"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
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT & SATISFACTION BROUGHT HIM BACK
Dahmer inhales deep, the crisp scent of autumn coaxing him from the depths of the crimson and gold forest and into a large clearing dotted with a trio of over-sized boulders. The morning sun beats against his dark back, though does little to quell the chill that settles in his chest and legs. He knows that later, when the sun is at its peak, the day will warm to a more comfortable temperature, as it usually does in the early weeks of autumn. The king of Sylva clings to those warm moments, remembering Tephra and its humidity fondly, before moving his mind to more productive and less nostalgic things.
A gentle smile finds the black beast's maw as his one-eyed love pulls away from the treeline. The sunlight glimmers invitingly across her golden coat and feathered wings, and Dahmer goes to meet her. He reaches his muzzle out for her, pressing it gently to the corner of her maw and exhales all of his tension now that she is present.
"I feel like I haven't seen you in ages," he murmurs quietly to Ellyse, though the statement is not accusatory - it is simply that. A statement. They had both been busy securing the borders of their new abode, taking account of those who had chosen to stay and those who had parted to follow in Gryffen's wake. He has slowly grown used to the shadow of their golden forest, but it has yet to feel like home and he wonders if she feels the same.
"I'm so thankful that you're with me," he confesses with a sadness deep in his blue eyes, "None of this feels like home when you're not around. And I can only imagine how you feel, love," he trails off for a moment as his gaze moves to the forest that surrounds them. "Tephra means so much to me still, and you were there even before I."
Don't say I'm out of touch with this rampant chaos; your reality. I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge.
She is lost to her own thought, as she so often has been –
No longer does she stare out into the endless sea, nor does she lose herself to the rhythmic pull of the tide frothing at the shoreline. She does not, because she cannot. The sea is miles away, and so is the volcanic island, and instead she is given the soft rustling of drying leaves and the creaking of brittle, crackling bark with each sway of the autumn wind. Yet, she would not change it for anything.
At last, she had found where she belonged, and it was not a place at all.
She does not miss his approach – how can she, when his weight whittles each fallen, dying leaf to dust beneath his swift and forward stride? Her eye watches the shadow of his silhouette emerge from a copse of hickory and pine, and she cannot suppress the warm smile from touching her pale lips at the sight of him. Her lungs inhale deeply when his cheek caresses her own, savoring the familiarity of sage and wild brush on his skin, but the scent of sap and of birch are altogether new. She does not shy away from his affection – choosing instead to trail her softness of her lips over the whiskered darkness of his, moving closer to him.
”It has been ages,” she muses with a wry smile, a glint carried in the deep hazel of her eye, roving over the length of his broad and handsome face. He is more beautiful to her with each passing day; the gentle fluttering of her belly never ceased regardless of how much time passed between them. ”but for good reason,” she murmurs softly, pressing a soft kiss into the crook of his neck, feeling his pulse and lingering just long enough to imply an intimacy of a different kind. An intimacy she missed, in the many long and seemingly endless nights she had spent away from him.
”I would follow you anywhere,” she says to him softly, sensing the sadness in his voice and seeking to chase it away with a feathering of soft kisses along his jawline. ”Tephra will always have some part of me. I will always carry it, but ..”(but it isn’t you) ”I cannot remain rooted simply because I am comfortable, and neither can you .. and the memories ..” she trails off for a moment, remembering the wolves of fire that had chased them into the abyss that had become their undoing. Remembering the way her eye had been gouged; the way his wings had been torn one by one from his body with no mercy.
Just as Tephra had been her heart, it also bore the scarring of too many memories that had tried to destroy her. It had been her foundation, but also her destruction.
”Some things are better left as they are,” she says as she presses a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. ”and some things we must move on from. I have no regrets. Not when I have you.”
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT & SATISFACTION BROUGHT HIM BACK
Dahmer nestles into her, lost in the golden mare as they stand in the forest clearing, ringed protectively by over-sized boulders. He revels in the warmth of her, letting his scarred shoulders loosen and drop the weight of his troubles, at least for a time. There is never a moment that she is by his side that he is not happy. She is his home, his guiding light, and he seeks to remind her of this every moment that they are together. He had seen it in the way Desole had devoted herself to his father ─ he had seen the heights to which they had risen when they joined themselves together, more powerful than any other pair in Azza.
Ellyse lingers in the crook of his neck and Dahmer inhales her enticing scent, nostrils fluttering as he turns his dark head slightly to lip at her tangled mane. She assuages his sadness with gentle kisses and gentler words, happiness returning to his face and ocean blue eyes. His thoughts linger briefly on their time spent in the Dark God's lair, but there are still events that he keeps hidden away as far as he can, in denial that they had happened and simply refusing to acknowledge them. He had gained Ellyse after their abduction, and that is all that matters.
"And I you, my love. You are everything I need," he offers her in a gruff whisper, dark head leaning against her neck lovingly before he falls again into a comfortable silence, listening to the sound of the breeze in the golden leaves and his champagne lover's gentle exhales.
After some time, he pulls away from her slightly so that his azure eyes may find her hazel one.
"Tell me your vision for Sylva, kitten, and I will make it all happen for you."
Don't say I'm out of touch with this rampant chaos; your reality. I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge.
The caress of his lips – dark and whiskered, pressed into the golden curve of her neck – elicits a shiver that traverses the length of her spine, causing the finely preened feathers of her broad wingspan to bristle and shift under the soft splendor of the morning light. Her pale lashes drape over her one eye, while the sullen eye socket is tucked away from view, as her cheek is nestled closer to the warmth of his neck. There, she can hear the rhythmic and soft thump, thump, thump of his steady heartbeat, and it is more than enough to make her feel at ease.
She, too, has her own secrets to carry and keep – she does not ask him what horrors he had seen; what evil he had committed (she had her own – she had murdered her father, a figment of her imagination and yet it had felt all too real. She could only imagine what he had been forced to face in the darkness and uncertainty of certain death. She did not ask, she would not ask, because deep within her still mending, aching heart, she already knows the sin he committed. The sacrifice he had made to return to her, to return to their son.
Though she may not realize it, there is one defining difference between he and her –
He knew the young boy he crushed beneath his weight was nothing more than a vision.
But she did not know that her father was a hallucination.
She murdered Elysium, believing through and through that he was flesh and blood before her.
And she would do it again, if it meant survival. If it meant returning to her children, to Dahmer.
She carried a darkness far deeper and soul-consuming than he knew.
Would Dahmer do it again, if he had not seen through the façade of a dark and malevolent God?
If he had not realized it was all but a hoax?
She is lost (yet again!) to her own thoughts, dismal and terrible as they are, and when his voice – soft, rumbling against her skin – interrupts her reverie, it awakens her desire for him, as her lips and teeth made work of the entanglement of twigs and brush knotted into the darkness of his tresses.
”Strength,” she murmurs softly to him, hazel eye seeking his of glacial blue. ”I do not want a sanctuary, Dahmer. There are enough of those. One day, war will come, and diplomacy will not be enough to carry us through the fire.” She is quiet for a moment, as soft feather-light kisses trail up the crease of his neck and against the tenderness of his throat. Power. Command. Capability, above any other.”I want an army.”
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT & SATISFACTION BROUGHT HIM BACK
A chipmunk has taken to scurrying in the underbrush of the nearby forest, rustling leaves and pine needles until it draws Dahmer's attention, placing an inkling of suspicion in his dark breast. His glacial blue eyes follow the small creature as it meanders in the growth, searching for any indication that it could be a shifter (someone of Gryffen's, perhaps, sent to gather information for the displaced white wraith) and not simply an innocent chipmunk. He is finally satisfied when he watches the small furry thing, unsuccessful in its search, move away from them and back into the dawn shadows of the golden forest. The black beast moves his gaze back to Ellyse, no longer distracted.
The winged mare nestles into him warmly and a contented sigh drops from his maw. A small, private smile follows closely behind ─ there is a certain magic to seeing her like this, the formidable Ellyse, and it never fails to brighten his mood. When he breaks the silence again, pulling them both from their heads and back to the present, she doesn't hesitate long to answer his gruff question as his lips tug gently at his obsidian mane.
And Dahmer is not disappointed (though he does not believe her capable of disappointing him).
"If only I could show you Azza," he murmurs quietly to Ellyse, his memories taking him again to the place of his birth ─ to the army he had built in the Subway, the legacy that they had left behind. He sighs again, quietly, before crooking his lips into a lopsided grin at her over his scarred shoulder. "I will give you an army, my love," he adds as her soft muzzle finds his chest where it meets the column of his neck, coaxing a nicker from his fluttering nostrils.
"We should visit Loess and Taiga soon. I haven't heard news from either, and I'm not comfortable letting them sit on our borders without knowing who they are," Dahmer grumbles quietly as he dips his head and rotates an ear back towards Ellyse, listening to the soothing rhythm of her breathing. "I have been meaning to ask ─ how did Warrick take the news of our leaving?"
