i'll use you as a warning sign - Isobell

[Ivar]

I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take Ivar cannot think of a single time when then mare in front of him has been anything less than intriguing. Not always interesting in the same ways, of course. First she had been a friend, and then a younger sister – protected and cherished. She was the crown princess of Nerine as well, a position which he owes familial loyalty. That had all seemed simple enough when they were children, but the innocence has long since left them. This last year she’d become a woman; a pewter-eyed beauty that stole the breath from his lungs and infuriatingly had refused to put it back. Their time below the waves had been paradise, and their time on land was meant to be a temporary thing. He has waited for her to say her goodbyes to Nerine, and to come seek him out. He has busied himself by gathering a little herd of bright eyed mares that enjoy his company, amusing ways to pass the time while he waits for Isobell. It was only as he realized that his herd had grown rather large that he simultaneously understood just how long Isobell has kept him waiting. And for this? For a crown? Surely she’d forsaken that beneath the water, surely she’d understood what she was giving up. Yet this is more important, her responsibility to a herd of land bound old women. She is never anything less than intriguing, but she is frustrating most of all. This close, Ivar can see the sleek scales along her skin, the perfection of her dark face and the way she watches him. She is kelpie and she is his. Yet she stands before him slim and lovely; another failed broodmare. “Step being so petty,” he retorts, but it is without venom. His dark gaze is tracing the scar on her shoulder, the undeniable mark Ivar had given her when he’d drowned her beneath the waves. Ivar does not hesitate the way Isobell does; he is reaching for her as soon as she is close. He presses his chest against her shoulder, wrapping his neck around hers in a warm embrace. Her sleek scales click delightfully against his own, and Ivar nips playfully at the dark curve of her jaw. “If Nerine can be more important” (he parrots back her words with eerie perfection) “to you, why can’t I have more important things of my own?” kelpie mimicry | dragon scales | tactile hypnosis minimal grullo tobiano king of loess