"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
Fireflies danced in the summer air. Cheri plodded slowly along through Taiga, down the main road that cut the redwood forest in an uneven half. She was headed home for Loess, already unenthused about how late in the day she’d set out. As the hours drew on and her family mingling came to its natural end, Cheri couldn’t seem to fully shake her journey’s exhaustion. It weighed down on her so heavily that her stone hooves thumped one after the other, protesting every stride. Her wings drooped, barely lit even in the dim light crowding around her. She was a deadbeat horse.
She yawned, trying to stretch her neck and gain back some of the enthusiasm she’d lost over the span of her short vacation without much success. It wasn’t a lack of sleep that was ailing her; in fact the night before last she’d slept as if she were dead. Her mother Amarine had to physically shake her into consciousness that morning when a light prodding hadn’t worked. She just felt bone-deep tired.
Nothing ached. She wasn’t sick - and she would know if she was sick - and she wasn’t pregnant, which had actually been a slight concern for a moment until her mother had assured her that the timing wasn’t suitable for such a case.
“So why do I feel like I’m dying?” She thought dramatically, veering off the course of the road into a thicket of tightly-clustered pines. In a few hundred meters the forest would give way to the valleys, which would (in time) show the subtle rise of the redrock buttes looming in Loess’ distant horizon. “I’m so close.” She knew, but the fear of legitimately collapsing in the roadway seemed to outweigh her determination in the present. She would just have to be content with sleeping out in the wilderness for a night, and then in the morning she could start again - hopefully a bit earlier if she gave in to her body’s demands.
The pegasus mare slid in between the soft bristles of the trees, their evergreen needles turning dark with the setting of the sun, and she wedged herself tightly among them in hopes of being obscured by any passerbys. Tonight she wasn’t picky: it took her seconds to settle in and drop her head before a deep sleep tugged her under a heavy wave of blackness, and Cheri dove into the nothingness eagerly enough.
She would never know how the evergreen cluster lit itself like a strobe light afterwards, flashing for a moment with a brilliant explosion of white light before it snuffed out and took her with it.
Down and down and down she went; furthering herself into a dreamlike trance that had no beginning or end. Her thoughts and worries dissipated, time itself felt less of a linear thing and more like an abstract concept, so that when she awoke the appaloosa mare had entirely forgotten where she’d come from or what she’d been doing in the first place. She blinked, hazy with confusion, and then the memories came back like an object being thrust out of a disengaged rubber sling.
“Ow.” She moaned, pulling herself out of the evergreens and trailing heavy brown needles with her when she did. Cheri had a roaring headache, one fit to split her skull right down the middle, and she clenched her eyes shut against the light of the sun when at last she stumbled out onto the road again.
At first, nothing was obviously different. Her mouth felt dry, unused, and her brain was throbbing uncomfortably which kept her from taking flight. But she did feel rested for the first time in days, finally. About a mile or so down the thoroughfare her pain had subsided to a manageable state, so she unfurled her wings and shook them free of the deadweight she’d picked up in the course of her slumber. “What a mess…” Was all she had to say about the litter of curled, dried needles that gathered around her pink hooves. “So many dead ones … I thought the trees had been healthy but perhaps not.” The mare shrugged, then took to the sky.
Up in the air again she was free to breathe and relax, so the thumping inside her skull quieted and before long, Cheri was touching down in the heartlands of Loessian territory again. It felt good to be home, but she had a prickling urgency to meet with Oceane and discuss everything she might’ve missed in her time away; the young diplomat tipped her nose to the sky and gave a short hello by nickering softly, and then she set off on hoof to track down one of her mentors or the Lady liege herself.
OOC note to readers: (tl;dr) this thread is taking place out of the known timeline. Cannon for Cheri and Obscene, but it in no way applies to the current in-game dynamics! *Mostly* for fun <3
06-11-2021, 07:37 PM (This post was last modified: 06-12-2021, 02:42 PM by Obscene.)
I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
She had been gone all night.
It isn’t in him to worry, least of all for her. Still, when he wakes and she is not there, he worries. It is hidden beneath that cunning demeanor he puts on for the court as he ambles nonchalantly through the canyons, his smug smirk firmly in place and the dark ruby of his eyes hard and unreadable. Once he had felt her blood on him as he had pressed his healing touch into the parts of her that struggled to fix themselves. The fury that he had felt then, the pain of possibly losing her. It still coils deep within him (around the snake that hisses and waits) and it’s not a feeling he ever wants to have again.
His hooves ring off the clay and rocky walls, making his way to the heart of Loess and avoiding whatever pesky ruling business he can. The sun had barely risen in the sky and he had already had several sips of nectar, finding it in curved rock formations and rocky bowls with that uncanny Fae knowledge that stems deep in his subconscious. To anyone else it’s just a normal day, just normal behavior for their monarch who tends to be inebriated at any time of day while ruling with a firm but gentle grip. Only one could see behind the mask now, one who knew that he drank to calm his nerves, to calm the raging sea of emotions he got when he was uncomfortable or nervous. But she wasn’t here.
It had been a hard thing, taking off the pieces of his armor let alone pushing down the visor from his helmet to begin with. To let her look inside to what made him what he was. Yet slowly and painfully, they were working on it. Working on taking down that wall, brick by brick. It was a slow process but it was worth it. She was worth it. His smug smirk softens into a crooked smile, one he gives only to her when they are alone like this, and there’s a flicker of warmth from the hard ruby depths of his scarlet eyes. She can be as wild as the storms she had once cast about her (that dark night when they had first met had never been forgotten), as vicious as the viper within him, and as obstinate and cunning as the Fae themselves. Her jaded eyes could also open wide with vulnerability when he touched her just so, a softness in the heated passion of her kiss, and he never tires of the way she trembles beneath him when he takes her. His unkindness is left piled at the door in those moments when he shows her what exactly a prayer from the Fae sounds like, the reverence that it should properly hold.
There are times they step before the people purposely not touching, to radiate in their individual power and remind the world of who exactly they are dealing with. It is only the whisper of a touch in those moments, a steady muzzle to a neck and a knowing gleam in their gaze to also remind those watching that they were a unit. A powerful one at that. No eyes are on them now though, as she rounds the corner of a chasm, as she comes back home. He steps to her without hesitation, breathing her in deeply as he plants a possessive kiss to her jaw. A suggestion forming in the glittering ruby eyes. “Have I told you lately how abhorrent you look?” He asks, an old joke that he never gets tired of telling. It always stirs the memory of when he had first said it, how long it had taken her to figure out that he could never actually insult her. His possession mellows into something softer as he moves his mouth to linger closer to hers, a wickedness in that crooked grin and a brow raised.
And then he kisses her like he means it.
As if he had done so a thousand times before.
As if he would die if he could not have her, abhorrent thing that she is.
Too late she realized how much had changed in her brief absence. The paths that had always been worn down were now overgrown, different than Cheri remembered. The scrubby, hardy growth of arid plants clung to the lower walls of the canyons where they hadn’t before, as if years had passed and not just a single night. Her confidence faltered the more Cheri took in the strange but familiar world around her, and the once-confident steps slowed their pace until the black mare had nearly come to a stop.
She rounded a bend in the maze of sandstone spires, only to be met with her worst nightmare.
Obscene. What was he doing in Loess? Cheri frowned, though her confusion about the events of last night superseded her ability to properly appear “displeased”, and the look itself was a less-harsh version of what it might’ve been in any other situation. Still, his mannerisms drew her attention back to the present and she watched, alarmed, as he approached her casually.
As if they were friends and not bitter rivals.
And then he kissed her.
It came so quickly that Cheri could only manage halfway picking up her leg before shock planted her firmly into place. The sensation of his lips, warm and with a definite purpose to their action, kept her silently amazed as they indented themselves into her pelt with a firm but loving pressure. That was highly unexpected; enough that her mouth popped open into a silent “O”.
Cheri blinked, trying (and failing miserably) to form words so that she could reply to his light-hearted joke, but just as a few came to mind Obscene had moved ahead without her. This time he meant business: the shape of his muzzle covered up her own sluggish mouth, quick to form itself to her as if he’d done it a thousand times before. It left Cheri stupefied, utterly frozen. The nothingness came back a thousand times as potent as the first, spreading throughout her lovely face and leaching into her motionless limbs until she found herself pushing back.
She kissed him because it reminded her of that day in the Pampas, and Cheri had never been able to get over it since.
Slowly, she closed her eyes. The darkness swept over her like a devouring animal, hungry for her subservience. She was surprised to find herself starving as well, having thought of this moment in heated daydreams until the desire left her gnashing her teeth in an unsatisfied rage. Obscene kissed her and passion sprung from the unspoken connection between them, as white-hot and real as anything Cheri had known in this life, as true and earnest as anything she would ever know in any lifetime, and for all her strength and goodness she was powerless in the face of it.
Gods she had wanted this so badly. Had wanted him.
Her face twisted in a spasm of painful ecstasy and with a breathy gasp Cheri broke away from Obscene, muffling an unexpected sob.
“Okay enough!” She managed to blurt out, finally taking that step she’d meant to take moments before. Her chest heaved, clearly out of air. She looked at him and then away from him, deliberately trying to make sense of what had just happened without losing herself again. “What the fuck Obscene?” Cheri murmured.
06-11-2021, 09:34 PM (This post was last modified: 06-11-2021, 09:35 PM by Obscene.)
I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
He barely noticed how startled she seems to see him, his focus primarily on placing his mouth on any exposed part of her. There is a tremor of anxiety as he notes the tense muscles beneath his lips and his grin slips only slightly as he goes to kiss her fully. Had he done something to displease her? Perhaps he had upset another diplomat when his patience had run too thin or this was yet another fit over him being "too blitzed" at that kingdom meeting but surely that was nothing to be truly sore about. Nothing that can’t be fixed with a little attention. He gives that attention to her now, his passion exposed in the kiss he presses hungrily to her lips and slowly she melts beneath him.
Relief replaces the worry as she presses back into him, kissing him as urgently as he does her. Time seems to slip away when he can feel her like this, when they both shed the heavy cloaks they wear and forget the cruelty of the world around them, cruelty that they had caused each other. Too soon. Too soon she breaks away and ends their kiss with a gasp that leaves him growling for more. He doesn’t let her get too far as a wild heat rises within his core and the serpent stirs with need. His teeth find a vibrant strand of her emerald hair and tugs it roughly to him, burrowing his muzzle beneath the fine layers of her mane and finding the sensitive skin beneath. “You know what you do to me when you do that.” He murmurs into the velvety flesh, another fervent kiss following his words. Undone by her. Forever undone.
It is her words that drive him more firmly away as he catches a tone to her voice that he wasn’t expecting. “What the fuck Obscene.” She asks and he steps back from her, the glowing red of his eyes narrowing as he tries to source out the root of her displeasure. “What the fuck indeed Cheri.” He snorts back, his smug smirk back in place as confusion quells the sudden heat of his need for her. “You’re the one that was missing all night. Making me listen to the tedious kingdom reports by myself, yet again.” He jibes, hoping to smooth her out with some humor while also keeping control of his own irritation. Where had she been anyway? And why couldn’t she look him in the eye?
“What are you doing here?” He snorts again with disdain but the worry is back, settling itself like a thick blanket over his shoulders. “Hmm let’s see. Ruling Loess. Obviously.” He rolls his eyes, not finding any amusement in this little game she decided to play today. “Now your turn, where have you been?” And he is pressed against her once more, his muzzle pressing firmly along her neck as his healing touch sparks gold from his muzzle and scans across her flesh. Making sure that she wasn’t sick, that there wasn’t something causing this strange behavior. He doesn’t doubt her own abilities but he can’t help but double check. “I missed you, you witch.” He mutters to her as he continues to weave his power until he’s certain she is whole and well. “Next time you tell me what you're up to, would you?” His voice is rough and annoyed but for a moment that worry flickers in the depths of red before hardening quickly back to stone.
06-11-2021, 10:34 PM (This post was last modified: 06-11-2021, 10:35 PM by Cheri.)
a bright and dangerous spark
Enough is never enough, not when it comes to Obscene having a say. Cheri stepped back and he reached out to stop her, a different reaction than every single other one before this. Usually her rejection would’ve been enough to put a firm stop to their tête-à-têtes, and Obscene would’ve lashed out verbally as well, but for some unknown reason he didn’t. He grabbed her instead, surprising Cheri all over again, and she complied with his demanding grasp.
A small part of her liked to be handled that way anyways. To be told what to do and when to do it, as long as the speaker’s confidence matched or outshone hers. In all other cases she was typically the guide, usually the first to put a hoof forward and rally the others into following suit. Obscene had outshone her from the beginning, but they’d both wanted to lead the dance and had ended up stumbling over one another instead… Yet this time, it was inexplicably easier to allow him the lead.
He kissed her again and Cheri’s body worked against her, curving itself like a pliable mistress towards her master. She cursed the damn thing and spat out her frustration at him, which he answered in a tone much more like the Obscene she’d always known.
Suspicious. Curt. Accusatory.
According to him she’d been missing all night. “That part fits, at least.” Cheri thought, grasping at that singular puzzle piece while the rest seemed metaphorically scattered around her. The one indication he’d given her to make Cheri think that everything happening right now wasn’t some sort of lucid fantasy, but certain reality. Still: this piece was colored blue and the rest of the remaining ones looked red. Nothing fit.
Like the part about him dealing with Kingdom reports all by himself again, as if it were a normal thing for them to review. Or how Loess seemed strangely different than the last time she’d been here, overgrown and trodden down with new paths over the old familiar ones. Even the trees she’d left earlier seemed different, no longer evergreen but brown, as if the seasons had changed entirely.
Something … something was wrong.
“So why does everything still feel right?” The pegasus mare wondered, collecting herself with a sigh that oddly complemented her earlier outburst. “I’m … sorry?” Was all she could muster, which still didn’t explain why he was here. She asked, and he replied in a fashion so uniquely his own that Cheri couldn’t help but partially roll her eyes. “Of course,” her mind jumped at the first rational explanation it could find, “it’s probably one big joke.”
“He’s probably using some sort of fae trick on me. Maybe he drugged me and it’s just now taking effect.” Cheri deliberated, her gaze slowly rising to meet Obscene’s once more. “I was in Taiga, obviously.” She tested those strange waters of his, game to play along as if nothing were out of the ordinary. As if she was totally unaware of anything sinister happening outside of this little encounter. As if they really were lovers and he really was King of Loess.
But him touching her like that - pressing up against her like a cat curled around a warm object - made it harder to see clearly. Cheri blinked, swallowing her reservations down again the same way Obscene brought his mouth down again to touch her neck, and the deft awareness of his magic instantaneously shot itself through her system. She felt incredible thanks to him, recognizing the feeling of a healer but never having had the pleasure of being healed by one other than herself. His was a gold sort of healing, just like the strands of tinsel in his mane Cheri could see so clearly now that they were mingled together again.
She resisted the urge to reach out and play with them coyly.
“For you?” She murmured sarcastically, sucking in a breath of his powerful musk. “Your wish is my command.” Cheri breathed the promise out and over his pelt where the words fell like gold dust streaked across his shoulder. She stared at him for a moment, lost in her thoughts and wondering just how far Obscene was willing to push things between them, and then her lips resigned themselves to the casual descent of a lover’s embrace, falling like silk over the wearer when they adorned his broad, handsome neck with slow, leisurely kisses.
One at the base where the thick chords of dark muscle connected to his shoulder blade. One at the wicked curve of his crested neck, placed firmly in between those tangled locs of ebony and fool’s gold. One underneath the crescent shape of his jaw, tenderly. One on the broadside of his nose.
She paused. “Would you like me to show you just how sorry I am?” Cheri whispered, the corners of her eyes tilted toward him, full of unspoken promises.
06-11-2021, 11:49 PM (This post was last modified: 06-11-2021, 11:58 PM by Obscene.)
I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
“Of course. Taiga.” He breathes and gives a slight nod but there is hesitance in his tone. They had been ruling together for awhile (and mated for a little longer) but they had still not said that shackling phrase, those three little words, that could change everything for the worse. He knows the time is coming to tell her, that the snake is becoming harder to shift out of, and soon he would lose all control of it. He can feel it now, stirring in the depths of his belly, an itch he just can’t scratch. No amount of nectar can subdue it anymore and he feels time becoming limited. As if he was mortal again. Soon, he tells himself. Soon he will admit the feelings of his pathetic shriveled heart before it is too late. But it’s not just the secret of the snake that keeps him from telling her. It’s the knowing that gnaws at his stomach, an ache in his chest. He cannot take it, to tell her he loves her and then watch her lie to his face when she says it in return. The insecurities he had held for years could still plague him now, still make him feel like that worthless lost boy he had once been. That didn’t deserve someone like her, that he only ever deserved her hate.
It’s not fair, he thinks, as he looks her over from the shards of jewels that crown her forehead to the supple curve of her barrel, to the skin above her hip where he likes to press his kiss into the hardness of bone. He had wanted more time, needed more time. It was why he tried to hard to escape from the monotony of kingdom duties, just to spend an extra second memorizing the delicate lines of her face.
“I’m serious Cheri.” He means it, his red eyes glowering at her momentarily but soften slightly as she breathes him in and her exhale flutters over his dark skin, making him shudder slightly in response.. “You can't just disappear like that, not anymore.” He snarls softly but there is no heat in his anger, the fire of his argument tinged with that worry that refuses to disappear. It was a matter of when, not if, that he would turn and then she would be sole ruler of Loess. She was too important to lose. It comes to him again that she may possibly also become his killer. He doesn’t know what she will do with him, when he is nothing but black and gold scales and venomous fangs, but he’s sure she will do the right thing. It just has to be her decision, he would not put that weight on her. Would not burden her with the pressure and guilt if she couldn’t follow through.
For a moment it is pain that lingers in the glowing inferno of red but it vanishes as she edges closer.
Then her lips are traveling to all those places she knows so well and he sighs in exasperation but does not recoil. “We've tried that before and obedience didn’t suit you.” He purrs with pleasure as each kiss hits its mark and he closes his eyes, becoming the obedient one beneath her touch. “Besides I rather like it when you hold one of those stone hooves to my throat instead. Or whatever else you come up with in those wicked crystals of yours to torture me with.” He drawls lazily, a roguish glint in his eye that matches the smile on his face. Letting her know that he is thinking of those things now as his arousal becomes more evident.
“You’re trying to distract me and while it’s working, it doesn’t mean this is resolved.” He murmurs to her, leaning into her kiss as his neck arches beneath her mouth and his own muzzle caresses the toned shoulder she's exposed to him. Teasing the skin there with tongue and teeth. “It’s one thing for the Queen to make a fool of her King and another thing entirely for a wife to make a fool of her husband.” He parrots back at her, words she had once used against him when she had worried about him and assumed wrongly that he had been disloyal.
He suddenly pulls back from her and it is a hooded expression in the dark uncut rubies of his eyes, a guarded look as his features smooth and he starts to withdraw into himself. “I see what’s going on here.” He states flatly. “You still don’t believe me. After all this time.” His nostrils flare with displeasure as he slowly begins to don his old armor, hiding himself in the folds of steel. For once he isn’t quick enough to hide the scarlet hurt in his gaze as he distances himself from her. “You still think I don’t care.”
If you fell asleep and woke up in a different time, how long do you think it would take you to realize that nothing was right anymore?
How far ahead or how far behind would you have to be for it to unravel suddenly, rather than slowly? And would you believe the impossible could be real anyways?
The truth dawned on Cheri as carefully as a stork wading through quiet waters in search of its next meal. The ripples of time were faint, nigh imperceptible at first, but they were there. The truth struck her like a rapier beak slicing through the surface.
At first she thought he was toying with her as the fae prince liked to do, though his scathing tone was noticeably softer. It was all part of the game, she thought. All part of his grand scheme to throw her off the scent of something much more despicable lying in wait where she couldn’t see. Was Aela there somewhere, hiding nearby and stifling her laughter? As Cheri kissed his dark skin she imagined the golden horse he’d brought along curving her nose into her shoulder, doing her best to stay silent while Obscene laid the trap.
She imagined all of the invisible paramours he’d thrown in her face, the longing to be one of them translated into the last touch of her lips against his nose until the pressure bore into his skin a bit too hard. Perhaps that was why he said what he said: the part about her pressing a pink quartz hoof into the fold of his throat. But it wasn’t until he mentioned her crystals that Cheri stopped altogether and drew her head away from his, if not her body.
“My crystals?” She thought. What about her crystals?
Her crystals … the thought circled a drain inside of her mind, swirling to an inevitable conclusion she couldn’t grasp in the moment. Something about the way he’d described them: whatever else you come up with in those wicked crystals - it gave her pause. She held perfectly still underneath him, just the way she had when they’d tangled together in the Pampas, a small part of her consciousness enjoying the blazing touch of his mouth and teeth scratching away at her dark shoulder while the world around them tilted. Cheri felt like she was experiencing vertigo for the first time, but there was nothing she could do to center herself while the colorful world blurred in a sickeningly terrifying way; that phrase: wife and husband, wife and husband, wife and husband...
“My crystals.” She realized, the spearpoint beak striking her through-and-through with an electric shock.
She came out of the Vertigo state by blinking rapidly, feeling as if she might hurl. Obscene stepped away from her and the result was that she stumbled forward, catching her balance again by striking out with one leg to steady the other three. Her spring-colored mane rustled like a silken green curtain, winking with sparkling color in the broad daylight as it did, and Cheri lifted herself up to face Obscene - a different Obscene from the one she knew - square in the face. “No, I … I believe you.” Cheri insisted, talking through the layer of cotton drying up her tongue. Her eyes, which had been so catty and severe before, now seemed to border on terror. “I do, Obscene. I really do.” Her voice faltered.
She wished suddenly that he would come back, press himself against her again like he’d been doing. Cheri was absolutely certain now that something had gone wildly wrong during her night of deep sleep and it scared her to think that everything she was experiencing right now was because of some fluke with the crystals growing out of her skin. Was she stuck here now? And if she were, just how much had changed? Her mind cut the thought off right there, unable to process such a cataclysmic event. It defied rational logic.
“I had a terrible night Ob.” Her eyes flicked quickly from left to right, as if seeing everything again through a new and horrifying filter. “I don’t think I’m feeling very well at all.”
06-19-2021, 02:37 PM (This post was last modified: 06-22-2021, 08:41 PM by Obscene.)
I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
He had thought them past this bullshit, to an extent at least. After everything that had happened there had been some sort of foundation built between them, an unsteady layer of trust but trust all the same. A twinge of guilt spasms in his chest for making her stumble but he holds fast in his resolve to put distance between them, not liking whatever game she was playing today. It is the fear in her eyes that makes his own throat dry, the widened whites around her jade iris’s as she stammers over her words. The Cheri he has come to know, come to love, had always been a proud and fearless mare. She had only grown in confidence over the years. It had been a long time since he had seen her afraid and his own muscles tense beneath the golden trails of his shoulders in response.
Something nags at his mind, something that he had stored away and forgotten, as she looks around with worry and says she’s not feeling well. Something that Cheri had told him before, something important he was suppose to remember. He can’t quite catch the end of that train of thought but it lingers, an annoying presence.
“I can’t find anything wrong with you.” He counters, stubborn and wary but unable to keep himself from her. It only takes him a few steps to be at her side again, for his muzzle to push away the stray strands of her damp forelock. Dark rubies glitter down at her, searching her face, as the golden spark from his touch slips beneath the part where her throat meets her jaw and scans her again. Comes away with nothing unusual. The snake within begins to writhe and he grits his teeth in response, tries to pacify his own increasing worry as if it might keep the creature at bay. Not now, not now.
In a rare moment of open affection, his muzzle soothingly runs along her cheek. “What happened last night Cheri?” He asks her quietly, trying his best to keep a lid on his growing temper. If someone had tried to hurt her, if someone had done something to her… He bites at the inside of his cheek in another attempt to quell the rising storm that’s thundering in his chest, unaware of the tell tale sign in his eyes as the pupils narrow to slits. God help the person or creature that had tried to harm her and would face the unrelenting wrath of the snake within. If this was the moment that he lost control for good then so be it. He would grab the world between the scaled limbless coils of his body and squeeze until someone came forward and paid tenfold for ever even thinking of touching a single hair on her head.
Oh; Cheri had nearly forgotten the way he made her feel. Over time and at the mercy of his spite, the slender waif of a mare had done everything she could to associate the Pampas Prince with the things she loathed the most. She had told herself time and time again that she hated him, wished the worst for him, thought ill of him when the weather was foul and her mind seemed to drift toward him of its own volition.
But the moment he stepped back to her side and lifted her nose, she was done for.
The warmth of Ob’s healing spread through her veins like liquid fire, molten gold, and she closed her eyes so that she could feel it. As if his touch wasn’t enough, the gift of his powers felt like a wanton violation of her privacy - he was inside of her, searching for something broken to fix - but Cheri leaned into it and sealed her fate all over again. If this were a test she was failing it, and if it was a joke she didn’t care. It felt like something real and yet, the moment felt as intangible as a dream. He was wonderful.
She was hopeless.
"I fell asleep in a grove of evergreens," She murmured, turning her cheek so that her lips could move against the broad, handsome angles of his dark face, "when I awoke I came home, but something was - something is different about this place." Cheri confirmed. How best to explain it, she wondered?
"I can’t explain it, but I’m not supposed to be here. We aren’t … this isn’t right." She opened her eyes slowly, unwilling to sever the warmth between them. Gods how she wished she was wrong. Cheri’s heart yearned for something that didn’t exist, something that might never exist outside of this moment. She pressed her head sideways into his neck and breathed Obscene in, careful not to jab him with the rough points of the crystals that inexplicably were the source of her problems. "I can’t help but feel like I’m running out of time." The pegasus hated to admit it.
Already she could feel the pressure building in her head, despite what Obscene claimed.
I’m scared. She wanted to tell him. Not of this place, not of him, but of the reality she felt she was destined to return to. Of the Obscene she left behind and the Targaryen who still had her heart. Confusion and anguish prattled inside of her like beasts at the kill, swiping at one another over the battered remnants of what she had always thought was right and what now felt like it was meant to be. The ache inside of her grew, but whether it was an ache of desire or one of fear Cheri couldn’t guess. It only served to give her pain.
06-23-2021, 12:52 PM (This post was last modified: 06-23-2021, 05:24 PM by Obscene.)
I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
She murmurs into the warmth of his cheek as he searches her again, tries to find some sort of explanation for whatever is ailing her, and he can’t help the low growl of pleasure that she elicits from him as her breath dances across his skin. It’s enough to make him falter slightly in his golden search, a sputtering of power before he straightens himself out and continues. He refocuses on her words and as she speaks of something different, as she says this isn’t right, that nagging tug in his head develops into a memory.
He exhales sharply as he withdraws his healing touch and slowly, reluctantly, untangles himself from her. “I think I know what’s going on.” It wasn’t surprising that he hadn’t noticed before. They were immortal and healers on top of that, no sign of age wore down their bodies, there were no wrinkles or graying to show that time had passed. They still looked much like they had that first night amongst the wildflowers when he had come so close to confessing his truths beneath the influence of nectar and pollen powder. So of course it was easy to miss that this wasn’t his Cheri.
“You told me there would be a day you wouldn’t be yourself.” He pauses for a moment, regarding her with curiosity. “His” Cheri would be perceptive enough to see the worry that lay in the dark red of his hard eyes but perhaps this one could not. This one still thought him a cold and heartless creature, a villain, a scoundrel. This one still yearned for Prayers.
Cheri had told him that there would come a day when she was not acting herself, that it was her but not her. Tricky magic stuff was what it had come down to, a vague description for her time traveling adventure, as she knew his patience for understanding such things was incredibly low. She had given him something to remember when the time came, something to impart on this young Cheri from the past. Glancing about to make sure they are still alone, he draws her closer to the canyon side and explains this but still remains a healthy distance from her. To stop himself from touching something that wasn’t his. He can’t help but wonder and worry where the real Cheri had gone or if this was still her in some strange way.
“You... She... told me to tell you that it will all make sense in time. There is a long road ahead of you and difficult decisions to make.” This part he understood and a muscle in his jaw tightens as he grimaces slightly, remembering all too well what had been in store for all of them. “There will come a time when you will have to make a choice. Take the hard one.” Whatever the hell that meant but she had insisted he say it, word for word. So he does.
That withered heart aches to bring her close to him again but he resists, his muzzle coming to rest on his glittery chest as he arches his neck and regards her. “You need to go back Cheri.” He murmurs quietly, his expression once more unreadable as he smoothes himself into something more familiar to her. It’s surprising how much it hurts to place himself back in his old armor, to wrap himself in the familiar coldness of his protective shell as he looks at her with indifference. He starts to turn from her, to head back to the bustle of kingdom life and go through the tedious dog and pony show he needs to put on until she returns, whole and his once more. If she was even his, he's still unsure. But he stops with a hoof raised, looks back over his shoulder and decides to remind her of something else. Something that he hadn’t been told to say but finds important regardless. “Do you remember what I told you on that night we first met? Before I gave you my name?”
![[Image: Obscene-Pixel.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/fTkjKh9Q/Obscene-Pixel.png){kind=tracking}