"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
He swallowed. Stared at the ground as his blood soaked into it. This hallowed ground. Sacred only to him. How many times did he come here? Like a ghost. Haunted here, trapped here, tethered. Always, he came back. Appeared, disappeared. This place that meant nothing. This place that meant everything. But only to him.
Only to him.
He lowered himself, as he always did, his bone-thin body resting awkwardly on a bed of armor protruding from him. He couldn't stay long, had been commanded. Had things to do, people to find, men to kill. But just for a moment. His mentor wouldn't know, just a moment. Just a recess into the first good memory he'd locked safely away. A memory he'd stolen, in his forceful way. Always so selfish, so controlling.
I love you. He tensed. Another memory. Slowly relaxed. Swallowed. Damn, but then it started, perfect goddamn timing as always. His insides rumbled, a feeling not a sound, shifted, transformed, pushed outward. He hissed against the sudden piercing pain. His skin ruptured, bled freely. He bit his tongue to keep from crying out, excruciating and blinding. He refused to think of her warmth, her flow of magic that had always soothed him just when he needed it, as if she could sense him. Sense his suffering. She always came when he needed her.
But all he ever gave her was pain.
All he ever was, was pain.
Destruction.
He sighed heavily and stood, removed his tainted body from this perfect place. The place she'd lain. He stared toward the mountain, to the place of his birth. To the place of his death.
I love you.
And sometimes a stupid damn heart just wouldn't stop.
She is not entirely sure whether he irritates her or amuses her. A mixture of both perhaps. Regardless, he intrigues her. He shouldn't - she has learned most of his secrets by now - but still he does.
As it happens, she had not been looking for him today. Truthfully, she had no intention of seeking him out ever again. Even so, she somehow still manages to stumble upon him.
That it is in the meadow is no surprise. They had met here after all.
Perhaps it is fitting that they are constantly drawn together. As it it turns out, she is as inconstant as he is. Of course, she has no reason to be constant. He does not love her, nor she him.
Even so she now bears proof inside her belly. On the surface, the changes are yet so subtle as to hardly be noticeable. The faint thickening of her stomach is barely noticeable and easily covered by her winter coat.
When she first spies him a short distance away, she is tempted to continue on. To ignore him. But if ever she had a failing (of which she no doubt has many) it would be her curiosity. Instead, she approaches.
”Dovev,” she greets in a cool tone, halting a few feet away. She says no more, instead studying him quietly, studying the way he cherishes the ground at his feet, knowing exactly why he does so.
heartfire
i filled up my senses with thoughts from the ghosts
03-06-2017, 04:20 PM (This post was last modified: 03-06-2017, 11:34 PM by Wyrm.)
:WYRM:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
It’s a good thing that Wyrm has almost no inclination of just what Heartfire’s powers entail. He knows, from personal experience, what she can accomplish, how she can transform and twist the mind without so much as twitching a muscle. He is not aware, however, that she can sip delightedly from past and present cups. Their histories have never been revealed to one another - and why should they? - because it has never been incredibly important. He worships the Heartfire he knows now, knew then, and that is all there ever need be.
The starkness of winter in the forest irritates him. There is always an annoying lack of entertainment, a restless sort of slumber that drenches the shadowy depths and leaves him longing for something more. Even curled tightly to a barren limb, part lion, part scales and claws and slitted eyes, he feels a restless sense of urgency that will not drain, no matter how long he lazily fights it. He knows (with a cringe that tenses between his shoulders) that it's because somewhere, out there, she drifts and carries new life. “Damned woman.” He thinks, frowning while he rises from his perch. A little boost from his hind legs and he leaps, arrow-straight, into the canopy above where he bursts from the treeline in a whole new shape.
An eagle has never been so black, nor so large, but this form suits him as he careens above the world and rides the bitter currents in search of her. In all of this place, there has never been a scent like hers, and the mere minutes it takes for him to find that particular aroma pleases him. Nevermind that she had not been far to begin with. What does not please him is the smell of sickly, tainted male that intertwines with hers as he circles above them before dipping easily into a lower, vertical shift of wind. Wyrm finds that jealousy doesn’t suit him well.
The shift is the most natural thing in the world. Feathered tarsus’ reach outward while his talons expand and grow, taking new form while his forelegs burst from the ebony breast. A neck sprouts, bright green, and from it a head grows and replaces beak and rounded eyes. By the time the earth rises up to meet him, he his whole, and his hooves lose no ground as they keep the forward momentum going into a brisk trot. Only the wings, sinfully black and outstretched, remain to balance him until he nears Heartfire from behind, folding tightly into themselves as he closes the final inches between them.
“Heartfire.” He calls to her, nose gliding gently over the tense shape of her hip. For a moment his face contorts, nostrils thinning and stretching into scaled, green slits. His eyes follow, growing wider and circular again but with sharp, vertical pupils. From between his stretched lips a forked, purple tongue flickers out, tasting the cold air around them while he inhales and sees the thermal transformation. The snow-laden meadow is blue-white and dead, but her body is radiating with red-orange life - and there … just there curled inside of her is the faint beginnings of their makings. To say that he was pleased would be a disgusting understatement.
A sharp tick of his muscles and the serpentine attributes vanish, leading him to raise his mismatched eyes to where the mess of bones and flesh stand some feet away. The shifter only tilts his head, moves forward in order to take a comfortable place at her side, and questions aloud, “What is this?” before falling quiet again.
If only he knew just what trouble she’d been stirring up.
It doesn’t matter that she had wanted to stay, that she had wanted him to find a way to convince her not to go. There was nothing he could have done or said, no amount of kisses traced by memory over the angles of her face that would have kept her feet from running. It was an impossible hope, an empty hope, that treacherous reflex of alove that she would always feel for the deepwater stallion. But she had dared to want it anyways.
It hadn’t mattered, though.
With his back turned she had slipped away, held in place only by his eyes, only by that fierce way he had of watching her. She slipped easily through the trees, unhindered by rock and root, flowing like wet sunshine across a world of perpetual autumn. She didn’t slow for the unevenness at the edge of the mountain, didn’t slow for the soft pines or a ground made from their needled flesh. She didn’t even stop for the forest, didn’t tuck herself away in the cave she had spent most of her childhood in, hidden safely from a world that would only watch and wonder and pry at the bruises in her quiet eyes.
Instead she ran until the burn in her lungs matched the fire in her chest, until sweat was damp on her shoulders and in the hollows of her hips, until there was a wildness in her eyes that could only be blamed on the pain and the hurt and the coming undone. She ran until running wasn’t enough, until it stopped helping, until the agony in her chest caught up with her and latched on, buried in the soft of her flesh like gleaming metal burrs. But when she slowed, when she stopped, she noticed him curled against the earth.
Her heart thunders, instantaneous, but this new agony is different, repurposed, somehow easier and so she bends into it willingly. One, two, three steps across the meadow and towards him, approaching from behind where his eyes have not yet spied her, and he rises. Even at this distance she can pick out the near-white armor, sharp against the black, etched in his blood just as it had been before. Her neck twinges, a sharp pain in the memory of an old scar on her neck, in a place beneath her mane where his teeth had buried themselves beneath such delicate blue.
It is enough to make her stop, to push doubt through the network of veins like bare branches beneath her skin.
Blinking, she looks away, but when she looks back again her chest tightens of its own volition.
Two others have joined him, one blue and white and beautiful, familiar in a way she cannot name. The other a bird before he lands, deep black and handsomely feathered, a horse when he stops beside the mare. He is a bright green, the color of new grass, of spring, but he keeps the black wings and they settle against him in sharp contrast. He does not seem familiar.
Her chest tightens again and there is something about the way they watch him, about the quiet intensity of the woman and the easy way the green one stays beside her, accidentally predatorial to his core, that makes her worry over the bone-clad stallion which such heavy, broken shoulders.
It draws her to Dovev’s side immediately.
She manipulates light and shadow easily, pushing the dark where she needs it, twisting it around the scattering of individual trees so that when she appears from behind him, pushing her mouth possessively against that thin, beautiful shoulder, it is as though she appeared from thin air. Shadow, as it were. Her teeth find this jaw, gentle pressure to coax his face towards her, and then she lifts her mouth to the curve of his ear, leaving a kiss in the soft place just behind it as though they were more than strangers, more than the scar he had carved into her neck. “You have an excellent nose for deception.” Her voice is silver and sharp, whisper-soft, but she suspects he will know the pain in it by memory. He has heard it from her before.
She slips beneath his neck and against his chest, turning in a soft u-shape towards the blue mare and the green stallion. At this closeness she is startled by the familiarity of the woman, of her face and her eyes and even the shade of her skin. It is the same as Luster’s own. But she hides the surprise easily, forcing it behind the pain, behind the hurt, burying it in the sharp angles of a wildly beautiful face. Her eyes are bright, luminous when the drift back and forth between the pair, curious when she turns to touch her mouth to the soft hollow of skin just behind the corner of his lips. Possessive, worried for him, and still she isn’t sure why. “Who are your friends?”
Well, goddamn it, he knew that voice, didn't he. He sighed and turned to her, his eyes roaming over her openly. He had cherished it after all, he had reason to be certain it was still all in tact for him. But almost immediately, she had a cute little pet come up to join her, uttering her name and claiming the line of her hip with his nose. Wow, well trained, and his brows lifted as he gave her a wry smile, turning back to stare at the ...thing. Man. Or whatever. His grin spread at the pet's question, "What is this?" and he tilted his black and bone-masked face at Heartfire, a drop of blood falling to the earth.
Yes, what would you call us? he purred, remembering the way she tasted, the way she melted under his blinded touch. Yes, even blind he could coax her breath away from her lungs, this deadly dagger. And he wasn't ashamed to admit he'd gladly do it again, he'd melt for her too if she could manage it. Ah, but she's got her friend now, and clearly he is all that she ever needed, with his creepy little eye thing he's got goin'. Didn't mean much to Dovev, he was beaten and worn bare by something far more terrifying than either of them could imagine. So he just shrugged and-
Ohh..
Luster manifested at his shoulder, her sweet mouth to his skin sending shivers down his arm and successfully stealing his breath. Her teeth on his jawline coaxed his face to her and he turned so willingly, his lips pressing to her throat as she kissed the soft place just beside his ear. Luster.. he crooned low, pleased to see her and thoroughly enjoying this perfect greeting. But his heart pinched at her words, though it didn't show in his face or posture, "You have an excellent nose for deception."
There wasn't even a hint in her voice at the pain she must be burying within, not to anyone more than he who knew the delicate chime of her hurt. He had been the cause of it at one time, after all. I'm sorry to hear this. I'd hoped to be wrong, he whispered near her own ear for her alone to hear, masking it with a light kiss. He'd make sure they spoke of it later; whatever she needed would be hers. Whatever she wanted.
She slipped beneath him, brushed against his solid chest, and his eyes met and held Heartfire's as he dropped his mouth to slowly drag along her back with her sinuous movements. Smiling. His precious Luster curled around him, settled her pink mouth against the spot of blue in the corner of his lips, and he hummed his pleasure. "Who are your friends?" she asked, and he twisted his head to brush dark lips across her cheek. That one there is Heartfire, love, he murmured without actually pointing out which one he'd meant. He trailed a kiss to her jaw, Mmm, he said absently, pleasantly lost in the familiar feel of her. Don't know the other, he added in a bored tone. She was much more entertaining. What did he care about a trickster and her pet, when he had Luster at his side.
Heartfire was far more fun when she was alone, anyway.
I'll take my bow, I won't make a sound I whisper truce as the ashes hit the ground
A shiver races down her spine as Wyrm’s touch whispers along her hip, a tingling of remembrance. Her blue gaze shifts, turning to touch briefly upon him, warmth evident in their ocean depths for the barest of moments before coolness steals over her once again.
Her attention shifts back to Dovev as he coos at her, a provocative question. What would you call us? A slow smile eases over her lips, though there is no humor in it, no happiness. She offers a very equine shrug before saying ”I would call us nothing.”
And it is true. They had shared little but a stolen moment, and she has many stolen moments. They had not been lovers (love is not possible between them anyway), and she certainly would not consider them friends. Enemies seems a bit harsh, though it is a very fine line. But she does not dislike him enough to consider him enemy. So, they are simply that, nothing. Two passing acquaintances who had chanced upon each other one evening. Or rather, Heartfire had ensured they chanced upon each other, but that is neither here nor there.
Quite unexpectedly, a shadow coalesces by Dovev’s side and a familiar blue and white figure steps from its midst. Heartfire stiffens as her sister curls around the bone-armored stallion in a protective stance, her bright gaze sharpening. They have never met, but Heartfire is nearly as familiar with Luster as she is with her mother and father. As she is with Augusta and Illum, as she would be with the sibling yet to be born.
She takes a step nearer as Dovev responds to her question, his lips tracing her skin as though he had a right to touch her. Eyes hard as the crystals they so resemble, she offers only one, low warning, speaking to her sister though her eyes remain on Dovev. ”He would be far safer without you next to him, Luster.”
As she speaks, the grass around them ripples before falling apart into nothingness. Into dust. They are left standing in a circle of bare dirt, the only other warning she would offer. There is little she cherishes in this world more than her family, and she remembers all too clearly what Dovev had done. Even if neither of them seem to be able to recall.
heartfire
i filled up my senses with thoughts from the ghosts
when the stars threw down their spears and water'd heaven with their tears:
He’d wanted a cure for boredom, hadn’t he? These days it seems like Heartfire does everything but disappoint him, which is a refreshing set of pace. Of course, that doesn’t stop him from looking between the odd pair when the obviously drawn-out word “us” drips from the black things lips. Wyrm would chuckle, if he felt so inclined, but even he believes Heartfire can do better than a simmering wimp. Only dogs cowered and bled in the dirt like filthy animals; and only weak-minded simpletons believed they could lump themselves into the same group as horses like Heartfire. “Forgive him, for now.” Wyrm contemplates, relaxing visibly while his spotted companion answers curtly. “He doesn’t know you.”
“But ... “ he thinks when a blue-black shadow emerges from thin air itself, only to wrap adoringly about the dying thing. The stippled creature is a surprising addition. “... perhaps he should.” And then his child’s mother is warning the girl, the grass surrounding them flaking into infinitesimal dust. He blinks in surprise, clearly unprepared for the display of animosity that rolls from her in waves. And my … what destruction it causes. “You’ve been holding out on me, I see.” The green stallion murmurs aloud, solely for the intention of Heartfire, though the other two will undoubtedly hear it.
He moves, animated as if by strings - strange to gaze upon and wholly unnatural - while the wings melt back into his bright jade skin, fading until they become no more. Wyrm only pauses when the tip of a single hoof threatens to touch down over the earth his speckled woman has erased, but he thinks better of it and places it back beside the other. “Luster, come now. How could you mistake me?” He teases, the sharp inclination of a grin lifting one half of his lips. “I thought we were friends.” He purrs, each word heavy with guilt. The green washes from the tip of his tail, lifting over his croup and gliding upwards over his shoulders, his neck, while leaving behind a glimmering dappled grey coat. It pools into a familiar star on his forehead and there it rests, with only Cinder to stand in the place he once stood.
“And you.” He finalizes, tone dropping while his bright eyes flicker to where the unknown stallion lays, “Have you lost your teeth, or perhaps your tongue, that you would shield yourself so pathetically behind a young mare for protection?” He asks, head tilting in sorrowful curiosity. “Be careful about your answer.” He warns quickly after, a soft laugh rumbling from deep within his chest. “Or I might be inclined to take both from your mouth by force.”
did he smile his work to see? did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Luster, he croons with his lips against her throat, and at this she can smile, small and thin and shadowed, I’m sorry to hear this. I’d hoped to be wrong. His mouth has travelled up to her ear by the time he is done speaking, ending with a kiss that she quietly leans into, and she wonders silently if he can taste her surprise. It is not like when Stillwater touches her, not that molten fire she has come to expect. It is, strangely, something gentler, maybe made so by the distance between them, by the lack of want that flutters in her chest for this man. Still, that smile deepens for him, only him, and she is soft when she curls beneath his neck to find comfort in the heat of his chest – soft, too, when his mouth tastes the shape of her spine and the hollow curve of each vertebrae.
She is not ready for his words though, even soft and buried in the easy bliss of his attention, not ready for the name on his lips or an introduction she had imagined a thousand times but never once like this. “Heartfire?” She repeats and she is emptier, quieter than an echo. “My Heartfire?” She asks again, as if he would have any idea what it is she is asking, any idea which thought she follows like a vein back to her heart. It is the name that belongs to her sister and, though she knows there could be many and each one a stranger, it is impossible to look into that blue face and not see the reflection of something she thinks she knows, if only in her core, if only by instinct.
For a moment she is distracted by his lips against her cheek, soft and imploring, by the kiss he traces across the blue like stars in the gleaming dark. But the low warning of Heartfire’s voice calls Luster back from the quiet and into the present where the world tries, once again, to wound her. He would be far safer without you next to him, Luster. There is no time to react before the grass shudders and breaks apart, dust and dead beneath their quiet hooves. When her bruised eyes drop, startled, round and brown and beautiful, it is only to find a circle of bare dirt, ruined earth, and her jaw hardens reflexively. The threat is impossible to miss.
But –
She finds she does not move, cannot move, leans deeper into the embrace of that bone and black chest even as her eyes narrow dangerously against such familiar blue. A blue she longs to fall against. Instead she pulls light from the sun, from the sky, drenches both she and Dovev in it until it gleams from the surface of their skin like they are dark gems. She is still new at this, but she finds that balance between nothingness and tangibility, creating a membrane like soft rubber to coat them both. It would do nothing against whatever had happened to the grass, such instant death, but it would guard against lesser things.
Her eyes are still narrowed and sharp when the green stallion murmurs his pleasure to Heartfire, apparently impressed with the destruction she had caused so effortlessly. It makes her wonder at them both, at the dark in the woman who must be her sister, at the dark in the man who seems so intrigued by her, so comfortable with her. But then he moves, that strange green man, shifts closer, and as he does the green seems to bleed from him, fading until it is only a small star on a forehead that is otherwise grey and dappled. Luster, come now. How could you mistake me? She is furious at once, seething and hurt, though she buries it deep and hides it well, hardening like a blade against Dovev’s dark chest.
“Snake, then.” She says, barbed and beautiful, watching him with eyes as hard and sharp as stones as she slips out from beneath Dovev’s neck just a few easy steps. “I think you’re more of a Snake.” It doesn’t bother her that Heartfire and Dovev will not understand, that they weren’t there the day this man had appeared to her as a soft grey woman, warm and friendly, asking Luster to guess her name. Then, turning to Heartfire with eyes that flash dangerously, “You keep interesting company, sister.”
But she is drawn away again by a voice that is low and, perhaps, as dangerous as she feels, wild in the wake of so much hurt, carved sharp and wicked by the teeth of so many lies. And you. The man says, and she only needs to see his eyes settle on Dovev for the swelling of sudden, thick shadow to pool beneath all of them. Have you lost your teeth, or perhaps your tongue, that you would shield yourself so pathetically behind a young mare for protection? She is silent when she slips back beneath Dovev, silent even when that smile appears in the pale velvet of such delicate lips. Be careful about your answer, she settles under his nose, sinuous and beautiful, or I might be inclined to take both from your mouth by force.
She curves silently beneath those dark lips, twisting to leave a kiss against the curve of that mouth again. Then, with eyes that flash and sharpen against a treacherous grey and green face, her smile widens, amused. “I wish you wouldn’t, I so enjoy both of those things.”
"I would call us nothing," she said so dryly, so dull. God, she was so much more fun alone. But it didn't dim his smile, only lit his eyes with amusement. Oh, and that look in her eyes when Luster materialized and shielded him with her beautiful body. "He would be far safer without you next to him, Luster," she warned in that deliciously sharp voice. His smile widened and he kissed sweet Luster again, there on her precious neck. This could get fun.
"My Heartfire?" Luster asked, and he didn't like that ache in her twinkling voice. It twisted his gut and hardened his heart, and he placed another light kiss at her cheek. Don't hurt, love.
Ah, but Heartfire was so grouchy today and dusted the poor grass at his feet. He sighed, burying the pang of concern for Luster to be near these two, at the danger his presence always seemed to put her in, ignoring the stupid wonder in the lover's voice as he commented on the display of destruction. Luster... he whispered, wishing her safely away. But he didn't have to, he quickly learned.
She pressed further into his chest and he dipped his chin to hold her. Then, over bare seconds, they were both coated in a protective layer of light, a guard against physical attacks. Tricky girl, full of delightful surprises.
His black eyes locked onto the other man though as he addressed Luster. He found he didn't like when they spoke to her, especially this one who seemed to play some sort of hurtful joke on her as he melded into someone else, someone she seemed to recognize. Snake, she called him, her silver-sweet voice gone hard and deadly, turning his own blood cold with instant hate. His jaw clenched tight, and he forced himself to relax again.
Then the stranger's attention was on him as he mocked him for hiding behind Luster, an endless pool of darkness expanding at their feet instantly. Dovev smiled again, couldn't help but kiss her sweet skin another time or two. Obviously, he hadn't moved a step at all since they'd shown up. Luster was her own woman, did as she pleased. Could always do whatever she wanted with him, whether it was protecting him or something a bit more fun and intimate. His eyes gleamed and he stayed silent. She twisted beneath him and brought his attention wholly to her again, her lips pressing to the curve of his dark smile.
"I wish you wouldn't, I so enjoy both of those things."
He laughed, his voice so clear and smooth for a man made of such sharp edges and hard lines. His nose teased across hers sweetly before he caught the corner of those sweet lips with another kiss. She was such a fun girl, soft edges with a wonderful fire in her.
But this all really seemed like something between he and Heartfire, and he turned his attention to her, keeping his chest pressed against his Luster. What can I do for you, Heartfire? I do believe my girl would prefer time alone with me, if you don't mind hurrying along this little chat. He had a broken heart to soothe, after all. Some idiot had bruised that gentle heart of hers and he intended to make it right however he could. Maybe he wasn't all bad, after all. For her, anyway.
I'll take my bow, I won't make a sound I whisper truce as the ashes hit the ground
