[mature] there is no other version of this story; kagerus

[rapt]

there is a dream in the space between the hammer and the nail ------ the dream of about-to-be-hit, which is a bad dream ------------ but the nail will take the hit if it gets to sleep inside the wood forever   He’d say the whole thing had felt like a dream, except, well – It had been, hadn’t it? But it was dreaming like he’d never known, rich and real and exquisite. In the dream, he’d bled, and he’d woken up bleeding. In the dream he’d wept, and he’d woken weeping. In the dream she and been there, and when he woke up – (their eyes meeting. wanting) She was there. For a moment. And then she wasn’t. Fading away like – well, like a dream.   He had followed her – had tried to follow her – but he was sleep-dazed, tired, and when he stumbled she’d kept going, until he lost her. This consumes him, he thinks of her often. He dreams of her, but compared to the other dreams, these are weak and watery. Nothing dreams. He moves through life and looks and looks and looks and doesn’t find her. He finds other horses that look like her, some that even share the same features – brothers or sisters or cousins, he doesn’t know, but the world’s a melting pot – but none of them are her. The place where her teeth had sunk in scabs over. The hair grows back. He is only left with the memory of pain.   So when he sees her again, when he’s not even consciously looking, he stops and blinks. He wouldn’t be surprised if he’s hallucinated her, a creation of wanting and missing, but she doesn’t waver or disappear when he blinks and focuses. She remains, by the river, a goddess, patchwork-colored. “You,” he breathes. It’s the first thing he says to her. It had been one of the last words between them before she’d left. “Stay,” he says, “please, stay.”   rapt caius x else

[Kagerus]

Out with the golden we sew, and the lower past that crawls.
Now, to the doorway you run, to the girl that's not lost.

I've tried not to think about it.
(Don't lie, little girl, he's all you think about, gnawing on your mind.)
The emotional energy required to analyze what happened, to truly consider and weigh the dream - I don't have it.
(You're scared that you went too far. It's not a matter of energy. Stop fighting yourself.)
That's not who I am, and I need to respect myself.
(Then close your eyes and dream, girl - for that is who you are. Dream of him.)

(Of Rapt.

Of the way his golden skin moulded perfectly to the inside of your mouth, and the way his blood tasted like manna - intoxicating, sent from the gods. You're thinking of how willingly he fell into your dream, like a fly headed straight for the web: you're enthralled by his obedience, by his beauty, by the way he calls you a wonder and means it. Don't fucking lie to yourself. You can't concentrate on anything except him.)

I find myself here often, beside the river. It is where I dwelt for a long time, hidden in the shadows: perhaps it is that same obscurity which I now seek. But I was also found, here - by Insignificance. Brought back into the realm of the living, to join a kingdom, to become a public figure, yes, that's me, Kagerus the diplomat: Kagerus the sister: not Kagerus the dreamer.

(You're killing me, here.)

I'm here all the same when he calls to me - as always, as always, I am caught off guard by his arrival. Flinching, and then backing away. I haven't - I'm not - it's too soon. Every nerve buzzes, waiting for some direction to fire in, caught in time and space. I am electric.

And he is a body of water.

Stay. Please, stay.

He is more beautiful than I remember. Golden as always, but marked: two darker patches, my mark, that which he shall always bear. It is the sight of myself on him that steadies me. That eases me forward, step by step, until I am nearly touching him - but then I stop.

(It's too easy, isn't it, my girl. Too easy to give in to the need - to control.)

"I missed you."

Kagerus

sweet nothing

@[rapt]

[rapt]

there is a dream in the space between the hammer and the nail ------ the dream of about-to-be-hit, which is a bad dream ------------ but the nail will take the hit if it gets to sleep inside the wood forever He’s always been wont to kneel, it had come naturally. From the very first, when he was a spry-legged colt set before a monster, noses outreached, almost touching, almost - oh! How he’d loved it, how easily he had bent for him, he’s like a sapling, easy to twist, bend, mold. And then one monster goes or fades and then she’d been there, with her powers and her fangs, with the taste of his blood on her lips, with her gaze piercing him. She’d changed the world – quite literally – and given him things, given him deserts and whiteness and, best of all, the monster. You waited. Yes. Always yes. She startles at his words, and he is ready to chase her again – but she doesn’t run. She stays, even though part of her doesn’t want to. And then she’s closer, and he realizes his memory had not done justice to her, that he had forgotten the exact scent of her, the whorls and patterns on her marked skin. She stays, is the important thing. She stays. “I missed you too,” he says, then, “I’ve been looking for you. I thought you might have been a dream.” rapt caius x else

[Kagerus]

Out with the golden we sew, and the lower past that crawls.
Now, to the doorway you run, to the girl that's not lost.

I am not a giver of things, like he thinks. I am not someone to bestow or gift unto those around me. I am a taker - a puller of strings - the worst type of person there is to be, one I always resented.

And yet here I am, nose to nose with the man whose knees I forced to bend. Even if I knew his wont for kneeling, it would be no solace.

I forget about my dilemma when he lifts his gaze to meet with mine. Their depths are a swirl of other-worlds and countless dreams that are beyond even me - my breath shortens, my pupils dilate, I draw every part of him into myself with utter greed.

"My boy..."

My gaze drops under his words, eyelashes fluttering, heart doing the same. I am suddenly shy beneath his gaze, feeling its touch warmly, feeling like I am naked before his hungry eyes. Hesitantly, as if I was not the one to lead our last interactions, I reach out for him.

He is soft where I plant my lips - on his own, an exchange of breath. I look up momentarily, but quickly away again. "There's nothing I could dream that's as sweet as you..."

Kagerus

sweet nothing

[rapt]

there is a dream in the space between the hammer and the nail ------ the dream of about-to-be-hit, which is a bad dream ------------ but the nail will take the hit if it gets to sleep inside the wood forever A shiver runs over him, one of delight and fear and want. He doesn’t even know what he wants, exactly; he can’t articulate the nature of it. He only knows that he thrills to be here, under her gaze, the quasar-stare of her eyes. To be called my boy. He has never belonged well – not to kingdoms, not to others. His family was broken and too wrapped up in their own angst to pay much heed to his, and the kingdom he was born into disintegrated soon after. But he belongs, here. To her. To this. To her whims. (He belongs to the monster, too. He’ll keep tearing off these pieces of himself.) She’s intoxicating – dizzying – in her presence, her touch. Her words. “Let’s go,” he says, “somewhere beautiful.” Anywhere is beautiful, with her – but the river is too plain. She deserves more. He lacks her powers – lacks any powers – but his mind, frantic and creative, is offered to her. He dreams of a jungle, wild and lush, full of impossibly large flowers; of animals made tame. The river, no longer plain and ambling, something larger and brighter, full of a fish in every color imaginable. A place where they could be alone. rapt caius x else

(lmk if you want me to change any of this!!)

[Kagerus]

Out with the golden we sew, and the lower past that crawls.
Now, to the doorway you run, to the girl that's not lost.

There's a flutter in my stomach that I haven't known before, one that weakens my knees every time he looks at me, and sends chills crawling down my spine when his breath warms my lips. It - the flutter - he - makes me want to touch him. More than just with his nose on mine. More than just with his eyes on the curves of my cheekbones.

Let's go somewhere beautiful.

My lips part in an audible gasp as a shudder of electric magic races through my nervous system, the sound ecstatic and awed - my nutmeg eyes close as Rapt pulls a dream from me as if it is his to take. The sensation is otherworldly, and yet I submit to the way he shapes our surroundings, to the way he is somehow leading me with my own powers.

I am closer to him now than I was before, my shoulder against his, my nose hidden in the curve of his jaw, breathless and needy and wanting.

The jungle around us is chaotically beautiful, coloured as his imagination must be, a place I never would have thought to go myself.
With my eyes half closed and my mouth absent mindedly toying with his mane and throat, I quiet the sound of the Jungle around us until the only sound if my heavy breathing, and a gentle sound of running water.
Privacy, a la dream.

"You are mine, Rapt," I murmur, girlish and small. "But am I yours?"

Without meaning to, I heighten our senses, leaving us slaves to the euphoria of our skin together.
He placed us somewhere beautiful, but I have eyes, and lips, only for him.

"Am I your girl..."

Kagerus

sweet nothing

[rapt]

there is a dream in the space between the hammer and the nail ------ the dream of about-to-be-hit, which is a bad dream ------------ but the nail will take the hit if it gets to sleep inside the wood forever Her powers make real his dream, the world around them shaping, brightening. The colors spring into vision, otherworldly, the fecund scents of the undergrowth below and trees above. There is sound, too, birds calling, the river rushing, but then it quiets, and there is only her breath. Hers, and his. She’s pressed against him, molded, a finesse to the way their bodies curve together. There’s another kind of wanting in him, a more instinctual kind – baser – and it’s overwhelming, too. She’s so close. And the way she speaks, the way she touches him – with confidence, with promise – only stirs more things within him, and he is hopeless, and confused. Am I yours? she asks, and he almost laughs at the question. He could never posses such a thing as she, he’s unworthy (that he’s here at all stuns him, in this magical world, this lush paradise, with her at his side). But her voice is pitched high, and the answer she expects – or wants - is yes. “Yes,” he says, though it feels strange, to pretend such a thing as he has any sort of claim to such a woman. He might have left it there, but she does something else and suddenly she is more, he feels her across every nerve ending. Her scent overwhelms, and that same wanting riots in his veins, a desire to claim, to take. “You’re mine,” he says, more assured this time. And it’s true, here, for there is no one else but them, and he is the one with a mouth on her neck, chest against hers, feeling every beat of her heart. rapt caius x else

[Kagerus]

Out with the golden we sew, and the lower past that crawls.
Now, to the doorway you run, to the girl that's not lost.

Yes. A single word with meanings athousand fold. A claim, even if it is a lie; a mark, even if it will fade.
I have belonged to others... But not in this way. Not in a way that leaves my eyes rolling back in my skull, or my breath lost to the sound of his, or my body begging for something I can't even pretend to understand.

You're mine.
"Show me."

(The dream splits, then, a duality of the mind that even I feel no power over - one thread of thought the two of us, here, pressed together in euphoria, joining in a realm free of consequences. Warm and comfortable, bodies that we belong in, sewn together in a way I would never dream possible... But dreams of this nature are not to be understood. They demand delirion - a lack of inhibition - the losing of --
Along the other thread, we are changed, shaped differently, as I have only once been shaped before. His hair is the kind of blonde that leaves fingers powerless to its charms; his eyes the deep brown that is almost forgettable until you look again and are snagged for good. In this realm, the heat and pressure of his naked body against mine is somehow even more irresistible, delirious. There's more of him to touch, to explore, to claim as my own. It doesn't make sense, but the movements are instinctual - his hands running down my back - my nails across his spine - his tongue tracing the grooves of my throat - the way I move to meet each of his  thrusts.
Both threads exist at once, and for now I am lost to their powers. Lost to myself.
Lost to him.

Lost.)

Kagerus

sweet nothing

@[Rapt]
Well, I gave you the best of both worlds :|

[rapt]

there is a dream in the space between the hammer and the nail ------ the dream of about-to-be-hit, which is a bad dream ------------ but the nail will take the hit if it gets to sleep inside the wood forever Show me, she says, and he is not one to deny her. Her scent still overwhelms him, the touch of her skin like some inferno, a razor’s edge from too much. He knows what it is, to want. What he knows less of is what to do when the wont is fulfilled, when she’s there before you, in this exquisite jungle, the world narrowed down to the heat of her gaze and the sound of hearts beating tandem. His mind might be blank, overwhelmed, but his body knows. It’s nothing he’s done before but no instruction manual needed, bodies together, his and hers, sun hot on his golden back. In the moment there is a duality, another world glimpsed, where he has fingers to run across her skin, a different shape, a different mind, but it still fits with her, to her. She still feels like heaven in every reality, in every reality he meets her, touches her, worships her. In each world, he tells her, in a voice made broken by want, you’re mine, you’re mine, you’re mine-- After, when he is dazed and shaky – stumbling from the sensations of it all, from the multiplied worlds, he leans against her. He does not want to be without touching her. “You,” he says, “are a wonder.” He’s said it to her before. He’ll say it again. Every time, he means it. rapt caius x else