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  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    i've never fallen from quite this high; Reia
    #1
    finger trips across my cheek----------------
    ----------------kiss me until i can't speak


    Travel to Loess has become more complicated in the last six months.

    Before, Pteron had moved freely between the two lands: a soldier with two homes. Now he is cautious, wary, as likely to be invisible as not. He still patrols the Loessian border, but it is in the dark of night when the residents are asleep; daylight is for Taiga. This furtive plan has been, for the most part, effective. There are times he has slipped up, of course, when he has been found out and hunted down. Reia seems to have some sort of supernatural ability to track him down, and the burn he’d received for trying to go invisible the first time she’d caught him has taught him the error of his ways.

    Now, when he catches the smoke-sweet smell of the golden mare, he knows to stay still. There is no use in running, not from a dragon.

    Pteron is walking a narrow trail when he catches the scent, penned in on either side by tall standstone bluffs. She’s probably been waiting for him, the pegasus realizes; he’s let his patrol become too routine. Backing up is not an option. She would know that he was trying to avoid her, and she is never pleased with that. The ghost of the burn on his shoulder – and the bite on his neck and the scrape on his jaw – twinges, and he resumes his walk, knowing she is ahead.

    The moonlight, blocked by the high stone around Pteron, shines down as he rounds a bend in the cliff, illuminating the woman that waits for him. She is as beautiful as a wildfire, and he is just as reluctant to touch her. It seems counterintuitive, that the closer they are the less likely he is to be burned, but Reia has made her demands clear. Pteron had told her ‘never again’ that night in the Taigan woods, and she has made him a liar at nearly every encounter since. The dragoness has a plethora of weapons to use against him and no hesitance in doing so. Threats of violence, actual violence, reminders of the obeisance he owes her as Princess, the flick of her tail beneath his chin as she twines against him; she uses these and many more, and the months have worn him down.

    It has been at least two months since she’d last found him, and there is something different. Pteron cannot lay a hoof on it, yet as he comes closer, a black dread rises in his chest.

    He had been too polite (too frightened?) to mention her winter weight gain at their last encounter. If anyone would be vain about their appearance it would be Reia, and he has no desire to add to the scars she has already given him. So he’d said nothing, and been grateful when she let him leave after a shorter rendezvous than she usually demanded. But that…that is not winter weight.

    “Is that mine?” He asks from a few yards away, his olive eyes fixed firmly on Reia’s pregnant belly. Pteron can already feel the iron bars closing around him, the shackles of responsibility somehow heavier even than those of being dragon-claimed. This is perhaps the very worst thing that he can imagine.

    @[Reia]

    -- pteron --

    #2

    no one really knows what the ocean hides
    but you and I, bird, we’re gonna find out

    It thrills her to make him into a liar, to mold him into something he never was.

    Pteron, such a kind boy. Bashful, handsome, polite. He is, and always has been, everything that she is not. While there is a wild beauty emanating from her, Reia’s feral and volatile personality destroyed what hopes father had to make her diplomatic. Set free into the world, she is as untamed as the fire crackling down her crest and tail.

    Pteron, such a kind boy. She, the tempestuous princess of Loess, has broken him.

    Indeed, his routine has etched itself into her memory. For weeks, she observed him from afar and permitted him the fleeting idea that she did not notice his coming and going. She fed him the lies that he was eluding her successfully when in fact she was helping build his foolish confidence until he would slip.

    And slip he does.

    A jagged, Cheshire grin stretches across her mouth as she stands and waits for him along the beaten path. From the shadows, she hunted him, pursued him until his direction became clear. With an air of smug success, she stands illuminated by the moonlight when his olive green eyes find her. The hesitance is all but spoken. It’s in the way his muscles flinch, how his ears swivel undecidedly, and how the shadows darken his face. ”Pteron,” she icily greets with a tilt of her head, watching him intensely when he finally agrees to come forward. There’s not a warm embrace or loving croon tethering their worlds together. What they have is a firestorm of ill passion and sinful lust. Patiently, Reia waits until he is a few yards away before taking a few steps toward him, her eyes flashing in the night. The eerie smile of a successful huntress flickers when she watches his eyes dreadfully creep down her body.

    Now, they both know.

    When he asks his question – she wonders if it was meant to be as snide as it sounded – Reia immediately snarls. ”Of course it is, you dummy,” but she wonders why she is already so large. Mother was never so heavily pregnant with Niklaus. The probability of twins never crosses her mind.

    A sigh of air is what gradually dissipates the aggressive furrow of her brow. The crackling fire plays with the chirping crickets as a backdrop to their conversation. ”I told you, Pteron. I – we – are yours,” there is a clawing satisfaction in her voice as it pierces through the sounds of nightfall to reach him. ”And now, you’ve become mine because of this.” Dead or alive, their worlds are finally woven together because of the miracle growing in her womb. 

    and I'll be next to you when the lights go out

    Reia



    @[Pteron]
    #3
    finger trips across my cheek----------------
    ----------------kiss me until i can't speak


    She says his name, and an icy finger slides down his spine. Pteron shivers; he hates the way his name sounds on her perfect golden lips. When he stops, she continues to come nearer. Too close for comfort, he thinks; on the other side of Beqanna would still be too close for comfort. It has not always been this way between them; Pteron had once considered her a friend. But then, the bright-eyed pegasus has considered everyone a friend – or at least a potential friend. It had been easy to overlook her cruelty, her possessive nature, her inexplicable rages. Children forgive easily, and a close friendship with the young princess of Loess was encouraged by every important adult in young Pteron’s life. So he considered her a friend, in the way that a burning flame might be a friend – safe, so long as it stayed within the walls of the lantern.

    But there are no walls that can contain dragonfire, and that Reia burnt them down should have come as no surprise. Should have, but Pteron is optimistic to a fault. And now, he is well and truly burnt.

    Of course it’s yours, Reia tells him, torching the potential escape that another father might have given him. It was too much to hope that there had been others for her, too much to hope that she might have snared another fool as easily as she has snared Pteron. The snarl makes him flinch, but he knows better than to pull away. Reia does not like when he pulls away.

    Instead he waits, praying that her anger will fade, praying for a miracle. Looking away from her is usually folly (she likes to strike when his attention is elsewhere) but he risks the fire and the teeth to look at the wide golden belly. Her scales are stretched wide across it already, shielding the unborn child. He imagines he sees a ripple just there, like something within her feels his scrutiny. His child, he thinks, his child and Reia’s. If ever there is a woman who should not be a mother, he thinks it might be the golden dragoness. A feral flame cannot raise a child. She’ll kill it, he thinks.

    He visibly blanches at the relief that idea elicits, disgusted by the fact he’d even consider it. He can’t let her kill it. It should not exist, but he cannot leave it alone in her care. She reminds him, satisfaction think in her honey-sweet voice, that it is his, that she is. And he knows it. When his olive gaze meet her gaze, there is acknowledgment there.

    This child is his responsibility, and its mother by extension. That is the world they have been raised in, where a child binds a man and woman in marriage as surely as an exchange of vows. And yet…

    Pteron’s head begins to shake, slowly at first, and then more firmly.

    “No.” He says, taking a step away. “No.” She’s scorched him for that simple word before, burnt the feathers from his wings and made him apologize for disobeying. But he says it anyway, because there are some things that are worth standing up for.

    “That might be our child,” he shouldn’t have said might be, Pteron realizes, but it is too late to change that now, “But I am not yours. There is no us. What we have – what we did – is nothing. Mistakes, things I regret. I do not love you.”

    @[Reia]

    -- pteron --

    #4

    no one really knows what the ocean hides
    but you and I, bird, we’re gonna find out

    Resistance.

    It screams in his every move, his every breath. It reminds her of a deer she once killed as it thrashed against her grip, refusing to give up on its life so easily. In the end, Reia won. She always wins.

    It comes to a sudden realization as to why her heart patters when his twists uncomfortably; he is prey, and she is the hunter. It’s an instinctual thrill that pours adrenaline through her veins. Greedily, she feeds off his leery manner and thrives on the way he looks at her and her expanding stomach. As desperate as she is to keep him close, to selfishly hold him, her expression never betrays her. Firelight ripples across her face, almost forebodingly, and maliciously glazes her pretty blue eyes for a fleeting moment. Eerily calm, she observes him and how he doesn’t reciprocate as she hoped.

    ”Pteron,” she says his name again, but this time sweeter as she edges too near for his comfort, breaking past his barrier just as she had in Taiga. ”Stop thinking it was a mistake. We were childhood friends. You’re the only one I’ve cared for,” how she manages to drip her voice in sweet nectar eludes even herself, ”It was only right. It was the next step.” But she assumes he will not so easily fall prey to this honeyed reassurance because his skin reeks of intimacy and sex, of someone else. Reia licks her lips, obscuring the possessive snarl that threatens to stretch dangerously across her mouth. Effectively masking it, her eyes look away.

    A slow, calculated breath.

    A deep sigh.

    When she looks at him, it is with renewed confidence even as she glazes over the idea of love; she doesn’t understand it, doesn’t claim to hold it in her heart for him. Nonetheless, ”You’re mine, Pteron. You did this to me. This is our child, together. Never, ever call it a mistake,” emotion shudders through the pitch of her raising voice before she forces herself to take another breath, choking down the smoke that wants to billow from her nostrils. ”Do not leave me alone with our child,” she doesn’t add how it may affect their families, their politics, their lives. Easily, she thinks, she could ruin him and destroy any happiness that he thinks he can seek elsewhere.

    Biting her lip, she inches another step closer. His body heat flares across her own and she briefly savors it as their eyes meet. ”Who are they?” Because there’s a stench of male and female clutched to his skin, because his heart reaches so casually to more than one. ”Tell me who they are.” The demand is bile on her tongue, bitterly spat at his feet. Part of her expects him to step away and to preserve their names, to leave her in the dark, but he would regret it.

    She would ensure his regret. 

    and I'll be next to you when the lights go out

    Reia



    @[Pteron]
    #5
    finger trips across my cheek----------------
    ----------------kiss me until i can't speak


    There is not an immediate eruption, not of words or teeth or fire. Rather than put him at ease, the stillness serves only to heighten her wariness. Reia is not a creature of long pauses. She has a temper as quick as her wit, and for her to not react is a bad sign – perhaps the very worst. Pteron’s breathing slows, each inhale increasingly likely to be his last, and then she finally moves.

    That is slow too, she slides forward like the honey that drips from her tongue. Sticky, he thinks, impossible to get out of his hair. Her words are as sweet as her touch, and Pteron is stiff beneath them. Reia is tenderizing the meat, he thinks, waiting for him to let his guard down so that she might strike just as he relaxes. This close, he can smell the ash of her, the heat that smells of blurred horizons and her burning skin. Her shoulder slides against his, and he swallows tightly. He is weak, he remembers, and it would be easy to give in, to give her what she wants. Take her back to Taiga, like her father had commanded. A cold slip of dread suddenly falls into his belly – is this why her presence in the woods had been a condition of his mother’s departure. Does Castile know that Pteron is responsible for his daughter’s widening belly?

    He must, Pteron imagines; and Reia’s demands have a sudden and unexpected weight to them. Do not leave me alone with our child, she tells him, and Pteron nearly protests. But that would be a foolish thing to do. He wouldn’t leave the child. No, he will take it instead, and leave Reia. He does not have any idea how to raise a baby, but he will figure it out. Even his bumbling efforts will be better than a life with Reia, and he is trying to formulate this into an argument that will leave him with all his body parts when she inches nearer. Every thought leaves him mind as she does.

    Who are they, she demands, just when Pteron is certain that there can be no worse turn to this conversation.

    He knows what will happen if he denies her, but better she rip him apart than touch a hair on that white head. 

    “No. What I do is none of your business.” That’s not enough, he thinks, she is a dragon with a bone; she will not let this drop. Not unless he gives her something else, something to distract her. For a moment he thinks of kissing her, of luring her to complacency in a manner that his saved his wings a time or too. But the idea of touching her makes him nauseous, and it would not even be enough. Not unless…

    Pteron reaches forward, stepping toward when she scoffs it him, and brushes his lips against her cheek. “They don’t really matter to you, do they?” he asks, moving forward to kiss the place beside her jaw that always makes her quiver. “Just like you don’t matter to them. You’re just a broodmare, after all, nothing important.” A last ditch effort, he knows, but perhaps if she expends her rage destroying him she will lose interest in pursuing them.
    @[Reia]

    -- pteron --

    #6

    no one really knows what the ocean hides
    but you and I, bird, we’re gonna find out

    All of this could be so easy, if only Pteron would accept what has become of them. With every fiber in his being, he resists what they are. It’s the hollowness of his eyes and the diversions he counters that indicate how little he truly cares for her (for their child). Fire flirts with the edges of her lips when her eyes level on him, searching desperately for the answers that he holds secret. Her body quivers as though from the cold, but it is her disappointment and suppressed anger that rattles through her core. Her eyes flash beneath the moonlight and the blue flames blaze to greater life, even if for a few seconds before dimming. She doesn’t want to be interrupted yet, not by father or anyone else.

    ”Pteron,” she hisses his name, spitting it out like bile as he denies her. ”It is my business if you’re to be my husband.” A growl claws the lining of her throat despite how sweet the underlying threat may be. They are promised to each other; it’s a feat she has yearned years for because there has never been anyone else.

    It would be easier if he simply accepted that.

    Even as he sidles closer and connects his lips first to her cheek, then her throat, Reia cannot dam the suspicion rising in her. There’s no way to prevent how her body quivers beneath his touch – he knows her, knows her weakness – but her jaws clench together with every word that he dangerously places between them. ”Broodmare,” she spats, snarling, ”You know damn well that is not what I am. I am the one you want at your side, that you need at your side. I can destroy so much of your life if you deny me, Pteron.” Her voice rises with the increasing anger before she lurches her mouth forward to aggressively bite his neck. ”Those worms have no place with you. They’ve been distractions since day one. Now,” she pauses in futile attempt to compose herself, ”I suggest you tell me. I will ruin anything - anyone - that makes you happy if you deny me, and it will be worse for them, and you, if you make me hunt them down.”

    Black smoke billows from her nostrils, a curtain in front of her pretty face, before it dissipates to reveal her still so near. Her warm breath reaches for him as a slow, deliberate step drives her nearer. ”I can be the best wife, if only you would stop fighting all of this,” in reality, she doesn’t know what all is involved with such a title. It’s possessive; that is the core reason she wants it solidified. He belongs to her, only her, and she will offer the same.

    As quiet coercion, her mouth is slightly agape with firelight illuminating the back of her throat, waiting threateningly to either expel or muffle. 

    and I'll be next to you when the lights go out

    Reia



    @[Pteron]
    #7
    finger trips across my cheek----------------
    ----------------kiss me until i can't speak

    His efforts to fan the flames are visibly successful; Reia’s blue mane flares as her movements become stiffer and her sky-blue eyes brighten and flash. Pteron can feel his own pulse somewhere near the back of his throat, a jackhammering of trepidation as he waits for the explosion that he knows is inevitable. She says his name, the sound sending an involuntarily shudder down his blue spine, even as he forces himself still at her growl. He knows what that growl means, knows that he will not be leaving this encounter without new scars

    He will take them, and do so willingly, if it means that she will leave everyone else out of it, if it means she will focus her rage solely on him. That would be worth it, Pteron thinks, and it keeps him still even as she rebuts his naming of her as a broodmare. If only it could be that simple, if only the child she carries were his alone. Pteron has no idea how to be a father, but he doesn’t need to, at least not to know that he will be a far better parent than the golden monster who threatens to destroy his life.

    Reia lunges, her sharp teeth ripping through the soft hide of his neck. The coppery smell of blood blossoms around them and Pteron grunts, pulling away as bet he can without moving his feet. Doing that would only makes her angrier. She calls them distractions, worms, as though Aegean is not worth ten thousand of her, as though his heart does not beat faster for Aquaria than it ever has for the dragon that snarls in front of him.

    Pteron knows that showing his own anger is dangerous, but there are some things worth the fire that he knows is coming. The muscle in his neck has already begun to knit together, but it still stings as he takes a step forward, raises his head so he can look down at her, his pale wings half-flared in a threat. “If you harm a single hair, you will regret it.” The stallion breathes against her cheek, knowing that she will take the words for acquiescence as much as the threat they are. Let her think that he would be as possessive a husband as she means to be a wife. If that keeps her from burning them alive, that will be enough. 

    It won’t though, that he knows all the way to his core. If he denies her now, she will hunt them down. If he denies her in the future, she will hunt them down. She might even hunt them down just as a precaution to ensure he doesn’t deny her. 

    “You will never be a good wife,” he tells her, even with the furnace of her breath against his chest. “But you will be my wife, and neither of us will touch another.” He’d meant the words to sound firm, a command from a husband to his wife. And they do – he prays she’ll listen to that even if not to reason – yet what he has promised weighs far heavier than he’d expected. Pteron knows he will keep his word. He breathes in the acrid smoke smell of the mare in front of him, and sighs.

    -- pteron --



    @[Reia]
    Okay time for babies !!!
    #8

    no one really knows what the ocean hides
    but you and I, bird, we’re gonna find out

    No one but Pteron has seen her like this, seen her at the near peak of her rage. Already, so soon in their lives, he sees her at her best and worst. This is meant to be, obviously, Reia reconciles to herself. A lover’s quarrel is normal. In fact, it will make them stronger in the end, an undefeatable force. If they manage a fight between themselves then surely all other opposition will be a simple feat.

    Surely.

    Blood dribbles down her chin. The iron tang is exhilarating as it coats her tongue and the lining of her throat. Dreamily, her eyes drift shut. Instincts scream for her to take action, to take more blood, but when she opens her eyes the temptation falters. Pteron is standing above her, for he is in fact taller when he isn’t shying from her. Anger rolls off him in waves, pummeling into her although she stands her ground with narrowed eyes. With his own threat, he continues to resist her. It sparks something in Reia’s gut. To see him like this, to help berth a defensive strength in him, oddly appeals to her. Surprise and mild satisfaction flashes across her cerulean gaze. A coy grin lopsidedly lifts a corner of her mouth. ”I’d like to see you try, Pteron,” despite the potential harm hanging above her head, Reia sweetly croons to him, tasting the waters of his disapproval.

    Enthralled by this entirely new side of him, Reia lifts her chin toward his throat where she hovers her lips. Warm, black smoke mingles with her breath across his skin. The coyness of her smile does not stray. ”And what will happen to us if you should break this matrimonial promise, darling?” She doesn’t plan to wander from him or to allow another man access. It’s him that concerns her, his loyalty already fickle by the way his scent mingles with others. Without allowing him the chance to respond, she shifts slightly to walk past him. Their shoulders bump. Next, her left hindquarter presses against his left shoulder before she pauses to glance back. ”Pteron, I suggest you hold that promise. You’ll regret the day you break that oath, as will the worms you meddle with.” With a final puff of smoke, she abandons him and heads toward Taiga, sensing the looming delivery of their child. 

    and I'll be next to you when the lights go out

    Reia



    @[Pteron]




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