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wherethewoofwoofsgo · 1 year

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Febuwhump Day Six : Secrets Revealed

Is it May? Yes. Am I still posting my backlog as I do it? Y... Yes. I cannot physically be stopped. I'm not writing a description, though. This is admittedly getting posted just because I feel I spent too long on it I would hate not to share it.

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“Honesty.”

His eyes remain shut, his head tipped back, fingers interlocked across his stomach. If all is going correctly, he is currently the picture of obstinance. He’d ask for nothing less. Anything less, and she might assume that he was simply engaged in a bout of listening, far away and in conversation with the cavern that envelops them, and that wouldn’t do for more reasons than the sickness a purposeful attempt might cause him.

“You’re old enough to know better than to play this type of game.”

He has to give his matriarch that. He knows much, much better than to play this type of game, knows the dark, panicky nights it’ll earn him when he’s discovered. Even thinking it too long is enough to leave a tremble to his hands, but he thinks of his cousin, of his whispers the night before, the struggle to keep his voice low as he told him where he’d go, of what he’d heard of the trains that danced across the surface of the continent, and he forces his hands still.

“I am,” he says, even. As if he’s never had reason to be scared of his mother.

The silence stretches on and at the end of the day, even with the terror of what lies ahead weighing down on him, Honesty is still Honesty and her momentary lapse in judgment is still enough to leave him fighting a quirk to his lip. It wouldn’t do, will just make her angrier. He lays there, counts the seconds of success, and waits.

Finally, she speaks, softer than he expected as she asks, “Where is Obedience?” The words tug at him, picking apart the strings that make him. It’s a mundane manipulation, the only type of manipulations she has, and he’s too old, too committed for it to work.

He cocks his head, eyes still shut, and he’s sure it bites at her as much as the cool of the cavern ground is beginning to bite at him through his clothes. He says it calmly, as if he truly believes it could ever possibly be a possibility, and he’s sure that only pisses her off more. A chill runs down him at the thought that, this time, she might well and truly hit him. “At a time like this? Obedience would usually be working a shop, wouldn’t he? Some kind of date planned for the afternoon break, I’m sure. A woman today?”

“Honesty.” As flat as her voice is, he still hears the way she holds back the beginnings of a plead.

He doesn’t let the sadistic pleasure, however short-lived it’s sure to be, shine through his response. “Matriarch.”

“Where is Obedience?”

He sighs, anything to drag the seconds out longer. “You know, he doesn’t have to tell me everything. His name’s Obedience, not Tell Honesty Your Every Whereabout.”

“If you truly have no idea where he is, you will say so right now.”

And well, that’s that, isn’t it? The silence stretches.

Finally, she whispers, “Honesty.”

He looks up to her and addresses her the only way he can think to extend the matter. “Forethought.”

It was, admittedly, a very stupid idea.

Pain bursts out of his side. It’s not bad, not compared to what he used to get, but it’s still a sharp pang through his side, enough to leave his eyes shutting tight. But she doesn’t hit him again, and the silence stretches on another moment, so he’s counting it as a success.

She spits out, “You know better.”

He barely keeps from laughing, the one guaranteed way to worsen the situation, and instead offers up, “It’s your name, isn’t it?”

“Where is he?”

The truth of the matter is, Honesty doesn’t know, not exactly. He knows where he was going, but he doesn’t know where Obedience is. Somewhere far away, hopefully. Heading somewhere even farther away. But if he admits that he doesn’t know, even if it doesn’t come close enough to a lie to leave him sick, then his role is done. His aunt knows he doesn’t know. It’s over. They’re done.

The dirt clings to him, the cavern pressing into his ears like water.

“Do I have to take you to your first mother?”

A shock runs through him. He sinks into the ground, looking hard up at the ceiling.

“I’ll have to lock you in the room over this, you know.”

And he does know, is the thing. He knew when he told Obedience he’d do this that he was going to earn himself some days in the room. His palms begin to sweat. He doesn’t want to go in.

He doesn’t want to make it worse.

Carefully, more careful than he has a right to be with the way he’s been swinging for death, he works his way to standing and leads his aunt into the house. They make their way towards the rooms his mother prefers, only to almost literally run straight into her.

Forethought straightens, saying primly, “Adamance, can you tell Honesty to tell me—”

But even before she interjects, he knows she already knows. It’s clear in the way her eyes dart between them, her brow drawn tight and stricken. “Where Obedience is? Gone. He’s gone. Left the caverns and went only the Goddess knows where. That’s what I’m dealing with right now.” She finally acknowledges him enough to ask, “Do you know where he went?”

He can feel his face morph into something ugly as he says, “Just that it’s somewhere far away from here.”

The next thing he knows, fireworks of pain explode across his face.

“What is wrong with you?” Forethought hisses at him.

His mother scoffs as he reaches up a hand to touch his cheek, and by the time it lands she’s gone.

He stares at Forethought. Now that he’s done what he meant to, has met all goals, served all purposes, a heaviness has settled over him, accompanied by an emptiness.

Obedience is gone. What else is there to say?

“I asked you a question. I expect an answer. Unless you want me to answer for you?”

She must be livid if he’s expected to deliver part of it himself.

His lips move of their own accord. “I’m ungrateful. I refuse to obey, even when what you ask of me is clearly what’s best for me. And it would be one thing if I was purely incapable of obedience, but that obviously isn’t the case, because I can obey the Goddess perfectly fine.” He pauses, takes a breath. “And that means I do it on purpose. And that makes me a worse son.”

She stares at him, heat burning in her eyes. He holds her gaze as best he can as she says, quiet, “You deserve this.”

He doesn’t ask her what, already has a clear idea of it as she grabs him by the arm. His body follows her. It’s real. Obedience has gotten his wish. And now, Honesty…

She was saying something to him, lecturing him probably, but he was too busy nursing the emptiness in his chest to sit with it. Down the hall, down to the door he knew so well, and even seeing the sigils worn into it was enough to make his heart quicken, even like this, and she threw open the door, threw him in. She didn’t tell him how long he’d be left in the room. Canniness would have. It was one of the things that made her a good first matriarch.

Immediately the terror of the room pushes into him, makes it difficult to think. Emptiness spreads out in him, Obedience’s absence an abyss. Immediately he knows he’ll dwell in it, sink into it for however long he’s in here—Days? Weeks? Will he still be whole when he’s pulled out? They’d try for it, wouldn’t they? But something could go wrong—A lump caught in his throat.

Obedience was gone. If all went well, Honesty would never see him again.

And what a terrible thing to wish for things to go wrong.

#original fiction #febuwhump2023 #febuwhumpday6 #wtwwg ; honesty #cw abuse #writing on tumblr

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wherethewoofwoofsgo · 1 year

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Resorption

You can read this if you see it in a tag but it's mainly for my friends who follow this blog. I doubt. It will make any sense otherwise.

Honesty asks the question he's spent the better part of a century avoiding.

217 words

“What were your other consorts like?” He can’t tell you what possessed him to ask the question, only knows that in his stomach there’s a pit of bubbling gross that’s getting stronger by the hour.

Her fingers pause where they carefully unbraid his hair and his heart begins to race faster, keenly aware of his neck vulnerable near her hands, between her thighs. And then she goes back to her work. “A lot like you,” she says, a softness to her voice that should make him feel warm or sticky sweet, valued, close to loved, even as an object, something, but instead it flips his stomach, threatens him with an upheaval.

He should leave it at that, curiosity unsated. He screams at himself to leave well enough alone. But instead he asks, “Like me how?”

In the corner of his eye, his handler repositions ezimself against the doorway. He does his best not to look at ezim, focusing instead on the gentle pull at his scalp.

“They were beautiful, which you know. You’ve seen their portraits. And they were, each and every one of them, a good son. Just like you.” She delicately lifts his wrist to her lips, and he lets her, even as that sickness begins to curdle.

Honesty has never been a good son.

#writing on tumblr #original fiction #wtwwg ; honesty #wtwwg ; ezphe #wtwwg ; honesty ezphe

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wherethewoofwoofsgo · 1 year

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Hello. My body is discovering new and exciting ways to be mentally ill. This is affecting writing. I am sure the imaginary gigantic following (my like five beautiful friends who follow hai i wuv u) this blog has in my head is just as upset about this as I am. I also have... schoolwork. Gwuh. Writies soon. Hopefully...

#woofs not writes

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wherethewoofwoofsgo · 1 year

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Febuwhump Day Fifteen : Self-Sacrifice

Is Febuwhump over? Yes. So very, very over. But! I still have shit I was working on! And ideas for prompts!!! So!

Someone new this time: We actually get the "main character?????" omgggggg Anyways have a terrible way of introducing Mourning Dove lol

Dove's best friend is sick, so he gives a certain goddess exactly what she wants. Narrator voice: This action will have consequences.

1.3k words

No warnings this time!! If you need something tagged feel free to ask :>

Hare is sick, the kind of sick that leaves you stuck in bed with your family around you, your daughter’s hand around yours. The kind of sick where Dove should, at this very moment, be in the hospital room, sitting and waiting for the moment it ends.

Dove is not in the room. In fact, Dove is nowhere near the room.

He’s across town, where tourists swarm the streets snapping pictures of well-kept historical buildings recently renovated and the newer structures thrown up alongside them, slinking into the hotel room the spider lady’s been hinting with a firmer and firmer grip to the back of his neck he should visit for the last decade and a half. He’s been good about denying her, would never dream of denying the lopsided grin that morphs his face, the dimples that, to her at least, betray him as not yet grown. He’d be happy to deny her a decade and a half longer at least, damn the bleeding and the headaches and the shit luck and the strange fear.

But Hare’s sick. The kind of sick that ends with an empty body.

So he straightens, screws his face up in preparation, and forces himself to loosen. Then he knocks.

The door opens, but it isn’t the Goddess looking at him. A different dweller looks down at him, assessing. “Mourning Dove?” ezi asks.

He looks at ezim, mouth caught for a moment. He reminds himself as his heart beats faster that friendliness is a virtue and nods.

Ezi hums, then open the door for him. “I’ll let the Goddess know you’ve arrived. You can join her on the couch.”

He doesn’t ask ezir name, even if he knows it would be the friendly thing to do, instead nodding and shuffling in after ezim. At the sight of the couch, he halts.

Ezphe’s body sprawls across it, but the pale of her eyes staring out at nothing are enough to show to him that it is not Ezphe. A lax husk. With delicate steps, he approaches her body, looking over it carefully. The body hardly breathes, no solidity to its muscles. He doesn’t sit beside it as he waits.

A finger twitches, and then she stirs, slumped leg twitching before crossing over the other in one smooth motion, hand coming to rest on her thigh. She looks up at him, the picture of poise not nearly enough to erase the sprawling image of death she presented a moment before from his mind. “Son of Severity.” She says it like it’s some spoiled fruit. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

Her body’s already seared itself into his mind as he straightens, immediately to the target. “You perform miracles.”

She stares at him and he wants to scream, but he doesn’t, which is pretty impressive given it’s her and he’s him. Instead, he lets her process. After several seconds filled with unfamiliar silence, an iceberg of a smile spreads across her face. “What kind of miracle?”

“Curing sickness.”

Her eyes narrow to slits, smile sharpening as her teeth disappear behind her lips. “This isn’t for one of your dogs, is it?”

“No. A friend.”

“An elf?”

“A human.”

A laugh trickles out of her as she rolls her eyes, leaning languidly back into the couch. “So one of your dogs.”

He’s sure he will be forgiven the nastiness that crosses his face when he meets the dogs that accompany the moon in the afterlife.

“You’re pouting,” she says, “and you may not be an adult, but you’re still much too old to pout.”

He’d qualify it as more of a glare, but maybe he’s not particularly good at glaring.

Something to her face softens, and if he hadn’t trusted her before, now he could drown both of them in the lack. “Dishonorable son, you must understand: You are… very young. You may think to grasp at it, but you clearly can’t yet. I could save this human of yours that you hold so close to you, but what it would mean in the grand scheme of things?”

She pauses, waits for him to respond, but he doesn’t want to play into it, and maybe that only strengthens her game in the end. It’s the kind of thing that made him wish there was someone he knew with the kind of power to kick her ass.

“Nothing. It would mean nothing. An elf, an elf I could understand. But a human? How old is your human?”

“As old as me.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “As old as you?” she repeats, her tone itching against him in one of the myriad of ways he couldn’t understand.

“A little younger,” he amends.

“They may as well already be dead,” she says, eyes flicking away from him.

“But you can heal him.”

“If I felt like it, sure, but I don’t.”

His weight shifts between his feet. She keeps the wall-sized windows of her suite open, and outside, the night shines into the room, the street lit in a dim rainbow, the sky shining down on them in a tapestry made of stars and constellations. “What if I did… it?” he blurts out. It was what he came here to offer, but still he can’t say it, not the whole thing, the whole deal. Fifteen years of resistance, but Hare is worth more.

Her face hardens. “Answer me honestly, son of Severity: Have you lain with him?”

His face scrunches up, head cocking to the side, “Why would I do that?”

“He’s not your family—For some reason, you’ve attached that term to the mongrels you cohabit with. So I’m left to wonder what else it could be.”

“He’s my friend.”

She stares into him, maybe searching for some sign he’s lying, but he knows she won’t find any. Finally, she hums. Instead, she says, “I don’t trust you to keep a promise.”

“I keep my promises.”

“I don’t trust you not to lie, either, especially not to me.”

His mouth tightens.

She laces her fingers as she leans towards him, the shadows of the room stretching across her face in a way that almost denies this body its beauty. A quiet surety to her, she says, “If you try to weasel out of this, you won’t even be capable of wishing I had killed you. Am I understood?”

“Perfectly,” he whispered.

“I don’t accept backtalk from my followers. I’ve been exceedingly lenient with you on it.”

“What do you usually do? Kill them?”

“Brutally?”

He chews at his lip. This is a dangerous game that he’s playing with her, a game he can hardly grasp the rules of, but it has never escaped him that he can’t win while he’s alive and if he loses she’ll kill him regardless. The easiest way to win—The only way he understands the rules well enough to win—is to give nothing. And this is a small world more than nothing. But it’s Hare. “But you’ll do it?”

“That’s not how my worshippers address me.”

He scoffs, but she cocks her head at him and for once he rethinks it, and the way his guts roil is the beginning of a sickness. “How do your worshippers address you?”

“Goddess will do just fine for now.”

‘For now.’ He stares at her and she stares back, but the usual heat’s gone. Of course it’s gone—She’s finally starting to win.

He takes a deep breath, steadies his nerves, soothes his anger and his stomach as much as he can manage in three seconds, and asks, all the heat absent from her bleeding into his voice, “Goddess, will you do it?”

She smiles at him like she’s eaten a bird. “A deal’s a deal, isn’t it?”

And how can it not be when Hare is sick and he needs him to be okay? Consequences are for when he’s older.

#febuwhump2023 #febuwhumpday15 #writing on tumblr #original fiction #wtwwg ; mourning dove #wtwwg ; ezphe

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wherethewoofwoofsgo · 1 year

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Gwuh

I didn't want to do this but I simply Must announce that I am in fact still alive. I have a couple things in the works I've just been busier and writing less than I expected. UGH, LIFE!!! Hopefully, something will be up in the next week!!!!

#woofs not writes

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wherethewoofwoofsgo · 1 year

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Febuwhump Day Four : Knife to the Throat

Sometimes, you are so deeply in love that even with the signs blaring in your face you miss them. Honesty is way too fucking young to be in a situationship with the goddess that created his species, my guys.

1.6k words

CWs in the tags, I am marking this one as NSFW just in case!

With her hand around his throat, pressed just enough to leave him foggy and tasting metal, he could melt into the bed. Her entire weight’s pressed into him, air pushed out of him, and all he can do is stare up at her, lips parted with each gasp for some kind of breath. Her hair hangs over them like a veil, lit from the outside by the plants growing on the walls of this body’s room. Her fingers stroke through his hair and there is nothing he wants more than to be still under her, her perfect, pliant plaything.

She squeezes harder at his neck.

His breath hitches and he threatens to shift, but at the last second he presses himself deeper into her bed.

“Good boy,” she murmurs. He could drown in her approval, dick twitching as she strokes his hair away from his head. “You do whatever I want when you’re here, don’t you?”

Less than an hour ago, whatever she’d wanted was his feather-light frame lying stomach to stomach on top of hers, still-clothed, her fingers carding through his hair while he carefully picked through his words and complained about his younger girlcousin, finally approaching her first century birthday and acting like it.

He nods more eagerly than necessary.

She leans close enough the light in the room truly disappears even to him, pressing a kiss to his temple before she pulls back and her touch is gone.

He takes the moment to breathe and once again truly appreciate it the way he only seems able to in moments like this, the cool air running through his mouth and down to fill his lungs even if the Goddess still weighs him down too heavily for his diaghram to fill right. He doesn’t shut his eyes, not daring the disrespect even given the circumstances, and instead watches her hands dance over to her nearest nightstand, into the top drawer.

Her fingers curl in his hair absentmindedly as she shuts it, hand wrapped around something shining in her hand before, with a practice he usually delights in witnessing, she presses it close to his neck. “Don’t move.”

He goes still more from instinct than her words, breath stilled for a moment before it comes heavier than it rightfully should. He knows, of course, that he’s safe. He is never not safe in the Goddess’s presence. She would never hurt him, not for no reason—Not if he hadn’t done something to deserve it. It’s the kind of thing that would make him dizzy if he said it out loud, but he grasps it tight as he forces his gaze away from her hand and up to her eyes.

Despite the sharpness of her smile, there’s still a fondness to the way she looks at him, the way her fingers curl in his hair.

His heart hurts with how badly he wants to be good for her, but it also hurts from the way it’s galloping in his chest. His body urges him to pull back, sink into her soft bed and its pillows, at least angle away, but he forces himself still, even if it makes him shake with effort.

She clicks at him, pressing the flat harder against his skin, enough he thinks it might accidentally cut, though of course she knows what she’s doing—How could something as old as she is not know what they were doing? “What did I say?” she says, and she doesn’t sound mad, but there are plenty of times she hasn’t sounded mad before blood stained the cavern floor.

It’s enough to quiet him, almost as much as the cold pressure threatening to dig into his throat, as he whispers, “I’m sorry, Goddess.”

Her fingers always feel nice in his hair, goading him to behave, and now is no exception. “It’ll be easier if you relax.”

Her hands around his throat, Quietude screaming himself to death: The most endangered Honesty has ever felt before now. But it’s not the kind of thing he can explain, not even to Matriarch Attention, so explaining it to someone like the Goddess is out of the question.

Does the blood ever get stuck under her nails the way dirt gets stuck under his?

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Something in her face goes cold. Slowly, a sharp smile splits her face. His heart pounds against his chest, body shuddering with the breath he tries to hold as she tugs at his hair. “You can do better than that…”

There’s a goading to her tone, a quiet encouragement enough to leave him shaking worse. If he could stop moving, he would have by now. “I don’t think I can. I’m sorry.” He trips over the last two words, struggling to keep himself from making her do anything she doesn’t want to.

Like a tease, she traces the knife against his neck, barely enough touch to tickle. “You’re very resilient when you want to be. You do want to be, don’t you?”

He barely stops himself from nodding. “Yes, Goddess,” he says, the words threatening to choke him.

It’s always been easier for him to practice his breath when his eyes are shut, but that’s not allowed. He keeps his eyes on her, even if her own linger where she traces patterns along his neck. If she cuts him, will she nurse at the would? It sends a tremble through him again, though he couldn’t tell you why.

It’s enough for her to tsk him, give his hair a tug. “You were being so good a moment ago. I thought you want to be good for me.”

“I’m sorry.” It’s like they’re the only words he can remember stuck here under her.

Despite them, she presses the blade down harder. His breath hitches up, body pressing into the bed. He forces himself to slacken a moment later, but it’s still enough to send her giggling.

“Do you not trust me?” Her fingers continue playing through his hair, encouraging.

“I do.” The words come out before he can consciously think on them, but that does nothing to change the truth to them.

“But…?” She’s teasing along his throat again.

His throat works, the knife pressed too close to it. He takes as deep a breath as he dares and lapses, eyes drifting past her and onto the ceiling.

“Eyes on me.”

His eyes flicker back to her automatically. “Goddess…”

“But?” She presses the knife harder and his skin aches at the edge of it, heartbeat palpable against its metal.

He doesn’t mean to whimper, certainly not for the clicks beneath it to come up.

Leaning over him, close enough they’re sharing air, shrouded off from the rest of the world by her hair, she asks, nearly a purr, “Are you scared?”

It does something to him, something confusing he isn’t sure he likes. He struggles to keep his eyes on her and not shut tight as he braces himself. Barely a whisper, the most terrifying thing he can imagine admitting, he says, “Yes, Goddess.”

He didn’t think her smile could widen. A hint of fondness creeps back in and for a second he softens.

The knife digs into his skin, just enough to nick.

For only a second, he loses control of his breathing, left in gasps and shudders where before there’d been only her prescribed evenness, the appropriate response to the Goddess’s presence. Despite all best efforts, his eyes squeeze shut at the same time his mouth purses shut, body tight with the fear, legs only ceasing their upward curl when they run into the Goddess’s back.

And still her voice remains as lyrical as ever. “Come now, eyes on me.”

He forces them open, forces himself to remember propriety. He hasn’t done anything to earn her ire, not yet at least, not if he can stay well-behaved for her. He can’t focus them, her face a smear in the dark.

Her thumb brushes against his cheek. “There we go,” she says, and he finds himself shuddering with something like relief even as it digs the blade deeper into his skin, the pain dulled by need. “You’re doing so well…”

“Really?” he asks, desperate, then pales, already tripping over his apologies, but she only grins at him, hand harsher on his face. A cool trail traces down his neck.

“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. And you likebeing good for me, don’t you?”

It’s enough to leave heat rising to his face, but he keeps looking at her, even as the ping of pain starts to filter in through his senses. “I do.”

Only as she leans over him, examining every inch she can see, does he realize he’s gone entirely lax beneath her. The knife pulls away, continuing to trace its patterns in an absentmindedness mirrored by the rough strokes of her hand. Finally, each word carefully weighed, she says, “You are a wonderful creation.”

It’s like all his stuffing’s been ripped out, insides weighed and measured gram for gram and packaged into perfect, bite-sized morsels. He can barely make his mouth work enough to say, “Thank you, Goddess.”

She doesn’t acknowledge his words, instead finally pulling away from him, teasing at the cut she’d already made once more before bringing the knife to her mouth and carefully tasting at the blade. She hums, considering, then tugs his head back by his hair, hard enough it hurts.

The breath exits him in one gasp, and from the look she gives him it must be a pretty noise. His heart settles, warm in his chest. If he can have a million moments like this, then it will be enough. It will make up for anything like before.

#febuwhump2023 #febuwhumpday4 #cw abuse #writing on tumblr #fiction #original fiction #wtwwg ; honesty #wtwwg ; ezphe #wtwwg ; honesty ezphe

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wherethewoofwoofsgo · 1 year

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Febuwhump Day Five : "That's Gonna Scar"

I am more of an emotions guy than an actual physical pain guy. With that out of the way...

A short reflection on a recent mistreatment

750 words

CWs in the tags!

Honesty’s side pulses as he stares at the gauze covering it in the mirror.

He can’t see beneath it, not really, but he can almost picture in his mind’s eye the wound, a ragged-edged tear through the skin much… smaller than he’d have expected. His stomach squeezes at the thought, heart beating faster.

She’d nipped at him when the skin finally gave, mouth burning against his neck, the air too cold in comparison where it hit her drying saliva. He’d tried to swallow down the whimpers of pain consuming him, the invasion a more intimate touch than he’d ever expected to receive from her. Even through it, he’d been aware of her mouth curling up against his rising flesh.

Despite it all, her fingers hadn’t gone deep—That hadn’t been the point. That rested somewhere between him and the mirror, lost to him in the nothing and the ephemeral. Her lips might well still be pressed to his skin with the way he ran his fingers through the air for some sense to it. She’d kept whispering encouragement even as her fingers came out of him with a slick noise, suction gone, and left him bleeding freely on her sheets, a dizziness settling over him. He was too old to worry over it, but still his heart had pulsed hard against his throat.

Before he’d left, she’d said, “It’s going to scar.” Her voice dripped a sweetness he could taste when she kissed him goodbye, biting at his lips and jaw. You’d think over three quarters of a century would be enough to get used to her handling, and most days it was. Most days, he took her affections exactly as he should, every bit of awe she deserved doled out in proper order, but for the past three days his stomach has been too unsettled to so much as eat.

His fingers dance over the gauze. When it was first applied, before it had inevitably needed changed, the doctor had looked very pointedly at him and said to leave it alone. Her tone left no room for argument, but the cock of her head, the set of her eyes, left him feeling less than repentant for disobeying doctor’s orders. Everyone knew he was a disobedient son.

And he needs this moment, each moment like this the touch provides—To struggle for breath all over again, falling into quickness as spouts of pain shoot up him. Like he’s still there. Like he never came home.

His matriarchs were told, of course, but past checking what follow-up care would be necessary, no one had harassed him about it. No punishment, which was good, no scorning, though even the idea of it was ludicrous—Everyone knows she likes to break things sometimes.

And with all the ways she could, he’s lucky. It’s not like he’s hurt badly, not like he can’t work. Not like he’s supposed to work today anyways.

Obedience is. Even imagining a word shared with him pulls his stomach together in ways nothing else will. There’s others to speak to, but for the way his heart slows, no one else will do. He allows himself the indulgence of imagining a world where he shares with his cousin every reaction, every thought bordering treason.

It’s not really an option, of course, just another thing to press down hard when he should let it rest. Obedience has more worries than some of their matriarchs, what with the younger men and his extracurriculars and the name that haunts him every second of every day.

He tries to ignore the whispering, both from the cavern and from a place deep inside him that makes him go cold whenever it speaks for too long. He doesn’t need them to tell him something bad is going to happen.

But it doesn’t have to happen today.

Sorting through the information the cavern sends to him, the whispers of numbing detail Obedience has most recently supplied, he picks his way through Obedience’s day as he pulls his undershirt down. It does nothing against the chill overtaking him. He has to be more careful as he takes the jacket off the cloths hook beside the closet, sliding in one arm then the other with as little movement as possible before buttoning it up. Soon, Obedience will have a small moment where they can whisper without being overheard. He doesn’t think he could forgive himself if something were to happen and he had missed it.

#febuwhump2023 #febuwhumpday5 #all the cws on this one are more safe than sorry? like... might be might not be but juuuust in case #cw abuse #cw descriptions of violence #writing on tumblr #fiction #original fiction #wtwwg ; honesty

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wherethewoofwoofsgo · 1 year

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Febuwhump Day Three : Muzzled

We are letting go of the perfectionism on this one. Letting it go.

I'm not really the kind of guy into physical kind of shit so this is a more... metaphorical muzzling?

Disobedience can only be allowed to go so far without punishment

1k words

CWs in the tags

Justice throws the scissors down hard enough the bounce against the table, skidding so far they nearly fall off. It’s enough to make Honesty flinch, the minuteness of the thing a matter of practice and nothing else. His heart quickens as he stares at them, then up at Justice, his cousin Attention, and finally their head matriarch Reliance.

Each of them watches him, and the anger radiating off Justice and Attention, while expected, leaves his fingers tremoring. As bad as that is, Reliance is worse. She has the flat, smooth demeanor of an undisturbed pool of water, the kind of look that obscures everything and sends his heart ratcheting higher.

“You’re joking.”

“You’re doing it yourself,” his aunt says.

Attention is quick to cut in. “The first round, at least. Head Matriarch will clean up the mess when you’re done.”

Her words hang between them as he purses his lips, eyes dropping to the scissors. When he was young and Attention and Justice were still fresh to their roles, Attention had been softer. The women might have preferred the term weak, but for a time, him and Obedience had actually had someone to trust with their problems. He can’t remember when that had changed.

This is going to ruin him and they know it.

His hair hangs heavy against his back, a weight he’s only aware of now that he stands to lose it. He’s lucky it’s as long as it is in the first place. He’d had to beg and bug and try and swallow his tongue, every failure to maintain silence in place of blunt truth a setback—And the Goddess knew his life was full of setbacks. Even without this measure, Obedience’s is already longer. He’s the better son, though he wouldn’t be, if they knew about the lies and secret friends and seditious meetings, but even now Honesty would rather be saturated with lies before than tell.

They don’t need to be doing this. He glares at the scissors, dented and aged enough he can feel his aching scalp before he’s even put them to his head. His matriarchs certainly think they do—Any self-respecting matriarch would. There’s a reason, after all, he’s been so careful with his poems, careful to eventually whisper each one to dust. Even if the anger and confusion wrestled into each one didn’t seem to do much more than amuse the Goddess, it was more than enough for punishment. And Sense had come into their room—Without knocking, as was becoming her habit—and his sister had seen and shown Attention. He tells himself he isn’t angry with her, ignores the bubbling inside him.

But the Goddess doesn’t care. She knows, and she doesn’t care. It would be easy to tell, but there’s the kind of discord one sows in the family and the kind one doesn’t, and this is clearly the second.

He hasn’t moved towards the scissors. If someone made him, he’d be forced to admit his matriarchs have been more understanding about it than the situation calls for.

But eventually, Attention speaks, voice strained from the effort of having to play her turn at even-mannered. He remembers when that used to be the one she naturally fell into, the one that left her able to recognize when Honesty was correct and not his girlcousins, and he aches. “Honesty. You’re going to earn yourself a day.”

Even before she makes the threat he knows what it’s going to be. But despite the way it makes his heart pound faster, his mouth drying up, he looks up at her, goading and silent.

He knows it will not make things better, will in fact only make things worse, won’t save his hair or his reputation, won’t stop Conscience’s matriarch from finally ruling him a bad influence and breaking their match. It will do nothing to influence the Goddess’s opinion, not even negatively. As always, his heart betrays him at the thought of her and races faster.

In that room, it will just be him and the dark and the walls, dread carved into them and sinking into his skin. Already, he spends more days than he should in there, from moments without warnings like this or words he’d have done well to consider a moment longer. Even the notice is a kindness. It leaves him burning.

“We can make it three,” Justice says. “You’re already pushing your way towards two.”

A day in that room is a day with no one to watch, truly watch, Obedience. No one to keep an eye on when he grows listless, or when he disappears by himself…

His body burns as he forces his hand around the cool metal, struggling to grasp it properly. He doesn’t look at them as he tries to maneuver the scissors, pulling his braid tight, hand a fist around it. They have him scoot the scissors higher, then higher still.

At the very least, he’ll have to explain this to Obedience and Dignity and whatever matches will still have him. He picks through his words as he fights with the blades, sawing through his hair. An overreaction, though they disagree. It’s the truth as he sees it. His hair tugs back painfully with each snip, left dangling by fiewer and fewer strands with each snip. He doesn’t shake, even as the nausea grips him fully.

Eventually, he’s left with his braid in his hand and he drops it like it’s burnt him. It makes a heavier thud than he’d expected as it hits the ground. For a moment, all he does is stare at the table and try not to be sick.

Then Reliance holds out a hand, ushering the other two matriarchs from the room, and he gives her the scissors. His stomach threatens upheaval as she moves behind him, but she’s silent as she fixes yet another of his messes. She doesn’t even give him a proper scorning.

Eventually, she leans past him, placing the scissors on the table. She pauses there, her wrinkled skin not quite touching him, and he thinks she might hit him, but all she says is, “You have no idea how disappointed I am in you.”

She leaves and, a minute later, Justice returns.

He doesn’t write again for nearly a decade.

#febuwhump2023 #febuwhumpday3 #cw abuse #writing on tumblr #fiction #original fiction #wtwwg ; honesty

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wherethewoofwoofsgo · 1 year

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Febuwhump Day Two : Flinching

Moral of the story: Don't ignore your evil goddess situationship, even if you have really valid reasons

2.9k words

Please mind the CWs! I don't want to put it in the tag in case people actually use it but this pairing is very dubcon (dubious consent.) A key element of the dynamic is he would say yes to most of what she wants from him but also he is not allowed to say no.

One of the simplest rules of the caverns is that when the Goddess calls, you answer. To do otherwise is to swing for death, dragging the Goddess and everyone unlucky enough to bear witness into it. If Honesty had been so desperate for that, he’d have simply returned home to the caverns where such things were easy to act upon.

But it’s one of many ways Silver Port isn’t as simple as the distal caverns. Despite working less, there’s always something to do, a constant stream of events being planned or attended or in need of some sort of assistance to run properly, and his cousin is eager to drag him along to as many as Honesty will allow, good practice for his Common and an excuse to meet people.

And, though he wouldn’t so much as whisper it to himself, maybe a part of him had hoped she’d let him be. It had taken hours to scrub the blood from under his nails, more for the pounding in his heart to subside, and even that had only been achieved when he’d finally allowed a worrying Dove to offer him something in his tea he doubted the Goddess would approve of. If Dove kept offering reasons for him to be unable to clear his schedule, no matter how flimsy the excuse…

Maybe he’d been stupid enough to think he had some kind of cover from her ire after all this time.

This is how he ends up at work, carefully laying necklaces in a freshly assembled box, about to tape it shut and apply its assigned label when Praiseworthy emerges from the front, a sickness to her tone as she maneuvers between tables and shelves. He only starts paying attention to her movements when it becomes clear she’s making her way towards him, long-used to others mingling around him. That alone is enough to make his stomach twist, sickness simmering and heat threatening to flood his face. He tells himself to calm down as she carefully arranges her words, each one in a neat line after the last. “I think your goddess is here to see you.”

Already his heart is squeezing in his chest as he searches her face. He runs through his week, tries to remember the last time he’d seen her. It couldn’t have been that long ago, but no, he’s been putting it off since that day with Opening Flowers. The realization is enough to make his insides crumple, the severity of his breach of etiquette hitting him. He swallows, straightening his back from what little slouch he’d fallen into, and slowly makes his way towards the front of the shop, sending a quiet hope to the caverns that no one here will witness a death today. He picks through what she might say, tries to use his limited time to prepare.

The beads clink against each other as he brushes them aside and, sure enough, there’s the Goddess. A navy blue dress hangs loose off her body, painted brighter by her dark skin, white hair hidden under a wide-brimmed hat. She’s straight behind the bronze desk, eyes already pinning him. She could’ve sat at one of the couches, vibrant red and pink things, and the sight of her standing leaves him sicker for it. Maybe that’s the point.

He picks his way around to the front of the desk.

She doesn’t so much as acknowledge Praise before, in Dweller, she’s addressing him. “This is where you spend your days?”

The first answer that jumps to his tongue is barely appropriate for his matriarchs, designed to make her regret the question. He swallows it back down, face burning at even the thought of saying it, and says instead, forcing his eyes to steady on her, “It’s work.”

“Busywork, maybe.”

He hadn’t considered she might target his employment. It offers room for the words to squeeze deeper between his ribs, building themselves a home close to his heart. Busywork. He chews at his lip, but only for a moment. “Does it not please you?”

“There’s very little this city offers that pleases me.”

He doesn’t remark on Dove’s near century of residence. “I’m sorry to hear that, Goddess.”

His words bounce off her, unheard or close enough it doesn’t matter. “You’re lucky I let you stay here. You recognize that, don’t you? Especially with Loyalty by your side. Do you know what grief your matriarchs bear for it?”

If he were stronger, the words wouldn’t sting. The mark she aimed to hit wouldn’t exist. He could tell himself, if not her, because telling her would be a death wish, that whatever they felt was their own damned fault and he did not deserve to bear the blame for what kept him alive.

In reality, they still raised him and his head spins with the thought of a life back home without Loyalty in it, the life they’re living. In practicality, he has denied them their sons. As much as he knows it would be a more than practical denial had he stayed, it still sinks into his gut, still stains his insides.

“Retribution can hardly bear it. You know how much it pains me to hurt her.”

His throat aches, but he keeps his eyes on her, even if for a second he finds himself fixating on a loose strand of hair. It is enough, he reminds himself, that she let him leave—That she forced his matriarchs’ hands to allow Loyalty passage with him. It is more than most women would allow a man, certainly more than the Goddess would. He can’t compare himself to a woman. It isn’t fair to either of them.

He stays straight, doesn’t shift his body. There is still the fact he is at work, with his coworker on the other side of their work desk, watching. He’d never dare to suggest the Goddess’s anger is undeserved, but he knows what’s coming, and this isn’t the caverns. Even her presence is enough for a scene somewhere like this, but she’s going to make it worse, though he doubts she’ll yell. At the very least, he wishes he were still the type of son who could take this kind of punishment dutifully and without all this excess emotion before it had truly even started.

Maybe that’s a sign that this one will actually stick—That the Goddess at least can give him a scorning well enough that he feels so sick afterwards he will never do what displeased her ever again. It’s not like he can fake a remorse that pleases her, not with what his name requires of him. Already he feels close to cracking.

“I’ve let you get away with things.”

She pauses, and he knows the dramatics are just another tool to extend the hurt, but his heart still twists, his chest exploding in pain when her lips twitch. All she’d have to do is look at him with this utter dissatisfaction a couple of minutes and he would split open like a pomegranate.

“Before this last week, it never occurred to me that I doted on you too much. You at least do as I ask, even if you can be trusted to behave for no one else, not even your matriarchs, despite them treating you well and beyond the proper care demanded. Even if you choose to waste yourself writing toxic screeds, defiant of every attempt to make you stop, no matter how extreme. Your hair still bears the mark of the last attempt at control, yet still you choose to disobey your betters, and I turn a blind eye because despite being an absolutely wretched excuse of a first son, the worst of your stock and the saddest example to have survived your recent mass departing, you can at least pretend to care, and pretend well enough that even you believe it.”

Her words are a constant stream, the natural rise and fall of a voice but no more than a casual conversation. But she doesn’t have to raise her voice. She’s been doing this kind of thing for millennia and she knows as well as he does that an even tone can screw into you just as deeply when wielded right.

It’s hard to look at her when she talks like this, but he looks regardless, even if it means focusing on the minute: The stray hairs, the places her eyebrows thin. His heart beats in his chest, stinging in time with his eyes, and he knows where that path leads. He wills himself not to cry, stamps down on the urge as fiercely as he can. She’ll stop when she’s ready. He only has to make it that far. Already it feels like a stream is splitting things: This moment and the moments before. He could get lost in it if he allowed himself. But it’s his fault. This never would’ve happened if he hadn’t given her a reason. It would be easy to blame her, and he’s blamed her before, but mostly he just feels sick to his stomach for forcing the words up. He can hardly take her in, let alone anything past her. The cheery orange walls barely register, her face beginning to blur.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, but if she hears it, it doesn’t matter.

“You bring every problem you have upon yourself. Have you ever looked at the pain you cause those around you with your disobedience? You try to fix things in your own way, I’m sure, but it only seems to make things worse. Your matriarchs, your cousins—If you were a good son, you’d recognize your own feeble-mindedness and allow those who truly know how to care for you to do what they were born to, but instead you become so wrapped up in these acts of petty resistance you fail to notice the crumbling of those around you. Your bedmate, your nephew, even those you claim are your closest friends.” Each one echoes memories like the stab of a knife. “If you were better, you wouldn’t be here. Because they would be at home with you. You made them carry everything by themselves for this fantasy of some grand cause and as much as you might like to pretend otherwise while you write your sad little stanzas, the kind of things easily outpaced by your girlcousins’ thoughtless remarks about their most recent sexual adventures, this is not a failure of mine but of yours.”

In that moment, the nights spent up with a sobbing Obedience didn’t matter, same as the attempts to part Dignity from his burdens, or to make Credence talk, just talk no longer mattered. All she had to do was speak her version of the truth to turn it to gospel and drain the heat from him, the room, the entire Silver Port summer. It sucks the air from his lungs, replacing them with concrete, heavy enough he might sink into the floor. His eyes burn with the urge to shut, to escape the reality of this room for even a second. In the corner of his vision, Praise lingers, but even with her in his sight she’s easy to forget with the Goddess’s presence to suck him up.

“You know that on some level, don’t you?” Her tone has an understanding to it that could kill him if he let it. “Otherwise, why would you run here, to live with some boy you hardly know, far from where your mistakes can echo themselves back into your face?”

He struggles to swallow, to keep his eyes not only open but on her instead of the floor or the door or even the walls, burning into his eyes as they do. It’s an even bigger battle to keep his face from scrunching up with his pain, instead kept some acceptable level of plain. The tears stinging at his eyes remove any daring that might otherwise move him to speak.

“Do you know what you are, Honesty?” she asks, soft as she scoots closer to him.

Struggling not to choke on the words and failing, he says, “No, Goddess.”

“You are a man I like to fuck, and not a particularly special one.”

His eyes finally squeeze shut, face collapsing with the expanse inside himself. It’s a truth he’s always known, of course, less a secret than something left unsaid, but it hurts more to hear said than he’d expected. His eyes burn as the tears finally leak from them. He tries to straighten his face, to force himself back to presentability, but his body refuses to cooperate.

This isn’t the worst thing she’s said, but it’s the one that made him cry. He could beat himself for it, knows his matriarchs would. The insults to his family, his name, and what matters is that he isn’t special? What’s wrong with him?

She lets him cry for longer than he expects, but she still asks, a rattle to her tone, “Are you crying?”

The correct answer is ‘No,’ because the correct response was to not begin crying. He forces himself to not, gut crumpling into itself, body threatening to heave in place of a voice, though with how tight his throat’s gone he’s not sure anything would come up even if it tried.

“Do you think you deserve to cry right now?”

He shakes his head, at least able to answer that one properly, and tries to calm himself by some inches. At the very least he thanks himself that he’s never been a loud crier, instead quietly gasping for breath as he tries to gather himself.

She’s quiet again for a moment as he fights with his body, and then, as even as breath, she says, “Cant you at least try to be good for me?”

His stomach threatens to heave, but he forces himself to breathe, all her words bouncing around in his skull, and forces his eyes open, his body straight, some semblance of propriety wrought into his body.

She’s closer now, fully in his space, rendered a blob of black and white and navy blue by the mix of light and tears. Even in the brightness of a surface city, he can see the cavern walls, hear the ripping of skin and muscle from cartilage, chewing, person rendered meat then spat back up and disposed of. He clenches as tight as he can, desperate to keep from trembling.

“There you go.” The approval in her voice is almost like she’s calling him good all over again and his stomach flips, threatening to loose itself on the floor. But at the same time a relief spreads through his core and once again he’s left wondering what has gone so deeply wrong with him to render him like this. She steps deeper into his space and all he can do is thank the caverns, aching in his chest as he does, that he doesn’t flinch back, her coo echoing into last week and the room behind him where Opening Flowers is still absent.

“Do you know what you’re worth.”

Despite his throat’s tightness, the tears still tracing down his cheeks, he forces himself to struggle for words, the beauty cut out by the struggle. “What am I worth?”

“Whatever I decide. And right now, I don’t think that’s very much.”

All he wants to do is go home and curl up. He takes comfort in how late he is in his shift. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you?”

What a fool he’d been to think himself too tired for new pain, the question leaving an ache fresh and unexpected.

She presses on. “Is that why you’re making this about yourself? Making me chase you down? I shouldn’t have to do things like this. You’re supposed to come when you’re called.”

All he can do is stare at her, stinging.

For a moment, she stands there looking back. Then, finally, voice soft enough he can breathe again, she says, “I think you are. You won’t do that again, will you?”

Immediately he relaxes enough for the jolts and twitches to wrack his body the way they’ve been aching to this entire time. He opens his mouth, eager to promise he won’t, to offer apologies for ever hurting her.

Her hand approaches his face to quickly. He rewitnesses every death she’s ever committed in front of him. For a moment, she’s pressing the knife into his hand again even as he meekly says no, no.

He flinches and they both freeze.

He’s stopped crying by now, the shock and relief still running their course through him, so he can see the way her eyes pierce through him. He loses the ability to breathe. Her hand goes to rest where it had wanted to in the first place, but the moment’s passed, even as she pets him softly.

She leans close to him, pressing a kiss to the shell of his ear and, close enough her lips brush against him, she whispers, “You’re going to regret that.”

He’s shaking again by the time she finally pulls away, walking herself out the front door of the shop.

He barely has enough energy to be glad no customers came in. Face warm with the new tears tracing down the tracts, Praise’s hands dance into view. She says something to him, but he isn’t paying enough attention to catch it, instead focused on forming his own words into something intelligible.

“I need to sit.”

#febuwhump2023 #febuwhumpday2 #cw abuse #cw discussion of suicide #cw verbal abuse #cw violence #...?#writing on tumblr #fiction #original fiction #wtwwg ; ezphe #wtwwg ; honesty #wtwwg ; honesty ezphe

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wherethewoofwoofsgo · 1 year

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Febuwhump Day One : Touch-Starved

Reiterating CWs and adding one because I didn't want it in the tag in case people actually use it to find content: This piece is NSFW, centers an abusive relationship and discussion of suicide, and is dubcon (dubious consent.)

An important part of the dynamic is that he would say yes to almost everything they are doing given the opportunity, but he doesn't have the option to safely say no so it doesn't count. If that will bother you, please skip this one!

AKA: "You're giving bad head. You know what else I bet feels bad? All your cousins dying."

2,304 words

Her hand’s tight enough in his hair to hurt. It’s probably the only thing keeping him with her, even with his fingers buried inside her and his tongue working at her clit in the long presses she likes. If it weren’t for the sharp tug at his scalp, his hair wrapped around her hand, he’d move from person to thing with feelings, if only for a few minutes.

It’s only when he’s down here, mouth wrapped around her and burning with the unnatural heat her body puts off, that he engages in the relief of shut eyes. Nothing exists beyond her bare legs resting against his shoulders, the cold seeping up off the floor into his legs, and her hand tugging insistently at his hair.

He doesn’t change what he’s doing—This body doesn’t like the constant change the goddess tries to push him towards, as much as she herself seems to forget it, and even if he did, pettiness suits him today.

Back home, his room is empty save for him, the latest spill of blood freshly scrubbed and charmed from the floor. His matriarchs would remind him that blame helps no one, but he knows better. He tries to be dutiful despite it. The anger will pass as it always does.

She pulls at his hair again, harder.

“How is it?” Her words crack the silence despite their evenness.

His chest pangs as he forces his eyes up. His mouth has stopped moving, but he keeps his fingers working, angling them up to press against her properly. Her leg tightens on his shoulder for his effort. Her eyes weigh him as he searches her face and even in the absence of other clues of a misstep, it’s enough to leave his heart splitting, waifing off with a breeze. He forgets himself and she gives his hair one sharp tug.

He pulls back slowly, face cooling with his spit on her face exposed to the air of the cavern. As nice as her rooms are, she doesn’t keep them warm, whatever her reasons may be. He forces himself into proper posture, sitting straight with as much eye contact as he can spare with the task at hand. He takes a breath to steady himself and, trying to mimic her, asks, “How is what?”

He knows, of course, because there’s only one thing it could be, but this is the Goddess, not his matriarch, and he would never dare to tell her he doesn’t want to discuss it. But even now, only half-looking at it, he’s aching, hardly able to perform a task as simple as this. To have to speak on it…

He will not cry. He promises himself that right then, the memory of her lips on his face, kissing at the tracts openly, tracing the paths left by tears with her tongue something he can still feel.

Her smile softens her features, even if she gives his hair another good tug with it, enough to leave him gasping. “He was the fourth, wasn’t he?”

Dignity. Dignity was the fourth. His stomach squeezes, things inside him threatening to become things outside. His throat’s already tightening, face warming up, eyes itching, and he reminds himself that he can’t handle crying in front of her today. But the cold coursing through his system doesn’t care, running lines up and down his arms as he fights to keep from shutting his eyes tight. His face burns, something begging for him to scream it, if he could only recognize it. If he was as far away from her as he was from them, maybe he would be alright. It’s a terrible thing to think about his goddess. An insult to himself and the men of his family, he dares to think that maybe it’s better they aren’t allowed to talk about it. His lips move before his filter. “My matriarchs would rather we didn’t discuss it.”

“Even with me?” She pulls playfully at his hair as she says it, a tease to her widening smile, but if hearing his words hadn’t been enough to flip his stomach, hers certainly are. She can be as teasing as she wants when every misstep brings Propriety’s echo swimming through Honesty’s mind, when the blood might as well still be slick on her fingers, shining an almost black blue-green in the glow of the distal caverns’ walls.

From the way her smile spreads, the hint of her front teeth poking through, she must know he’s remembering something, though he doubts what. She kills many different people for many different reasons. There was nothing special about Propriety’s death. If he did something like that, she’d kill him and only care for a minute. Honesty isn’t stupid enough to pretend different, even if even her legs can’t warm him against it.

He forces himself to look at her even as his eyes fight to dart away, for once the picture of obedience, even if so much as thinking the word nearly makes him flinch. “Of course not, Goddess. My apologies.” It comes out stilted.

She hums, smile unknowable to him. He aches for his cousin, his whole chest caught in the act. He’d settle for anyone he could truly lean on and not endanger. She loops his hair around her finger, twirling it over and over again, and his side gives a familiar phantom ache, a reminder of where her fingers had forced themselves in. He allows himself a moment to pretend that he simply hasn’t pushed her to violence today, conveniently ignoring that she hadn’t stopped whispering, breath hot on the long shell of his ear, how good he was being for he as she pinned him to the bed, his body shaking with the effort not to move as her fingers finally split skin the half century ago he’d gotten the scar.

“You’ve stopped.”

He forgets himself, taking in his unmoving hands, and her hands again entrap his hair, tugging back with purpose, head tipped back up to face her. Something plays behind her eyes and he can’t tell whether or not there’s any malevolence to it. You’d think over a century would help him know her, but he’s beginning to suspect she will always be a mystery to him. His bed is so empty back home. “I’m sorry.”

She tugs again, more cajoling now, and that’s what makes him move again. She lets out a sigh, fingers pulling at strands. He’ll need to visit a bathroom before he heads home. He allows himself a longer blink. He’s missed even this in the time his family has been gone. “It must be bad.”

The worst part is that when she dips her voice like that she almost sounds like she cares. His heart’s in a death grip, her eyes and his again meeting. It would be so easy to let himself believe she’d care if he joined his cousins tomorrow, if only for an hour. The mere idea that he’s something more than a toy—As intoxicating as all this is, that would top it.

He’d seen Dignity fraying, had been waiting for it by the end, but Respect had caught him by surprise. Creedence had ripped his heart out—That was his nephew. He can’t even think in the direction of Obedience’s absence.

All the hurt has to go somewhere, and maybe, if they just pretend… It won’t work, a piece of him whispers, but maybe if he wants it badly enough. He won’t cry. He leans his cheek against her thigh, burning into his skin as he looks up at her. It clenches against him. His wrist is starting to hurt. “It is.”

“Are you lonely?”

Less than a month ago, he cleaned blood from his and his cousin’s rooms for the fourth time in two decades, hardly a blink. It had been his and Loyalty’s job, and he’d ended up sending his cousin to fetch charms for them. There were some things a seventy year old shouldn’t have to deal with. The last time he’d tried to do something about the way Dignity was fraying, he’d snapped at him and gone silent for days.

They still hadn’t been speaking when he did it.

“Yes.” It’s the truth, just like every straight answer pulled from his lips. He tries to avoid opportunities for the sickness spelled in his name to sink into his bones.

Her fingers loop in his hair, enough to send pulses of chill across his shoulders. He melts into the touch, eyes threatening to slide shut, traitor to him and the Goddess. It’s so easy to pretend, if he’d just let himself. It’s not what he wants, too sexual for the need he carries, but it’s as close as he can get. There’s no one else to touch him. “Tell me about it.”

There is so much to tell. Even now, the aching inside him threatens to spill out in ways that would get him killed. His heart’s squeezed tight enough to hurt. His eyes start stinging again and he can’t shut his eyes and he can’t resort to his usual methods of telling her it’s none of her fucking business: One doesn’t speak to the Goddess like that. Instead, he asks, “What’s there to tell?”

She’s got that smile on her face again, like she’s kind, or like they’re playing a game together. Like she doesn’t and hasn’t had exactly what she wanted for as far back as civilization goes, as if she’s an observer more than anything. “Plenty, I’m sure. Not like there’s anyone else to tell.”

The pain aches so hard that for half a second he hates her. He has never felt the urge to scream so thoroughly, a pressure building in his chest. He stares at her, breathing as carefully as he can as he keeps himself straight.

“You stopped again.”

He continues, forces himself to focus on her eyes, the black sclera broken only by four red pupils enough to mark her alien to him, even when his dark skin and light hair are mirrored back. He doesn’t think about the kind of woman her body might have grown to become. He swallows.

“I can’t sleep right. It’s colder when it’s just me, and emptier. Lighter. There’s none of the awkward presence another person offers, no one to get stuck against me in the wrong way in the night. It should make it easier, but… I was only just getting used to Obedience’s absence.” He takes a deep breath. “And I know that sounds pathetic. But he was like a second heart. I’m missing something without him, and it’s never coming back. I’m never going to stop missing him.” The caverns tickled at him, something like being underwater, a reminder that it’s there, around him, willing to listen, and he wishes he had some way to respond to it right now, that he weren’t here, though at the moment he wishes he were anywhere but here.

“And now I’m alone. Loyalty is, too, one of us each to rooms meant for four.” He paused, lips pursed. He could hardly stand to look at her as he thought it, but finally he forced himself to tell it. “I know it isn’t proper, but it would be better to have anyone by my side than spend a decade alone. I’m sure Loyalty feels the same.

“But even beside that I’m… scared.” The word came out a whisper, hardly loud enough to be heard. “I wasn’t expecting… most of this. Obedience was old, for someone like that.” His throat tightens around the admittance, no matter how honest it is. “But Dignity was only 200. The others were younger. It’s not—” He barely stops himself, the words caught on his lips. It’s not right.

Her fingers tug at his hair. “It’s not what?” she coos.

He lets his head dip, long lashes painted in the light of the cavern as he kisses her thigh. “I’m sorry. You’ll do what’s best.”

“I will?” There’s a tease to it, like they’re in on some kind of joke together. But he isn’t joking, can’t piece together what she could possibly be getting at.

“You will,” he promises, face pinches as he presses another kiss to her skin, another apology.

Her fingers stroke through his hair. Eventually, she said, “You can be very good when you try to be.” The truth hurts more than he expected, but not as much as the only proper response.

“Thank you, Goddess.” In the sanctity of his head, he plays with phrasing for the pain in his chest. It can’t harm anyone if it’s kept to himself, even if the lightness of his still-unrecovered hair on his back argues otherwise.

She hums again, quiet and to herself, the kind of thing enough to make his stomach drop. What a thing to know her just well enough to sense the test, but not whether he passed or failed. Then she tugs at his hair and this at least is clearer, if… disappointing. A moment passed. It doesn’t stop him from making a pathetic noise, and that doesn’t stop him from a moment of disgust with himself.

He finally allows himself a moment of shut eyes, just enough to adjust, his legs starting to warm on the floor, his face hot between her legs, then he forces himself to look at her again.

Her teeth show in her smile. “You think I can make you feel better?”

A bullet through the brain wouldn’t be enough to make him feel better. “I think you could try,” he says, and he even manages to make it sound nice.

She spreads her legs, exposing him to the world again. “Come here. I want to kiss you.”

There is nothing to do but what she asks.

#febuwhump2023 #febuwhumpday1 #nsfw #cw abuse #cw discussion of suicide #wtwwg ; prose #wtwwg ; honesty #wtwwg ; ezphe #wtwwg ; honesty-ezphe

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wherethewoofwoofsgo · 1 year

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A Note on Dwelling Elves

So I have a friend who's read all the lore now (hello friend) and like... made me realize I didn't expand on the dwellers nearly enough because I need nyall to understand: Dwellers are like drow in aesthetic, spiderish goddess, and possibly living conditions alone that is It.

Let's get into it.

So first of all: Dwelling elves are an extremely isolationist sect of arguably elves that do not function like normal elves At All living in a series of naturally forming semi-alive caverns.

Imagine you're a highly religious society but instead of like... acts being attributed to your god, your god is literally walking around the city killing people she deems disrespectful. That's the dwelling elves' situation right now and has been Since Creation.

Second of all because I wanna get it out of the way really fast: THEY'RE NOT AN EVIL RACE. I DON'T BELIEVE IN EVIL RACES I THINK THE IDEA IS STUPID. They definitely think they're better than you, but they're pretty sure all they have to do is sit here and let you all fight amongst yourselves and they'll be the last ones standing. In the meantime: You wanna trade? They like that vegetable shit it pairs well with their mushrooms.

They've definitely let people use their poisons to assassinate important leaders because they literally don't care but that's... the extent of it, really.

However, rest assured, living in the caverns is hell for everybody and I mean everybody.

The typical dweller living situation is you're born into your mother's family, an arrangement where a small household like Dove's is still like 30 people who mostly share rooms their entire lives, with girls having at least 20 years of difference between them. If you're a boy, you're either a first son, in which case you get named just like a girl and the family tries again for a daughter, or you're a second, in which case you have a different name category to pick from, the family tries again for a daughter, and at some point in the next five years you're fed to Ezphe, the spider goddess!

Names are virtue names, with matronymic last names, but I'm doing fucky shit with naming here because I just hate fantasy names I guess. Like that's the decision I came to. So everyone's name is just literal translations into English. Let's get some examples from actual characters:

Some women: Retribution, daughter of Foresight; Severity, daughter of Clarity; Integrity, daughter of Prowess

Some first sons: Honesty, son of Adamance; Obedience, son of Severity; Faith, son of Understanding

The literal only second son I have: Shame, son of Severity

Here's where it gets fun: So at 50, you're religiously responsible for yourself. You can also have more function in adult society, can start being prepped to go off to monastery equivalent it's not fleshed out right now, what have you (also can get struck down by Ezphe for stupid bullshit like everybody else.)

This is also when you get your naming spell done. That's the spell that makes not living by your virtue make you literally ill. That's what killed Dove's mom, just FYI.

Dwelling elves work a little similar to other elves in terms of when you're an adult, except you don't declare yourself an adult: The matriarchs of your house do that.

The matriarchs of your house do a ton of shit, to be quite honest. They are running this bitch. Imagine you had like seven moms and your mom had to answer to them. Most decisions the matriarchs make are decided together but if a matriarch fucks up bad enough the others will wring them the fuck out. (These are where most of the familial abuse comes from but don't worry, there's tons of room for trickle-down elsewhere.) There's a bit of an age hierarchy in play, too, with the oldest matriarch becoming the head of the house. Matriarchs are often chosen because the others decide "You have the temperament we want running our household."

(Fun note: Heads of house can still get bitched out by Ezphe if they're important/fuck up badly enough.)

Women start having kids around 250.

Men start having kids more like 115, because oh, oh the lifespan on dwelling men... is very bad. (Please don't make me do math to make this actually make sense.) But at least in noble sphere most men are dead or Otherwise Gone by the time they'd be 300 through some mixture of running away, committing suicide, domestic violence, pissing off the goddess or name magic fucking them up. It's Really Really Bad.

The main counter culture things I have right now are both very quite because uh. Again. The goddess walks amongst them. Hard to get anything done when that's going on. And that's a kind of men's lib group and an anti-goddess group.

The running of caverns is often managed by councils of noble house representatives picked from amongst their matriarchs.

On top of obeying the rules of Ezphe each settlement obeys the rules of its individual cavern--Again, these are semi-alive entities, and they have a level of respect for these places they live in. There are people who part of their trade relates to interpreting the messages of the cavern.

A lot of people's work relates to a lot of odd jobs that need to be done with smaller regularity. Everybody who can works and that includes nobility.

I am trying to remember all the little shit.

Big one I was trying to remember: Dwelling elves are allowed to leave. The main reason they don't is... basically dwelling elves are just shitfucked in the outside world? Most of them don't know Common or any language other than the one dwellers speak, everything is really fucking foreign and weird--Like they've never even seen the sky before foreign--and dwellers were hand-crafted with hella sensory issues and have problems moving with the rapidity of most settlements. Like... Comparatively, dweller settlements move really, really slow. And it's a hell of an adjustment.

I don't think I even accomplished what I set out to do. Well. It happens.

#wtwwg ; dwelling elves

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wherethewoofwoofsgo · 1 year

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A Quick Introduction

Hello. You are getting... as close to the spiel I give all my friends and coworkers and anyone who will listen about my babygirl as I can replicate in text format, which means it is not gonna make any damned sense. Bear with me.

If you know anything about D&D, there's some basic concepts copped from it, but honestly I fucking hate D&D's lore, so I mostly stole it and did whatever the fuck I wanted.

The majority of our story takes place in Silver Port, but we can't start there. We gotta start, instead, in the dwelling caverns (Think drow and you got a start.)

In the caverns, a scandal is brewing.

Severity, daughter of Clarity, has had a child outside the approval of the matchmakers. Even worse, the child is a second son--An extraneous boy past the one already alive. She's not telling who the father is, but thankfully the answer for what to do with the child is the same as what to do with any second son: Feed him to the goddess who created them and walks every cavern's halls: Ezphe.

Given we have a story, it doesn't quite go like that. For her efforts, Severity dies--There's only so long you can push against the spell of a dweller name.

Fourteen hours train ride away, in a world vastly different from our own but where cellphones and shit still exist, Shame, son of Severity arrives in Silver Port, a sunny, deserty, highly human and dwarven city, and is promptly adopted by a pack of dogs who make a living by stealing who rechristen him Beloved of the Dogfell pack.

There's a lot wrong with the life, obviously, but he grows up feeling loved, and not just by dogs.

He's involved with the local thieves guild from a young age(a group rendered a more respectable position than your average thieves guild by Silver Port's unique stance on theft), several religious organizations that provide regular meals (though he always remains more interested in the gods of the dogs), an eccentric elven woman who decides she's his aunt now, his local unhoused movements, and probably some other shit I haven't thought of yet. He's involved in his community, as are most people in Silver Port--It's a hard city not to be.

One thing he is lacking in, or maybe two: elven education in general, and dweller education in specific. It's bound to happen when there just aren't that many elves in town and what ones there are are spread out as shit.

Basically ya boy thinks he's grown at 25.

A QUICK NOTE FOR POSTERITY: Here's how elf age works here. Simplest way: From 20 to 100 you're 19 but you need to be 23 to vote.

A bit more complicated: At 20, in an ideal world where your family is rich and you all get along, an elf chooses their sixteen most interesting relatives. They will then spend the next eighty years doing five year apprenticeships with each, searching for a passion, and at the earliest at 80, though more likely at the earliest 90, declare themself an adult.

Obviously it doesn't often work out like that because bitches are not that fucking rich and you take what you can get, but that's the ideal.

But what do you do when a bitch is raised by dogs and born to steal?

That's the dilemma facing the elves of the thieves guild who are like "there is no way we can let this literal infant declare himself an adult." (They give in when he's like 48, he gets the tattoos to go with it and everything.)

Now at 50, dwellers reach the age of religious responsibility--They still aren't the age to vote in our example of 19 and 23, but Ezphe will kill them if they act up too bad.

And it is at that age that Ezphe appears in Mr. Dove's dreams and is like. "Hey. I'm your goddess. I literally made you. You need to come home and worship me." (She is playing favorites with his family.)

Now keep in mind. Dove is now a full grown man with full grown man responsibilities. So like any full grown man he says. "No."

Do you think a goddess is gonna take that well?

It is this period of 40s to early 100s that I am currently most interested in exploring. Please ask me questions and I will post things as I think to and want to, peace and love on planet Earth.

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