and i'm terrified i won't get out, brinly

[ghaul]

GHAUL

i can take you there, but baby, you won't make it back

He’s nearly ready for sleep when an unfamiliar scent is drawn up into his nostrils. Well, not entirely unfamiliar, but one that does not typically belong here in Pangea. He chitters quietly to himself in thought and then he shifts his wings across his back so they lay loosely across him. Ghaul must reach her before the aliens do, he thinks, and so he hurries from his little nook in a canyon near the border.
 
The scaled creature tilts his head this way and that as he observes the blurs of deep navy blues until they turn to a white-hot blob. He pauses, one talon curled in the air for his next step, and he wonders why there isn’t even a red outline to her. This requires further investigation, of course, and he’s skittering toward her with a wide grin smeared across his face. Ghaul hesitates when he reaches her as he slows to a brief halt to consider his options. A brief series of clicks emanates from his throat and then he closes the gap between them.
 
His wings spread wide to guard the webbing from her heat as he curls his side against her. The scales provide him with just enough protection to withstand her but it feels like stepping into a hot bath. A hissing breath is drawn between his crooked fangs, but he adjusts quickly enough. Slowly, very slowly, he folds his wings across his back once more and releases a slow breath,
 
“Warmer than Greta,” he muses aloud, followed by a short snicker. “I am Ghaul, of Pangea. You are my guest for one year?”
 
In his excitement to meet something so strange, he has regressed into his childhood speech patterns. He spreads his jaws wide in a seemingly dramatic yawn before a soft purr settles into the back of his mouth. Could he keep her for longer than a year? Or perhaps he could just snatch her away every time winter is approaching.
 
“I want to touch your face.”
 
His head tilts, curled horns glimmering with their stardust as he observes her. In his hurry to solve the mystery of her heat signature, he nearly forgot to learn what she looked like. Now it just feels odd to map the curves of her cheek and brow without some sort of request beforehand. This night is full of firsts, for him.

@[Brinly] he loves his niece already. best heating blanket.

[Brinly]

Brinly

She is less than thrilled about being stolen away to Pangea. Brinly was not good at making homes, and she still is not sure if she would consider Nerine to be such a thing, but, it was the closest she had ever had. She has never been the type to take kindly to being told what to do, regardless. She has spent too many years in the wild of the mountains and forests to fold so willingly to another’s demands, and this was no different.

She has never been trapped by a border before, and for someone that already felt too easily suffocated, she was certain this would tip her over the edge.

The draconic creature finds her, and she is elated.
Because if anyone deserved the brunt of her fury, it was him.

“You,” she spits the word as he approaches, trying to not let her attention stray to the peculiar horns that twist where his eyes should have been. He was an oddly fascinating creature, but she had no interest in that just now. He is drawing closer, and where usually she would shrink away, or warn someone to not touch her, she does no such thing.

He could burn for all she cared.

When he slowly presses into her she waits for the cry of pain and alarm – for him to recoil back at the ruthless heat of her skin, to smell the singe of burning flesh.

But nothing happens.

He curls into her, and she feels his scales and she is reminded of that moment with Isilya in the meadow – when she discovered that she cannot burn scales.

She wrenches herself away from him abruptly, her ears flattened into the tangled black tendrils of her hair. He likely cannot see the anger that etches so firmly into every line of her face, but she is certain that he can feel it. Can feel the way the words that hiss from her lips crackle like flames, can taste the ash in them when she sneers, “The term guest implies that I can leave, on my own free will.”

He asks if he can touch her face, and she widens the gap between them with a curt and flat, “Absolutely not.”

— burn until our lives become the embers —

[ghaul]

GHAUL

i can take you there, but baby, you won't make it back

Ghaul has never had to question where his home is. From the moment he was born, Litotes told him that Pangea was where he would come to roost, and that has been his answer ever since. The winding canyons and dried out marine life bring him comfort the way a baby blanket might. These things, this place is entirely familiar and safe in his mind. He can’t imagine how anyone else could see this kingdom any other way.

She is seething when she speaks the single word ‘you’ and he gibbers amusedly at the sound. Him. All that his presence entailed. Even if he could see the way her eyes hesitantly linger and then hurriedly stray from his horns, he would not mind. The monster is proud of this face. It is scarred and scaled and, most importantly, it is his. This is the face that Clarissa sees fit to kiss and adore.

He lifts his head to watch her when she rips herself free from his side. Disobedient. A guttural hiss builds in his throat as he closes the gap between them once more. Perhaps he had been too kind, too optimistic to expect her to simply comply to his whims? He can hear the way her breathing comes in uneven rhythms, heavy with her rage. He hardly listens when she speaks. Instead, he chooses to drape a large wing over her that wraps too tight around her shoulder, squeezing her to him.

“You can leave if you like. Just let me eat one of your legs and I’ll set you free,” he says, lowering his head to teasingly snap his teeth at the foreleg nearest him with a discordant laugh. He wonders if her body heat makes her taste different than others, but he does not sink his fangs into her for now. Ghaul lifts his head once more and he presses his nose roughly to her face. He is perhaps too rough when he traces the curve of her jaw, the edge of her cheekbones. She almost feels familiar, somehow. Like a fraction of another face he has memorized before.

“Saying no is pointless. I take what is not given,” he mumbles against her temple, his words slurred by the way he keeps his lips pressed to her skin.

@[Brinly] hes so gross im sorry