![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
look look I actually wrote something
I've been working on some semi-new canon, and I think I've finally got the rough plot and character details hammered out. The following is just something I wrote to explore the characters of two antagonists, (maybe three, counting the POV character), Francesca Staunton and Gregory Wolfe.
Francesca loves dolls.
This in itself is not unusual; even before the sickness, Francesca had always loved dolls. She loved to collect them, and she loved to talk about them while she arranged Sophia’s hair, if she wasn’t already humming a child’s melody as a mother might with her child. But when her mind changed, her love grew, and she began to seek dolls of more than just porcelain and wood.
Sophia has always been her favorite of the coven sisters, and she shows no other nearly as much favor. She is the only one permitted to call her “dear Sophie,” she is the only one who dotes on her like a true sister, and she is the only one who pushes her to greatness. When the Colby house burned, its coven hunted down, Sophia was the only one to whom she offered their matron’s grimoire. But her dear Sophie was too afraid to take the knife to flesh, and Francesca howled with rage.
The other sisters do not trust her, and many question why their matron would ever allow such a madwoman to stand at her side. Dear Sophie is the only one she claims to trust in turn, but that, as with the rest of her words, is uncertain. Sophia may have trusted her once, before the sickness—but she is the only one who has seen her grimoire since then, in all its broken and chaotic horror, and the memory of its pulse fills her with fear.
One night she has a dream, in which Francesca is the same beloved sister who has always been at her side—long, delicate fingers thread through her hair, Francesca hums softly, and she speaks to her of a new doll she’s collected. Sophia sees the doll, carved with its own grimoire—one that looks remarkably like her own, which Francesca draws into her own like ink from a page, into the vast, unending chaos of her fractured grimoire, leaving only leathery, sewn-together skin stretched over a wooden frame—
She awakens with a scream, and it takes Gregory nearly an hour to calm her. She does not sleep in the coven house again.
---
When Gregory sings, the earth sways under his voice.
Of course, this is true in a literal sense as well as figurative; one of the first songs he mastered, as he tells it, was that which quakes the ground, and it is one of his finest. Songs to twist the air, to dull metal, to seize limbs and to spark flame—Sophia loves them all. She loves to hear his softly accented voice shaping each precise syllable, and she loves to feel the magic pulse and roll from each verse, working the ether like a skilled artisan hones a sculpture of glass. But more than anything, she loves to hear him sing verses of his homeland, songs that work no magic but that of comfort, and he sings them only to her.
No one else calls him by his first name. “Wolfe,” after all, sounds far more fitting of a man with such an intimidating air and spotted reputation, and it speaks of both the guarded respect and cautious fear with which many of the sisters regard him. What they see as unwavering devotion, Sophia sees as stubborn thick-headedness; what they see as a fearsome, crazed battle-lust, she sees as nothing short of beauty. What they see as a wolf, she sees as little more than a man, and this is what endears him to her.
She has known fear but twice at Gregory’s side: once, when she first saw him crush a man’s skull with his sledgehammer, for it was the first time she had seen death, and the first time someone had tried to attack her for her name; and twice, when the man with the mask howled a name that could not be his and bore down on them with rage, for it was the first time she had ever seen fear in his eyes, and she could do naught but feel it herself.
Sophia still doesn’t know his true name, nor has she seen his grimoire. But neither of those matter to her, for she is certain that neither would change the man she knows him to be.
---
When Francesca sings her trilling arias, both Italian and German, or when she sings playful melodies of skinning the MacGuffin boy and burning the world to cinders—only then does Sophia know true fear, and only Gregory’s voice can still her again.
Francesca loves dolls.
This in itself is not unusual; even before the sickness, Francesca had always loved dolls. She loved to collect them, and she loved to talk about them while she arranged Sophia’s hair, if she wasn’t already humming a child’s melody as a mother might with her child. But when her mind changed, her love grew, and she began to seek dolls of more than just porcelain and wood.
Sophia has always been her favorite of the coven sisters, and she shows no other nearly as much favor. She is the only one permitted to call her “dear Sophie,” she is the only one who dotes on her like a true sister, and she is the only one who pushes her to greatness. When the Colby house burned, its coven hunted down, Sophia was the only one to whom she offered their matron’s grimoire. But her dear Sophie was too afraid to take the knife to flesh, and Francesca howled with rage.
The other sisters do not trust her, and many question why their matron would ever allow such a madwoman to stand at her side. Dear Sophie is the only one she claims to trust in turn, but that, as with the rest of her words, is uncertain. Sophia may have trusted her once, before the sickness—but she is the only one who has seen her grimoire since then, in all its broken and chaotic horror, and the memory of its pulse fills her with fear.
One night she has a dream, in which Francesca is the same beloved sister who has always been at her side—long, delicate fingers thread through her hair, Francesca hums softly, and she speaks to her of a new doll she’s collected. Sophia sees the doll, carved with its own grimoire—one that looks remarkably like her own, which Francesca draws into her own like ink from a page, into the vast, unending chaos of her fractured grimoire, leaving only leathery, sewn-together skin stretched over a wooden frame—
She awakens with a scream, and it takes Gregory nearly an hour to calm her. She does not sleep in the coven house again.
---
When Gregory sings, the earth sways under his voice.
Of course, this is true in a literal sense as well as figurative; one of the first songs he mastered, as he tells it, was that which quakes the ground, and it is one of his finest. Songs to twist the air, to dull metal, to seize limbs and to spark flame—Sophia loves them all. She loves to hear his softly accented voice shaping each precise syllable, and she loves to feel the magic pulse and roll from each verse, working the ether like a skilled artisan hones a sculpture of glass. But more than anything, she loves to hear him sing verses of his homeland, songs that work no magic but that of comfort, and he sings them only to her.
No one else calls him by his first name. “Wolfe,” after all, sounds far more fitting of a man with such an intimidating air and spotted reputation, and it speaks of both the guarded respect and cautious fear with which many of the sisters regard him. What they see as unwavering devotion, Sophia sees as stubborn thick-headedness; what they see as a fearsome, crazed battle-lust, she sees as nothing short of beauty. What they see as a wolf, she sees as little more than a man, and this is what endears him to her.
She has known fear but twice at Gregory’s side: once, when she first saw him crush a man’s skull with his sledgehammer, for it was the first time she had seen death, and the first time someone had tried to attack her for her name; and twice, when the man with the mask howled a name that could not be his and bore down on them with rage, for it was the first time she had ever seen fear in his eyes, and she could do naught but feel it herself.
Sophia still doesn’t know his true name, nor has she seen his grimoire. But neither of those matter to her, for she is certain that neither would change the man she knows him to be.
---
When Francesca sings her trilling arias, both Italian and German, or when she sings playful melodies of skinning the MacGuffin boy and burning the world to cinders—only then does Sophia know true fear, and only Gregory’s voice can still her again.
no subject
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
lol I love the next paragraph, too, though. ~~THEY SAY HE'S SCARY BUT I DON'T GET IT, HE'S PRETTY~~ hahahaha ohhhh Sophie you're so screwed. *dies* But um. XD That paragraph did a good way of capturing that concept without making it all whiny. "They say he's mean but I wuv him anywayyyyyyy /crai" is how most people (... including myself, orz) tend to write it, but this was just matter-of-fact and you can tell that she's determined that that's the truth about him.
I know I didn't touch much on Francesca's part but XD My reaction was "heyyyyy it's femka and non-stupid Xion 8DDD HOORAY \o/" so um. XD Anyway! This was lovely. <3 Can't wait 'till you start writing this.
(no subject)