An arcane circle flickers to life beneath Purity as the Ravenghast tilts its head back, hungrily swallowing the pearl whole.
And then it paused.
Strange. Strange.
What an odd little pearl. It did not taste alive. The memories from it were veiled and indubitably muted. As if the world viewed through it had been a hazy watercolor illusion, one that was diluted and yet another shade lighter. It began with no childhood and ended with no discernable conclusion before finding its way here.
A strange pastel thing.
It held very little in substance, but every so often there was a memory of a soul that did not belong to it. The irregularity was melded between the nacre layers like an irritable little grain of sand. Was it one of the many souls that the Chalice had once consumed, perhaps?
Nevertheless, the price was paid. And now one was owed.
Born of dream shards with a smattering of soul, they were closer to shadows than they were the living. A hazy outline cast from the light. Without meaning--without purpose. Desperately trapping souls in a lidded teapot only to have it gradually poured from one's spout and left vacant once more. Over and over this process seemed to begin anew, drinking but always thirsty.
With its blackened touch, the raven-thing wove a rather creative solution into the Chalice. It was not a soul, but akin to a spider's web. One that no one could see. And at the center of this black little web was a tiny grain of nacre-sand, the smallest shard of a soul used as its budding seed. It sat there like a spindly, hungry widow waiting to be fed.
It would be simple enough to bestow a stolen essence, but could one really call that their own? A secondhand thing. Tattered and worn with memories that could never be theirs? What a terribly depressing thought, and untrue to sincerity of a wish.
What it gave--was the means to grow a soul of its own. It gave the Chalice the freedom to make of its own design. To choose the souls of its liking and wrap stolen pieces of them around that little grain, over and over like layering a pearl anew. Trapping them in the black web within its being until it was both sizable and whole, polished and ebon. A thing it could truly call its own. A thing it could make with what it liked--once it grew enough to know what it liked at all, of course.
She already had the means to "collect" after all. Why not put it to good use?
Until then, there is always time to sit down, and brew a nice cup of tea.
...and the pact has been sealed (a known contractor has been added to the registry!).
Purity
@
EclipseMirror
