04-19-2018, 01:39 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-20-2018, 10:11 AM by Longclaw.)
Time spins itself into oblivion without caring too much. If you're not careful, it sweeps you up and gives you a false sense of security; carries you along in it's twisted current and spits you out once in a while so reality can hit.
Longclaw droops a rather blue muzzle above the placid, glass-like surface of a stangnant pool and thinks about the places Time has taken him. The few scars along his legs, back, and chest tell their own stories, with his bright eyes catching the most important nick along the base and curve of his neck (Femur had permanently gouged matching holes for his other girls' appreciation.) All of them were met with a fond smile, reflected back at the tall stallion as he peered at his own likeness.
"Getting a bit gray around the nose to be primping yourself, dad." A wheedling sound behind him spoke. Longclaw turned slowly, the curve of his glimmering neck reflecting each glance of light with the flash of odd colors. His son, Wolfbane, stood behind him - younger than his elder siblings and yet, at only a year and half, more appealing than most of them. ("The others were adopted." Claw thinks harshly, "This one has my blood diluting his veins.")
"You should be practising." Longclaw rebuffs, the tone coming out as flat and hard as a stone. He means, of course, that Bane should be out on the shore, flapping those great behemoth wings of his so that he might eventually use his birth-given talent. "Not pilfering around, and certainly not coming here to try and tell me what I should be doing with my time." The warg barks, turning on still-agile feet to face his youngest get.
Seeing the challenge, Wolfbane lowered his masked head and golden ears, but said nothing more. It was almost impossible to talk with his father these days, and though Longclaw knew how much of an insufferable ass he was making himself out to be, he couldn't stop from feeling bile rise in the back of his throat when others started to come around. They were annoying, save his son and mate, Femur. Most had stopped interacting with him before his early retirement, but after the switch Longclaw had been avoided like the plauge.
Anything was laible to set him off.
"Don't sit there and fume, boy." He snapped, "Get to it."
@[Femur]
Time passed her by in the blink of an eye.
At least that’s how the last year and a half felt after watching Gansey master flight with her heart in throat and a fierce sense of motherly pride hooking claws into her gut. The same pride became her chief emotion next to a deep and abiding love for their small tribe of a family as Valensia blossomed in a leggy almost-mare and Wildling began to resemble his father more and more. Then came the birth of Wolfbane - the firstborn of Longclaw and herself. Every waking moment was spent doting in the newborn colt, his trio of older siblings and their wolfish patriarch.
It is no wonder that time has passed them by with the speed of light - of suns born and burning out. She had always felt a universal creep in her bloodstream since the blue stallion came along and woke her from her childish games in the forest long ago. But time seemed slowed and almost stalled on their private island paradise beneath the smoldering shadow of the volcano. However even the slowdown of time could not stall the inevitable and bit by bit, she began to notice the minutiae of change in her blue mate - -
First he retired from his service to the kingdom that had harbored them from the beginning. Then he began to leave the island less and less. If he did leave, he came back smelling of the wilderness and not his other pets or anyone really. She never mentioned any of this to him - he’d have known it just as she did. Part of her was glad he’d devoted more time to them because she was selfish and lured him in more deeply with the allure of family.
Femur would never admit it but she was glad he strayed and sparred less and less. Part of her was sadly afraid of that too. She could recall long ago mention of a curse though she’d never asked for the details of it. Could something have set the curse into motion unbeknownst to all of them? The goldenrod-and-white mare let out a sigh. It was too damn early in the day for such troubling thoughts. Especially when she could hear the blunt posturing of father and son that allowed her to easily track them to a stagnant pool of water.
Bane, their beautiful boy had apparently just been rebuked by his insufferable father and she glided by the colt first to run her small muzzle the length of his neck in affectionate greeting. “You’ll fly when you’re ready,” she whispered to him with a conspiratorial wink of a black eye.
Valensia has been the first to use her wings in their family, ever so eager to impress and please. Gansey took a little longer but he had finally taken to it in the most dramatic and heart stopping of ways - by leaping off a cliff and just going for it. Only Wildling couldn’t fly and did not mind this airborne trait of his siblings’ - they could have the skies, he’d stick to the ground.
Bane, she knew, would fly in his own time. However it did not help to have a father snapping and spitting at him about it. Luckily she knew how to coddle their son best and soothe the inflamed senses of the blue warg. “My love...” she called out to him in a light lilt of what was forever a mix of danger and desire. Her bottomless black gaze settled on his sullen face and she sucked a laugh back into her throat because by the stars, he was adorable in that pout! Once, she might have said as much just to tease her lover but she knew to tread cautiously around him these days.
Even for all that caution, she knew their fates were tangled up together in a hefty skein of what would come to pass. She knew too that there would be a good amount of heartbreak and physical ache in it as well. Nothing ever came easy and they’d had peace together for way too long without the threat of the curse hanging over their heads like a storm cloud. Still none of this stopped her from pressing as much of her flesh to his in her usual attempt to join their bodies together as one.
@[Longclaw] I took some liberties and made some general assumptions, let me know if I need to change anything! <3
Watching them grow hadn't been so hard. Longclaw remembers Gansey-boy, leaping from that damned cliff and coasting for a bit. Wildling had been a fun romp and never ceased to please his blood-father. Valensia had been more of Femur's than anyone elses, but her beauty and her allure had been altogether pleasing to see develop.
When had that changed?
Together they'd made Wolfbane, everything Longclaw had wanted and more ... he should've been eclipsed in happiness and, well, he was it was just that ... just that ...
They weren't him.
It was hard to explain. When Claw began to notice the beginnings of the sickness, it'd sent him into a spiral of depressive thought. Undoubedtly it was the curse - the same enigma he'd bitterly told Femur about once and never again - but the shape it was beginning to take terrified him. Wolfbane began to grow in his mother's belly and, every day or so, Claw would feel urgently inclined to check his reflection.
He searched for any imperfection. A wrinkle, a gray hair - they all seemed to him at the same time terrifying and fascinating. One glance would turn into an hour's worth of reflection and he would just ponder over how incredibly beautiful he looked. Eventually, he only enjoyed the company of his own reflection, wheedling away at the annoyance of others in order to simply be alone so he could study himself.
It was ... crazy.
"My Love ..." Femur calls to him, the cat that crept so inconspicuously onto the scene when he needed her most. The movement of her lips entranced him,eventually turning Longclaw's vibrant green eyes to her face. This reflection he could handle; in it was a clarity and beauty unrivaled. The flame-wielder exhaled the weight of heavy secrets and rumbled his keen pleasure at her company when his little ghost-girl melted comfortably into his side.
"You devilish wisp, always protecting him. He'll get soft, you know." Claw muttered, catching the end of Wolfbane's eyeroll as the yearling boy tucked tail and ambled away. Their offspring had garnered a good sense of when to vacate a situation, especially when Femur had the inclination to toy with him as she usually did. Claw, always willing to bend to her whims, tilted a knowing eye in her direction. "Fifth time's a charm?" He joked, fanged mouth parting to grip her poll and rub loose tension in her neck.
"I'm glad you came, though. He doesn't mean to but that boy ... he's starting to wear on my patience." The warg grumbled, pressure beginning to build in the center of his chest. "Which brings me to my point; I need a promise from you, Femur." Her blue mate expresses, halting his gentle massage to catch her attention.
@[Femur] No problem dear!
She’d seen it come about - -
Never questioned the depth of his devotion to their brood of foals or their own passionately made get. But he slunk away to stare at himself in tide-pools and puddles. She knew then that he was looking for outward signs of the curse that festered in him like a sickness.
At first it took only seconds to glance and see that nothing had changed - he hadn’t changed. Seconds became minutes. Then minutes became hours. With those hours came a fresh attitude of snapping at their children and other residents until there was only his reflection and him. Until she cane along and broke the spell looking at himself held over him. But Femur noticed it was becoming harder and harder to pull him back to even her side.
She hasn’t given up though. Won’t - because he is her beloved, her everything. Besides the children of course but he had been there long before them and she had always hoped against hope that he’d be there long after the children were grown and gone off on their own adventures. It seemed like she was racing against not only the curse but time itself to delay the terrible inevitable.
She knows she ought to feel defeat because what happens will happen despite her invention or even because of it. Femur fights; not usually a fighter but she fights for him against the curse and all those hours stolen from them so far. For now her love and all that it encompasses from passionate touches to hard love-bites is enough to stem the curse’s tide. But she is left with questions -
When?
How much longer do we have with him?
How much longer do I have with him?
The green of his eyes have always been stunning - still are stunning! His eyes are twin forests that swallow her whole surrounded by the iridescent sea of his face. Stars he was beautiful! If anything could break her heart then looking at him in those moments of profound love did just that - broke and pieced her heart right back together all in a matter of instants. How could she ever stop looking at him? She could but looks dissolved into touches; into the press of her flesh to his like she did just now.
“My place as a mother is to coddle him as much as I can before he leaves us.” She gave him that dashing fanged smile he loved so much beneath eyes blacker than black with unspoken desire. “Besides, I can only coddle him for so long. It is your approval and love that he’ll seek for the rest of his life. Sons know they are the apples of their mothers’ eyes but they’ll forever search for validation from their fathers and the need to exceed their expectations.”
Femur knows that Claw is hard on Bane for a reason - he is their first bloodborn and a son at that. Bane has mighty big hoof prints to fill and Femur has no doubt in her mind that their son will be anything but successful in that. She believed him destined for greatness just like she believed all their children were.
Claw is hers now though.
The desire deepens into a hot bloom that spreads beneath her skin as he begins to rub the tension loose from her neck. “Practice makes perfect.” she mouths back coyly. There is hardly any time to engage further in her favorite game of getting each other worked up as he turns way too somber too fast.
“It’s because he’s too much like you when you were that age I’d imagine.” Femur shifts to stare more directly at him the moment the massage ends. Her ears pin back at the mention of extracting a promise from her. She grits her teeth, not liking where this conversation is going even as she forces herself to nod in acceptance. Surely it has to do with the curse. She could think of nothing else as a pitiful and all-consuming look of love found her face.
“Yes, my love.”
The minute those words left her mouth was the same minute she swore she could feel the universe tighten its precarious hold on the pair of them, drawing that noose just a tad bit tighter. There’s not enough time! Came the fleeting thought as she stared back at him grimly.
@[Longclaw]
When Femur’s first pregnancy became a solid fact, Longclaw had not believed the amount of love he could have for her would ever grow deeper.
He should’ve known, by then, that anything concerning his soulmate should never be quantified in terms of beginnings or ends.
Claw remembers how scared he’d been the day she brought Wildling home to live with them. How (for a split second) he’d buckled under the weight of fatherhood. Her eyes of coal had been the dam to suspend his rush of heedless emotion - his Ghost-girl had always been that way, fiercely unafraid in the face of certain defeat.
Looking at her now with that same expression of reproachful determination dragged him tooth and nail back to reality. It centered him, gave focus to the sometimes hazy expression he wore. “He is fantastic, isn’t he?” The shifter admits, crumbling when she dazzles him with a signature look. “They all are, of course. We were fantastic parents …”
“Unlike my father.” He thinks in a rush of bitter resentment. If it weren’t for that wretched creature and his continual scheming, Claw could have had the semblance of a peaceful future with the object of his every waking fantasy. He wouldn’t have to force a depressing necessity upon Femur, who so obviously wanted nothing more than his adoration. “Promise me that when you’ve finished listening to what I have to say, you’ll consider your options and do the right thing when the moment arrives.”
For once, the vein of his seriousness could not be turned aside by the welcome warmth of her belly and hips fitting into his own; if he gave into her desires (he would, he always did) she would thank him later for pressing her into such a tight corner.
@[Femur]
05-05-2018, 09:21 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-05-2018, 09:22 AM by Femur.)
It had been so easy to love him. Still was so easy to love him. Even as he barked at their firstborn and made her gnash her teeth together in consternation. He was still so easy to love from ear-tip to hoof.
Every luscious blue inch of him was dedicated to her in worship and love as much as every coin-bright and bone inch of her was to him. Femur knee deep inside herself that no matter what he asked of her or made her promise to do, she’d do it. That much was owed to him just for being a fantastic father to their little troupe of foals and just for the sheer fact that she loved him.
There was no other love like theirs. Conquering and consuming. Bright and hot as a comet’s tail streaming across the night sky. They were cosmic and Femur felt the slam of galactic desire and the pull of planetary want deep inside her whenever she looked at him. That’s all it ever took- just one look and she was done for.
She can see his gaze sharpen with renewed focus as he comes back to her momentarily. “Yes he is.” she echoes with motherly sentiment as their son moves off to pursue his own agendas. It was sometimes hard watching them grow up and gain that independence from their parents but she always felt a hot rush of pride at seeing them go.
“Are,” she corrects him swiftly with her signature black glare. Femur can never be so bold and brash in front of him for very long. He softens her - feminizes her to the point of lovesick lust as she plants herself more closely at his side so that parts of them can brush and touch in unapologetic ways as her usual passions takes a backseat to the seriousness in his face and tone. Whatever it is that he has to say will be a threat to the peace they’ve known for so long.
How can she prepare herself for it?
By standing next to him as straight and tall as she can (which isn’t very tall at all compared to him), looking as imperious as only the daughter of a fallen king and his chosen consort can look. But Femur is Femur and she cannot help how her fanged mouth plays at his neck even as he begs - not in the commonest of ways - a promise from her.
“It all sounds so terribly final.”
Femur sighs; somehow she’d always known it would come to this - promises and an end to the tangled web of peace and passion they’ve had. Her lips find his ear for a quick nibble - she can never be just content to answer him without a nip or a nuzzle. “But I promise.” She swears it solemnly.
@[Longclaw] <3 sorry for the wait!
She reminds him that once upon a time, he’d considered giving Wolfbane his gift - the same way he’d received it. It would be fitting, and Longclaw can’t help but admire the flame’s unique color and abilities. He knew, deep down, that its power was what drew his friends close, and his golden lover closer. Wolfbane could use such a gift, he could wield a great power … but the cost had been too high for Longclaw to pay. The once-guard of Tephra couldn’t bring himself to risk giving his son such a terrible burden.
“It all sounds so terribly final.” His mate complies, once she’s attached herself against his blue side and stretched her pretty lips upwards to toy with one of his equally colorful ears. “But I promise.”
He sighs, and begins to walk ahead so that they might slip further into the warm recesses of Tephra’s wild forest. “When I was a yearling,” He begins, glimmering legs rising above twisted roots in a fluid sweep, “my father and I murdered my grandsire, a stallion named Lupei. I had been convinced that he was unstable - which technically was true - and so we put him down.” The shifter states, matter-of-factly.
I trained a whole year for that fight. He thinks, but doesn’t say aloud. Wyrm tore me away from my mother and my twin, just to curse me.
With his nose, Claw pushes aside thick ropes of hanging vines and passes a veil of others just like it. What lies behind is a trodden clearing, where a mossy carpet is just taking hold after so many years of tiny hooves trampling it. Their children’s playden now showed signs of neglect, but the quiet hush and pleasant privacy it still provided would suit them both adequately enough.
Longclaw stops somewhere near the center, and shifts his bulk so that he can view her with the slight tilt of his square cheek. “After he died, my father insisted that I eat Lupei’s heart; we knew what powers it would give me, but I had no idea that it was a bad exchange.” Longclaw mutters, his lips soon finding the nearest square inch of Femur’s tantalizing body. “Lupei had stolen it from another horse, same fashion,” He murmurs, in between each warm kiss, “and then he went cuckoo. So will I.”
Finally, at this, the warg pauses. “Right before we killed him, Lupei was threatening to use the flame for destruction - he wanted to set Beqanna on fire, and everyone with it.”
@[Femur] It's totally fine! We can wrap this up whenever you'd like 
Femur can remember when his eyes hadn’t really been eyes. They’d been white flame. Hot and cleansing and somehow all-seeing. He’d told her of the curse attached to the white fire and still she’d burned for him. Power or no power, she’d burned for him because Fate had decreed it and who was Femur to deny the constant rampant combustion of her heart and flesh?
She loved him no less and no more for that power. Could love him just for the iridescent blue of his skin and the glisten of fang against his mouth. Loved him through everything and could do no less than just love him unconditionally. Even as he pushed on ahead deeper into the forest and she slipped along after him, forever his ghost-girl.
Femur is shocked by his sudden revelation. It’s not that he hasn’t trusted her just that she’s never heard the origin story of the curse. He had been so young! Especially to take on that kind of responsibility - putting a wild uncontainable beast down for the sake of all. Even one that was a blood relative! She gave a sad shake of her head for the blue yearling she never knew, mourning the fact that what he’d done couldn’t have been easy to stomach know matter how necessary.
It had to have been necessary too. She knew Claw did not kill without provocation. Even as a wolf, he killed for the sake of the hunt and need for nourishment. There was a respect in him for the art of battle and one’s foe - she’d seen enough when he taught Tephra’s soldiers and their own children.
She follows him (hasn’t she always?) diligently through the tangle of vines. Green ropes of living plant glide over and against blue flesh then gold. The feel of it is enough to make her shiver. Not from fear of the unknown and where they’re going. Not even from fear of the conversation they’re having and what he’s asked of her. But from the sheer fact that she is with him and just maybe they’ll make a moment to outlast all the other moments that have come before.
It is love and lust that makes her shiver, giddy at the thought of passion and the press of his fanged lips to her overheated skin.
The spring in her step and the bounce in her butt is silenced by the sudden recognition of where they are. She can still see their bevy of foals trampoline the grass and plants down to bare dirt beneath their fun and games. Here she had tended to bruised egos and smoothed over scraped skin with a loving mouth. It has been so long since Claw and her had last stood there and now nature is taking it back. Just like she knows it will take back their bones one day.
Femur is careful of the new growth of moss that carpets the playden as she joins him in the center of it. He pins her there with his stare and she knows that he is not finished with the telling of his tale. The fact that he ate his father’s heart does not faze her on the least. She loves him so, she could eat him up! That isn’t hard to understand though he ate the heart not out of love but out of power and command. She understood those too; could only imagine what her father might have made her do if he’d been given the chance (they’d have drank from the oasis he called up from the ground through an offering of death and blood).
He admits that he’ll go crazy.
How can she care when he is kidding her between every word? Each kiss is a distraction from what he says though she hears him and it sinks into some part of her brain not dimmed and dumbed by passion.
Finally she surfaces from the fog of passion to ask him - “Do you want to watch it all burn?”
Sometimes even Femur is victim to her own dark nature. But some part of her feels she must ask this to gage his own level of madness that she has seen creep in over the last year.
@[Longclaw] wrote most of this at work on my phone so I apologize for any mistakes lol. Also enjoying the thread but ready to wrap up and move on to the next bit if you are? ❤️
Everything is saturated in color. Shades of green press in around every golden line that defines Femur’s face and in the hard, black pools of her eyes Longclaw can see the peacock blue of his own reflection. All the beauty in the world was pressed tightly into their private bubble, just two sets of hungry eyes devouring the likes of each other’s endless adoration. He loves her wordlessly; he knows this might be their last encounter.
Longclaw aims to have her as many times as she can stand.
“Yes.” He murmurs, the soft apex of his vibrantly colored nose lowering to bump against her golden forehead, “I want to see it all razed in pale fire, scorched to ash. Everything made new and empty.” The stallion grunts, jerking his mouth towards one of her ears. He feels the pressure of growing fangs against his tongue, and in a flash of motion they’re buried underneath her snowy mane where he can press them eagerly into the supple folds of her flesh.
“For now,” He teases, dragging the deadly tips across the arc of his ghost-girl’s neck, “I think I’ll just burn you up instead.”
Claw enjoys the hedonistic feeling growing in his gut, letting it build before he finally gives into what she … what they both want. For the moment and far into the night he’s the Longclaw she deserves, the one Femur loved from the moment they first set eyes upon each other. The old Tephran stud, in turn, is still amazed at how much he needs and wants her - time has only increased that desperation.
Death could come for him now; Longclaw was more than ready.
OOC: It's time <3
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![[Image: sScEgld.png]](http://i.imgur.com/sScEgld.png)
