To love with an iron fist

Jude

Somebody ought to corrupt me on the dance floor
And take me home

Noe’s letter burns in his backpack as he summits the hill. He’d had to stop carrying it in his pocket because it had seemed to burn all the worse the closer he held it. You’re being stupid. “I know,” he agrees to empty air, sliding the bag off his shoulders, eyes riveted to the shrine. Maybe she’ll think this is stupid too. Maybe it is. Jude doesn’t trust anyone’s judgment but Safrin’s anymore - she’ll be the one to tell him. 

The grass is autumn-dry and uncomfortable under his shins as he kneels and begins placing his offering - an iridescent blown glass sphere with flecks of silver and blue suspended within. The illusion of movement artfully frozen in time. 

“I had so little time to try and keep my promise in Stormbreak.” His hands fall away from the gift to clench at the dead grass near his knees. The shreds stick to his pants and crunch uncomfortably against the webbing of his fingers. “And for so much of it I was distracted.” Jude’s face twists so tight his eyes close, the faces of Noe, Koa, and Sohalia twisting in amalgamation even in that darkness. His eyes open to stare at the shrine, its shadows deepening with every inch the sun slides past the horizon. “I can’t be the only one who’s failed you like this. Right?” Please. She doesn’t deserve the failures of more than just him, but Jude can’t bear to be unique in his shortcomings. Human hearts stray so often - but why do they have to stray away from her? His hand touches his father’s pendant at his chest and curses his family line once more. 

“Can you stop it? Can you rip this out of me?” Jude falls forward, hands reaching past his knees and his offering to grasp the edge of the altar. “It hurts. You made me yours, you gave me my name, and I still can’t stop hoping to be someone else’s when they don’t want me anyway.” Koa’s venom stings in his ears and makes his fingers curl, bloodless and white, against the shrine’s foundations. It hurts just as much to fail her as to be unwanted, and hurts further to feel the shame of comparing the two in any way. “Can you make me only see you? Only love you?” No matter what it takes or how it will work. A touch of pain when his heart starts to stray. A vessel to pour his love for anyone else into. Anything to assure his devotion to her - the only one he can count on to always return it in kind. 

- - -

Type: Light | Style: Other | Level: Basic
Star Rush | A pendant of morganite with flecks of starlight. Adds +3 luck

Jude is requesting a way to either remove existing romantic affection into a vessel of sorts to stand in for a Ludo mind wipe, or willingly curse himself to feel pain/be course-corrected if he starts to feel it for anyone but Safrin or Safrin-approved people. 

Or have it be a two quest plan with whichever Safrin decides to happen first to be decreed here! (And dragon buddy please!)

If he doesn’t roll successfully please deduct MP for a quest!

Show me all my desires and dark sides
And pretend by night's end you won't leave me alone

Safrin

The air changes. It’s not a gust or a glow, not even the shifting of stars—though they do seem to pulse higher overhead, subtly syncing to a different rhythm than the crickets and dusk-sleeping birds. It’s a change in gravity. In attention. As though the world inhales and hushes.

Then, without a sound, Safrin is there.

She does not descend. She unfolds—like a bloom in reverse, stars spiralling into shape until they resolve into the goddess herself: barefoot, luminous, timeless. Her gown spills behind her like night made silk, shot through with distant galaxies, and when she moves, it whispers with the hush of waves over celestial sand. "Oh, my sweet boy," she murmurs, and her voice is so soft, so full of fierce, aching love that it almost undoes the quiet entirely.

She kneels. She, for whom time and distance mean nothing, kneels in the dry autumn grass beside Jude, her hand already reaching, threading through the shadows he’s cast across the shrine. She touches his shoulder, then his cheek, gentle and deliberate, before sliding her arms around him and drawing him into her embrace.

For a moment, she simply holds him, her starlight a balm against the raw and trembling devotion in his bones. "I know what’s in your heart," she whispers against his hair. "I felt every twist of doubt, every hope you tried to bury, every thread of pain you traced back to yourself like it was your fault for bleeding." She draws back enough to look at him, her fingers brushing beneath his chin to lift it. "You are mine, Jude." Her thumb smooths a track across his cheekbone. "And I will not let your heart become a casualty of those who couldn’t see its worth."

She glances to the glass sphere he offered, starlight catching and spinning within it like a memory suspended. "Your devotion is beautiful. Your pain, unacceptable."

Straightening slowly, she lifts her hand and with a gesture, the stars above them flare—and from the darkness behind her steps a dragon. Small and bright, formed of comet-light and moon-glow, the creature coils beside Jude like an extension of Safrin’s love. "She is yours," Safrin says softly. "A reminder that you are never alone. That I am never far. For you to name, as I have named you."

Then her expression shifts, solemn and watchful. "As for what you ask.."A pause, the night seeming to lean forward to listen. "There are two paths I might grant. One, a vessel. Something you may pour your love into when it becomes too much, too tangled, or too unwanted. It will hold it for you until you are ready to take it back—or not at all."

Her gaze intensifies. "The other is a geas. A divine tether. Should your heart begin to stray toward one I have not chosen for you, it will hurt, Jude. Not enough to harm, but enough to remind. A constant pressure toward purity. Toward clarity." She lets the choice hang.

"You may have both," she adds, a glimmer of indulgence threading her words. "But one must come first. Decide, my darling, and I will shape your quest accordingly."

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Jude

Somebody ought to corrupt me on the dance floor
And take me home

The moment she appears he forces his eyes to resist any urge to blink, relief caving his chest. Her love is cosmic and unending and he doesn’t deserve it but she calls him sweet anyway. Calls him hers. He leans into every glancing touch until he can fall into her embrace, long arms wrapping in return, clenching around woven stars and spacedust so he won’t risk his nails against her skin. Jude’s breath heaves like it’s meant to herald tears, but he can’t cry when she’s here at last. 

“I’m sorry you had to feel it,” he croaks, sinking into the starlit sea of her eyes. Surely she can’t mean it so literally but maybe if he’d been better, smarter - 

When she rises he follows in her wake as far as his knees, reverent at her feet like any marble statue or woven tapestry. Devotion alone seems hollow, but if she weighs it against his failures and finds it worthy, he won’t dare lift his voice to object. Not when she spins life itself between her fingers and places it into his hands. His very soul stirs with change, with connection, and he can only eke out a strangled, “Safrin.” Jude now struggles to know where to look - this comet-creature he can feel budding in his mind, or the goddess who bestowed it. 

But the dragon slumbers, and Jude’s eyes snap to his herald as gravity pulls the world close. A severity to the choice that, to Jude, cannot be simpler in this moment. 

“The vessel. Please. I can’t bear it, and I don’t want what I feel to immediately compete and bring me pain I’m already feeling.” It brings him shame to say it, to think he is torn in his devotion even now, but he resists averting his eyes. She has taken his shame and his heartbreak in hand without anger; hiding now would betray her graciousness.

Show me all my desires and dark sides
And pretend by night's end you won't leave me alone

Safrin

"Oh, my love," she breathes, her arms drawing him close again, tighter now—tight enough that no shadow could ever hope to slip between them. Her cheek rests against his temple, her breath a warmth that smells like night-blooming flowers and something deeper, vaster—like galaxies folding into themselves with affection. "Do not apologise for what I already forgive," she murmurs, voice soft and woven through with starlight. "You hurt because you love. Because you care. Because Vi made a heart too big for itself and put it in your chest."

One hand rises to cradle the back of his head, fingers threading gently into his hair as she hums low in her throat. The sound is less melody than gravity, and the comet-dragon behind her lets out a slow, contented breath that stirs the grass. "You have chosen wisely," she says, lips brushing the edge of his ear. "This is what you must do."

Her hands drift from his shoulders to settle over his heart, as though she might still it with reverence alone. "For every feeling you wish to remove—each love, each ache, each hope that no longer serves you—you must create a vessel. It can be something you make, or find, or buy, but it must be beautiful. A container worthy of having once held your heart." She tilts his face to hers, her gaze like moonlight on deep water. "Next, you must collect something tangible from the one you are mourning. A lock of hair. A token. Something that was theirs...or once yours, because of them."

Her voice darkens, takes on a twilight edge. "Burn it. Let it become ash, and once you have the remains, place the ashes into the vessel and set it beneath the stars." Her fingers trail down his arm to lace through his. "Then, Jude, you must consume dreamdust. Just a pinch. And sleep beside the vessel, where the moonlight can reach you and fill the spaces with its light." She lets the silence linger, her touch still steady. "When you wake," she whispers, "the ache will be gone. Not dulled. Gone. Your love will be sealed within, waiting—but no longer weighing you down."

Safrin draws back slightly, eyes flickering with a knowing gleam. "But be cautious. Should you ever break one of these vessels—by accident, or design—everything inside will return to you at once. Every ember of feeling. Every memory that once burned." Her smile is tender, but edged in warning. "So choose where you keep them wisely, sweet boy. Even the stars are vulnerable when touched too carelessly."

---

For each emotional tether that Jude wants to sever, he must

1. Create/Make/Buy the vessel the ashes will be stored in
2. Collect a piece of the person (hair, spit, an item of theirs, etc)
3. Burn it
4. Place the ashes into the vessel and leave it out beneath the moon/stars while taking Dreamdrust.

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Jude

Somebody ought to corrupt me on the dance floor
And take me home

How anyone could be so close to her and ever pull away is something Jude's mind can't comprehend, and he isn't sure he will even be able to when it becomes necessary. But she weaves strength everywhere she touches him, pours it into his soul through his ears, his eyes, his nose. It's like the moment of peace when drowning becomes stillness, but this time there's something worth all the suffering waiting on the other side.

For the promise of that kind of peace, Jude would do anything. He sits rapturous beneath the palm she lays over his heart, any trembling he may have felt before quelled in an instant. Her voice sways between suede comfort and obsidian gravity and drags him along with it like her consonants have barbed hooks. 

"I understand." For relief, for freedom, he will do all of it. And he will find a way to keep that vessel as far from the world as possible so that her warning will never need actualization. 

"And then I'll come back, so you can keep me safe from feeling it ever again." She deserves certainty here, there is no room for his own self-doubt to shadow and crowd the promises he makes on faith. "Thank you, Safrin. Thank you. For...everything," he whispers, eyes dancing between Safrin's softly smiling face and the dragon beside them. Jude has to find something beautiful now, something to reflect his heart - a heart she says is beautiful, is as Vi always intended it to be - but she has already taken his heart and given it living, breathing form. He can only endeavor to find a second best option. 

Leaving her means pulling the weight of it all back onto his shoulders, but it is the only way he will prove his strength to her. Maybe even to himself. 

It starts with standing, then it's merely a matter of one foot at a time from there. The slumbering dragon is gently pulled into his arms, and Jude looks a little taller standing in her starlight as he takes a moment to drink her in before he has to leave. "I love you," he tells her, and for once doesn't overthink the words when he shares them, no flush or shyness to be found. She'll know what he means - the particulars of his feelings, caught on hooks and barbs somewhere between the sentiments of a child and a man. Pure, and maybe a touch naive. If he does this right, maybe it will be the only love he has to know. 

- Fin

Show me all my desires and dark sides
And pretend by night's end you won't leave me alone