"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
It was never a solution that was meant to last. She knows better and yet had convinced herself otherwise, told herself that forgetting would be as simple as it had been the first time. It wasn't though. Not when he was here, only out of reach due to her own stubbornness. No, not stubbornness, she tells herself as she looks out at the sea. Her fortitude. Her dedication to her best interest. Her pride.
She has never been good at swallowing that last one. Even now it catches her her throat, a sullen knot as she appears beside the water in a shower of golden sand. It reminds her of the past, a nearly tangible reminder that this is not what she should be doing.
Let the monster lay.
It should not be so difficult to follow sage advice, advice that she'd give anyone in her position. Of course, no one has been in quite her position. It is just Djinni here, small and golden beside the fresh water, her brown eyes fixed on the murky depths where she knows he lurks.
ooc: okay so this is posted in the meadow but obvi is wherever stilly is currently chilling :|
@[Stillwater]
He had been a fairly common face once. In the wide area of his wet and forested cage.
But he'd kept out of sight since the day she set him free.
He returned, briefly, to meet the youngest outcome of yet another mistake with her. Always her. He wouldn't be admitting that. If she didn't already know, he wouldn't put that power in her devilish hands.
And then he'd vanished again, to do what he does best. Attract and devour. Feast and prey. Live like the king she made him. He knew his first-born would follow suit. Occasionally, he might wonder what Djinni thinks of that. In rare moments, he might even wonder if she despises him for it. But it never lasts long in his thoughts.
She's always been a survivor.
The truth of that statement had his teeth pressing firmly together and his dark eyes flashing. He hated that he couldn't kill her. He hated that he couldn't taste her delicious, delicate last breath no matter how many times he got her in the water. Even though a small part of him thrills in it, this never-ending hunt, his irritation was poisoned with a secret pride.
As far as he knew, she is the only one that could survive him.
And now he craved her like a rare tonic, exquisite and invaluable. Even at that moment, as he rose from the waters before her as though summoned and obedient. But they both knew better. Water trailed over his disgustingly brown skin, a brown that made the blue of his eyes look darker, duller. He craved her. Needed the taste of her that he could nearly smell in the air, making his mouth water.
Looking into her eyes though, he couldn't help but smile, even just a little.
Brown.
Did she do that just for him?
Djinni. I've missed you. But he'll never say it.
He'll never say it.
09-22-2018, 05:12 PM (This post was last modified: 09-22-2018, 08:25 PM by Djinni.)
Fate would have preferred them not to meet, but Djinni has never been inclined to let fate have too much of a hand in guiding her adventures. Stillwater might have found happiness in his cave by the sea, might have sired kelpies on Nayl rather than the dragons she bore to Lior instead, might have done a great many pleasant things. Djinni had taken that opportunity from him, plucked him from the granite shore and locked him in an ever-autumn cage.
It was his misfortune that this coincided with the Reckoning, that Djinni's control over herself had weakened for just long enough to let water in through the cracks. She has no moral compass of her own - there has always been Walter for that - and the brutal ends to his seductions have never bothered her because they are not anyone she knows.
That is an advantage to being secluded after all: she never has to know.
He rises from the water, murky brown and dripping. He's black again before she's really processed the desire to do it. Turning him colors had been fun in the moment, but it clashes with her memories and so she flips it back as easily as she blinks.
Just out of reach, he smiles. Impossibly handsome, the blue-eyed stallion stirs a heady desire within her, a need that she had always found impossible to resist in the past. Only his disappearance had saved her before. Now it is the thought of a flaxen haired stallion and the girl beside him, a little girl with Djinni's face but her father's warm smile. That is what keeps her own the shore, keeps her smile nothing more than a breif flicker across her golden muzzle.
"Why are you back?" She asks instead of 'Where did you go? Why did you leave me? The genie hopes, in her most contrary of ways, that his answer is a terrible one that she can hold against him. The small mare leans away from the water, away from him. It's safer to be farther away, Djinni knows. Where he can't trap her, where she can't be tempted.
09-26-2018, 07:12 PM (This post was last modified: 09-26-2018, 07:13 PM by Stillwater.)
Stillwater
"Why are you back?"
Not one he'd like to answer, so he ignored it.
His eyes glided over her appreciatively, and slightly hungrily - he couldn't help that. Saliva still pooled under his tongue and it was taking a deal of control to be this near her and not advancing on her. But there she was so wary and guarded, leaning away from him in that minute way. So unlike the fearless Djinni he knew. She'd never been necessarily open with him, so it wasn't like he'd expected much.
Certainly more than this, though.
Well. He stepped forward anyway. Smooth and gradual so she could dart away if she must. His black velvet hovered over her, over that supple muscle in her neck that was very fun to bite. He wasn't liking what he was finding, though how could he blame her, he supposed.
You smell different. His voice was cool, eyes flicking back to her face as he paused at her shoulder. It was a bad different, but it wasn't polite to say so. A disgusting stranger's smell on her, his mate. His jaw ached in response, flat useless teeth sharpening into needle-fine points. He swallowed more saliva.
I can help you remove it, he told her softly, sweetly, with a handsome quirk in his lips and shine in his eyes, looking over his shoulder at her. He could fix it. He could make it right again.
come down to the black sea swimming with me go down with me, fall with me, lets make it worth it
Nerine feels very far away in this moment. Everything does, really. The entire world has narrowed to this encounter with the two of them, and even though Djinni leans away from him he comes nearer, and she wonders if he is drawn by the same magnetism that she pulls against. Her dark eyes trace the water that drips down his figure, follow the curve of his back until it is blurred by his nearness.
'You smell different', he says, but it is the way he offers to remove it that tells Djinni how he truly feels.
The reminder of the outside world feels strangely at odds with the way it has narrowed, and the rose-gold mare shakes her head as though the flinging about of her metallic mane might grant her some clarity. It does give her a chance to pull away, and she look up at his impossibly handsome face and feels her resistance pool at her feet like the water does at his.
"I have a mate," she tells him, using the word as Isobell had. "And a daughter." A family, something that was not so easily removed as the smell of them on her skin. Djinni knows she will not be able to refuse him if he comes any nearer, and so she throws words instead, an intangible barrier.
"I love them." She says, and it is true. Also true is the rising warmth of her blood, the loud strumming of her heart. The genie recognizes these symptoms, the weakening of her control, and she stares at the cause with unreadable eyes. They have only ever been good at one thing, and while at times she wondered if there was potential for something more, the dun mare had never let herself think on it too long.
He knew what she was saying, and beneath his stoic exterior, he raged. He beat at the cage of his own mind. And swallowed more saliva, eager for a taste of more than just her now. His crank was winding and eventually it would have to halt, it would have to play. In a blanket of blood, he would play.
"I love them."
He would not be undone. His determination was setting firmly. He nodded slowly, tilted his brilliant smile just right. Just so. His eyes glittered like the light of a pale moon over his lake. And he leaned closer, watching her beautiful face as he brushed his lips softly over her jaw. His whole body was relaxed, at ease here with her. His mind was not.
"Yes," he confirmed, agreed, in a hushed murmur against her skin. He deliberately misunderstood her. "And two sons," he reminded her. A night of reminding her, then. Remembering where she was, who she used to be, what she used to have. Did his children mean nothing now? Did she not realize how rare and impossible that was for his kind? Perhaps the others would need to die first, but he didn't think so. She only had to stay a while.
"Don't you love our sons too, Djinni?"
He wasn't sure what she'd done with Lochwood. He saw him once, just the once, so briefly. And then the babe was gone. Part of him assumed she'd killed him. Perhaps he'd turned out just a little too much like his sire, a little too dark or a little too hungry. A little too dangerous.
Perhaps she knew he would've had to kill him.
His gray-blue eyes were on her brown ones, lips parted and watching her. He was close enough to hear her pulse, hear it call to him, sing to him. With a silent breath, he controlled it. For now. He kept the silver from his eyes, kept his beast at bay. But he wanted her. As he always would. With a slow blink, his skin smoothed over and he was as slick and rich black as an Orcha. Made for the water. Showing his skin for his mate. Reminding her.
And even this wasn't his real body, but she knew that too.
"Where are you, Djinni," he whispered, his voice like gravel.
come down to the black sea swimming with me go down with me, fall with me, lets make it worth it
10-14-2018, 08:32 PM (This post was last modified: 10-14-2018, 08:34 PM by Djinni.)
His lips touch the night-cool line of her jaw, and Djinni quivers. She doesn’t move beyond the shiver that shakes her from head to hoof; even her doe eyes remain fixed on him as he blurs with nearness. Don’t you love our sons too? he asks her, and the words clatter loudly in her mind, a question she doesn’t know how to answer. She’d forgotten them, she realizes.
Forgotten the boys and their too-hungry eyes, forgotten the way they reminded her of their father.
She must have done it on purpose, wished them away. Sudden realizations like this are not a novelty for the ageless genie, but they are far from common. Djinni had kept Starlin though, kept the quiet girl who looked just like her and nothing like him.
Saying no is impossible, because as soon as she remembers them she remembers why she’d forgotten.
They were too much like him.
Too much like their father.
Too dangerous.
The warning bells that chime at his nearness have long since become background noise, and they echo futilely as the moonlight highlights the sleek crest of his neck and the impossibly beautiful angles of his face. There is no resisting him; his kind have made certain of that. For all her chicanery, Djinni is no less of a woman. Yet she might have resisted were it not for the smoothness of skin that she suddenly feels against her mouth.
It stirs an unconscious response in her, a shimmer of golden sand and then a matching slickness to her hide, grey now rather than pink and pressing against any bit of him she can reach.
"I’m here," she says between kisses, pushing him without thought back towards the water with deceptive strength. "You’re here too." The words seem nonsensical, murmured against his oilblack skin from between teeth that grow ever more pointed. "Stay here."
