watch your tongue or have it cut from your head,
save your life by keeping whispers unsaid.

  Time has shifted; changed. He has not settled into it, not yet. The days move swiftly and without precedence, and he finds his life slipping away before his very unusual, compound eyes. He cannot piece it all together before it is suddenly gone, washed away with the gentle breeze and bathed in the memories of blood, loss and destruction. He has lost himself in his own mind in the days, weeks, and months preceding the war, and he finds he cannot reclaim what was once his old soul. It has been discarded, left behind with the now decomposed, rotting corpse of a female he had never known the name of. He had murdered her in cold blood, with nothing but brutality behind his motive - fueled by a desire to protect his kingdom, which was now nothing and no longer his.

   Still, he felt a deep connection with it - a longing that he could not shake. He loathed the blasphemous sun and the way it beat down on his delicate wings, radiating warmth and heat that the shadows had so often protected him from. The bright sunlight of day often deterred him from socialization; and it was only within the dark spread of night that he ventured out from between spindly, looming trees, uncloaking himself from a blanket of literal invisibility. The lands had long since grown quiet - too quiet. Their King was nowhere to be seen and was often impossible to track down, and their numbers were growing fewer. He felt entirely alone here, even surrounded by the youthful adoration of his daughters (who had grown so much in such little time; he was hardly ready for their eager ventures away from home) and the gentle, albeit uncommon affection from his sweet Speck.

  Loneliness was a difficult thing to shoulder, and it weighed on him heavily. He longed for the dark, grasping branches and welcoming shadows of home, even if it meant abandoning his post and remaining only a resident. He had followed Demian to the very ends of the Earth; had promised to protect his eldest son - though very few knew aside from himself and Padma. They had harbored this deep secret, abandoned what was once theirs to protect it and now there was nothing to show for it. He had done his task, as far as he had seen it - in the end, it was Demian who had let him down. His old friend, may his fragmented pieces rest well wherever they lay, had asked him to do the impossible.

  Tannor was not to be tamed, and he certainly should not have been King.

  His mind remains stirring, brewing with idle thoughts of frustration as he peers out from the embrace of a few solitary trees in the midst of the field. He is again cloaked in his invisibility, a strength he was sure would soon fade away, as would his post, when he sees her in her glimmering glory. Though the sunlight is hardly bright today, it still peers unyielding from between the thick cloud cover overhead, illuminating her slender form as her scales sparkle beneath the light. She is the very definition of regal; the alabaster serpent mother of a King. She is seeking something - someone - and the way she lingers along the shadowed line of thick brush and foliage tells him it may be him she is searching for.

   Though they had shared few words in the past, there was an equal understanding between them - a shared trait of oddity; both unusual in their own way. Oddities with a very hefty secret shared between them.

  He uncloaks himself once more, stepping from beneath the shade of an old oak just as she begins to traipse by - he leans forward and gently nips at her flank with a smug smirk on his features; his compound eyes peering closely at her as his vision pieces together a bright, vivid image of beauty and grace. Her oddity was becoming, beautiful even - he knew that his own would never match hers. Alas, a chuckle rises from his throat as he watches her with unadulterated curiosity.

   "Looking for me?"

elysium

no mercy from the edge of the blade,
dare escape and learn the price to be paid.

watch your tongue or have it cut from your head,
save your life by keeping whispers unsaid.

  She is of serpentine essence, with quick reflexes, smooth graceful movement and biting words - she epitomizes everything that there is to being a snake, and her venom-laced words are no less biting. Her observes her carefully as she responds negatively to his blunt nip; he had not harmed her but being startled was humiliating enough for her. He cannot conceal his wry smile as she peers irritably at him, though she draws nearer to him anyway. He is not afraid of her, though his heart pounds gently against his ribcage as she moves closer to him. Adrenaline, he muses to himself, though he knows that is a lie.

  His gaze is set intently on her, and he cannot help the chuckle of mirth bubbling from his throat as she realizes she is admiring herself within his own iridescent oculi. She is unusual, in so many ways, and yet he finds something endearing in her irritable, self-worshiping demeanor. It is a long few moments before she finally looks into his eyes, rather than merely at them, and he stares back unblinking as she spits out her aggravated anxiety. He, too, had been having his doubts, lingering at the surface of his simmering loneliness. He longed for home (her own words and his own), and within such longing there was a deeply-rooted seed of doubt slowly growing, developing and blossoming beneath his champagne-tinted skin.

  He listens to her closely; his cheek turned away from her slightly as his earhole leans to hear her every hissing word. His antennae drape over his still equine-shaped jawline, nearly drifting down and brushing over the top of her crown. Her questioning tone does not deceive him - no one can tell Padma what to do, and she has never needed permission from anyone. She often plays the demure damsel, and yet he knows better. Alas, he finds it intriguing, and as a moth to a flame, he is drawn in, curious still.

  "Disgusting might be a strong word, but I do agree, Padma," his deep tenor rumbles, his long tongue suppressed by years of practice as he speaks slowly and deliberately. "I, too, have grown tired of this. I think that he may have gone away, and for how long, I cannot say." He pauses now, his voice low as he stares deeply into her eyes. "The war has long since passed and we are the ones paying the price. Though I held .. his" Demian, he means, but he dares not think or say the name for fear that it may be known by the spies that still linger. "request of me in high regard, I think that it may be time to move on."
 
   To go home, he doesn't say, but she already knows.

elysium

no mercy from the edge of the blade,
dare escape and learn the price to be paid.

watch your tongue or have it cut from your head,
save your life by keeping whispers unsaid.

   Her smile is as wicked as her tongue, and yet there is something altogether alluring about the way she holds herself. She is a display of biting elegance; a shrine to all that is beautiful and simultaneously dangerous. He is weak in that manner - though he is a solitary creature, he often grows weak (in his many) knees at the sight of something unusual; tantalizing. Temptation is not something that he is able to shy away from easily. He is pulled towards all things that glimmer and shine; and she gleams with an alabaster brilliance that both amuses and arouses him in every sector of his brain.

   He watches her as she nears him again; her breath is suddenly his and he can taste the sweet nectar of blossoms that lingered over her tongue in the not so distant past. She observed him for a long moment (particularly his antennae, which still dangled overhead, almost teasing her in their close proximity to her scaly flesh) and he pauses beneath her tight scrutiny. He wonders for a moment if he has imagined the sudden shift in her words, in her physical language - he senses something enticing about her and he cannot pull himself away.

   She scoffs at his polite wording, but he would not refrain from maintaining some semblance of diplomacy. He would not frown upon the lands that once belonged to the now Queen of the Valley; it felt sacrilegious in a way .. but he did agree. Wholeheartedly. It was painfully bright, blossoming with flowers of many shades and bathing often beneath the adoring light of the sun. It was nothing of what he was used to and it was nothing of what he desired in a dwelling; he had left home long ago and had regretted it in every day since. She spoke to his silent longing; begged him from his quiet hiding place inside of his own mind. He did not speak his doubts, and yet somehow, she already knew.

   She presses her soft, whiskered lips to his ear, and he pressed his cheek to her neck, antennae brushing along her scaly pelt as his chest plate presses against hers. His heart pounds for a moment, and he thinks of Speck, of his daughters, but the loneliness has grown into such a chasm that he is unsure as to whether or not he can climb out of it - or if he wants to. She lingers with him in that moment, and for a while, he says nothing - gently touching his own whiskered lips and flaky, scaly skin to hers. Her giggle elicits something that had laid dormant for some time within him, and he knows what her intentions are, and he is powerless to resist.

   He knew he should pause, to find Speck and their children, to let them know of the journey ahead - but he decides in that moment to leave it all be, to allow himself this terribly wicked moment. He will turn back later, sated with her scent lingering upon his fragile wings and sweat-stained scales, to retrieve them - but for now, he will have her, and allow her to treat him after all.

 "Lead the way, Padma," He murmurs, his voice low to her ear. "treat me."

elysium

no mercy from the edge of the blade,
dare escape and learn the price to be paid.