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how time twines around your neck; lepis - Elektrum - 11-14-2018 He has spent lifetimes watching it play out. Rewinding and replaying every moment in a constant loop. There she is again, nearly lost in torrents of whirling snowflakes that exist only to die by the heat of her skin as they settle on the planes of her body like they belong. He counts them sometimes, as they collect, when he has watched for the thousandth time and can’t think of anything better to recollect about those final unyielding seconds. There are as many of them as there are reasons she should hate him; a conclusion he has reached without a crippling remorse. Sometimes when he is watching he thinks of ways he could have won her. Most times, he thinks of the ways he can ruin her still — lets her rejection coat him, thick and black as tar, writhes in it until he suffocates, again and again and again. He drinks it down like poisoned wine, and when he is finished and his tongue is burning and his insides are festering, pours another glass. Perhaps it is his biggest flaw, the way his pride consumes him; how he fixates on any deemed assault to his own ego. It is of no surprise then, that he finds her. That he has been watching, licking his septic wounds from the purple-black shadows of all the worlds he knows without her. Waiting, biding his time as her sides grew round and ripe in the comfort of her newly found haven. He is ready now, his scabs freshly peeled with the knowledge of her latest lover, to rekindle their unequivocal passion as it were. “You’re not welcome here.” Oh, and he remembers how much she had meant it as a twisted smirk curls up the ends of his lips, and he appears at the edge of a wild stream. “Try and stop me.” He says it aloud, to the trees perhaps, because there is no one to hear him. Yet. @[Lepis] :| Oops. RE: how time twines around your neck; lepis - Lepis - 11-20-2018 There is still a smile on my face as I crest the green hill, remembering the sound of Pteron's laughter as he tumbled over in the grass. The smile remains even when I see the stallion, but it grows still, as immobile as the sudden marble of my muscle. How is he here? Why? At my side, the boy disappears, and one stormy grey eye watches the grass fold down in a colt shaped indent. It was his instinct as much as fawn's is to lie still, I have found, and I have never been more grateful for it as I sidestep a conveniently placed boulder and continue forward toward him. "This still counts as Loess." I tell him, knowing that it really doesn't, not without the formalities, but betting on the fact that he does not know this. Gods do not have time for such petty mortal things like alliances and treaties and oaths of loyalty. Or so I hope. "Why. Why..." Words fail me for a moment, an uncommon occurrence, and it takes each bit of strength in my still round figure to keep from looking at the hill where I know my young son is hiding. "Why are you here? Go somewhere else. Surely there's a world with no plague." @[Elektrum] you can take that to the bank :| RE: how time twines around your neck; lepis - Elektrum - 11-22-2018 She comes just as he knew she would. The sight of her cresting the hill beyond the stream is one he finds familiar, as though he’s already been here, done this before (and, perhaps, in another timeline he has — he has found it difficult to keep track lately). The vague curiosity that he harbors regarding this particular circumstance, however, is fleeting. There’s a smile on her face that reminds him of sunlight, but somehow makes him feel darker for having seen it here and the weight of that emotion alone is enough to draw him from whatever introspection he had been lost in. There’s something else, too. A child — plastered to her side until it isn’t, until it vanishes. Instantly he can feel the hot prickle of betrayal surge beneath his skin. A god, he will wonder, not seeing the trails in the grass and thinking perhaps it is his own creation that she has kept from him. As she moves towards him, alone now, he is watching the smile die on her lips and is grateful for it. He will be the one to do the wounding here. “This still counts as Loess,” she says, near enough for him to smell the sweat on her skin that tangles in the air with something more fragrant, honeysuckle maybe. She doesn’t acknowledge the smaller being that she had been with, and he settles back onto his heels and for a moment is quiet. He’ll let her pretend she has come alone. For now. “Lepis,” he addresses her, the dark smile growing larger on his lips. His eyes flash in a dangerous way, like he knows how this interaction ends. Maybe he does. “You must mistake me for someone who kneels to you.” The sentence is telling enough. Before he had been polite enough to leave her past alone, but since the meadow, since their rendezvous in the stars he had grown increasingly less patient. He’d played the reels and seen it all. Here before him she is naked, her truth laid bare. “And while you do leave me trembling, I can confidently assure you it’s not in fear.” That much is true, at least, though he can’t decide if the tension wringing through his body is erotic or simply wrathful in nature. Before this encounter there had been moments where he had wondered if he would regret become this, whatever this is. Quicker than he’d known himself, however, he had been placated by the notion that he could erase and abandon what he did not like. The moral dilemma became somewhat ambivalent and convoluted, and he had found himself leaning into the chaos instead of away from it. He has always found the lines somewhat blurry, anyways. “Why are you here? Go somewhere else. Surely there’s a world with no plague.” Of course he knows about the contagion. It had brought his meadow games to a screeching halt, replacing beautiful bodies with xylophone ribs and sharp, jutting hips. Too self-involved to have such catastrophe fall across himself he had abandoned his playing field in search of new entertainment, and Lepis had been a fresh wound for him. Unluckily for her, he’s not one who grows tired of a sport quickly. After all, he’d held Atlantia for years in a beautiful cell of his own creation. Had he let her free when he’d grown bored? He doesn’t remember, and again, the guilt does not cripple him. There is a moment after she speaks where he thinks to lie and tell her he must stay, that his magic is drained, and force her to accept him into her world for as long as the plague gives him reasonable excuse to. The idea is quelled quickly, however, when he realizes the lie itself would mean admitting a weakness and that alone is something he finds himself unable to compromise on. He is a god, after all, omnipotent and unstoppable. “Thousands of them, millions to be sure. I could show you.” There’s a second, dangerous flash of his eyes. He braces himself for the venom to follow in her words. Her answer won’t wound him this time, barbed and prickly as he is in this moment. The moment he comes to collect what is his. @[Lepis] RE: how time twines around your neck; lepis - Lepis - 11-24-2018 There is a flush of fear, cold and familiar, at the sound of my name on his lips. I have known, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I would have to face him again. Foolishly, I had thought it would be years from now. I had let myself believe that a god had better things to do than bother with someone like me. He had gotten what he wanted of me and I had done my best to remain unmemorable. Surely he’d had a thousand mares in the time since. ‘you must mustake me for someone who kneels to you’, he says No one kneels to me, I think. Not here. Not anymore. Here I am no one; here I live a paused life. My time in the brilliant pampas has thus far been like some sort of dream. Spring is warm and grazing is plentiful; there are no dangers. I know the world spins on outside this little herd land that Noah possesses, but I have thought little of it since my arrival. The arrival of the golden stallion and his harsh words is an abrupt shock, one that I still struggle to process even after he finishes speaking. The danger in his eyes dulls my tongue and amplifies the thunder of my heart. It would be easiest to become docile. I am more likely to survive if I give him what he wants. These are rules that I had nearly forgotten, awareness that comes along with a twinge of phantom pain in my once-broken wing. But there is a stronger ache, one that is far more real, one that reminds me there is a little boy not terribly far away, and that I cannot leave him. It reminds me that I have priorities beyond my own survival. “Go find one then.” I reply, my reply firm but without venom. I am doubtful (exceedingly so) that this tactic might work, and so I reach for the threads of emotion that bind my magic. It has been some time since I used them. I’d had no need to, not when happiness was the only thing I felt and there was no sadness or fear to cover up. No fear until now, anyway. I’m not sure how effective I might be against something omnipotent, but I am willing to try. RE: how time twines around your neck; lepis - Elektrum - 12-10-2018 elektrum how time twines around your neck @[Lepis] RE: how time twines around your neck; lepis - Lepis - 12-26-2018 I wait, with only the thud of my heart to remind me that an eternity is not passing as I do. I grasp the thread of my magic tighter, weaving a thousand simple strands into a barrier, donning them in a cloak I have not worn since I fled Sylva. In the woods, I had never taken it off: always defensive, always on edge, always waiting. It feels foreign in this paradise of a land, but as I feel it settle around me it is with a still-familiar weight, a reminder of how freeing it is to feel nothing at all. My emotion is on the outside and my mind is clear, so when Elektrum refuses with a single word I am more than prepared. I expect an attack from the set of his pinned ears, the darkness in his eyes, and the tension in my wings loosens without conscious thought: ready to flare or flee or fight. And then he is gone. “Wha…” The word isn’t fully formed before he is back, moved behind me in an impossible way that might have surprised me more a month ago. (These days I have an invisible son, and turning toward wherever he reappears have become second nature). He’s visible only with the edge of my wide vision, but the heat of his breath is enough to pinpoint his location. Enough to give me a target. The kick isn’t especially powerful – I have little range to draw back – but my hoof is not the only thing I send toward him. The same heady mix of fear and panic that I’ve drawn from within me sails toward him as well, as intangible as his thousand worlds. With my feet under me again I spin to face him, wings half-flared and my ears lost in the frosted tangle of my blue mane. “Go Away!” I repeat, the meekness of our first meeting replaced with the calm of pseudo-sociopathy. ooc: okay this was terrible and i’m sorry D: @[Elektrum] @[Wolfbane] RE: how time twines around your neck; lepis - Wolfbane - 12-27-2018 My dreams have all come true Like all good nightmares do @[Lepis] @[Elektrum] Novel for you both lol |