Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Gilgamesh      THE PAINTED WORLD

     The lightly-falling snow drifts to the ground around the King of Heroes. He himself is untouched, as if the snow doesn't find itself worthy to set upon him (in actuality it's simply a Noble Phantasm repelling rain and snow and mud, but it certainly makes a grand statement). He's dressed himself in his heavy coat, his sweater, his black pants. The coat swirls behind him in the occasional gust of wind like a great black cape against the white snow. There's a cup of what might be coffee in his hands, but if it is, it's richer and warmer and more delicious than any coffee on Earth, in a golden cup that wouldn't be out of place in a movie about templars and archaeologists. The steam rises up into the air in front of him, a warm spot that mingles with the King's own radiant glory. He's making no effort to conceal himself whatsoever - the light of his existence shines beautifully across the snow, a sparkling, glimmering gold that cuts through the Painted World's quiet.

     Behind him, the gates of the graveyard are shut tight. There's a vast tent of silk draped over the whole thing, spilling over the fence and hiding the inside. The King's foot taps against snow, a crunching sound most unfamiliar to his ears.

     Is he anxious?

     He's never been anxious before. He savors the sensation as he savors the coffee, sipping it slowly, gently. What has he ever had to be anxious about? What has he ever had that challenges him, besides Enkidu? Certainly, something like this is routine for him. And yet...

     And yet he put more work into this single moment than all the presents he gave out as the King of Holidays. In this singular moment, he concentrated all his effort, all his energy, all his will. This isn't a mere present. This is a statement. This is something important.

     So he waits outside the graveyard gates, sipping his coffee, gleaming radiantly, tapping his foot as he waits for a woman.
Priscilla     Entering the Painted World of Ariamis of course necessitates going through Anor Londo to reach the private palace room in which the monolithically huge work of esoteric art is kept. With advance permission to enter, Gilgamesh gets to experience the extremely rare sensation of not standing out like a lighthouse in the dark (perhaps more of a bonfire at twilight) when walking the 'streets' of an Olympian marvel of Gothic architecture that vastly outstrips the scope of modern metropoli, drenched in divine sunlight and walked not only by various gods and holy Knights, but some five digits of human beings of myriad cultures who are palpably different beings than the usual, already selected by the harsh trials of pilgrimage to Lordran from the outer lands, and further enhanced by their conquests and successes by the soul arts so that they are all some degree of superhumanly (by modern standards at least) strong of body and sharp of mind, adept with craft and magic and war.

    It stands at incredibly stark odds with the interior of the painting; two peaks of two impossibly tall mountain circles that couldn't be any more different. The sun is ostensibly out in the Painted World at the same time, but cloaked in layers of clouds and mists that make it shine a sort of midnight cerulean, causing the frigid snow to faintly glow and glitter. It is incredibly hushed and quiet, cold in a way that is almost more spiritual than physical, and silent in a way that is almost introspective, such that each crunching footstep stands out in focused, sharp relief. Rather than grandly ornate, gold and white, the castle here is more darkly and austerely old Gothic in style, in greys and blues and silvers. Though it is obviously smaller than a whole city of gods, it's far, far larger than necessary for perhaps the few hundred souls that would have lived in it, and tall and interconnected to an almost storybook extent. Where a tiny village would have sufficed, people went ahead and built something that includes a tower that must be fifty storeys tall, all the way from the bottom of the valley that surrounds the mountain, and connected by a grand bridge.
Priscilla     It's blatantly obvious that the two locales are like two different mirror sides to the mental landscape he'd walked previously, not long ago. Blended together, they'd easily make for something very close, albeit far prettier; less dark, oppressive, and uneasy, without the pall of some hostile dark older than time. Though the Painted World is completely empty, and appears somewhat worn with age, not to mention packed with an unnerving number of gravestones crammed into any space that can be spared, 'fixed up' as it is, there is doubtlessly a certain melancholy beauty to it. At the very base of the valley, once shrouded in inescapable blackness, the ground is now covered with unbroken fields of ephemeral white flowers and great spiralling trees and roots of diamond-like ice and petrified stone the size of buildings.

    There's also that weird bonfire, but we know how that works.

    It's practically unheard of for Priscilla to ever let someone in before herself, but this is an unusual occasion (and she's especially busy around this time besides). If that's what Gilgamesh gets up to, she humours it, albeit not without some very reflexive trepidation. Finally showing up, wearing her many layered white and grey furs, even walking barefoot through the snow, she couldn't possibly look any more rightly in place, as if the creator had painted her into the scene, rather than her simply living here. Her natural 'aura' blends right in to the point of being almost indistinguishable.

    The fact Gilgamesh had set up something around the graveyard on the cliff is immediately concerning. Nothing good happens in graveyards. Out of the reasons someone could have for putting a tent over one, less than one in a hundred aren't terrible. Priscilla shows up with vaguely forced and nervous interest, already silently praying that Gil hadn't done something for which she must take the role of the offended.

    "I see thou hast . . . made thineself well at home. Thou didst not put this far from thine mind at any point, for the fact I briefly spoke of it more than a month ago." Awkward conversation starter. Priscilla doesn't do icebreakers. The ice never breaks.
Gilgamesh      Gilgamesh drains the rest of his coffee as she arrives. He discards the gold cup over his shoulder, and it vanishes into the air, the ripple of the Gate catching it like a skilled magician snatching a coin from someone's ear. He stands there for a moment, watching her, admiring the way she blends into the landscape. Yes, it's as if the lady was painted into the world. He is a bright outlier, an outsider, and she fits into this place like it was made for her. Perhaps it was, for all he knows. It's a world that doesn't belong to him - a rare enough sensation, but since he's not particularly fussed over the idea of not owning someone's personal painted landscape, not one he cares to press. He just looks at her, as though he was standing outside the painting and critiquing one specific part of it to the artist as a prospective buyer. When she tries to start a conversation, he smiles.

     "No," the King of Heroes says, "Indeed I did not. I rarely forget things that are important to me."

     His face goes a bit red at that, and most assuredly not from the cold. He scratches his cheek and then turns away. "You're wondering what's behind the tent."

     "It is...your holiday present."

     The King isn't looking at her. Is he...fidgeting slightly? "I wasn't content to simply give you something simple. You are...something special. Someone special."

     He stops, like he's tongue-tied. It's unlikely, but she hasn't seen him like this before. He starts again after a cough to clear his throat. "I wasn't satisfied with anything I could think of. Though, for some reason, knives kept coming to mind."

     "Your present is inside." The King of Heroes steps aside from the graveyard gate, still not looking at her. "It took me some time. I hope you understand."
Priscilla     The only upside of a two part awkward conversation is that it's about one of the least accessible places in the Multiverse for anyone to hear it. The two of them can pretend it was a lot more refined after the fact.

    "I had wondered what precisely being a part of thine especially exclusive 'nice' list wouldst entail, King of the Holidays." Priscilla manages to say with a little more levity. "Albeit the 'gift' of mine own couldst hardly be called such, especially fit for a holiday regarding thankfulness and togetherness." she says, then with a little bit of dry melancholy creeping into the end. It's only the sudden mention of knives that gets the frost to crack, causing her to hide something of a helpless smirk behind a hand. "Perhaps such is mine curse. It wouldst seemeth that every Christmas period, I am the recipient of a great number of knives, daggers, and other short blades. I had wondered if it were something about mineself, but perhaps it is an affliction of a kind." It's a little funny to hear it from Gilgamesh too.

    "Very well. It wouldst be unfair in the extreme to not at least lay eyes upon something the King himself hath spent such time and labour upon, rare as it is for him to need to work at anything. If such a present was so worthy of thine efforts, I shalt consider it high praise." Priscilla says, eventually taking a deep breath and pushing open the gate, hoping for the best.
Gilgamesh      "It's because," Gilgamesh says as she opens the gate, "You are sharp, but not in the manner of a brute force thing. You cut to the heart of the matter swiftly and uncompromisingly, carving away unnecessary things. You are not axe, or sword, or rapier, or even scythe. You are most like a knife, a beautiful, well-forged knife, and so I imagine that even the mongrels of Multi-Vars would pick up on such a thing."

     The gate swings open. The tent falls away, vanishing into the Gate. It was probably a very elegant, very expensive rug. The light of the Painted World falls on the graveyard.

     It's beautiful.

     It's been cleaned, thoroughly. Every gravestone has been scrubbed free of weeds or vines. Cracks have been repaired. Inscriptions have been touched up. Fallen gravestones have been rebuilt, or replaced with beautiful, areligious statues of mourning figures. Flowers have been planted in various spots, growing in the cold snow despite all logic saying they should not. Bowls full of sweet-looking fruits, bottles of alcohol, and other traditional offerings to the dead from a half-dozen cultures are scattered about the graves. Other graves have expensive-looking grave goods, weapons and armor for people Gilgamesh could tell were warriors, lodged in gravestones like markers. Gold coins sit in artful arrangements like offerings to a distant ferryman. Everywhere Priscilla looks, the graveyard has been touched up, cleaned up, improved in some subtle way, as if to all line together in a single, beautiful thing.

     The King walks in behind her. "I wasn't sure," he says, uncharacteristically quiet, "Which rituals of peaceful rest your cultures subscribed to."

     "So I simply did as many as I could think of."

     "Merry Christmas, Priscilla."
Priscilla     Priscilla goes in braced for what she hopes won't be the worst. As much as she appreciates many aspects of Gilgamesh's character compared to others she knows in the Multiverse, she has seen enough of his lavish gifts, grand gestures, and methods of showing the average what things should really look like according to him. While everything from his wealth to his hospitality to his politics have always been of the highest grade and grandest scale, these aren't the kind of things would see anywhere near something so . . . private. So personal. She tells herself, inwardly, that it's faith in the King that prevents her from giving voice to it, but knows that it is really just an inability to put any of it into words --that she wouldn't be able to even if she tried.

    So, it is with plainly evident surprise that she takes it in; for once her feelings are clear as day. Whatever she had expected, it certainly wasn't this, not only from Gilgamesh, but at all. For all the solemn respect her allies had given to her fallen surrogate home, and the efforts they had put towards facing the dark things that had built up both within it and within Priscilla, she had never once seen any one of them she had let glimpse this little world see it as something to dare think about --something worth honour and commemoration.

    After what must be a full minute of speechless staring, Priscilla swallows uncharacteristically hard, starting to walk between the gravestones, fingers trailing on markers free of built up snow and dust, tracing crisp inscriptions she hadn't yet touched, kneeling to examine piles of offerings and adornments, and to think of what those buried on those spots would think of them now. It's outright stupefaction, as if she'd never conceived of anyone doing such a thing, never mind wished it, and that alone might be worth it; the knowledge that not even those allies dear enough that she still holds them close to her heart after the sundering of the Union had affected her in this way.

    "Thou didst this all thineself." Priscilla says, still knelt before a grave, without looking up. "I see now. No wonder it wouldst hath taken thee so long. Not a matter of scale that escapes even the King, but that the King wouldst put such meticulous thought towards it, and work with his own two hands." The thought of Gilgamesh of all people sorting out the time-consuming work that Priscilla does every year just for herself, and then going even further, is bewildering. A shining golden demigod, clearing and mending and polishing stone markers. It's unreal.

    Priscilla is bad with feelings. She hadn't always been, but she has been for a long enough time --longer than many human lifespans-- that she may as well have been. Most of the time this is a constant thing --a subtle absence of the right responses and expressions and reactions that are there to put one another at ease or communicate how to nagivate around oneself. In very rare cases like these, it's an issue of being able to process them sensibly, rather than exhibit them.

    Pulling in a deep breath --the first she'd taken in several minutes-- Priscilla gets to her feet, lightly dusts a patina of snow off the knees of her dress, turns around, and puts her arms around Gilgamesh's neck, squeezing him in a way she'd forgotten how to do, but somehow felt right, given the bewildered kind of inconceivable appreciation pulling at her hearstrings in the moment.

    "It is more than I couldst anticipate from anyone. Truly thou must be the King of this month as much as everything else. Thou hast mine thanks of a sort I am unable to even explain."
Gilgamesh      Gilgamesh just watches. He watches her trace her fingers along the stone. Not a word goes between them to break the stillness of the graveyard, to break the beautiful, somber silence the King of Heroes has built for the First of the Concord. She trails her fingers along fresh inscriptions, kneels by offerings, inspects the gravestones. Not a stone out of place. The eye for detail is, indeed, beyond human. He's even cleaned up some faded inscriptions, doubtless with some obscure Mystic Code or Noble Phantasm that allowed him to do so, inscriptions so old it would've been hard to see them before.

     She breaks the silence, and he smiles, and he nods at her question. He doesn't speak, not yet. He lets her hold the image in her mind as she stands.

     She hugs him.

     The King's face goes bright red. He only blushes when he's taken terribly off-guard, when he's thrown into disarray by someone he finds attractive, and the look of it is probably foreign to Priscilla, who's only ever seen him in *control*, dignified, Heroic, divine. Now, for the first time, that one third of him that is firmly and confirmably human is showing in her presence, the young, flustered man he is beneath the all-knowing, all-wise, contemptuous god-king. Her arms around his neck, he stands there for a moment, as if uncertain, before he embraces her.

     His hands go to her waist. He tugs her up against him, gently. He tries to look at her, then looks away, gazing off into the sky. "It was the only present I could think of worthy of giving you. This is what it means to be someone the King of Heroes..."

     Another hesitation.

     He doesn't hesitate this much, ever. He's clearly working through something, maybe even something foreign to him, something alien. After a while, he presses his forehead against hers. He locks his red eyes on her own. He fights down his hot cheeks.

     "Fell in love with."

     "I fell in love with you slowly," the King says after a moment, tilting his head backwards, "At first, respect. Then, admiration. Then, when we ventured into your soul, and I saw what you were, what you were beneath the surface...when I saw your unique nature...how alone you were in all the world..."

     "I fell in love."

     "You are one of the only people I think it is even possible for me to love," he says after a bit of silence, "One of the only people I think I am capable of loving. Maybe the Goddess Rhongomyniad, perhaps. Enkidu for certain. But you are..."

     He swallows.

     "Enkidu..." He laughs a little, looking away from her, "...it got called my Queen, once. It said that my Queen was probably you. I..."

     "...didn't correct it."

     At that, he falls silent. He's just wavering for a moment, holding her there in the light snow of the Painted World. Then, finally, the King does what he is best known for - a bold, forward action, the sort of thing a man called the King of Heroes ought to do.

     His fingers slide up into her hair. He pulls her forward and presses his lips against hers. It's a deep, fierce, needy kiss - not just passionate but hungry, hungry for understanding, empaty, connection, the kiss of a deeply lonely creature who has stood atop the world and looked down on it with contempt for so long that he's barely able to process the idea of someone standing next to him. It's not just a movie kiss - it's an epic kiss, a kiss straight from a myth, the sort of thing that caps off with 'happily ever after' in fairy tales. The King of Heroes kisses the First of the Concord with the ferocious passion and the unparalleled experience of pleasure he always boasts about, but underneath it is genuine, powerful affection - affection he doesn't know how to convey any other way.
Priscilla     For all that it is appreciated, the intense privacy and seclusion of this place, as a world away from the world, meant not to be remembered, may well be as responsible for the breaking down of normal character within it as anything else. A place with nowhere else. The last two people in the world, in a sense. A situation in which words and feelings both come out unchecked.

    The emotional side of Priscilla is as surprising as the uncollected side of Gilgamesh. Though kindred in many aspects, especially of bearing, the way the King of Uruk's second side shows through as opposed to that of the Queen of Lordran is a stark juxtaposition. It isn't an awkwardness that Priscilla minds; not a hesitation that makes her think less of him. Indeed, she is herself just as bad when it comes to this, though more likely to disappear and disengage for it, than stammer and struggle through. In that way, she distantly thinks, his bravery is commendable.

    She abruptly stops thinking when the confession comes out. Generally. They aren't so much words she'd not expected from him particularly --she has had some vague inkling of their approximation for a short time now-- but words that she hadn't ever anticipated hearing, period. Not in that sense. 'I love you.' had been enough to make her cry when seeing Gwynevere for the first time in centuries, and that meant something so very different. The mental gears are visibly stuck. Her pupils contract and just stay that way. Her lips are parted very slightly as if to say something, and then nothing comes out. Her heart physically stops for a second, as nearly superfluous as it is. Given the stillness of the Painted World, it creates the uncanny impression that time itself has stopped, where the only other entity capable of illustrating its progression has seized up.

    It isn't being 'caught off guard', but having no idea how to react --not just in action, but in actual thought-- that leads having no precedent --no overriding --no *better* course but to be swept along with it. In lieu of any trace of a thought of what to do on a day like this, Priscilla is caught up in the moment, and responds to the only other being that feels as if they're really *here*; someone who can do better but come along and nod solemnly, swear platitudes or loyalty, and conduct themselves respectably, but be a part of this thing dearest to her, here and now. Her arms tighten around the god-king, her foot lifting to the toes, even the tip of her tail curling in a brief instant of being swept away by the feeling of not being *alone* here; that rather than transient visitors, passing ships, that there is someone very real and living giving life to both this place and to her through their thoughts and feelings. It's something she was never truly aware of until it left her life for good, and something that never came back again ever since, and so she clings to it in the only way she knows how.
Priscilla     It never works out that well, though. That is the frigid little breeze of a thought that finally rolls into her briefly emptied head; the precursor to a growing gale.

    It never does. It can't. It isn't *allowed* to. When has it ever? What always happens? When has she ever made the right decision like this? So many times were 'the time' for it was okay, and suddenly they weren't. Wrong, over and over again. That feeling. That old, awful, inescapable feeling, creeping up anew. Opening up like this. Gambling like this. Losing like this. Daring to think so, only to be taught better; taught that it *doesn't work that way* and to fall to a new level lower. The knowledge that these things are for other people. That they happen, but not to her. Bringing them to her is to turn them to dust in her fingers. Falling for the lying thoughts that tell her things are fine is to lead her gladly to another cliff. She *knows* that much. It's an instinct. It's how things *work*. Even this little perfect moment is so full of holes and catches and sharp edges; so many failure points, so many finite allowances, so many unknowns, so many ways to fail and to hurt and make everything worse again.

    The intrusive gust of cold doubt becomes an avalanche of voices that are no longer little; no longer small and prickling. Even if she'd liked to imagine they were gone and buried, just because she hadn't heard them for as long as this, she knew all along, perfectly well, that they weren't. The sensation like tight, biting strings wound around her heart; like ice cold water filling her chest and her mind working too fast for her to keep track of, thoughts going out of control and begging to hit the brakes before they crash; the way her voice stops as if caught in a vice; irrational survival instinct doing the opposite of its job, all other thoughts and feelings stuffed in the trunk and blind reflex with both hands on the wheel. Things she didn't listen to before and suffered for it, and so now no longer has the option of ignoring it.

    It probably feels an awful lot like an anxiety attack to Gil, close as he is. The part where her heart starts hammering much too hard and much too fast for it to be excitement anymore, simultaneous with the rising and falling of her breathing completely stopping; where her body goes stiff and her fingers grip his shoulders as if frozen by electrical shock. Over a few transformative seconds, it the experience goes from a romantic epic to a some kind of episode of shock, and Priscilla pulls away as if wrenched free, clutching at her throat, struggling to catch her breath, even paler than usual. The blue mist that escapes her lips with each heaving breath draws attention to the fact that his own are frostbitten and bleeding.

    Priscilla is quick to get ahold of herself, at least. Quick enough to remind herself that she isn't a child; not vulnerable and naive and taken for a ride by the Multiverse either. Lowering her hand to her chest to try and quell her racing heartbeat, Priscilla swallows down an unbecoming uneasiness, and forcibly articulates "Th-thou hast mine apologies, King of- . . . Gilgamesh. It is just . . . all of a sudden . . . I couldst not . . . pray do not taketh offense. I had . . . lost sight of mineself for a moment. I-it is much to taketh in. O-of no fault of thine own, of course."

    When she finally lowers herself to a kneel again, Priscilla seems more embarrassed than Gilgamesh could ever be, given the circumstances, going from white as a sheet to borderline fuchsia. "Ah . . . that was not very becoming of me, was it. Thou went through all this effort and I . . . was . . . not ready, I supposeth. I well should hath been." Now *she's* the one flustered. "A-a little time wouldst . . . not go amiss. Thou art welcome to stay, however! Pray do not mistaketh mine intent."
Gilgamesh      Priscilla breaks away after a moment of heart-rending shock. The King is not an inexperienced child, not a fool who cannot tell when someone is undergoing an absolute storm of emotions. He's skilled at reading people, skilled at seeing through that sort of thing, skilled at looking at the little tells and the little motions of their bodies. He's been reading bodies for a long time, too, especially women in the throes of passion - it is *abundantly* clear that, for all he may be having trouble speaking and processing his feelings, his body knows exactly what to do.

     She breaks away. He's aware of the cold on his lips; he purses them as drops of divine blood hit the snow of the graveyard, decorating his work with his actual blood as well as his sweat. Slowly, the frostbite dies, divine constitution and impossible healing processing away the damage as Priscilla stammers over her uncertainty. He doesn't say anything, again, just watching her with perfect red eyes. There's no sense of anything on his face - neither disappointment nor frustration nor joy. Instead, his fingers go up to his lips. He touches them thoughtfully.

     Then his fingers touch hers.

     The cold is intense. He fights back a wince. He is Gilgamesh, King of Heroes. He has driven naked through the snow to fight frost giants for their treasures. This is far more important, and so he will resist the frigid cold of her breath, the frost that escapes from her lips deeper than the deepest glacier. He presses his fingers against her lips not in a show of dominance or silence, but in a show of understanding - and a show of willpower. He holds his fingers there for a moment, long enough for them to freeze over, before he withdraws them.

     He's determined to make sure that she understands - the flirtatious King would not go to that sort of effort for just anyone.

     He shakes his hand slightly and smiles at her. "You need some practice," he says, in that playful tone he loves to take, "But you've certainly an instinct. Was your mother or your father a love god? You're a natural. Once that instinct is honed you might be an unparalleled kisser."

     His warming hand goes into his pocket. His other hand just extends outwards, and a cup of hot coffee falls into it. He offers it to her, and if she accepts, he produces a second, otherwise sipping from it himself. "I did not do this to seduce you. I did not do this to claim you as a treasure. I did this...because you deserve it. And because the people you treasured deserve it. And because the people of Babylon deserve it."

     "Take all the time you want. I have a few pleasures to pursue, some meaningless indulgences." He sighs, then smiles over his coffee. "Some blondes who caught my eye. Some playing around. I am the King who knows all the pleasures of the world. My feelings are separate from my desires."

     "...but I can wait as long as you need."

     The King sips his coffee again. "I'll stay as long as you permit me. And..." He looks towards the rest of the Painted World. "I hope you won't mind if I indulge in some more improvements like this one. Nothing to damage your memories. Just...glorify them. Brighten them."

     His eyes turn back to her. "Make the world that is your heart a place I can also dwell."