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]
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]