Disclaimer: Lalalalalalalalano.
Author's Note: HELLO PLEASE READ THIS. THIS IS IMPORTANT.
Below is one of the first stories of a series that I and tumblr/AO3 user Dangersocks are writing. It is only one of the first stories, because the first few stories are too mature to post on this website. If you want to read them, as well as Dangersocks' incredible contributions to this universe, please check out the link to my AO3 account on my bio page.
Warnings: Cecilos. Flowery. (I'll give you a minute to bask in the glory of that pun.) A prelude, of sorts. Based on tumblr user ozytreart's super-duper-neat Monster Hunters AU. Crap editing.
XXX
Butterfly Weed
XXX
"You've been troubled, Carlos."
A flick. A hiss. A worn card spins in graceful pirouettes across the linen of the tablecloth, the pastel kaleidoscope of its ornamental back a pleasant contrast to so much crisp white. Through some small miracle, the oversized card manages to twirl delicately around the Wedgewood teapot and a tiered platter of macaroons, its progress only momentarily hindered by a crystal vase. Begonia and geraniums give a diminutive shiver; by the time the card skids to a neat halt before Carlos, it has been further decorated with small, lemon-scented petals.
A painted cup poised half-way to pursed lips, Carlos idly flips the proffered card. The Magician, it reads. Or it would, were it right-side up. Unimpressed, he dangles the card between pinched fingers, as he might a vial of chemicals, staring simultaneously at and through it. Beyond its gothic design sits his eccentric host, a vision of lilac and cream in this ivy-swathed gazebo. He is smiling. His host, that is: grinning in a nonchalant yet dreamy way that makes Carlos think of butterflies. Hundreds of butterflies. Thousands of them, wings glittering, as they crawl and scramble over one another.
He looks back down at his tea, sweet with clover honey.
"You don't mind if I call you that, do you?" said host asks into the silence, voice as smooth as syrup and equally saccharine. Hypnotic. The broach at his throat bobs. And at first, Carlos had found his blithe charms off-putting, particularly when he himself was so visibly discomforted. But then, the one lounging across from him is a strange, influential man; he likely has a history of dealing with unnerved guests, and is no longer bothered by it. He seems much at ease, in any case: head cocked, lips pert, chin resting languidly on the elegant arch of his laced fingers. He continues, "It's just, titles are so tedious. And long! They're such a bother. Not to mention petty. Take ourselves, for instance! Just because I am a Marquis, and you a simple Baron, does not mean that you are in any way a lesser man than I. Quite the contrary! After all, you are a scientist!" the Marquis coos, positively reverent. As he speaks, a pleasant shudder marches down the stairway of his spine. Nestling more fully into the cradle of his hands, he regards Carlos with colorless eyes— eyes that are shimmering with far more awe than is either necessary or appropriate. Carlos is not entirely sure how to react, or what to say. But that's fine. Clearly, his host can speak enough for the both of them.
"You agree, don't you, dear Carlos? Of course you do. This archaic system, so far removed from any basis of merit, is something that has irked you throughout life, I'm sure. Yes, I thought as much." The man nods, sage, as if plucking a primrose from the tip of the scientist's tongue. Carlos wonders how hard he must have been thinking such things for so detailed an answer to be read from his expression alone. He also wonders where the burgundy blossom in the other's palm had come from. The Marquis dusts it tenderly away. "You really are so smart, Carlos. So very clever. To that end! Let us not allow something as trifling as peerage to hinder our new friendship. I hope you will do me the honor of simply referring to me as Cecil."
The Marquis smiles again, bringing to mind cracking chrysalises.
And it's all very… unexpected. Abrupt, like Carlos' realization that his cup is dripping scarlet dribbles of columbine. Startled, he nearly drops the decorated china; spilt blossoms bounce once atop the tablecloth before melting into liquid stains. What? What? How had it come to this, again? Just this morning, Carlos had been trudging aimlessly through life: living from vaguely plotted experiment to vaguely plotted experiment, weary from sleepless nights and the derision of his peers. Reserved, resigned. But a few hours and an atypical introduction later, and here he is: nibbling on scones with a man crazy enough to leap out of a two story building. And while the situation is, ultimately, more amusing than it is outwardly disturbing, Carlos finds himself agitated by some unknowable knowledge. A certainty—the heavy sort that wedges itself into a soul— that his life will forevermore be comprised of two distinct halves: the time before he broke Cecil's fall, and the time after. For an instant, the sensation of this realization is comparable to vertigo.
Carlos is struggling. He is struggling both to keep calm, and to keep up. His tea seems to be drinkable again—the vision before surely a sort of trick— so he takes a steady pull, if only to give himself a minute to think. Cecil, cheerful as ever, hoods his eyes and watches. The vase between them bows beneath a rainbow of ranunculus, round as stars and multilayered as a mystery.
A second card flutters to a stop beside the first, gingerly stationed next to his saucer. Carlos does not touch it. Not yet.
"As I was saying," Cecil purrs, in a voice that ribbons from his lips in velveteen loops. It's an appropriate metaphor; Carlos feels inexplicably bound whenever he speaks. Rooted to the moment, to the spot. And not in a way that he can hold the moonflowers creeping up his chair's legs accountable for. A rubbery bud nestles against his ankle; tender offshoots tickle his thighs as the husky baritone tickles his ears. "Things have been a bit difficult for you, as of late. Poor dear. Despite your boundless enthusiasm, your natural intellect, and—if I may—your stunning coiffure, the scientific community feels that your work dances too intimately with the occult to be worthy of anything but skepticism. The unremitting scorn has left you understandably weary, and hesitant to pursue that which you love. But that hesitation will only serve to hinder you further, I'm afraid. Resisting your instincts is rarely a good idea."
Carlos quirks his brow, glancing surreptitiously between the exposed Magician and the one who'd dealt it. He looks pained in that special way one does when forced to face uncomfortable personal truths. Cecil, as a consummate gentleman, makes no comment when his companion shiftily snatches up a silver spoon and dips it into his tea, swirling the liquid for lack of any other distraction.
"Have you the Sight?" the scientist asks with practiced detachment, giving the wet utensil a brisk tap against the rim of his cup. The sound of porcelain on silver rings out with the tinny clarity of a bell; rounded ruby petals—perfect little blooddrops— pearl and fall, pearl and fall, as Carlos shakes the spoon dry.
The Marquis responds with a noise that might've been a snort, had it been made by anybody else.
"Of course I have sight," he returns, very droll indeed. As if to emphasis this, he leisurely flutters his butterfly lashes, pallid eyes bright behind the crystal of his spectacles. "If I didn't, how could I possibly see the cards, silly boy?"
"That's not—"
"Oh my," Cecil croons, all but giggling behind the steeple of his slender fingers. "Just look at what has risen!"
"What are you…? Oh…"
Bewildered, the scientist allows his gaze to follow his host's: outward and down, beside the saucer and next to the Magician. Or, rather, close to the Magician. The second card, despite Carlos' certainty that he had not touched it, is now face-up and… floating. Hovering—yes, rising—, its paper edges buzzing with a suppressed, but vibrant energy. It might even be glowing a touch, as moons tend to do. Which stands to follow, as that is what it is.
The Moon.
Carlos gapes, open mouthed, while Cecil nonchalantly readjusts the vase atop their table. He fluffs the garlands of glycine twined decoratively around its base, and feathers out springy bunches of butter-yellow jonquil. In some distant, pollen-pocked part of the scientist's mind, the innocuous gesture sets off confused alarms. Because wait, hadn't there been…? Hadn't that vase held some other flower, just seconds before? He is quite positive it had. Even if he can't recall specifically what it might have been, he… Well. In the scientist's defense, it is difficult to focus on such mendacities when there appears to be an anti-gravity pocket somewhere in the vicinity of his dish. Curious, and not nearly as frightened as he probably should've been, Carlos extends a timid finger and pokes at the hanging card. It revolves at his insistence, but does nothing else.
"Sir, what on Earth…?"
"Cecil," the Marquis corrects gently. He is still smiling, despite the mild horror stealing across his companion's face. Or, feasibly, because of it. "Well, Carlos, I suppose we should not be overly surprised that your present is currently defined by confusion. This is a lot to take in, I imagine. But here is the good news: your intuition is waxing, even as your certainty wanes. Things might not be what they seem, but if you trust your instincts—even those you do not fully understand—you will make decisions that you are ultimately happy with."
Carlos mind skips from word to word like a stone over water: settling long enough to create ripples of thought, but knowing that if he lingers he will drown. What is this? What is this? 'Intuition?' 'Things not being what they seem?' Well, that much is clear— Carlos believes in the otherworldly, but only insofar that spooky anomalies can be explained by science. Yet this—this all seems more the result of absence. From a lack of science. There is no way a place this fanciful could actually exist outside of Wonderland and its nonexistent mathematics. And even if this stranger's smile is as wide and white and winding as a cat's, Carlos is confident that they had never left London. For goodness' sake, he can't remember taking a carriage elsewhere, much less tumbling through a rabbit hole. Nor does he recall strolling somewhere new. Or…
…or…
The scientist's brow furrows deeply, tansies pinwheeling behind his narrowing eyes. He processes and catalogues, compiles and extrapolates and yes— his postulation holds. It's true. He cannot remember anything after Cecil's fall. Had he suffered brain damage…? Had he been knocked out and subsequently transferred? Or…?
Or…
"…we never left," Carlos mutters, realization dawning in much the same manner as the morning sun: weakly at first, unnaturally insipid, but quick to grow strong on tendrils of clarity and brilliance. His head lifts, glasses fogged from the rosemary mist wafting from his drink. The smog of it clouds his vision in a temporary haze; the face across from him is blurred. Humanoid. Twinkling. Something round is twinkling— a violet star set within the camber of his throat. It is… It is there— then it is gone. There, then gone. It is all gone, all settled down: the mist, the moon. The latter rests, tucked between Carlos' past and his unspecified future, covered in a meshwork of weeds. The lengthening expanse between the scientist and the Marquis is a scattered, lacy mess of sweet alyssum and tarragon florets.
"We never left," Carlos repeats, sonorous with conviction. It makes no sense, yet that somehow brands it the obvious truth. Impossible, but undeniable. At least, Cecil makes no move to deny it. "We're… we two are still on the road, aren't we?" he presses, the burr of accusation in his voice almost tangible. Or— or perhaps there's no "almost" about it. Perhaps it is tangible, incarnated in the spiny clotburs that now garnish Cecil's spongecake. Their sudden appearance does not seem to faze him—not like Carlos, who jumps as they pop into being. Instead, with supple, sinuous fingers, the Marquis plucks the oblong burrs from whipped puffs of icing and clucks a wry chuckle.
"How is that rude?" he questions then, as if that were the most natural response to the scientist's accusation. It isn't, of course. Or maybe it is. Carlos knows little of social niceties, never having seen a reason to store such inane factoids in his brain, but he has suffered enough women in his life to recognize some degree of meaning in flowers. They have a language all their own, his mother had told him mysteriously, trying to entice him into more socially acceptable hobbies. Like microbes and compounds. Hers was a valiant effort. Still, as with dance and calligraphy, Carlos cultivated no interest for it. It was just as well; her comparison had been erroneous. After all, unlike science, the language of flowers is an arbitrary human invention, lacking any sort of logically dictated rhyme or reason. Of all the ways to communicate, it is the most foolish.
"Ah. As opposed to the mortal tongue?" the other interjects, with the sickle slyness of one harvesting hypocrisy. "With its countless nuances and emotive irrationalities?" Behind the bridge of his hands, Cecil's smirk is dangerously sharp. Much like his mind, apparently, for he makes a good point.
But no. No, that's not the point.
"Wait, how did you know what I was—?"
The Marquis shakes his head.
"Language is important in all of its forms," he says with import and a rustle of nightshade. Nightshade. With great force of will, Carlos concentrates… and if he concentrates, he can make his mind acknowledge the fact that the vibrant blooms were not there mere moments ago—that they had simply burst into being in the season of space between instants. But the surprise of this realization wavers his attention; the knowledge siphons through the holes in his understanding like sand and seeds. He is left with a ringing emptiness where understanding should be. It itches at him, unfamiliar. Void-like. He tries to fill the gaps by scrutinizing the violet petals as they curdle into belldrops, chiming delicately from bunches wound 'round Cecil's slender neck. They quiver as he rhapsodizes. Carlos does the same. "The combination of guttural sounds, the grotesque contortions of the body… Even something as ephemeral as a single flower blossom can convey so much, my friend, if one knows what to listen for. Without these means by which to communicate our deepest, most terrible truths, how would we ever understand each other? And it is so very imperative that we understand each other, dear Carlos."
It sounds like a threat. It is not a threat. It hardly matters either way, because Carlos is entirely out of his depth, and thus unable to be of much use to anyone. Himself included, unfortunately. He simply doesn't understand—doesn't understand anything at all. Nothing, sans the fact that he is here, but also not here, with no memory of how he came to be here. And yet, the Marquis somehow expects…
"…pray," the scientist manages weakly, "what is it that you need me to understand, exactly?"
Cecil blinks. The nightshade has been replaced by a rumpled spring of garden anemone. Carlos wonders madly if the stalk itself had morphed, or if one bloom had simply swallowed the other, cannibalistic. But then the other speaks, and renders all else meaningless.
"Did I not just say?" he murmurs, as if a touch bemused by his companion's stubborn insistence on accepting the situation piecemeal. "I need you to understand me."
"I… what?"
"Listen closely."
The Marquis stands. Carlos can hear a rubbery snap of vines as he does so; dead leaves rasp plaintively against the wooden slats of the floor as he takes a dainty step. With a clawing pang of panic, it strikes Carlos that Cecil might be intending to leave, but no—there is nowhere to go. Quite literally. For the first time, the scientist notices that there is a prominent perimeter around their ethereal picnic: once the gazebo ends, so does everything else.
Everything. There is only whiteness beyond the rails. Thick, glutinous whiteness, calm with latent potential and fields of artemisia. It presses against them like a wall. And hung upon that sturdy barrier, interspersed in measured segments, hovers a halo of familiar cards. Like a fairy ring, or a fence, or a pentagram… The phantasmagoric backsides of the tarot deck calls to mind the stained glass of antiquated churches. He wonders if that is why he feels like he is being watched by a higher power.
Cecil takes another step. Then another. His heels echo, the reverberation hollow.
"Here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush," he gravely intones, the cadence of his voice setting a steady rhythm for his feet. Harebell and marigold sprout in his wake; helenium petals, jagged and orange, land in wet blemishes upon his silken shirt. His is a measured pace—a dragged elegance, like the march of a bride. Or a prisoner. "Here we go round the mulberry bush, so early in the morning."
As he passes, each card suspended in the monochrome air turns to see him off. The Devil. The Devil. The Devil. The Devil.
"Here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush."
The Marquis pauses. His footsteps die. He has traveled far, a wearying distance—half the world away from home, just to visit Carlos. The hemisphere he's traversed in lush and green; his future path is as barren as a desert. The scientist jumps to the baseless conclusion that its foliage has already been plucked. But baseless or no, when he whirls to face his host, it is to find them separated still: their bodies held apart by the opulent weeping of an extended bouquet. Feathery plumes of bleeding amaranthus; cosmic starbursts of snowy hemlock; waxen spirals of perfumed jasmine; fragrant columns of mignonette, their ambrosial scent tickling some incorporeal part of Carlos… Teasing him with something like a memory.
Cecil beams. His eyes and lips have closed tight. Red salvia thrums in the veins of his throat. The song continues.
"Around my own black mulberry bush, so early in the morning."
He understands. Not the song, nor the flowers, but… But he grasps the truth of it, all the same.
"…you're trapped," Carlos whispers, disbelieving, as the realization takes root in the fertile dark of his brain. The Marquis says nothing, and in so doing tells him so much. Possibly too much. Something thrashes behind the pool of Cecil's watery eyes, deep and dark and far below the surface. The scientist's breath hitches, and The Moon begins to gleam. He knows. "You're trapped here. And you—you expect me to free you. Somehow. But why? Why me?" he demands, the words stretched thin and starting to crack beneath the lingering weight of incredulity. Carlos' bewilderment is nearly palpable, looming between them like a monster of his own.
The other monster does not reply. Instead, he pushes something into his companion's frantic hands. The flowers, Carlos supposes, though that is not their form anymore. Instead, they have become his Future. The third card—the one that had been on the table. The one he had not flipped. He does not flip it now, either, yet it refuses to be unseen. It waits until he blinks, and then—
Cecil, laughing. Cecil, crying. Cecil, writhing— in pain or in pleasure— his slender fingers clawing frantically at fistfuls of sullied sheets. His bare back glistens beneath a sheen of glassy sweat; in the rosy light of a candle, the labyrinthine mess of cuneiform prophesies and dark spells that have been carved into his exposed flesh appear to undulate in kind, the twined patterns both possessive and permanent. He can taste saline on his tongue, hear wanton moans in the deepest chambers of his ear. Feel—poignantly, deeply— a parasitic, rotting fear, skittering around the Marquis' heart like a millipede.
He is afraid he is a butterfly: swathed in magnificence and beauty, but hideous beneath.
Carlos opens his eyes. He is tucked against the table, his Reading neatly spread before him. The Magician, The Moon, and The— He flushes, looking away. Looking up. Cecil is watching, patient, from his gilded throne across the way, legs crossed at the knee and a teacup held aloft.
"…I'll ask again," the scientist growls, the words graveled and catching on snakesfoot. The opal-hued tendrils of the downy blossoms shudder in tantalizing horror, even as Carlos forces himself to meet his host's eerie gaze. "Have you the Sight?"
Cecil indulges in a drawled laugh. It is not unkind, but it is deep. Deep and soft and terrifying. In near-physical waves, the sound of it reaches across the gazebo, meandering around sweets and saucers. It is reaching for him. It is straining for him, wraithlike, from the ruddy bud of the Marquis' pretty mouth, scrabbling towards Carlos with the same flexing tenderness as the stamen of a hand flower. "No," he then vows, the retort so sinfully low that it makes Carlos think of Hell. The Devil. "The Sight is another's burden. I have the Voice."
It is as much a question as it is an answer.
Bindweed, burdock, belvedere — the field of his thoughts contradicts and compliments, a thorny tangle of hypotheses and theories and bursting blossoms and unfurling leaflets all growing at impossible speeds. The snarling stems hiss, deafening, in their mad rush to reach the sky. The painted ceiling groans in oaken voices, wood straining beneath the insistent push of vegetation.
"'The Voice'?" Carlos parrots, tone fragmented by varying degrees of suspicion. "The voice of what? Of who?"
Cecil beams, cheeks pink with rhododendron and oleander. A gossamer grove of milkvetch winds demurely from his fingertips, crawling across the tabletop. Its tiny petals, overstretched like clover, bend backwards in their hunt for Carlos. The scientist shies away from their wistful reach, fascinated and horrified. Enraptured and repulsed. Coltsfoot rises from patches of blinding darkness, round and bright as impressionistic suns. The tarot cards are smoldering. The ceiling creaks. The ceiling cries.
"…you aren't the Marquis."
The ceiling gives.
'Dear God!'
The garden of Carlos' thoughts and fears escape into the ether, flooding the enclosure with a light so blinding it leaves everything else dim. It invades, that light— fills and chills the gazebo, and makes his head pound. 'Goodness me,' the ache echoes, with a touch of pressure behind his eyes. 'Oh goodness, sir! Sir—!' The throb of it escalates, like everything else; the scientist presses a palm to his forehead, still glaring down the creature across from him. He does nothing but stare back. Stare and grin, the corners of his lips creeping like alehoof. The curves of that leer coil and contort, slink and slither, until the expression has wrapped 'round the other's face, and throat, and chest…
Carlos' legs are shaking. His voice is shaking. The world is shaking.
"What are you?" he begs, barely able to hear himself over the unrelenting noise in his head. 'Can you hear me? Need you a hospital?' "What are you?"
Vines are braiding through the trellis of Cecil's tresses, blooming brightly against the pale sheet of his hair. Beneath the talons of their thorns, his skins sloughs in clumps like dirt. Rooty veins snap audibly, but the creature shows no fear. The sweep of his smile cracks his jaw in two as mud oozes from the sockets of his eyes—sand susurrating down exposed tubes of bone. He is unfinished leather, larva, and topsoil. A butterfly perches upon the exposed fossil of his chin, and spreads its wings in a smirk.
"I suppose you'll just have to wake up and find out."
'My good fellow, please! Are you all right?'
The roof is in tatters; the blackness bleeds upward. Gradient, straining, stringy— Carlos feels as if he is sinking in mire. Or drowning in wet earth. Or being bound in silken strictures, entombed within his own cocoon. Claustrophobia binds in kind, like a shadowy heath; he gives a desperate shout as he is swallowed by his own consciousness.
"Marquis…! Sir!"
Something chortles, ancient and powerful. He doesn't remember what it is. The dream is slipping, trickling through his fingers. There is concrete beneath his fingers. Beneath his hammering head. A warm weight presses atop his hips, unfamiliar hands flittering like butterflies between his temple and his shoulder.
"Sir…?"
He is opening his eyes.
"Please," a Voice returns, unseen within the Void. "'Cecil' will do."
XXX
From languageofflowers:
Amaranthus: Hopelessness, or hopeless love; self-sacrifice
Artemisia: Absence
Begonia: Deep thoughts
Belvedere: "I declare war against you"
Bindweed: Great inspiration
Blooddrops (Adonis): Sorrowful remembrance
Burdock: "Touch me not"
Butterfly weed: "Let me go"
Clotbur: Rudeness
Clover: Be mine
Coltsfoot: "Justice shall be done to you"
Columbine (red): Anxious and trembling
Garden anemone: Forsaken
Geranium (lemon scented): Unexpected meeting
Glycine: "Your friendship is agreeable and pleasing to me"
Sweet alyssum: Worthy beyond beauty
Hand flower tree: Warning
Harebell: Submission, grief
Heath: Solitude
Helenium: Tears
Hemlock: "You will be my death"
Ivy: Fidelity; a symbol of eternal life
Jasmine: "I attach myself to you"
Jonquil: "I desire a return of affection"
Lilac (violet): Youthful innocence, confidence. First love
Marigold: Grief, despair
Mignonette: "Your qualities surpass your charm"
Milkvetch: "Your presence softens my pain"
Moonflower: Night, instability
Mulberry tree (black): "I shall not survive you"
Nightshade: Truth
Oleander: Beware
Ranunculus: "I am dazzled by your charms"
Red primrose: Unrecognized merit
Red salvia: Forever mine
Rhododendron: Danger, beware
Rosemary: Remembrance
Snakesfoot: Horror
Tansy: Hostile thoughts
Tarragon: Lasting interest