how time twines around your neck; any

[Elektrum]

The way the snow looks against the black sky reminds him of the galaxies he’s left; little planets, little stars, specks of nothing consequential lost in a sea of never ending nothingness. He would return to them, eventually, but Elektrum does not hurry for anything (or anyone, for that matter). Instead, he watches the snowflakes melt by the heat of his body; worlds devoured at his whim. He takes a moment (a moment only, nothing more) to wonder after the girls he’d shown the stars then stripped them bare of, and the end of his lips curl in a way that can’t resemble mental stability. 

He wonders if they’ve met their ends, yet.

Sometimes he showed them if he was feeling particularly spiteful; watch their bones as they’d blanche, and the earth, eventually, that swallowed what remained. They would call him a sociopath, but he knew that he was always a little too cruel for the insult to carry and weight. The last girl, a masochist of sorts, had loved him, craved him in a way he could never reciprocate. She wore her desperation like perfume; heavy. 

He isn’t kind, and time has done him no favours. Each day has brought him further and further away from reality, inflated his mind with a lethal combination of knowledge and half-truths. Today, he flickers into existence along the edges of the meadow where the snow falls heavy and sticks to his dark eyelashes and coats the bend of his back in a matter of seconds. In general, he avoided this world, where its patrons insisted on monopolizing his time and stealing pieces of him like vultures stripped away the flesh from bone - but he’s grown bored again, of shifting space and time, moulding it like putty into the shapes of his choosing. 

Today, he seeks adventure.
Today, he seeks a game.

ELEKTRUM

how time twines around your neck,

[Lepis]

The odd colored feathers at the crook of my right wing refuse to settle smoothly against their golden counterparts regardless of how often I twitch the muscles beneath. It is a distraction that I do not appreciate, not when I am doing my best to keep watch around me. It is difficult to settle anymore, to truly relax. It is all but impossible to do in the meadow and so I do not even try. Instead, I watch the creatures around me, trace their paths through the muddy snow, speculate as to their destinations.

I had honed my imagination in childhood, when my only companions were my mother and uncle and those fit to meet an impossibly young queen. I run my blue-grey gaze across the countless strangers – a mahogany bay, a painfully lemon pony, a champagne with a silver mane – but none catch my interest for very long. Yet despite my lack of social interaction in this most social of places, I make no move to leave. My twitching wings settle at my sides, held high to better cover the plethora of scars across my neck and back. My blue-to-white mane is long, painstakingly maintained and my single vanity. It covers the scarring across my withers and shoulders, and I am grateful that time has begun to lessen the redness of them, allowing them to blend more easily into my dun coat.

Time continues to tick on, and I do nothing more than turn my head now and again to better see something every now and again. I begin to grow bored, and there is an uncomfortably numb sensation beginning to build in my left hind leg. Rather than torment myself, I engage my neighbor in brief conversation, discovering that the mulberry roan is here to get a little time away from her herd. Her life sounds intriguing, but I can only tolerate her nasally voice for a few moments before I disengage from the conversation and head for a less populous area of the meadow.

A bitter gust of wind blows past, and I glance to the clouds overhead. They look heavy with rain, and I remember the brewing storm that I had seen on my journey here. It is coming sooner than I’d thought; perhaps I should seek shelter. I can’t quite make up my mind, and I pause, one navy hoof half-lifted as the thunder crashes overhead.

@[Elektrum]

[Elektrum]

He isn’t left waiting long.

In fact, he’s still imagining worlds disintegrating by the heat of his back, his great head curved aslant his shoulders, when he sees her. She doesn’t resemble his usual archetype. She isn’t beautiful, at least, she isn’t anymore; a thousand scars along the ridge of her spine and neck have muddied her (wrote out across her flesh an obvious ruin). Regardless, something about her calls out to him.

It is, perhaps, her general disinterest in the others in their vicinity (or more pointedly, him, because he is as conceited and presumptuous as he is cruel), or perhaps her apprehension and the feeling of concern that settled across her body as plainly as the snow. The agitation festering like a forgotten wound under her skin is clear even through the space between them - the way her muscles pull again and again, the way she faces head-on and never leaves her back unguarded. He’s seen a victim often enough to recognize one.

He doesn’t realize that this is the characteristic that draws him to her, that his own childish obsessions and desires have peaked this particular interest. He doesn’t recognize the heaviness in the back of his chest, buried deep behind his ribs, as pity.

Too self-indulgent to be perceptive, he is also blissfully unaware of the storm overhead until the smell of ozone in the air becomes palpable. Even then, when he draws a breath and lets the clean, crisp air fill him, thoughts of shelter are admittedly not the first to reach him. With glassy eyes he thinks briefly of Her, of Cordis. He thinks about the way the lightning wrapped around her body, as tight and as suffocating as her agony was. Now, years later, he finds some comfort in the irony of it - how lightning could split the sky into halves just like it split his world.

He breathes a quiet sigh, lets Her go, and rejoins his game.

Now, he could walk to her, but Elektrum has never been the type to hide his obvious talents. Instead, he travels through time and space in fractions of seconds all in order to place himself directly in her path just as the thunder claps.

“You look like you’ve made a mistake, or two,” he says, casually in his mind if not a little arrogantly in reality (a byproduct, no doubt, of his upbringing).

“Want to run away for a little while?”

He doesn’t know yet what he wants her for - if he would show her stars, or bones, or both.

ELEKTRUM

how time twines around your neck,

@Lepis

[Lepis]

I project an appearance that is nothing like me: hard and wary. He had seen me in a moment of weakness earlier, when the shield was down, but I've no intention of dropping it again. I am obviously spooked by his appearance I recover quickly - leaning back but without giving ground. There's an irritated huff of hot air into the cold spring and my blue-grey eyes reeling in their rolling whites to become thin slits not much different in hue from the roiling clouds overhead.

Once, long ago, I had been pretty. Not especially so, nothing that does more than catch the eye for a moment or two. It had not lasted long, and now I am only striking - not quite conventionally attractive, but at least not unpleasant to look at. My face is made up of sharp planes and dark angles; someone had once described me as fierce, and I hold that word tightly, savoring it and using it for courage in situations such as this.

I don't speak, I know his type.

He doesn't disappoint, proudly quipping a witticism that makes light of my appearance. It isn't one I haven't heard before, but I pin my ears to the smooth navy mane regardless, clearly more than a little irritated. The offer that comes afterward does genuinely surprise me, and it shows in the flash of curiosity in my stormcloud eyes.

"Where?" I ask instead of snapping dull teeth at the audacity of his nearness. The way he'd appeared before me is disconcerting - is that how he intends to run away? I'm certainly doubtful of my ability to run much of anywhere once this storm comes down, and I'm certainly not going to fly. It's either get drenched and freeze the night away, all alone in the meadow or go with this stranger.

My appearance very much suggests I might be the type of suffer (these scars are not those of a warrior, but rather of an oft-broken kind), and it almost surprises myself when I say: "Yes. Wherever, that doesn't matter."

@[Elektrum]

[Elektrum]

She thinks she knows him, but she doesn’t.
She couldn’t possibly.

To know him would be to have seen the hazel growing aslant a meadow river, and the vivisection that ran the waters there red with blood. To know him would be to know the way his twin sister looked when he saw her for the last time that he dared to, bound and bled, smiling. If she knew him, then she would know the way his golden mother’s bones looked underwater, and how his silver mother bound herself with lightning; a cage of her own making. Instead, she knows what he allows her to see; someone petulant at times, arrogant and cruel at others - but always someone who doesn’t need anyone else.

So, when she asks him:
“Where?”

And then, just as quickly, says:
“Yes. Wherever, that doesn’t matter.”

He answers, “As you wish,”  with a steely smile that suggests she really ought to have specified. He could bring her somewhere terrible; unravel her again with her own history - peel back her flesh and learn what lies underneath. And going in he did consider it, but her willingness to participate in his schedule of events for the day has left him in a more generous mood. It’s the simplicity in the transaction that thrills him; the power behind gifting that which the giftee could not possibly hope to afford that sends the hot prickle of adrenaline barrelling down the ridges of his spine.

Luckily for her, he has decided to show her something beautiful. He doesn’t realize it’s because there is more to him than he would prefer to believe.

Because he would prefer to believe he didn’t linger on the lightning.
Or that he didn’t hear repeated a thousand times when he closed his eyes, the words: “Are you alone?”

And she won’t know this either, but when he moves to touch her (and he must, to travel in the way that he does) he is unconsciously careful to avoid her scars and so he swings his head forwards, slowly, and touches her chest with the end of his nose.  

Then everything disappears.

When the world comes together again it is not the same, in fact, it’s not the world they’ve left at all. One of his favourite haunts, the sky is lilac like the petals of wild waterleaf, and it melts into a haze of blush where wisps of feather-white clouds strain out all of the colour and pour them like paints into the rippled reflections of a glassy lake that seems in these moments more like a mirror. It’s midnight, and behind them a curling mountain peak reaches out into the sky and threatens to pull it down into everything else - until snow, and rock, and water, and the two of them, are all one thing. It’s beautiful, and a far cry from the meadow’s winter thunderstorm.

“That’s better,” he says, breaking their contact and sounding blasé enough despite the expression on his face that reads otherwise. These first moments were always his favourite, when their eyes grew wide with wonder, when they thought him a God. He doesn’t care that he tangles threads of time and space each time his heart hurts and he feels the need to forge facades of his own self-worth for the rest of the world. He doesn’t put that much thought into anything besides himself for long enough to notice.

“Now,” he says,
“Where were we?”

ELEKTRUM

how time twines around your neck,

@Lepis

[Lepis]

'As you wish', he says, and the universe sends a thrill dancing down to the very tips of my wings. His smile suggests that the thrill might have been a visceral reaction to danger, but I do not feel fearful as I raise my head out of his way. I had tamped down on that emotion entirely, drowned it in the excitement that instead floods in alongside the adrenaline.

For a space between heartbeats I am nothing at all.

I am still wrapped in that sensation when the world reforms around us. It is unsettling, but the nausea has faded as quickly as it roiled up, and I exhale the last breath of meadow I still hold in my lungs with something that's just short of a sigh.

My reaction will not disappoint him; I take in the scene with open wonder. Though I am not well traveled in the slightest, it is too obvious that this place is elsewhere. We aren't in Beqanna - or at least, not in the time that I know it. When he speaks I turn to look at him again, as startled by his neutral reaction to this sight around us as I am by the new world itself.

So when I find that his tone does not match his expression I find myself smiling back without thinking about it at all. I cannot even remember the last time I had done so, and it feels warm in my chest, where the winter never seems to leave.

"I think you were about to tell me who you are, and how we got here." I reply, and though my tone remains playful I cannot help but look back frequently at this strange midnight. "And I was about to tell you my name is Lepis."

@[Elektrum]

[Elektrum]

To her, it’s a utopia.
He had intended it more a prison, at least before.

This world is so still that you can hear the wind combing through the eyelets of the leaves. They are the only living beings here, at least today. The last time he had come he’d brought Atlantia, kept her for a time simply because he could. She had remained willingly, but it’s amazing what he could get others to do when they believed he was omnipotent. She was a beautiful companion, a pretty prize with striking features and wings that looked as though they were crafted from glass, but eventually he had even grown tired of her.

Now, he draws ripples in the water with his chin pretending not to notice Lepis smile, but her reaction is exactly what he’s hoped for and he’s been awaiting it with bated breath. She says her name is Lepis, and it means nothing to him. He could know her in an instant, read the entire history of her life in fractions of seconds - but where was the fun in that? He eyes her scars a second time and wonders if she’ll volunteer the story now.

But she only asks about him.

He doesn’t like to use his name if he can help it. It reminds him of them, of all the tragedy of their love that spilled over onto everyone else; dirtied them, ruined them like an oil spill - touching every single piece. Because he was not only built in their image (the perfect alchemy of their destruction), he was named for it, too. He lifts his head up from the water which drips dutifully from his chin.

For a moment the only sound that exists in this world is the sound of that water dripping back into the glassy lake while Elektrum determines how he can best evade the question.

“A god,” he drawls, and while his answer itself is delivered flippantly it isn’t out of the realm of possibility for his ego to think it. Because isn’t that right? He’s seen the stars, and existed in all the spaces between them. He’s known every edge of every plane of every world, and nothing was off limits. He made worlds out of nothing and the carbon on his breath, after all.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he asks her then, the ends of his lips pulling into a crooked smile.

“Or are you not impressed? Should I take you back to the meadow?”

ELEKTRUM

how time twines around your neck,

@Lepis

[Lepis]

I have always been fond of bodies of water, and the mirror-like expanse of this lake is no exception. My mother had always warned me about the open water and the dangers that lay in wait, but that had never been enough to stop me. I want to swim, but the stranger is close to the water and to enter would be to move closer.

I am not certain that I want to be closer to him.

But I am not really certain of anything anymore. This isn't a world I know, and I had barely known the one we'd left. Nothing is familiar, and so when I recognize humor in the stallion's voice I cling to that, because there is nothing I know better than emotion. He says he is a god, and rather than argue the point I instead ask a question.

"Should I bow?" My bright eyes are alight with humor, but I manage to keep an almost perfectly neutral expression. "Or are you the type of god that prefers groveling? I've never met a god before, so I'm not quite sure. Do forgive my manners." It is the answer that I would give to a god if I ever did meet one, polite and respectful, but there's none of that as I feel a smile break across my navy mouth

@[Elektrum]

[Elektrum]

“Should I bow?” She asks, and he is quick to consider it. The idea of anyone bending their head to him is thrilling, and it raises bumps of prickled skin along the length of his back.

“Or are you the type of god that prefers groveling? I’ve never met a god before, so I’m not quite sure. Do forgive my manners.”

He won’t admit it freely, but he was entirely wrong about her. She isn’t what he had intended to choose - she isn’t beautiful, and she isn’t vulnerable. The scars wrote out ruin across her flesh, but they don’t seem to hinder her. He hadn’t wanted this for today’s game, but nonetheless he grows increasingly intrigued.

“Don’t be juvenile,” he quips briskly, the lines of his face pulled tight for just a moment before giving way to a quirked brow and crooked grin. He is more playful today than he had expected to be. He eyes her scars again, briefly, in consideration. She’s surprising him.

Still she doesn’t volunteer her story, and while he grows increasingly impatient it isn’t showing. He can ooze charm if he wants too, and that’s exactly what he chooses to do in these moments. It’s easy to trust him when he chooses to be kind.

He’s guarded, certainly, but not threatening.
Arrogant, and at times cruel, but not wicked.

“All I ask is eternal worship.” He says.

He’s only half joking. It’s why he brings any of them anywhere, to bathe himself in the adoration and wonder that follows his impressive field trips. One in particular had clung to the idea of him, would have built him monuments if only she could have forged the appropriate metals. She was interesting for a time. Even with the wonder in her eyes here, he doesn’t think Lepis would build him anything.

“You can swim if you want,” he says, then, noting how her eyes drift here and there to the water. He wants to make her happy, likes it even, and beyond that enjoys doling out his permissions. It was as though she needed him then, like she depended on his say-so.

“I’m fairly confident that there’s nothing too prehistoric lurking below the surface.”
Because he was likely the biggest predator, of sorts at least, for miles.

ELEKTRUM

how time twines around your neck,

@Lepis

[Lepis]

'Don't be juvenile', says the eternal being, as though I would ever be anything other than that to something that has existed since before time. I'm not a child by mortal standards though, having passed my fifth birthday a few weeks ago. Still, I am not an old soul by any standards, and the grin on the stranger's face is encouraging. It is not often that I let my guard down, but I am considering it.

I realize that just as he tells me all he needs is eternal worship. I recognize the dizzying emotion, but rather than step away (figuratively and literally) I move closer...then past him, and into the mirror-like water. It ripples as I break the surface, spreading out from me in concentric circles that disappear into the midnight darkness.

As the last of his words fade into silence, I take a deep breath. This place is like nothing I know, and it is so perfectly quiet. If I close my eyes I can almost forget that there is anyone here but me. Almost.

The almost puts a faint smile on my navy mouth as I turn back toward the stallion. For a moment I meet his gaze squarely. His claim to godhood is unlikely, I know, but that does not make him any less likely to be omnipotent. There are powers wielded in Beqanna that would put many a deity to shame, and mine is among them. It is not high on the list to be certain, and it is nothing compared to this ability to move through universes, but its a power all the same.

One that I use mostly on myself, truth be told. Like when I flood the burn of fear with recklessness, so that I am bold enough to ask: "So what else can you do, god?" There is an irreverence in the way I say it, as though I am waiting for him to react and do not necessarily expect a positive response. Taunting, maybe. Teasing.