Lawrence
"Hmm, tremble in the eternal pits of fear? No, no, that one's already taken. Kneel before me? Nah, too cliché. Maybe something book related, a pun perhaps? My my, what to do..."
While Lawrence rarely acted up, he could sometimes say the strangest things. But even then, he was suddenly turned away from the three damsels, thinking with great focus while muttering what little he managed to scramble through his uninspired husk. Whatever he was thinking about had to be quite important, considering how intently he was taking his notes.
"Kh, I felt like throwing a cool one liner." His frail body trembled in disappointed, looking down in shame. Until he dramatically snapped his fingers, and a serpent large as a tree slithered out of the man's coat, like a misty fog that smelled of greenery and nature and life. With eyes like jewels, and scales that glimmered in the gentle candle light, it exhaled a pleasant aroma, and soon the table was adorned by fresh shrubbery, quickly growing berries and delectable fruits while trees sprouted freely.
Lawrence shook his head, smiling despite the timid act he put up earlier - if it was an act at all.
"Growing things is easy. Anyone with a mind to it could do it. But if you don't know how to tend to your creations, they'll just wither and fall. It's... difficult sometimes. Painful, when you try so hard - just to have forces beyond your control take it all away..." He grabbed an apple his dearest serpentine friend created, and toyed with it freely before taking a healthy bite.
"Its why I try to understand our headmaster. Pests and weeds can be problematic." He gave lady Fu Hua a glance and shook his head bitterly. "But in my humbly worthless opinion, I'd rather accept it. Whether its animosity, love, friendship - they're all welcome compared to silence. When you're stuck alone in the dark pits of regret, even the venom spats between enemies become cherished memories. The agony of being trapped in a dark place, unable to escape your own toughts... to be frank, I'm still not sure if I made it out myself... haha."
His black eyes looked... hollowed. Even now.
"You're all real, right?"
The snake and the bird just happened to be there, but unlike the usually chipper times... they were oddly silent.
Kore "For my sins, yes," Kore says, and she can't stop her lips from quirking up in an ironic smile.
"And believe me, I understand completely. When the world is empty but for you and your thoughts..."
Was it that she went mad and returned to sanity? Or maybe she could not go insane in the first place.
Or, just maybe, she was insane from the beginning.
She had destroyed everything after all, even though her family was meant to preserve everything.
Hours watering a patch of sparse dirt, more dust than earth, hoping to see a sprout, any day now, any day. She had cried when she had seen the first hint of green push out.
Pouring through books on horticulture, farming - she had picked them up half on a whim, half to have something to talk about, with a certain sense of smug amusement, and blessed herself later as the garden had grown around her, a little patch of life in a dead land.
And talking aloud - not to herself, not to the plants, but just to hear a sound-
"I understand completely." She says again, quiet and intent, staring past Lawrence.
