this is Salem, a land filled with magic and maladies. It is a place where witches and their elemental familiars gather, a home to legend and
lore that predates time itself. Yet of all the wicked and wonderful stories the past can tell us of, the most magical are the ones yet to happen.
This is Salem - this is the start of your very own journey. Welcome to starfall
Starfall is an animaga witch roleplay set in mostly modern times. Members play as witches in a world plagued by monsters, where the only safe spots are walled cities. Starfall strives to be a character-driven roleplay with expansive lore and a highly interactive plotline. We want to allow members to
create and look back on a magical journey, and mold the site and its plot as their characters grow.
Post by kasimir burovski ✨ on Dec 7, 2017 9:16:03 GMT
blue moon
you saw me standing alone
a ghost on the wind; he sees his past reassert itself in the technicolour reality of a cyan banner, hair fluttering in the artificial breeze of movement as a figment he had long since exiled to bitter regrets and wistful nostalgia walks past in the full regalia of flesh and blood. kasimir stops. stares, wide-eyed and stunned. his heart all but lurches out of his chest, knocking rapidly against the ivory cage demanding to be let out; stomach twists into butterfly knots in guilt and self-recrimination. almost ten years he had managed to avoid catching sight of milo tremerie, and it is here, now, where his once-friend had not even crossed his mind in so long, that he sees the man again.
remorse like a wave rises brine-soaked in his blood; his brain is a tiny vessel caught in tumultuous storm-born waves, lost and adrift and entirely unhelpful. for a single instant, kasimir almost steps forth, almost calls out the name lingering on the tip of his tongue drenched in bittersweet memory.
then, the moment passes; he tears his eyes away and flees, vanishing to the ebb and flow of the street in a way only illusionists can do. his heartbeat is overwhelmingly loud in his ears. that did not just happen. no. it is a momentary reminder of the past, that is all, a flash of serendipitous luck edged in the regrets of a childhood no longer his to claim - it is a moment of transiency to be relegated to the dusty annuls of history now that it is over. kasimir has no business seeking out the heir of the tremerie family; kasimir has no right to seek him out. and he has not forgotten, even now, so many years later, the desperation and terror that had motivated him to break off contact.
resolutely, he turns away and makes for home. his life, and milo tremerie's, have not been relevant to each other for a very long time now.
( ... and yet.
his feet itch for a path they still remember from nine years ago; his thoughts cannot stop replaying that flash of cyan embroidered with the gold of sunlight. )
Sometimes, Milo wants nothing more than to dye his hair. Or to change from augmentation to illusion. Now wouldn’t that be interesting. Sometimes he wants to shrivel up and stop existing, a thought that would have been alien to his starry-eyed, dream-ridden mind of nine years ago.
But! That is sometimes.
Most of the time, he is extraordinarily happy to be alive and kicking. Because this world is damn fine and the people he knows are exciting, and there are things to be done and damsels to be saved. Today is one of those most-of-the-time days, where the heir of the Tremerie may as well be an elf during christmas. He is in a great mood, and he doesn’t really know or care why. It just happens to be so, and so it is.
---pause.
Milo spins around, not even losing pace as he switches to walking backward. There is nothing but the street. And yet, he of all people knows the feeling of being watched. And, as his eyes narrow, he realizes he knows when he has been outsped. Milo frowns but is unable to bring any kind of negative emotion to the surface. “Hey now. If you wanted an autograph, you could’ve asked.”
Post by kasimir burovski ✨ on Dec 8, 2017 15:23:18 GMT
blue moon
you saw me standing alone
he cannot stop thinking about milo tremerie. the galaxy spins through the unfathomable vastness of the universe on its tilted axis, the tides ebb and flow with currency changed in saltwater and brine and sand swirling through waves, the city breathes through the amalgamous heartbeat of each of its citizens, and kasimir cannot stop thinking about milo tremerie.
each thought is drenched in remorse, regret; rip out his larynx and vertebrae, he thinks, and the blood that spills will remind him of why it was that he left. but regret, like guilt, only grows stronger with age: a fine distillation of self-recrimination as potent on his tongue as hundred-year wine, and just as complex a flavour with the time his thoughts have had to ruminate. kasimir slips through the streets, but his mind substitutes reality for memory; he runs, and behind him echoes the long-forgotten routes of the past now once again seeing the light of day. an avenging recrudescence of his guilty conscience; kasimir blinks, and finds himself drowning in the shadows cast by a very familiar mansion.
milo tremerie's mansion.
kasimir freezes. moments tick by. then, quietly, eyes still trained on the building, lets out a long breath. 'kirjava,' he thinks, desperate, the frangible compendium of his composure - held together by the desperation-forged responsibility he has by now etched into the core of who he is - threatening to shatter into a thousand glass stars. 'kirjava-' and even in his mind do his words fail to form from the his half-spun thoughts and the scattered collection of english letters.
his familiar, beautiful, brilliant as she is, understands with no need for sentences and materialises as a comforting presence pressed against his side. she does not offer excuses, nor false comfort. she knows him far too well to bother.
'you should talk to him,' she says after some time has passed and the shadows have shifted for the longer. she eyes him with something fierce in her amber-gold eyes and flickers her tail against his leg. 'stop running away.'
'i can't-' he immediately begins to protest, only to fall silent with a wince as kirjava digs her claws into his skin and glares up at him.
'stop. running. away,' she orders, baring her teeth at him before he can do something as idiotic as protest. 'you have run away from this for eight years. if you regret it still, thendo something about it. before the choice is forced upon us.' with their luck, neither kirjava nor kasimir have any doubts as to whether or not they will see milo again - and most likely at the most inopportune of times. a hint of flame shimmers across the ocelot's fur in response to her emotions.
again, she cuts his protests off at the root - this time before he even forms the words. 'if you cannot face him, then write him a letter,' she snaps, clearly fed up with kasimir's overwhelming desire to sink into the ground and never reappear again. 'you are my witch. i am your familiar. i refuse to allow you to add another regret to our list when it can so easily be prevented.'
he looks at his familiar for a long, drawn out moment. blinks. sighs. then offers her a small, fond smile. “what would i be without you?” he murmurs out aloud. he reaches down to run his fingers through her thick fur, taking quiet comfort from her steady materiality.
‘maybe i will. write him a letter, that is,’ kasimir muses.
A while later and Milo has returned home- the radiance is not quite off his face yet, and the servants aroiund the house have caught whiff of his mood. Before he knows it, Julia, the head cook, has already baked a fresh set of his favorite snacks. He promises to indulge her once he's done with training for the day, and then sets off down the halls (whistling) for the practice room.
His sword, he finds, has been neatly polished and is simply waiting for his touch. When his hand slides over the handle, he feels Rosaline appear behind him. The deer takes up the center ring of the arena, and Milo smiles when he sees her. "And here I thought you were going to be annoying me with telepathic remarks the whole time."
I can still do that is Rosaline's response.
Milo sighs. "Just let me enjoy myself, would you."
You have three more documents to go through, and a meeting tomorrow with you-know-who.
This is how he managed to convince his family he didn't need a secretary. That, and... "I know." He wasn't the type of person that needed to be reminded. Rosaline seemed to enjoy this response greatly: mirth flooded her steely blue eyes. Dance with me, she said. "What's the point? You can predict everything I'm going to do."
If you're fast enough, predictions are useless.
Milo sighed. Nine years and he'd never won an argument with Rose.
Post by kasimir burovski ✨ on Dec 11, 2017 15:50:34 GMT
blue moon
you saw me standing alone
he writes the letter.
it takes him a rather long time - throughout the entire process he wishes for nothing more than to be relieved of this thankless task, and yet every time he even thinks of leaving, kirjava fixes him with a fierce-eyed glare and he finds himself returning to the paper. they exchange few words - they need few words - and he is every grateful for her company no matter how reluctantly he concedes to her wisdom. but that does not make writing the letter any easier.
'to: lord tremerie' kasimi begins, then crosses it out and starts again; 'dear' he writes and abandons that particular iteration not a moment later; he almost decides on a simple 'milo,' before he stares so long at the name that the letters begin to swim around on the paper in front of his eyes and stop looking like words at all. in the end, kasimir settles for writing a neutral 'to: milo tremerie' and begins with his apology before he can waste any more time or paper.
'i hope this letter finds you in good health,' he writes, the words so stark and uncomfortably formal against the page. but how else do you begin an apology letter to someone whom you cut off contact towards eight years ago? 'you likely have very little impression of me, and of our interactions, as they were both sparse in nature and from over eight years prior, however you were a major impact on my life and i have never forgotten you. thank you, again, for the kindness you had shown me when you could have so easily and understandably turned me away, and for the unconditional companionship you offered to one who you had no obligation towards.'
and then. the hard part. 'eight years ago, i abruptly cut off all contact between us without explanation, and for that, i cannot apologise enough. please, know that you did nothing that caused not influenced my behaviour - there were merely circumstances within my own life happening at the time that i thought necessitated the cessation of our relationship, for your safety and perhaps for mine also. please understand that i am making no excuses for my actions; i understand entirely if you have no desire to forgive me, or even if you do not remember me at all.'
'my apologies again, and i wish you the best for your future,' he finishes, resisting the urge to crumple the letter beneath his fingers and burning it in a pretence that it had never existed. he is terrible with words. with apologies. with social situations. why is he doing this. kasimir hesitates for the longest moment before a soft nudge from kirjava finally prompts him to sign his name.
done.
he feels.... apprehensive, but also oddly sad. nostalgic for the happier past so long gone.
'are you going to send it?' his familiar brings him back to the present with the soft brush of her question against his mind. kasimir considers, then shakes his head.
'since we are already here, i might as well slip it into his room now,' he replies. perhaps odd, perhaps slightly ( or not so slightly ) creepy, but better than to risk the letter falling into wrong hands, slight as the chance might be. so as he says, kasimir slips from the spot he had tucked himself into for the past too many hours and makes his way to the window leading to his once-friend's room.
heights are of no obstacle to someone who can fly; he lands silently on the window sill, invisibility settled over him as he peers through the curtains to check for people, then picks the lock and slips inside. the room has... changed greatly from the last time he had been present - understandable, considering how long ago that was - but kasimir does not linger for long ( it is too unexpectedly painful; something within his chest aches like injured joints on a rainy day ). with quiet movements, he moves across to the bed and lays the letter on the pillow.
Eventually, Milo becomes breathless. Rosaline is always a step ahead of him- and he knows he needs to be faster and hit harder, but somehow that registers as impossibly out of reach. It is funny how easy it is to consider himself operating at "optimum levels" when increasing that optimum is just an inch away- a breath away-- one more swing away---
"That's enough! You did well."
Rosaline's voice catches his sword in the air: it is inches away from her button black nose and for all the rush of wind it creates she does not so much as flinch. The sword seems to rattle with the intended potential it has lost, and Milo finds himself staring at his familiar with wide, startled eyes.
Somehow, he is the deer caught in the headlight.
-x-x-x-
When he opens the door to his room, the last thing he expects is a stranger standing over his bed. "Hi there," he says, his response immediate to the situation. He does not hesitate or care to know who the person is or what they are doing here, he needs to quickly react first and think second. Dressed in a sweat-soaked shirt and trousers, with a freshly water-doused head of turquoise hair, it's a miracle he manages to look intimidating at all.
It's probably the friction that his warm smile and cold eyes create that does the trick.
"You have a few seconds to explain yourself before I alert the compound of an intruder. Though..." his hand goes to the hilt of his sword, the muscle memory still searingly fresh. "...the guards should be the least of your worries."
Post by kasimir burovski ✨ on Jan 4, 2018 6:38:53 GMT
blue moon
you saw me standing alone
so caught up is he in his memories, his emotions, his regret and guilt and overwhelming sense of self-loathing, that kasimir does not notice the door opening until it is far too late. he looks up, wide-eyed and startled, at the man that strides in; milo, he recognises as his heart constricts and pain lances through his chest as surely as if he had been cut open and branded. so different - he carries the weight of eight years regally, and there is such steely frigidity in his eyes that kasimir finds himself retreating a half step without conscious thought; and yet, so similar still to the boy in his memories, with his turquoise hair and aristocratic features and sword secured at his side.
"milo...?" the name slips from his lips without his permission, carrying with it the tangled mess of feels crashing together within him. kasimir's face is numb - bone white, if he had been able to see it - and terror begins to overtake as the predominant emotion. "i- i mean- my lord-"
he takes another half step back ( his hands are shaking, since when were his hands shaking ) and what little remains of his courage deserts him in that instant. kasimir turns and, in the fastest he has moved in a very long time, dives out the window in a flash of crimson and luminous white wings. it does not matter where he is going - all that matters is running, fleeing far far away from here, from milo and from the past and from this unforgiving guilt.
kirjava stays behind.
with the air of someone who is entirely fed up with the idiocy of her witch, the ocelot greets milo with a regal if not slightly apologetic nod. "milo tremerie," she greets. "we apologise for our entry, but my witch has left a letter explaining his actions." she indicates the aforementioned letter lying innocently on the bedspread with a flick of her tail, amber-gold eyes never leaving the man.
"unfortunately, he has never been good at social niceties," she comments mildly, and settles back comfortably on her haunches, looking all for the world like she has absolutely no intention of moving.
Milo squints. What the fuck is a robber doing m'lording him of all things. And in a flash, the stranger moves- faster than the wind out of the open window. Milo's grip on the hilt tightens as he sneers at the air. He shouldn't have bothered with the niceties. He needs to stop bothering with the niceties.
Rosaline springs forth from the air, materializing and jumping out of the window. In the gardens, her steel blue eyes look up at the sky and she calculates and creates a wall of wind, designed to appear suddenly and use the stranger's velocity against him by knocking him down or, at least, out of the air.
Milo snorts when the ocelot becomes the focus of his attention. "Oh fucking really? Left an audit report, did he? ...No way. He even used the proper titles. I'm sure we can attribute this all to stage fright."
He pauses and glares at the creature, amazed at how lightly she expects him to be taking this. "Hold on. Kirjava?"
Milo feels sick.
Should I hold back? asks Rose, her tone mildly amused.
Post by kasimir burovski ✨ on Jan 6, 2018 11:49:04 GMT
blue moon
you saw me standing alone
heart beats, frenetic, splintering his ribcage into shards of ivory that tear, jagged, through his chest; it is a damning drumbeat deafening in his ears: dum-dur-dum-dur-dum-dur-dum in a never ending spiral that bruises his flesh beneath its percussive force. tear out his larynx and it would hardly hurt less; sink fingers past his ribs and into the quivering stutter of his lungs and he could hardly breathe more. kasimir flees on wild wings into the infinite azure of the sky because to pause would be to think, and to think is far beyond him.
perhaps, though, he could have benefited from a degree of logic and rationality, for the wall of wind he crashes into is entirely and absolutely unexpected.
of course. milo has an air affinity. of course. but even this forcible stop does not halt the desperate chaos of his thoughts, his emotions. falling, falling, kasimir collects himself and reaches for a spot within eyeshot, blinking himself past the wind barrier and preparing to take wing once more. that is, until it registers that his familiar is not with him, that his familiar has remained behind.
'kirjava?' he calls, panicked and confused and mildly terrified. 'why are you- where- ?'
'you should return,' she responds, seemingly unperturbed by the roiling mess currently twisting his intestines into knots. 'i am staying here until milo responds. or asks that i leave.' he cannot help the pulse of bewildered betrayal that lances through him at that proclamation. why...? kirjava, likely sensing his distress, softens her stoic wall of determination to brush compassion against his mind. she does not alter her position, though. 'he deserves this,' she tells him. 'and you need this.'
both he and kirjava know that he would rather throw himself into an active volcano rather than force her to obey any of his commands. thus, there is nothing he can do about this situation beyond hiding himself in a tree and praying that his familiar's answers ( and his letter ) will be enough. kasimir.... is not hopeful.
kirjava, meanwhile, sits, poised and still, as she watches milo snark to himself ( or to her - it matters not ), half a mind in the present, and half a mind keeping track of her witch. "you could call it that," she says to the lord, dry as the desert. if only it were mere stage fright.
it is at that point that the witch in front of her pauses, glares at her, then appears to double take as recognition sinks its hold into his mind. "yes, it is me," she replies with a slight dip of head. a pause, then the ocelot equivalent of a slight shrug. "kasimir wished to apologise, but as you can see, he can be quite.... stubborn."
