The feeling was like a subatomic black hole causing her being to collapse in on itself piece by piece, atom by atom. Sucked in, especially in her throat - a shortening, a lessening, a closing of what once blossomed. The infinite and endless spiral towards exhausted nothingness that never ended.

And how she hated it.

The warping of her flesh and bone left only a shell of a mare, though in truth, she did not spend much of her time as such. Spring girl, spring baby. A well aged fairy child, having never learned how to handle responsibility. In this new Beqanna especially, she had no place. She had nothing; no one; not even herself.

She spent her falls and winters in hibernation; needing only the light rays of the sun and occasionally some water to stay alive, the magical mare subsided into herself so greatly that, during the cold seasons, she shriveled up into an odd looking tree stump and took on the appearance of death. Yet come every spring, as the sun warmed her alabaster hide and dogwood flowers once more, the softly red-and-green glowing woman would be forced to awake.

This was one of those mornings. Her slumber had started to become interrupted, and subconsciously, in her dreams, she knew that spring was coming; winter was ending; and her reprieve from the terrors of reality was coming to a close. And today, it finally did. The boughs and branches of her figure began to unfurl from their knotted form of a disfigured horse lying on the ground. The flowers in her mane and tail opened and reached desperately for the thin sunlight. And when her eyes opened, their glow took many moments to return; it was as if the black hole within her was running along the wall, flipping on all the switches all at once, though she was simply incapable of processing all the information at once.

Thirsty.

That happened to be the magician's first thought, believe it or not. Of all the things she could recollect (Trekk, her sons and daughter, her parents, her kingdom, her life), water came first. And as she lifted her head from the muddy earth, she heard the rumble of a river.

Convenient. I thought ahead.

With a great, noisy, and utterly inelegant effort, Noori heaved herself on to all fours. As her stumbling, infantile steps brought her closer and closer to the water, small flowers began to grow behind her in a sweet little trail, and the grass was visibly greener. Usually, Noori did not allow this function of her magic to be apparent; but she was running on the reserves of the past summer, and her mind simply had to make sacrifices.

SPLASH!

There is something to be said here about the character of this little nymph; how exactly that thing can be said in a good light considering the circumstances, one cannot be certain.

Bobbing up from her cannon ball into the relatively deep river, Noori was a new mare. Her eyes shone like balls of green fire, and her bark began to unfurl itself from its tight grasp on her body, allowing the red and green glow of her form to perforate her alabaster skin. Reaching some higher ground, Noori threw back her head and shook vigorously, droplets of water raining down like beads of mana. In every way, she was at that moment a Victoria's Secret model, except with the unassuming air of a maiden.

And for a moment, the black hole ceased to kill her.

It's the first word she has heard in months. The first sound coming from a conscious creature, from a thoughtful, intelligent creature. The woman had nearly forgotten that such other creatures existed, that she was not alone in her intelligence. Maybe she hadn't forgotten, though, maybe it was more of an intentional obliviousness. She was ever so good at denial.

When her breathing catches in her throat and her legs become like trunks in the river bed, she knows it is him. When her heart breaks and her stomach churns, she knows it is him. When that feeling of guilt and love mixes in her guts, she fucking knows that it's him. And it hurts. It's the bile of a thousand years of sickness - a burning acidity that is sure to leave her gagging.

"Trekk." The name slips from her like a stone, heavy but emotionless. She does not know how to feel, not any more, not since she knows how awful she's been, how aloof and otherworldly and unfaithful. Her eyes cannot even bare to see him, and like the trunks of her legs, they are rooted in to river bed.

She knows it is him.

And that undeniable tug is pulling at her every fiver, begging her to relent and to collapse into him with wracking sobs and inconsolable chaos and misery. It has been so long - she has been literally sleeping it away - and yet still he is here.

Always, always here.

He deserved better; and at best she was a consolation prize that stank of other men and tasted of betrayal.

His legs carry him towards the place where she is rooted, carry his scent and his breath and his being just outside of her grasp, just so far the she can't reach out and touch him. Oh, how she wants to touch him. His mottled fur and rotting flesh are no deterrent, they barely even register in her mind - she thinks only of his touch and of his embrace, of how so very, very long it has been since her last encounter with him. With her true love.

Her true love.

His words shatter her fortifications, a pin pricking a solid wall of titanium and rendering it to dust. The trunks of her legs completely give out, and she stumbles, catching herself momentarily before completely losing her footing with her forelegs. Her knees slam into the river bed and her nostrils inhale the bristling water; she resurfaces coughing and bleeding green sap, both from her knees and from her eyes. The tears are sticky and move so slowly down her face, it's as if it will take hours for the first one to fall.

"Trekk," She says again, her voice tremulous and barely loud enough to hear over the sound of the river. The word is only one yet so much is said, the pain in the back of her throat, her guilt, her plea for forgiveness, the thousands of apologies she has yet to give but that he deserves, every single one of them he deserves. Noori steps to him, her once strong frame wracked with noiseless sobs and desperation - she reaches for him, her eyes pleading, begging, not knowing any better. She is a child before him, desolate and covered in filth. Her lips peel back in a grimace, her eyes clenching shut as the sobs overpower her.

It is half a minute before the sobs suddenly stop short, her eyes opened and her breath not coming at all. Stop, she tells herself. Stop, or you'll lose him again.

Her body had buckled in on itself, curling into a tight dogwood-clump of misery. She stretches out now, snot running down her alabaster muzzle, the sap-tears plentiful around her eyes, but barely any length down her face.

"I haven't been with anyone, Trekk, not anyone since you." And it's true, but she knows that her carousing with Sinder and Eight and all the others from that time beg of his heart to break. "Not since we made Takei, Trekk, not since that night." Her voice is pleading, desperate, inconsolable save for by the man before her. She reaches for him again, this time without the sobs but with all the same intensity and need.

"Baby, please, I'm here now.
I missed you, please, please come to me.
I'm right here, sweetheart, let me hold you - please Trekk, please baby, I won't hurt you again, I won't." And she knew it was true - but she had hurt him so much, so badly, that she knew he had every right to spurn her. Again and again and again. She knew.

As her gentling words tumble recklessly from her lips, medicinal plants sprout from the river bed and begin winding themselves around the stallion's abused legs. Yarrow, goldenrod, and calendula. They press tightly into his open wounds, splitting apart and spilling their salves and potions into the infections, cuts, scrapes, bruises. Her control over the plants is only subconscious, they physical embodiment of her will for him to heal and to be whole and well. She wants the world for him - but as they stand there, all she can give him is the temporary relief from the misery of his wounds.

She doesn't see his crude smile - the thick film of her tears leaves Trekk only a shadow, a shadow of the man she knew as a child, as a frolicsome girl - all blushes and quiet smiles, freckled cheeks and soft, oh so soft kisses. A thousand years ago, in another world and at another time, they existed. A peripheral existence, not seen from straight on; the type of life that is lived so freely that every tiny detail is felt, every fractional brushing of his skin against hers a lifetime of happiness.

And then, a lifetime of sorrow. Each granular moment degrading her foundation with such swift and cutting movements - a going away of emotion so rapid that, in fact, she herself was gone away too. So far from this realm that time enveloped her being, armored her in woods so white that the cherry of her cheeks disappeared into time itself - remembered only, a fading taste of a lover's fluid that was at once salty and sweet, thick and dissipating.

She tastes him now.

He steps into her as he always has, as he always will, as he was always meant to. His body against hers, snagging on the rough edges of her exterior, but melting and combining and becoming one with her underneath once more. Her tongue, the only soft part of her, suckles the soft underside of his shoulder, where his skin is loose and flexible and fits perfectly into the folds of her mouth as she sucks him in, drinks him and becomes of him. There are flowers in her breath, flowers of mourning but also of new birth - a goodbye to the heartbreak, and a hello to the lovers embrace they shall share forever more.

"I am yours, Trekk," she whispers, moving her lips up to the tangled knots of his mane. She preens them, pulls them, feels the fluidity of his flesh beneath her touch. He responds to her every beck and call, the sinews of his flesh bending to her will like bees to flowers; her touch becomes more insistent, needing more of him, more, it will never be enough - there will never be enough time for her to make up for the harm she has dealt, for the heartbreak she has squandered on her darling.

She breaks from him suddenly, and her lips feel empty without the coarse fibers of his hair tangled between them. The emptiness of her soul as their skin becomes separate is a vacuum, the void of space consuming all matter before it, stars and worlds and beings and gods - all consuming, destroying all in her path with a dead passion so strong that not even time itself could envelope its chaos.

"Trekk, I... I've been practicing, with my magic, I've been dreaming and working an-and-" Her eyes are worried, panicked, too long without him and he will become only her shadow once more. "Just watch, okay?"

It happens slowly - for a long while, it seems as if nothing is being done at all. She only stands - the breeze tumbling her willow-tree locks, caressing the dogwood flowers that blossom from between her cracked bark. Her glowing green eyes are filled with concentration, the pulsating of her glowing innards growing more and more fervent. The wind screams, coiled barb and poison icy sprouts like wildfire along the riverside, storm clouds brew over head with an unearthly speed. For a moment, it seems as if she is calling upon all her power to end them both, to crush their existence, to render the passion of their story into a forgotten whisper of wasted grace.

Silence.

Not a leaf stirs; the clouds pause; she does not glow at all. The rough folds of her bark turn inwards. The cracks of her being meld together, the seams that were ripped by the gods sewn delicately back together. Then small hair fibers form; still alabaster white, but growing, ripening, coming to fruition. The silence is unbearable. Her eyes never leave his, never once, she does not even blink. Her colour returns; her blush; her youth.

She is tiny again. Two hands shorter than him, a rosy river child. She stands before him as he met her; and the last parts of her to drain themselves of magic are her eyes. Her pupils resurface, and she blinks. He is no longer a shadow. He is her everything. Her lover. Her sun. The only song she will ever even wish to sing.

"It's me, Trekk. Your baby." She smiles, her rosy lips trembling with a love so forcefully felt that she wishes she could stay this way forever. But already her hold on this foreign magic is weakening.

A step forward. Her skin against his. The soft, delicate folds of her body tracing every possible line, every possible crease and curve, her lips making love to his every part, to the soft spot behind his ankle bones, sending shivers down his spine with a warm breath placed there. They are in tandem, they are in concert, a wavering flounce of love that shall inevitably fail. Her hips call to his deep seated desires, beg of him a deed so sacred that she regrets ever sharing it with anyone except him. Her tail tangles itself around his leg; she goes round and round, dancing with him, pressing her lips and her skin and her freckled cheeks to each of his surfaces. Her tongue mingles with the delicate skin within his ears, beneath his eyes, far below his stomach where only she has ever tasted and been one with. She fixates on him, sends her breath and her tongue and her body running down his every crevice, tracing him with such intimacy that there is no time for thoughts, no time for sadness any more.

"Touch me, Trekk," She breathes, desperate, longing, knowing that it will not be long before she returns to her hardened, magicked self. Her hands are around grabbing at the muscles of his back, her lips pressed against the underside of his jaw - the highest she can reach while standing on her tiptoes. Her breasts are nestled tightly against his muscled chest, her leg raising and begging to be taken into his arms, for him to hoist her up and toss her as if she weighs nothing, but means everything. He smells beautiful. He tastes angelic.

"Make me yours."

Be calm, my love, and know that I love you, she thinks as worry blossoms on his lovely face at the sight of her rebirth. To witness such a tender expression breaks her heart in such a way that the pieces can finally reform her heart: a heart which had been fundamentally shattered by her own doing. Now, however, he heals her. In that one simple look of love and concern, she feels herself coming undone in the best of ways.

She tastes the tang of his love for her and memorizes its flavour, memorizes the curve of his hipbones and the grooves of his stomach as they meet with that which she presses her lips to now. Her every movement and suckle is met with the smallest of moans cast from her lover's parted lips, and the response only furthers her dedication to him, to his body, to his soul: that she would ever consider another is an abomination, one that she knows is no longer a possibility for as long as she lives. He is hers, and hers alone. She holds him in the palm of her hand, in the curve of her tongue - that is proof enough of her ownership of him.

His hands reach from her shoulders and pull her to him as she stands to press her open mouth to his jaw, welcoming her, brushing the hair from her face and running over the lithe muscle of her back until the come to rest at the crests of her hips. She can feel his desire growing and bumping hungrily between her thighs; her hands grab and devour the flesh of his back, needing him closer, closer, closer. His broad ribs are expanding against her own, the muscle over them flexing and extending in a mesmerizing way, manipulating her breasts and calling to her most deeply seated desire. She whispers the words then, her breath hot on the underside of his jaw - make me yours.

An audible gasp escapes her as his fingers dip between her thighs, but he takes away their pressure and delight to respond to her request. With an ease that further wettens her, Trekk hoists her into his arm and for a moment, she is flying. He is her wings, her freedom. With him, gravity ceases to exist. They align perfectly in the time it takes for him to cast her wantonly onto the bed, and her hips raise the second she lands there in a show of desire for their becoming one. Her arms extend above her head, breasts falling to the sides as her weight travels to her shoulders.

But that is not Trekk's intention - yet.

He pushes her legs further apart with a greedy smile that sends electricity racing up her body from the pit of her stomach, and then melts his lips into her labia. His tongue teases and adores her scrupulously, calls from her throat moans and cries of utter abandon and amour; her hips swivel and jerk beneath him, and her hands tangle themselves into the mess of his hair, tightening and releasing just as her hips do.

She is on the cusp of ecstasy as he leaves her soft flesh - a cry sits on the tip of her tongue, uncompleted and stunted, furious at having been denied the right to existence. Her ribs are expanding and contacting rapidly, heaving, really. Her hands clutch at his figure as he slithers up from below, pressing her own fluids to the nape of her neck. Her hips are still writhing, pressing and wiggling against him in pure and utter desire.

The breath in her lungs escapes at the sound of her name on his lips. The first time, it causes her to stop, for her nerves to stop responding: it feels too good, too right, too lovely, her system becomes overloaded in that one simple word - the one simple word with which he claims her. Makes her his own, and never to be anyone else's. She could live forever in this moment, never needing to take another breath.

He repeats her name, and it is better than the first time. It revives her, brings her to throw her arms around his back and to draw him closer to her. The third time, she is nuzzling his mouth away from her neck and onto her own. She tastes herself on his tongue, and he tastes himself on hers - for a long moment this exchange is all the exists between them, the film of their lives stuck perhaps permanently on a single frame. Then, he says her name a fourth time. She bites his bottom lip and moves to make herself available to his truest desire, delirious in her need for their joining.

The weight of him disappears without warning. Her green eyes snap open and find him next to her, with a self-indulged smile writ clearly on his unfathomably perfect lips. Lips that, only minutes before, had brought her to the edge of ecstasy, had spoken her name and stopped time, had melded with the warm flesh of her tongue. Now, those self same lips crow out his vindication, flirt with her impatience in the most insinuating and arousing of ways.

"My darling," she murmurs, a brow cocked, a hand just barely tracing the lines of his stomach until they reach the stiff shape of his desire. There, they stop; there's a twinkle in her eyes, a lust on her breath. "Do you really want to play this game?" She leans forward as she speaks the words, so far that her mouth is only centimeters from his ear. She can see the goosebumps the warmth of her breath causes him. Whimpering as only dollish girls can, her tongue reaches and caresses the lobe of his ear, the curve of its inside.

He is on top of her again in an instant, looking disheveled but determined. She grins at him, foxy and red, the same sun-kissed girl from before, except that her freckles have taken on a far more tantalizing hue. Tell me my dear. What do you want? She bites her bottom lip, arches her back so that her hardened nipples brush against his chest. Her eyes toy with his knowingly, daring him to wait for her answer.

When the beginning of him meets the beginning of her, she loses all sense of playfulness and dollishness - his stiffness against the folds of her body utterly destroys her mental fortifications, leaves her in absolute chaos that can only be reined in by the full brunt of him inside of her. The change in her eyes is apparent, flashing from foxy to that of the vulnerable girl he once knew and loved, who then and now and and always will need him.

She shivers.

"I want to be one with you," barely audible, an admittance so sacred that she could not say it louder even if she were screaming. One small hand reaches up to cup his face, to bring it carefully closer to her own in a most delicate of ways. "I love you, Trekk," her voice breaks, but there is no time for tears.

Their lips meet as he presses himself into her innermost part. Her lips part in a gasp but the weight of his lips against hers brings her attention back to the kiss, back to the rhythm of his hips and the way she can't help but arch her back and move with him in perfect harmony. The hand that was on her face moves to his lower back, pulls him deeper within her. He goes slowly at first, and she marvels in his design, at how with every liquid movement he reaches the part of her that she never knew could create such carnal sensations of utter bliss.

"I love you, Trekk," she says again, more urgently, needing him to know, to never forget. Her finger nails drag against the skin of his back, their chests are pressed together and the heat of his breath is the only weather she will ever know. Their sweat and saliva and arousal mingles, rejoicing in their reunion in a cocktail of fluids and scents. She begins crying out again, softly at first, in response to each of his full-length thrusts. Their bed is a cacophony of the sense, of scent, taste, touch, sound, and smell.

To ever leave it again would be her life's end.

She moves against him in absolute bliss, utterly incapable of anything except accepting him into her, over and over again. Her eyes roll back in pleasure and delirion, and it is to his every beck and call that she responds; a figment of his imagination; fit to perform his every desire.