occur. Until, far in the distant future, it wouldn't anymore.

The third-year Slytherin had not ventured out to the grounds on such an unusually decent Scottish day to craft herself the contemplation of nature's woes, however. Of course not. Instead, she had come out under the white-smeared sky with the intention to seek isolation outside of the ever-crowding castle walls- book in hand, cat in tow and vibrantly regrowing grass underfoot. The topic she had naturally found herself drawn into, under the shade of a looming tree still finding its leaves once more for the new season, would have perhaps been more fitting encased in the glass and leather bubble of Slytherin's commons. A small oasis of peace between the chaos of Hogwarts- though that memory of an ambush so alarming just a year ago never truly left her memory-, the underground den of snakes found itself half-under the greatest mystery on campus: the Great Lake. While the warming grounds found March in reviving animal activity and wind chills, its watery sister habitat continued on undisturbed except for the rise in water level. Ever-present yet mysterious, always lurking yet never truly known. How deep could one go before they must reach back for air? How far into a mentality could one go before their original thought is lost?

Astrea, indulging herself in yet another re-reading of the Scarlet Letter- the red and cream cloth binding well-worn and golden cover ink faded with time- could not give a definitive answer. Her feline friend lazing upon the springy weather-cooled grass, no doubt ready to terrorize budding weeds, could care little for the dilemma she often found herself in. Contentedly alone as they remained even as a lingering snap of winter's chill assaulted them a week into the meteorological spring, there was sure to be more than enough time to contemplate the topic.

A slight shift in wind and from the corner of her eye, Orpheus silently pulled himself up from his easy sprawl, his instincts made exceedingly alert as he shifted focus. It seemed she spoke too soon. Warned of another's presence, it did not surprise Astrea to hear the faint sound of footsteps amongst the din of nature's frolic, muffled by the plush carpet of grass slowly making its way through the entirety of Hogwarts' grounds. She did not bring her gaze up from the foxed pages between her hands- though she had stopped reading the decorated ink some time ago-, so sure was she of this stranger's imminent disinterest. A disturbing of the peace, they carried with them. A distraction, they toted readily.

A cough. A beat. An inquiry. Addressed so bluntly, Astrea could do little else but raise her head, a dignified expression of incredible dispassion characterising both pureblood and her noble companion alike. A boy stood in front of her, unknown in his appearance- presumably of any other blood status than pure-born by this description alone, for with the slowly dwindling population of bluebloods came a greater interest in the business of those left. "Your business?" Chestnut hair highlighted the colour of copper wire in the primaveral sunlight, eyes a small hurricane of gold and emerald green- they did not meet her gaze, sliding slightly off to the right. Peculiar.

Seldom gathered the courage to approach her, collected their interest enough to interact with her. Oh, how they stared- their lingering gaze accompanying her between snippets of downtime, stranger in identity they were but their attention rang just familiar enough to brush off. Without fail there seemed to be a select few faceless spectres who would watch Astrea with such strange idle interest, a strange imitation of the careful observance she often found herself in against the grain of interaction. Some believed themselves invincible in their supposed safety of ignorance, backing down only when she had made her awareness expressly clear, while others took the timid path- catching her with attention so fleeting a single stretch of time could number many more instances. Even caught red-handed, their interest knew no bounds. Curiosity killed the cat for satisfaction to bring it back, yes, but the irritation of one so unamused would not make that last.

It was as if the grey area in-between class and break had become a circus fair, decreasing her to a moving portrait hung up on the wall for all to see. Oblivious were her spectators to the fact that it was not she who called their distance a glass wall but they- their awareness kneeling before her throne of unapproachability, unaware that it had been born out of gilded survival.

This child, as irrelevant a face he was at that moment, already found himself a step higher than many another student. There had been a note of hesitance in his advance, a lull between the approach and greeting, but it had steeled nonetheless to help him find his voice. Departing from the clouds of conformity Astrea knew dissuaded many a student from remaining in her mere vicinity, he did not back down. The visible marker of stress upon him- fine-boned knuckles rubbed raw and bleached whiter than his heritage- spoke of a nurture situation un-hindered by the trappings of pureblood etiquette. With what had been an un-yielding question of recognition- no carefully formed grace to it, but with too much surety to be a mistake- a relaxed air strung taut forming flashing arrows about his stranger identity.

Ah, if the boy were to have come up to a student far more passionate that she, he would be eaten alive. If not in the pit fight playground that Hogwarts found itself to be then in the wizarding world as she knew it. In a life as cutthroat as high society, one needed to accept the fact that every twist and turn in public was a test early on. No matter the weight of action, even a single misplaced step- whether in conversation or confrontation, there was no difference- could bring disgrace to both their reputation but their family's as well. There was a reason why upper-class children often found their calling in either resignation or revolution, with what the stifling crowd looking down upon them so critically.

She had seen what had become those unlucky few who found themselves cursed with blood-reputation slightly later in life, with the permission of the Book of Admittance long after the idea of fairytale had been teased out of them. Their magic flavoured cotton candy pink with party tricks, fumbling with responsibility and respectability like an untrained clown in a circus of performers. Not a pretty sight, that hardship of finding themselves complacent in their previous freedom without the accelerated lifetime of grooming. There would be little sympathy. Not when those common-born associated with those raised restricted from cradle to carriage, when even Hogwarts rejected the idea of complete safety.

To be blessed with the potential of magic was to be completely saturated with the possibility of risk, even at the cost of suppressing such uselessness as vulnerability. With all the vaguely detached interest of a noble, looking into the life of an underling, Astrea wondered briefly how this boy- this child- would use such an opportunity.

Time; the healer.
Time; the killer.

appearance here | orpheus here
text colour #274E13

@Astrea Soleil Neptune

A mountain of identical faces was spread along the Grounds like morning fallen leaves from the deep past, faint smiles or tears adorning their flesh, the only way to tell one from another. They were in the background, cleverly cowering from the spotlight and heat from the sun, blending their skin in color with the sky to stand out in nothing except silhouette. Levi could be drawn to the sapphire shadows, but he found himself under the reach of the rays. That very magnetic pull brought him here, eating from the palms of a Scotland spring and thanking it sincerely for the blood in his mouth. But standing still and letting the universe sway him back and forth, carry his dead weight along tides of wind, the boy was able to feel the field slipping away, and he stood by choice before the reaper, before judgement.

Wish to burrow she may, but such fame tore through the emerald veil of trees, shattered into a million fractured beams, and ignited the face of a certain girl who could never hide from such recognition. Born underneath this light so that it would never burn and only kiss her complexion, fair yet eerie, otherworldly, a creature of the night. We were afraid of the darkness, but only within it would we ever connect the constellations. They dangled helplessly before him now, the strings of amethyst galaxies that tied them into a perfect archer. It was dazzling above her head and reflecting upon ebony hair, dancing within and around her, revolving as a makeshift sun. However, a single blink and the revolutions became a new deceitful lure: the consuming hunger of a blackhole that Astrea cried from, her own screams swallowed in the mess of her own making.

Some sort of a repel, uncanny to that between things a tad too similar for their own health, kept their stares apart. Their contrasts were possibly seen there in a physical way, as though staring into another dimension where the emotions of the confused were bred with perfect clarity in an active, lively spring such as this. There was death contained mercilessly by her grey, walls extending for kilometers in a colorless labyrinth, nothing but the scarce hope seeping from monotonous walls to drag you from one dead end to the very next. In his, a forest, golden and nurtured by a goddess only his parents would name. The Gryffindor’s gaze could breathe air by itself, survive alone and without the anchors of sockets, as it was life embodied.

Avoiding her was hard standing feet away, knees aching and wobbling with a craving for safety. Even with his eyes averted ever so slightly, the effects of her aura took a toll on the spring as it could not outweigh the girl’s fine dusk in all its purity. The ground beneath the dangling limbs of the tree was disturbed, freshly so, as though the younger boy’s grave was dug six feet beneath mere moments before he crept to his guillotine, the lovely, unnerving execution that the heiress held and cradled like a newborn. There was a lightning strike, and whether it came from her hissing tongue or the sky dyed with her dusky blue blood, he didn’t know. Above, the tree was dead, branches limp and complaining, soon to submerge the patch of earth under which his poor body was buried.

A hand shot up from the soil, familiar but decomposed beyond love’s sway. A ring on its middle finger, silver and shimmering blindingly with a symbol no one would recognize but Levi. It’ll be yours someday, son.

Levi blinked again. It changed, waned into a thin weed that had swayed in a manner a tad too anthropomorphic. It was alive. She was speaking, though her words contributed nearly nothing to the fuzz growing in his head, walls lined in slandering mold.

"Your business?"

The lion wouldn’t have been staggered should her voice sound hoarse and unused after over a decade of silence, like the biting tongue had been knotted up and swallowed by white, unnatural teeth. Everything was flawless, though there was a surreal quality about precision and how it was not to be achieved, not by an adult, not by an eleven-year-old with a white-knuckle grip on a ladder, and certainly not by a teenage girl. Something engulfed her, and it was more apparent when her harmonious voice met his ears, a shiver crawling down his spine like a bug spun from a web of lies. It was something of classical music to stand and twirl to her inquiries, a piano in an abandoned mansion, gorgeous, but above all else, empty.

Behind her posture were vows, of what couldn’t be said, however that knowing purse to her lips, the coldness and concise formality to the words, all these signals she tossed up and down to be left to her lonesome, to her graveyard, to her storm, and to her peace. It was no mystery why the phantom lingered alone, the corpses told him what her abrupt dialogue could never, but how tired of herself she must be. How exhausting it must be to run circles in that head, to close your eyes in the distortion of a silver spoon and wake up with the prayers that you would be caught on the other end. How miserable.

It couldn’t happen on its own, he decided. If Levi knew nothing, it was that perfection was made, not born. And how he craved that symmetrical look, that magnetic draw that made so many monuments into rigid ruins, ones to his taste, yet he would use it for good. His good. “You’re hasty.” One eyebrow quirked with a teasing grin, and Levi aimed to meet her eyes, anticipating the vast eruption of battle with muscles so tense they throbbed. Looking at her again was such as staring weary into the sun at its apex, but not in the way of its grace, only in the way of that red-eyed burning pain, splintering your iris. At that moment, he knew if she were any less human, she’d have come from hell with more to say.

Though Levi yearned for it, sycophancy was not yet his greatest and most cherished vice. If his aim were to charm her prior to the first climb, his body would need to prepare for debility that came with failure.

Then, in agony that could call tears should the slightest sting meet his nerves, he found the things he’d flouted before, as a humble onlooker who’d rather carve out their eyes before laying those fiends where they didn’t belong. First, the book clasped between her hands, suffocating, gasping at a touch that might wilt the very tree her weight burdened. In his peripherals, those branches were again flaccid, sinister and bare, rotting at the slightest, most soothing caress from the sweet wind. Its cover was remarkably intact, in pitch with the tidiness of her own noble and elegant appearance, but out of place with the world she ought to have killed. To be read along its fitting crimson spine, The Scarlet Letter.

Some memories were locked away behind curses and breathy mutters, though the others—mostly those that were innocent as far as the boy’s mind grasped—came in rapid flashes as it did with any growing child. Surely Katerina had delved into a novel of that title in a time far back, but those were of the broken, and damn near impossible to piece together as a puzzle with well over half the pieces filed away in birth records. What he most recalled was its title at face level, etched along a chocolate cover, and hushed weeping masked by her brunette hair. Still, over the soft classical records, his mother’s guilt was the predominant melody, the ace he clung to in memories years down the jagged line.

A true creature of stealth, somehow a fine feline had dodged the brethren’s line of sight, perhaps stalking along the dynamic grass for a kill of its very own; its comfort in the hands of cold, icy caerulean blood was nothing but a red flag. It was an admittedly pretty one, far from the chameleon of its breed with conspicuous stripes along its fur and narrow, critical eyes. Where it obscured its slays was beyond Levi, but he knew they were standing on them, disrespecting whatever the cat brought to the table. There was a peculiar but distinct sense of remorse for not spotting it sooner, and the Gryffindor would cock his head at it, a gentle calmness easing through him with the presence of something other than Astrea and the demons she towed within.

The drama of the situation was inescapable. Theater lights in a more natural habitat shined down on the two at odds and the peers they’d brought to the knife fight: devastation in inked pages and cunning critiques in an animalistic brain on behalf of the earth-bound specter. All that stood in his hands was nervous moisture and an innate will to sprint into the depths of the milieu and be invisible. Tension was not what the younger boy sought, not an air to be sliced by solely a sharpened sword only the dead held, but it was the hand he was dealt. Exchanging a few vague words at a time could be done until her guard slipped to the spring soil, or until it didn’t, and her energy was matched in a more direct approach than the ingenuine flattery that built the foundations of one Levi Drakos.

The thought itself made him chuckle and ease the chilling shots in his vertebrae. When it came to an ordeal as this, a destined rise, it was his way or no way. The boy’s hands fiddled with his sleeves like they were waiting to artfully drop the spade-adorned aces concealed. If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying hard enough.

private thread with @Levi Drakos
opinion neutral (negative connotation)

How long must it take for a chased dream
to become a nightmare?

It was a rare thing for Astrea's cultivated pride to be wounded, but her judgement was something much more turbulent. ​If she had any hope of being ignored like many other passersby had chosen to do, it had been quickly dashed the moment this intruder continued to speak, his speech signalling to the world a northern nativeness many southern-born student ex-pats could not boast. And yet even with such a curt greeting, it seemed that the boy found it wise to entertain pointless jest. Without the cushioning of familiarity, it landed flat, provoking what was perhaps the opposite reaction desired.

Hasty, he says? "And you, a disturbance." A bother, a breach of suspended peace. She does not sneer- too cultured for such a childish display of dramatics- but a thick veil of disinterest bleaches the clipped tone, her tongue curling about the few words with the prime definition of unimpressed apathy. To be accused of hurriedness on a languid day of peace, when it was he who specifically sought her out- the shamelessness. If she were the hasty one, the child in front of her had too much time on his hands.

With so blatant a physical hesitance, it would not surprise her if the Scot were a first-year- or perhaps a green second year, miraculously spared from the near-constant threat of Hogwarts as a whole. After a while, one, finding themselves in the face of possible danger- whether it be by monster or man- would learn to think more on their actions. Seldom did she pay much attention to the standard schoolmate past their name and, occasionally, basic reputation, her interest falling with each descending year. What business did she have with those still untouched by danger's grasp and under the deception of safety? The expansive castle housing them would not protect them from the magical world's beasts the same way it sheltered them from the elements. Here in this backdrop of stone and destiny, it was a test in adaption as choosing wise words became essential in the face of danger's greedy grasp prying desperately at their very sanities. A true test of humanity pushed into constant life-or-death situations.

He would learn, someday. Most likely sooner than later, but at an indefinite specific time frame nonetheless. But that day was not here yet, and Astrea had no reservations expressing her eternal displeasure at that mere fact behind a porcelain mask. This irksome boy, with his goading grin and uneasy body language, was a fool to place such feigned fearlessness at her feet- catching her eye for the first time as if she did not see those hands nervously clasped together. Between reddened fingers and fabric sleeves, rubbed an invisible coin of luck.

She was no Charon, ferry of souls and collector of fees. She needed no offering of conversation, cared not for a flimsy invitation of intrigue. What she desired, instead, was to be granted her former peace, a drifting spectre serenely unbothered by the woes of prepubescent strangers. Alas, even something as insignificant as her lonely wish, unspoken it was, could not be granted and she instead was bound in mortal flesh to accompany the skittish songbirds in soul song, exposed in a state of ever-dragging personal duty. A disappointingly anticipated fate.

Freed she was of her schoolmate's clear gaze as it strayed further from her direct stare, instead following the motions of her ever-aloof feline companion, a curiously familiar cocking of the head indicating more obviously the boy's interest. Ah, now she realised what the child reminded her of- a bird. The flighty quality of approach and nervous body language, paired with a strange endurance of exposure and smoothed tone of voice. Faking confidence under the enduring conditioning of life, growing cocky with success before actively demanding their payment. She was not so naive to imagine a stranger would seek her out without a secondary objective- with only a need for her dull companionship. She was, at this moment, a means to an end and a stepping stone to greater things. Feed a flock for long enough and they'll soon follow you forward.

Orpheus, to his credit, did little else to acknowledge the brunet's presence than stare unblinkingly in accusation, daring protest with haughty gooseberry green eyes before slinking away behind Astrea's back. Belatedly acknowledged by such a similar creature to its owner with mannerisms unfamiliar, the Egyptian Mau had apparently decided their intruder was not worth further attention past natural caution. A subtle gesture of dismissal far more effective than spitting in their victim's face in insult. Where exactly had he learned that particular trick, she believed she knew too well but mentally paused to acknowledge it nonetheless, carefully filing away the thought for another time of peace.

So perfect for the court life imitation executed by those of high standing, the feline was the closest thing to Astrea's ideal animal companion as one could get, with what the Slytherin's admittedly inadequate emotional ability and frosty countenance. Much like Hester Prynn and her child, their lives crafted shoddily out of quality fabric the colour of half-regret and uncanny knowing, there was a certain perfectness to their pairing that rang just short of suspicious. It was as if fate had filtered her personality through a sieve, separating the most glaring of her human failings from the fine-grain backbone of her personality.

Unlike the underclassman before her, her attention waned not in her stare but internalised mind, caught in an all-too-familiar state of brief introspectiveness behind a gauzy veil of perfection. Prone her mind was to become simultaneously weightless with an ever-extending network of thoughts and burdened with their meaning. This cyclical frame of structured contemplation she had lulled herself into was something as usual as any other fact under the sky, body ever-vigilant while her stream of consciousness flowed elsewhere.

A partially self-imposed modern-day Atlas holding up the world of her reputation, there was much less need to save face in such a setting as Hogwarts, where maintaining her comfortable execution of propriety meant less of a dangerous dip in societal approval and more a test in resisting annoyance. And resist annoyance she did, faced with the contrary nature of the child stood solo, his fidgeting fingers dancing betwixt fabric and flesh as his distracted huffs of air conveyed ignorance. To allow for restless weakness as obvious inattentiveness was sloppy, especially faced with such a perceived threat as she, his solo surveyor of body language.

Those sharp eyes and no doubt brilliant mind were to be wasted in the modern culture of informality. Such an ambitious push past the metaphorical protego she had constructed upon herself inadvertently was not something she saw often, after all. He was young, still. Moldable. Though not nearly young enough to be completely replanted without question. If she, perhaps, were a more impulsive and wholly different person, perhaps she would have entertained the idea of distanced mentorship, if only to soothe the dissatisfaction curling in her very being at the boy's pointlessness. If only to correct his damning behaviour in preparation for the harsher world.

Alas, that role was better suited for others, those who bothered to burden themselves with the eternal drain that was constant companionship. She, who drifted amongst throngs of unknown identities with all the acknowledgement of a well-bred thestral- selectively seen yet still present regardless- had no business entertaining the throw away thoughts of a dithering idealist. Certainly, there was a small handful of students to whom she felt some semblance of contentment- an amount countable on one hand whose immediacies soothed a portion of her ever-thrumming need for vigilance- but to earn a safe spot in her mind was a mission hard-won. Her loyalties lay as true as could be as long as their moralities aligned, a far more unknown fate forward if otherwise.

Astrea, with her inadequate social skills in every situation but formal, was not fit for careful tutoring. The art of spoken wordplay was something much more suited for her mother's touch, her Lady mother's socialite reputation doing her well in luring information- a well-honed skill far surpassing Lord Neptune's iced suavity and Astrea's own practised politeness. Even her father, as unmovable as he was, knew exactly where to direct his instruction. Well-versed he proved to be with the art of commanding a room, not with careful coaxing but magisterial manoeuvring. If the Scot expected to use her in command of a room's attention in any way but mere presence and scant attempts at small talk, he would be sorely disappointed.

Time; the healer.
Time; the killer.

appearance here | orpheus here
text colour #274E13