bakerstreet | other words.

[ info. quick rundown: legislator/adviser to the Sacred Council and the Senate of his country, inspired by Ancient Greece/Rome. manipulative and controlling at his worst, charming and charismatic at his best. talks a lot of bullshit, but makes it sound good. infamous for his orgies. chaotic neutral. assumed cr, canon mashing and multiversal shit is go. m/m for shipping, wide ota for the rest. ]

ailuromancy ( n. ) divination by watching cats' movements.
tintamarre ( n. ) an uproar.
anacampserote ( n. ) something that can bring back a lost love.
fescennine ( adj. ) lewd or obscene.

Or bring your own!

1. uitwaaien - to take a break to clear one's head; lit. "to walk in the wind"

2. logomachy - an argument over words

3. apotheosis - the perfect example; elevation to divine status

4. gerful - wild and wayward

5. [get in there and choose or randomize one of your own. didn't get the butt one this time.]

strikhedonia ▷ the pleasure or feeling of saying, "to hell with it!"
sough ▷ a moaning, whistling, or rushing sound as made by the wind in the trees or the sea
tacenda ▷ things better left unsaid; matters to be passed over in slience
yuputka ▷ the phantom sensation of something crawling on your skin when there's nothing there
vagarious ▷ erratic and unpredictable in behavior or direction

MIZPAH: the deep, emotional bond between people, especially those separated by distance or death
GEZELLIG: cosy, nice, inviting, pleasant, comfortable; connoting time spent with loved ones or togetherness after a long separation
ORIFLAMME: a symbol or standard that inspires confidence, devotion, or courage

[ Or bring your own! ]

[ If Papa Nihil could see his younger self, why can't Seestor?

With that said, are you up for 1969 Sister? c: ]

[ Certainly wouldn't be the strangest thing she's ever conjured up! "Oriflamme", of course, definitely comes to mind but if you were thinking of any other words, please bring 'em on in. ♥ ]

[ ooc; Honestly all the prompts you'd picked are perfect, so I'll be quite ambitious and will try to work them all in! Please let me know if this is okay or if I need to change anything. ♥ ]

[ Gas leaks, dreams... those were only excuses. Ways to obscure a message that was unpalatable to the psyche. Sister Imperator had had many a nightmare, many a bad trip, but she tried to ensure that the waking moments afterward were spent deciphering whatever cosmic message she needed to understand. After all, if the Prime Mover was confused, then the whole Ministry would follow suit. Not that she thought it still mattered, as she was just headed out the door after that incident at Whisky a Go Go.

As such, when she'd stepped out of the Ministry threshold in a rage, only to find herself turned around and facing who she knew with a certainty was herself in the future... Her fury tamed itself - not fully dissipating, but waiting - and she compelled herself to stop and understand. What the fuck did the Dark One want from her now?

She mulled her words over before she finally spoke - ]

You're still here.

[ Sometimes, the Ministry became...thin. The air, the sounds, the - as the Ghouls took to calling them - "vibes". Wafer thin. A veil of cobwebs between right here, right now and echoes through the times. To say that Imperator was no stranger to...ghosts...was a gross understatement. She built her whole life around hauntings, figurative and now quite literal.

Her child would be home soon.

Nihil's body would be back where it belonged soon.

But they were not, yet, and the early morning halls she took upon herself to patrol should have been more silent for it.

The angry, exact footsteps click-click-clicked first in her temples, like a migraine. Then, a blitz of emerald, blonde, wrath, and bared teeth, breaking through the spider's silk that held back the past's nightmares. Her fingers clenched to claws - the rage, the tension in her phantasmal self's body also seemed to want to come home. ]

And so, it would seem, are you. Though I suppose you don't think that will be the case for long.

No. I'm leaving.

[ The memory of Papa Nihil's shameless display still burned a hole in her chest. Jealousy writhed like centipedes around her heart, and she clenched her fists. It was such a pointless emotion, especially for the Prime Mover. Especially when she thought long and hard about where it came from and why it was there, festering like a purulent wound. ]

Are you telling me that you stayed?

[ A hand reflexively settled on her lower abdomen, where her unborn child slept and dreamt. Did she... did she tell Nihil after all? ]

[ That pulled a harsh, short laugh out of the older woman. Did she stay. Had leaving ever truly felt like a viable option? She only remembered the hurt, the maelstrom of pain she had always been too proud to confess to. Maybe that one night, as the obsidian that usually made up her heart rose to its boiling point. Maybe, for a moment, she had been rendered blind to sense.

She reached to cover her young self's hand over her womb, too. The gesture was a gentle one, but her tone remained stern. ] What is this that you carry with you? [ For all intents and purposes, it was a rhetorical question, but then, by all logic, so was most of this conversation. ] Where do you think you can take him? Take yourself?

I don't know. Away. Away from Papa Emeritus Zero - [ She spat out his full title with scorn - ] And away from his... [ Infidelity? Sister Imperator frowned, turning her face away from the older woman. ] Away from his arrogance.

[ Being questioned like this was not Sister Imperator's strong suit. She was accustomed to calling the shots, and being challenged on her judgement momentarily made wrath burn in her gut all over again - and it prickled, like a thousand jagged thorns choking her heart, but only because she knew that she was right. It turned out that arguing with one's self was no less frustrating than arguing with someone else, if not even more so.

She let out a sharp sigh. A hiss of displeasure. She had so much she wanted to say, both to herself and to Nihil, and yet... The words felt leaden in her mouth. ]

[ Did Imperator imagine that she could feel the fetal shade of her son, her precious unholy bastard, move under their stacked palms? She wanted to believe it. The flatness of the other her's stomach did not necessarily indicate how far along she was. Maybe there would be a timeline in which this her would not, but she, herself, kept the pregnancy secret with a glamour.

Lava bobbed in her throat as she released herself. ] Selfish. That is the next Antichrist and you mean to rob him of his birthright? Over what? [ Those ancient indiscretions, no more his own fault than they were hers, too? He had been long since forgiven, but her own shame at the part she played in Nihil's...difficult adjustment to the antipapacy would never stay fully buried. ] A broken heart? Mend it. This Church is your heart. [ ...And Nihil is the Church. ] And it cannot run on Father and Son alone.

[ The accusations stung like acid, and this Sister Imperator wanted to fling herself at the older woman, to gouge out those wizened, seeing eyes - but no, she knew and felt it too. Her precious, beloved son, heir to the Emeritus bloodline. She would make him the next Papa, if she had to lie, cheat, kill. She would do it in a heartbeat. She would make him happy. She would raise him with the utmost of love, shower him with gifts, make sure he knew that he was the forbidden fruit of her eye. ]

No, it needs Father, Son, and - [ Mary on a Cross, with her fucking bleeding, impaled heart - ] Unholy Ghost.

[ A smile, sharp as a dagger's edge, devoid of mirth, curled at the younger Imperator's lips. ]

So you - so I could admit it, eventually. A broken heart. [ She let out a derisive laugh. ] We love too much and too viciously, do we not?

Did you ever tell him?

Admit what? [ Imperator's eyebrows rose, erasing some of the heavy lines carved into her forehead. She shrugged one shoulder, biting the inside of her cheeks so a mirror smirk won't over take her expression. ] I'm only talking to myself.

[ She thought she had a handle on all her aspects, the maiden and mother still equally accessible to her in her crone years, but this young self - too old for maidenhood and too new to maternity - seemed like a liminal space. Wild to think that some of her blades may have dulled over the ages. But, oh, the trials and tragedies this furious, fresh thing still has ahead of her. ]

We love as we were meant to. [ Her sigh was heavy. ] And, no. I never said, he never figured it out. I couldn't put that on him, after the others. And I think we both know that, even if it had been sanctioned, I was never meant to be just another disposable mistress on the rotation they forced him into.

[ And to this Imperator, this woman, this/her crone self worn by age and experience, felt too wise, measured even in her fury, and it was both comfort and pain. This woman before her had harnessed her emotions, made it the dark armor that cloaked her - whereas this Imperator-self was still drowning in them, floundering in her inexperience with love and envy and grief.

It had been difficult, knowing that she and Nihil were joined in Unholy Matrimony and yet also knowing that she had to sit back and watch him propagate the Emeritus downline - all because she didn't have the luxury of time as Prime Mover.

Perhaps it was all Satan's plan and he laughed at her now for the human folly that was love. ]

Forced? [ Another scoff. How right and how wrong all at once. ] If we had chosen it, he could have been ours and only ours -

[ The words flickered out and died on her tongue. It was too late to fight for it now, not when he had already sired his other children - and not when honesty to him was as difficult as it was because it required her humility. ]

[ Something that likely only Nihil could have identified as a real smile did actually touch her lips, in the end. The hard line of them softened, the muscles in her jaw relaxed. ] Silly girl, don't you know? He always has been.

[ She'd always thought that, too, though, hadn't she? That there would be a choice in the matter. She loved that boy, that man, that god-child for so long on her own, it never once occurred to her that the mutual lack of trust between her and the Clergy might get in the way of her plans, of their future. But once Nihil had been restored to his throne, even her own organization threw themselves upon him like vultures, desperate to devour every last piece of faith and devotion that they could scrape off the Morning Star-son's bones. ]

Those treacherous Sisters they put in his bed, do you think he loves them? Those fucking harpies? [ She tsks. Even at the time, breathing only misery and guilt, she knew that could never be a matter of love. ] He has a heart, too.

[ He always has been.

She could only look at her older self, first in disbelief, then in dawning realization as the cogs locked into place. She would never weep, but the blaze of obsidian anger in her eyes cooled and softened into something like both mourning and joy. She'd convinced herself that Nihil had wanted this arrangement too, and she was fully ready to shoulder the weight of her broken heart by condemning him to his faith in solitude.

Oh, she knew there had been no love in those encounters. They were simply rituals - measures taken to ascertain the bloodline. The more sons, the more Papas, the more sacrificial lambs to Satan and the stage. But somehow... somehow, Sister Imperator had hoped in full naivete that Nihil would use the power given to him by the eye to exert control, and with their combined dominance over the clergy, shape their destinies into something almost like - a sardonic smile tugged at her lips as she thought of it - something like a white picket fence life.

It was all so foolish - so innocent and so idealistic. Looking at her crone-self now - Imperator could only imagine how young she seemed to the older woman. How raw and unformed, pure rage and bitterness without any finesse or sophistication. ]

Now I understand why I met you.

[ Not so young, exactly - that was another glamour Imperator was quite familiar with - just...not fully informed. ] We always think we know everything. [ To be fair, by comparison, she had. ] But - [ She brushes a finger over the other her's stomach. ] - your world is changing. What you don't know yet about this child, alone, would fill a library and you will savour every word of it.

So. Leave, if you think that is right. [ She puts her hands up, not quite in surrender, because the gesture is a bit sarcastic. It wasn't right. But she'd already made her own choice. Whether this visage of such a horrible night followed her or its own path, she couldn't make that decision - she could only say what she had done.

And what she had done was stay and take back her Church. ] If you want your Papa to know that you think he should remain lost to this nightmare.

[ Ah, there it was, that familiar battle cry. Her younger self couldn't help the short laugh, the smirk that followed, even as her eyes glittered with understanding. She couldn't very well leave after that. Not after her older self goaded her on as such, and dangled their precious Papa Nihil as bait.

And their child.

He too had a destiny to fulfill, and if she wasn't there, he would dig his own burial site, lay it out over the bones of the martyrs that had been slaughtered before him.

There was no way she would not save her own child from digging a grave. ]

Copia.

[ She laid a hand over her womb, where she thought she could feel him stir - just as pure and as unholy as his father. ]

Born of the Father, and the same.

The fruit doesn't fall far from the tree, after all.

[ The divinity of forgiveness and the diabolicalness of perseverance tangled and bloomed within her, one hybrid flower after the next. Two halves of the Unholy Spirit, given equally back to its counterparts. As the Church could not survive without its final (arguably most important) third to balance it, neither could that particular Ghost exist without its other parts.

Nihil was the light to her shadow. Copia was the sum of them. ]

An abundant legacy, for all of us. Not easily won, at times maybe harder to see the worth in the battle.

[ Her laugh, this time, was softer, less mocking. ] In temperament, yes. In all the ways you'd wish for him to be.

Then... Then it's all worth it.

[ What would she have done had she not conferred with her older self? Would she have thrown Papa Nihil to the wolves? Would she have abandoned the clergy to their downfall and denied her son glory? Despite divination being a part of their sacred arts, Sister was just human, and her claircognizance only extended as far as the Devil would allow.

She didn't know what branch of the road she would have taken, but this meeting shaped the course of her life, and that of the church - and most importantly, that of Copia. ]

Thank you, sister-self. You are most wise.

[ True, yes, she was. Some of that came naturally, the younger Imperator must already know, but the years that separated them... She brushed it off with a quick flick of her fingers. Envy never suited her much. ] Only a matter of time. You're young, but we were born old. It's the experience that will get you where you need to go. For better or worse.

[ And to the first thought? Imperator tipped her chin. ] Some. [ She corrected. ] Some of it is worth it. The rest will happen anyway and you will live with it.

[ That elicited a short bark of a laugh. Of course. Life wasn't life without a certain amount of useless shit, was it? Trust Sister Imperator not to romanticize existence - something her younger self understood as whimsy but wanted to cling to despite herself.

After all, she wouldn't have stormed out of Whisky a Go Go if her anger hadn't told her that she deserved better.

The bell chimed, and Sister Imperator glanced back at the door from which she'd meant to leave. Papa Nihil and the ghouls should be returning to the ministry soon. ]

I think my time is up.

Blessed be, sister-self. [ Her dagger sharp smile curled at her lips once more. ] And I'll see you soon.

solivagant:: wandering alone
nepenthe: something that can make you forget grief or suffering
gotong-royong: the joint sharing of burdens; the bearing of the weight of the world together with trusted friends
zugswang: a situation where every possible move or decision is a bad one, or one that will result in damage or loss
latibule: a hiding place; a place of safety and comfort

[or bring your own]

[ ooc; info. priestess devoted to the fictional goddess of a fictional historical empire that died out 2000 bc and thus, long lost to the modern world. prefer f/f for shipping. ota for gen. welcoming all kinds of timey-whimey, multiversal stuff as well as various au's. no smut. ]

sankofa ( n. / phr. ) "go back and fetch it"; we must look back to the past so that we may understand how we became what we are, and move forward to a better future.
antiscians ( n. ) people who live on opposite sides of the world; "whose shadows at noon are cast in opposite directions".
tacenda ( n. ) things better left unsaid; matters to be passed over in silence.

Or bring your own!

[(slightly outdated) info in journal, open to canon, crosscanon, aus, ocs. assumed cr okay. f/f pref for shipping but if you have some gentle, calm man to throw at her for f/m, have at it.]

hiraeth (n.) a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.
dérive (n.) lit. "drift"; a spontaneous journey where the traveller leaves their life behind for a time to let the spirit of the landscape and architecture attract and move them.
appetence (n.) an eager desire, an instinctive inclination; an attraction or natural bond.
brontide (n.) the low rumble of distant thunder.
nemophilist (n.) a haunter of woods; one who loves the forest and its beauty and solitude.

[or choose your own.]

Edited 2023-07-05 19:02 (UTC)

1. ostranenie: defamiliarizing what is known in order to know it differently or more deeply.
2. wēijī: lit. ‘crisis’ or ‘critical moment’; the idea that there can be a positive result in a wisely handled risk
3. tatemae: what a person pretends to believe; the behavior and opinions one must display to satisfy society’s demands.
4. resistentialism: when inanimate objects seem to demonstrate spiteful or hostile behavior towards humans.

[ Character info. ]

01. smultronställe: lit. "place of wild strawberries"; a special place discovered, treasured, returned to for solace and relaxation; a personal idyll free from stress or sadness
02. fuubutsushi: the things--feelings, scents, images--that evoke memories or anticipation of a particular season
03. orenda: a mystical force present in all people that empowers them to affect the world, or to effect change in their own lives
04. kintsukuroi: "to repair with gold"; the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for being broken
05. déplaysement: when someone is taken out of their own familiar world into a new one
06. mellifluous: a sound that is sweet and smooth, pleasing to hear

1. quondam: (adj.) belonging to some time long past; once, but no longer

2. antephialtic: (n.) something that protects against nightmares

3. marcid: (adj.) withered; incredibly exhausted

4. anfactuousity: something twisting and turning; something mazelike and confusing

5. inselberg: (n.) an isolated mountain

defenestrate (v.) to throw someone or something out of a window
dépaysement (n.) when someone is taken out of their own familiar world into a new one
matutine (adj.) just before the dawn
naufragous (adj.) causing shipwreck; in danger of being wrecked or totally destroyed
oubliette (n.) a dungeon with a door only in the ceiling; a place you put people to forget about them

or choose your own!

1. whelve
(v.) to bury something deep; to hide

2. kawaakari
(n.) the gleam of last light on a river's surface at dusk; the glow of a river in the darkness.

3. defenestrate
(v.) to throw someone or something out of a window

4. yoko meshi
(n.) the peculiar stress of speaking a foreign language

5. nyctophilia
(n.) love of darkness or night; finding relaxation or comfort in the darkness

gokotta (n.) the act of rising in the early morning to watch the birds or to go outside to appreciate nature

soigne (adj.) possessing an aura of sophistication in dress, manner, or design; presented or prepare with an elegance attained through care for the finer details

resfeber (n.) the restless race of the traeller's heart before the journey begins, when anxiety and anticipation are tangled together; a 'travel fever' that can manifest as an illness

Or bring your own

other words.

sarica — fantasy oc — ota

Toki Wartooth | Metalocalypse | ota

tom hanniger | my bloody valentine

Sister Imperator | Ghost

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Noiz | DRAMAtical Murder | OTA

ara vana — original — ota

oerba yun fang | final fantasy xiii | ota

Arid | The Fall: Unbound | ota

Hibiki Fujiwara | Original | OTA

Coda | Changeling: the Lost OC

lars | nier reincarnation

joel miller | the last of us | ota

Lancelot | King Arthur (2004) | OTA