wintersday (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wintersday) wrote2022-10-31 10:11 pm
wintersday) wrote2022-10-31 10:11 pm
Fic: Diverging Paths
Title: Diverging Paths
Fandom: Sunless Skies
Major Characters/Pairings: The Felined Eccentric, Paimon
Wordcount: 300
Rating: PG
POV: Third person
Summary: At Carillon, the Eccentric encounters a piece of her past.
Notes: Originally written as a giftfic for wolfraven80 on AO3
The Eccentric hadn’t planned on coming back to Carillon, nor had she needed to. She could have stayed aboard with her engines. But it’s a place that reminds her uneasily of other places, where she left other pieces of a being that exists no longer, and there’s something appealing, sometimes, about poking a bruise. It’s a little test of self – the proof in the pain. She wanders the Gaslight Terrace, watching pilgrim sinners, and wonders if that’s what draws so many of them here.
The Eccentric is no penitent. There’s nothing about herself she wants to alter. But as she leans against a marble railing carved with dangerous thorns and more dangerous roses, she sees a grey shadow detach itself from a piece of unsettling statuary and start towards her.
She doesn’t really like cats, and this creature, which isn’t a cat, she doesn’t like at all. She ought to scare him off. She waits. Paimon pads quietly closer.
“You’re not coming back with me,” she says.
Paimon blinks at her. His tail twitches. Like poking a bruise, she holds out a hand for him to sniff, which he does, with the stern dignity of an elderly minister. Then, unexpectedly, he pushes his head into her palm. She scratches the fur between his ears, and hears a rumble in his chest, a creaky purr.
“You’ve changed,” she says. It’s funny. She’d thought she was the only one who could. Paimon’s fur is soft and warm against the skin she’d chosen, and with a start, she realizes she’s smiling.
“I hope the devils are indulging you,” she says. “As for me, I’ve got machinery to attend to.”
She heads engineward – homeward – along the same tiled path she’d taken. When she looks back, her own shadow is the only one that follows.
Fandom: Sunless Skies
Major Characters/Pairings: The Felined Eccentric, Paimon
Wordcount: 300
Rating: PG
POV: Third person
Summary: At Carillon, the Eccentric encounters a piece of her past.
Notes: Originally written as a giftfic for wolfraven80 on AO3
The Eccentric hadn’t planned on coming back to Carillon, nor had she needed to. She could have stayed aboard with her engines. But it’s a place that reminds her uneasily of other places, where she left other pieces of a being that exists no longer, and there’s something appealing, sometimes, about poking a bruise. It’s a little test of self – the proof in the pain. She wanders the Gaslight Terrace, watching pilgrim sinners, and wonders if that’s what draws so many of them here.
The Eccentric is no penitent. There’s nothing about herself she wants to alter. But as she leans against a marble railing carved with dangerous thorns and more dangerous roses, she sees a grey shadow detach itself from a piece of unsettling statuary and start towards her.
She doesn’t really like cats, and this creature, which isn’t a cat, she doesn’t like at all. She ought to scare him off. She waits. Paimon pads quietly closer.
“You’re not coming back with me,” she says.
Paimon blinks at her. His tail twitches. Like poking a bruise, she holds out a hand for him to sniff, which he does, with the stern dignity of an elderly minister. Then, unexpectedly, he pushes his head into her palm. She scratches the fur between his ears, and hears a rumble in his chest, a creaky purr.
“You’ve changed,” she says. It’s funny. She’d thought she was the only one who could. Paimon’s fur is soft and warm against the skin she’d chosen, and with a start, she realizes she’s smiling.
“I hope the devils are indulging you,” she says. “As for me, I’ve got machinery to attend to.”
She heads engineward – homeward – along the same tiled path she’d taken. When she looks back, her own shadow is the only one that follows.