"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
The heat in Djinni’s veins feels radiant he runs his teeth down her spine; her hips quake beneath his mouth. Something has spurred him farther than before. Djiini is not sure what it is, but she feels it in the way his touch turns from passionate to desperate, sees it in his eyes when his gaze locks to hers.
He no longer holds her still, but she doesn’t move.
Her eyes remain on his, warm brown streaked here and there with softer gold. She prefers the green – thinks it more striking – but when she lets her guise fall she is as she was originally made. Those eyes had never opened as she was held in her mother’s embrace; the little grullo filly had been born dead.
She is alive now. That is all that matters.
The cool press of the stone wall against her side is a startling sensation. It feels so cool, and she backs away, backs toward Stillwater. She refuses to think (some part of her has begun to sound the alarms). Instead she feels the slide of Stillwater’s muzzle along her smooth and supple hide, the dig of his teeth as her rounds her rump. His forelegs grip her as the fire in her blood overtakes her entirely.
She does not know how much time has passed. Her grey hide is streaked with sweat she does not remember. Stillwater is behind her and she turns to face him. The shadowy light of the cave casts his handsome face into stark relief, and Djinni wonders why she has not seen him like this before. He is handsome, but the world was full of handsome men (and devastatingly beautiful women). Something has changed, but she’s not exactly sure what it is.
Night has deepened around their cave, and the cool autumn air has crept into the cave. Djinni watches the heat rise as steam from Stillwater’s back, blending into the shadows of the cave.
She had thought him a creature of the earth until now. Why wouldn’t she? He was always hiding in darkness, lurking in his seaside cave. There had been nothing to suggest otherwise, but she sees it now. He is not something Djinni has ever seen before. Nearly everything is a repeat to her anymore. Her life was extraordinarily long, and her powers extraordinarily immense. The mare has done everything she has ever wanted, gone anywhere she ever dreamed, seen everything that has ever existed, known each fact that ever was.
She’s not sure about the black stallion.
Still defined by fearlessness, Djinni reaches toward him, steps farther into the darkness and is no longer sure where shadow begins and he ends. “I…” she begins, but the words fade into quiet. The space beneath his neck looks empty, like she should tuck herself there to fill it. She does not. “You…” Words fail her again.
“So you like… the cave?” Incredible.
current appearance: natural build - slim smokey grullo tobiano brown eyes
Every twitch of her silky skin beneath his touch only drove him further over the edge. There was no turning back, and no changing what was to come, even if he wanted to. Even as those heated, brown eyes locked with his, there was no recovering from this. He was gone. The predator remained to take his fill, to heed nature and claim her possessively with an iron-tight grip and an impossibly strong vise where their skin met. She'd backed into him as he'd rounded behind her, and the beast read it as eagerness, fueled him on like kerosene to a flame.
He was strong, so strong. Had left a number of marks and bruises on her. But somehow he'd maintained enough control not to draw from her, not to sink his teeth and claim two different ecstasies. Somehow, he let her live.
As the thick haze gradually lifted, he realized he was panting, his body shuddering and his eyes closed. He stood so very still. He sensed her before him, turning to face him, but he didn't move; struggled to catch his breath. The dampness on his skin was not water as it should be, salty and thick instead. Sweat. It was odd that he'd never had to sweat before. Not that he could remember. Such a strange thing to lock his mind onto, to focus on so that he wouldn't think about what just happened. What he'd done.
But he did it anyway. His thoughts slid back to her and his hard eyes drifted open to meet hers as she stared at him. A mind-shattering headache rattled through his brain, wincing at the slightest movement. He blended into the blackness of the cave, the night settling around the world outside of it. An anger simmered inside of him and his jaw tightened. It was stupid, it probably didn't make sense, and yet here he was feeling tricked, deceived. As though she could have somehow planned this and used him. As if she could have known what would happen when she made herself to his likeness.
I.. she began, and he flinched from it even though it was so soft and quiet. The tension in his head tightened and he groaned behind gritted teeth. She stepped toward him and his ears flattened to his skull. This should be a time of contentment, of feeling so rested and blissfully sated, and yet he could swear his skull was trying to kill him from the inside out. You... she tried again, briefly falling silent once more.
So you like... the cave?
He growled. Get out, Djinni, he barked sharply. His voice was dry and raspy, gravelly and so unlike its usual smoothness. Using it shot a spear through his brain and his eyes slammed shut with another groan as the world seemed to tip to the side. What have you done to me? he whispered in agony. He could only stand helplessly locked in place, afraid to move for fear the pain would be too much and cause him to black out. Undo this. Help me.
come down to the black sea swimming with me go down with me, fall with me, lets make it worth it
02-26-2017, 11:17 AM (This post was last modified: 02-26-2017, 11:21 AM by Djinni.)
djinni
Djinni’s other nature had never truly called her before the Reckoning. She had stayed safely in the sky or tethered firmly in the ground; the water had never sung to her the way it should have.
Something had changed in Nerine – or perhaps even before that, when Beqanna itself had rearranged the world around her. Djinni had only ever done what she wanted, and then she had suddenly been forced to endure everything, regardless of how she felt. She had eaten, she had drank, and she had swum in the ocean. The beady eyes of the Nerinian dolphins had beckoned to her from beneath the waves, but she had done little more than whicker a greeting, nudge them gently with a friendly hoof if they swam too close to her in the shallows.
Yet they had continued to call to her, chattering as they crested the foamy waves, flashing sleek grey fins as they danced above the water. It was almost as if they had known.
Djinni had dived into the water the instant she left Lagertha, and the dolphins had been there to greet her. They taught her the waves and the shore and the dark press of tons of water overhead. She had learned the water and yet had remained utterly oblivious to its presence in Stillwater.
When she had left Nerine, she had left behind the sea. She had brought Stillwater with her, but it had never occurred to her that he might be anything more than what he appeared to be on the surface. She still swam, from time to time, but there was no pod here in the freshwater of Sylva. There was no companionable comfort as she bumped against the others. She has missed their touch, and as she blinks – almost blindly – at Stillwater, she thinks she might have found it again.
He crushes that rising hope in a single sentence.
Djinni is proud, and in this moment she is terribly vulnerable. He tells her to get out and she does, vanishing in an instant rather than let him see her crumble in front of him.
He is alone in the darkness.
* * *
And then he is not, because she has wished him into the water in front of her.
Djinni stands at the edge of the pond beside Stillwater’s cave (she had not gotten very far at all). The mare looks into the still water where she has just placed Stillwater without a single ripple. It seems fitting, but there is no pleasure at the accidental wordplay on her face. Instead she is scowling, her eyes darker than brown, darker than black.
“I didn’t do anything.” She says, and her voice would be a hiss if it weren’t already a whisper, as though the woods and water could hear them.
A djinn does not have control of the world.
Djinni does not shape the world to her whims; the world shapes itself to please her. She wants him to sink and he does, the water and the earth pulling away to make space for him as she wades in beside him until only their heads and necks are above the water and the shore is yards away. She considers drowning him, decides against it. It might not work. She’d rather not find out what happens when the world does not submit to her whims. (If there are other reasons to not drown him, she’d rather not consider them.)
Instead she tries what had not failed her before, and reaches toward him. Her muzzle is smooth again, sleek in the way that had elicited a growl from him that she knows had not meant Get out Djinni but rather ‘Come closer Djinni’. Her sides are still grey, but they are as sleek as they are when she swam with the dolphins. Her eyes are still dark, but their lack of color belongs with her smooth sides. Pupiless and dark, her predatory cetacean eyes lack any emotion.
Her shoulder slides against his beneath the water, startlingly warm in the cool water. She turns her head to keep her muzzle along his neck, dripping water down his still-sweaty hide as she does, following the line of muscle until she reaches the water and pulls away.
current appearance: slim build smokey grullo tobiano brown eyes
He wasn't sure why he was surprised when she suddenly vanished the instant he told her to leave. He blinked, slightly dumbfounded through the shards of glass piercing his skull. But still he couldn't move without the pain pummeling him as he closed his eyes to the darkness around him.
Then water filled the space in a blink, and he gasped in shock. Dark eyes flew wide open to find himself in the lake, his head swinging to either side to confirm it was their same body of water before the cave. I didn't do anything, her sharp voice cut in with a hiss, snapping his attention back to her. It didn't hurt to move anymore, the pain seemingly soothed by the return of the sweet caress of water -had she known to do that?, and his gaze dropped back down to it as if only just then noticing it.
And then he sank suddenly deeper, jerking his chin up to keep above the surface. There was enough room though, enough to keep their heads above water as she waded in with him, and he relaxed. He released a slow breath and settled in, as though he were sinking blissfully into a muscle-relaxing hot tub. Mmm, he hummed absently, turning foggy, half-lidded eyes to meet the predatory glare in her full black ones. He felt drunk. She looked pissed. He sort of wanted to laugh, and his nose scrunched up trying to keep it from his face. He'd said something to make her look that way. Couldn't remember what though. He thought maybe he was always making her mad with things he said.
He felt pulled to smooth it away though, and reached for her as she reached for him. Her sleek muzzle, her slippery skin against his, had him humming again and sliding closer, his mouth lipping sweetly at her nape. He wished he could change, felt his legs wanting to fold in closer, his skin prickling where reptilian armor should have formed so easily. His jaw ached, his flat teeth throbbed. Why did he have to be broken; why couldn't he be whole and show her what he really was. Maybe watch fear finally flicker in those fearless eyes. How she would hate him.
His eyes closed as she dripped water down his neck, drawing her nose along his muscle and down to the water before retreating. He followed her though, filling the gap she tried to create, draping his head over her smooth back and rubbing against the slippery satin of her, enthralled with the feel of her. He wasn't sure if he was man or predatory in that moment, sometimes they were one and the same and sometimes they were almost separate. All he knew was her just then, everything else fell away as he sank into this strange and wonderful stupor. Blissfully ignorant of anything outside of their little lake.
He nibbled at her withers, tossing an arm over her hip and dragging her closer. Did it make him a fool that he wanted her again?
Probably.
Yet still he grazed his teeth across her spine, firm and slow with another low hum.
come down to the black sea swimming with me go down with me, fall with me, lets make it worth it
The anger in his eyes she had seen in the cave is gone in an instant, and for a moment doubt flickers across her still face. She’s granted a reprieve as he looks down at the water, time to collect herself. His rage had become shock, and when he meets her gaze again it is something else entirely. She’d struggled to hide the doubt, but the amusement that bubbles up is completely unbidden. She’d been raging a moment ago, yet as he reaches for her with a stifled laugh she all but giggles aloud. Always quicksilver with her emotions, this is something else entirely. Stillwater seems happy, and so Djinni is happy with no logical reason as to why she should be.
Her efforts succeed, and the emotional elation she feels is muted only by the physical sensations. Djinni presses herself to him, feels the heat pass from his warm skin to hers with not even cool water between them.
The mare floats easily, far lighter than a creature her size ought to be. Bouyant is the right words, perhaps, and she only bobs down a little as he hooks a leg over the point of her hip, dragging her closer – under. Djinni doesn’t resist. She had backed herself into him before in the cave, had done her part in whatever it is they’ve done. Brazen. That is what she has been.
She is more cautious this time, lets him take the initiative but puts up no resistance. There is tension in her muscles, but it is from holding herself back and not from pulling herself away. That is clarified in the way she croons beneath his touches, quiet little sighs and breathy whispers that sound rather like his name on a running loop. Despite the chilled water around them she feels the same heat from before, a blistering flood that shimmers in her veins.
Reassurance. She had wanted reassurance that she had not imagined what had happened before, that she was not the only one that had lost herself. Of course, the passion in his touch does little to truly prove that, but she tells herself that it does. The water makes everything simpler, faster, and she raises her head above the water on a neck that is longer than usual. She doesn’t want to think again, so she moves, feels his warmth above her in the water, and presses back.
current appearance: slim build smokey grullo tobiano black eyes
From roaring and raging to slow and flowing, and back again. They each dragged the other along with every wild change, every sudden upheaval into something new. But now it felt balanced to him. Now it felt natural. Now they rode the waves, or drifted in lazy currents. It didn't beat against them and push them apart. It surrounded and cradled them together. It only made him want her more.
It only made him hate her more.
He hated that this happened, so sudden and unexpected. So unpredictable, like her. He was not meant to be here, was not meant to be touched by her. Wild, free. Solitary. Sweet smiles with a devil underneath. Unnatural attraction and an insatiable hunger. He never cared to take them this way. They never made it this far. Just enough to get them ready, consumed in their delicious wanting, then clutched in his steely grip and drained, devoured.
That was when he felt his pleasure; when their aching moans turned to terrified screams. When they sang for him beneath the water, beneath his touch. His breath hitched just thinking of it, remembering it. He draped his arm over her and pulled her closer, his mouth watering, his body thrumming. And she let him, didn't resist at all as he dragged her in, held her against him. Again, he was captivated with the feel of their skin-to-skin, so smooth and gliding along each other. Unnatural.
But so intoxicating.
With every caress against her, she urged him on with soft little noises; quiet sighs and breathy whispers. He pressed her side to his chest, his arm still over her tasteful hip. The black satin of his mouth explored her, slowly tracing the dips and hollows of her back, to her shoulder. His throbbing teeth pinched her there, a tease, a taunt. Her sexy noises were good, thrilling, but she was still holding back, still reining herself in. That was displeasing. He wanted her, would take her further than anyone. If she really wanted it. If she wanted him.
His lips slid slowly along her sleek neck, hot tongue tasting her with suckling kisses, savoring her. That's not enough, Djinni, he pressed quietly against her skin like a gravelly warning. This genie was still hiding in her little bottle. He wasn't one for half-baked, preferred to have it all hot and ready for him. Preferred to warm her, heat her, hear how she really wanted him. Even if he ached to drain her the whole time, his jaw tight and mouth watering.
Even if he hated her.
come down to the black sea swimming with me go down with me, fall with me, lets make it worth it
03-03-2017, 03:51 PM (This post was last modified: 03-04-2017, 01:51 AM by Djinni.)
She doesn't consider the potential consequences of what she - they - have done (and she won't for many more months to come). This is about what they, no she wants. This is not about what will might happen later.
If she knew how to beg, she would.
She would grovel, she would plead for him to pin her down and mark her neck with bites and kisses both, she would beg for it - harder, faster, more, always more until she can't even breathe for the feel of it.
But Djinni doesn't beg; she doesn't even know how. She takes and beguiles. She has always been good at that. They are more similar than either of them know (than Djinni would ever want to admit).
Her black eyes are still devoid of emotion, but there is a crooked smile on her lips as she looks back at him over her shoulder, as she reaches up. Stillwater tells her that it's not enough and she laughs, too drunk on his touch to be perturbed.
"Not enough?" She asks, pressing her muzzle to the underside of his jaw, feeling the pulse of his heartbeat. Her teeth nip at it, softly once, then a bit harder. She has no reason to be suspicious of whatever it he is holding back; she might not know what he is but she is certainly not afraid.
The white teeth she uses to nip again at his throat are serrated, far sharper than the flat ones she most often wears. She opens her jaw wider - wider like a beak and not a muzzle - and holds the soft skin of his throat between between them and feels his heart on her tongue for just a moment before she's pulling away. She is not gentle when she does, closing her teeth sooner than she might have and raking furrows into his skin.
"Why do you get to decide what's enough?" She says softly as she presses her muzzle to the bleeding wounds and wishing the pain of them away in an instant (she can't really want to hurt him; that is simply not her nature).
There's not enough enough time for him to answer before she's grabbing his neck in her elongated jaws and wishing him momentarily light enough to pull over her her shoulder and fling him into the rippling water in front of her with a tremendous splash. Djinni might have ruined the mood - for the moment - but she waits to see his reaction when he surfaces. The urge to change him to something that she can press into the silt beneath the water and take him the way he had taken her in the cave remains, but her predatory nature is not so overpowering as to let her force him when he might be, even now, doing his best to get as far from her (and her glinting teeth) as possible.
"What if enough for you is not enough for me?" She asks with oil spill black eyes: fish eyes, dead eyes. "Or what if it's too much?" Djinni smiles, her pretty mouth at odds with her sharp teeth and flat eyes. Hiding behind appearances has always been her strong suit; she'd rather react than act. Djinni might look like a predator - and act like one at times - but her only truly base instinct is her insatiable search for amusement, for something to occupy herself with.
She wore a sexy little smile, and with those solid, black eyes it looked eerie and beautiful. He watched her as she looked over her shoulder at him, his lips still pressing savory kisses against her flawless skin. He told her it wasn't enough, he wanted more from her, and she laughed. A growl built up in the base of his throat, enjoying the sound of her amusement and hating it, hating how she affected him. It was silenced immediately when her muzzle touched below his jaw, touched his pulse beating against the smooth surface. His eyes drifted closed and his lips parted in a quiet exhale.
Not enough? she asked, pinching him there with her teeth, softly and then harder. A satisfied moan dragged from him, enjoying that too until suddenly her teeth were sharp and bladed and her jaw was spread around his throat, holding him for a moment. The malevolent spirit in him leapt to the fore in defense, his eyes instantly turning the murky, clouded gray of his predator. Her jaw tightened as she pulled away, cutting into him, marking him. She made noises, formed speech, but words meant nothing to him.
He snarled and shot towards her, lunged for her with every intent to kill this one that dared harm him in his world of water, dared to stain his home with the oily black of his blood. She gripped his neck and threw him as though he weighed nothing to her, and his clunky horse body landed with a splash in deeper water. He sank below the surface and stayed there, raging, pissed, wishing this damn tight skin would rip apart and let him out. Wishing he could claw it off and explode into his Self.
His heart thundered, blood boiling and roaring as he growled beneath the outside world, the dangerous sound waving and undulating and deep. Trapped. More trapped now than he was with her chain on his wrist, locked in this seductive body that was far too pretty, far too soft. Just the lure, the disguise to draw them helplessly in. Just the cloak he wore, but now a straight jacket he couldn't escape from.
He was volatile rapids beneath a deadly calm face as he made his way back to her, calculating eyes trained on her. His head rose above the water, moving so damn slow in this clumsy body, and she smiled a predator's grin. His lips peeled back to bare stupid, flat teeth before settling again. Calm again. Still again. He approached her, slow and purposeful, and his lips sought out her perfect throat.
Maybe it was unexpected, but he kissed her deeply, hungry and needing with another desperate moan rumbling against her delicious skin. He tasted her, felt her heartbeat against the heat of his tongue. He shifted closer into her, his kisses deepening even more, urgent and hot. So desperate. He wanted her. Needed her now.
Without warning, he clamped down and stuffed her beneath the water, twisting her to her side as his full weight bore down on her and pinned her under him. His black hair moved free and weightless around him, and he held himself on top of her as he tore into her neck, snapping and ripping away. Then again in another spot, tender flesh between his teeth, yanked and torn then released. Foolish creature.
come down to the black sea swimming with me go down with me, fall with me, lets make it worth it
03-05-2017, 05:18 PM (This post was last modified: 03-05-2017, 05:23 PM by Djinni.)
Moonlight ripples on the disturbed water, breaks into a thousand shining pieces, never settling into an accurate mirror of the perfect orb in the sky. With bates breath she waits for him to surface, her black eyes glinting sharply but her mouth remaining hard. When he comes up, comes toward her, she still her flicking frosted tail, takes only a few shallow breaths.
He is not running.
He is not leaving.
There aren't words to describe the unexpected catching of her breath, to detail the way she moans when his kiss at her throat sends fire through every fiber of her being. She sees stars overhead that are not there, almost imagines there are two moons, feels her heartbeat in the way the water laps at her sides. Any part of him she can reach she does, presses hot kisses to his skin between painless rakes - marking, scarring (claiming?) - his neck and throat. There is no hesitance in her now, her earth-bound climax forgotten in her desperation for more, for another, for him.
This is new. This is strange. This is frightening.
There is no time to fear, no time to think, no time to react even before he is shoving her beneath the water, before his kisses become bites and his hunger for her becomes hunger for her blood.
She could be gone in the blink of an eye, a hundred thousand miles away, and yet she remains. The water around her is murky, but the moon is full and she can see the way her red blood clouds it even further, knows she could taste it if she opened her sharp-toothed mouth.
But she stays.
Everything is slower now, the fire of seconds ago frozen in an instant. There is ice in her now, cool and logical as she feels her body shredded beneath his touch. The pain she wishes away (and the danger of blood loss) so she is only held underwater, pinned beneath him not so dissimilarly than she had been in the cave. He's seeking some other sort of release this time, and something demands her to stay, to see exactly what it is that he is doing. She does not know him. The black horse is a puzzle she cannot piece together.
Eventually she pulls away, and when she floats above the water again she turns looks at him with those flat black eyes and her flat black mouth, entirely devoid of anything at all. The blood that runs in rivers down her neck is dark, glittering here and there with unnatural flecks of gold. She keeps herself safe, knowing there's too much blood in the water for anyone to live but content once more in her fearlessness. Water drips down the pale strands of her frosted hair, down the length of her nose where it mixes with her blood and falls into the water.
He cannot hurt her, not forever. Djinni will let him - has let him - take from her. Take her body, take her flesh, take her blood. "What do you want?" She says, her voice softer than before with the lust and humor gone. It sounds like a question, but she'd meant to say something else, to tell him to take whatever he wants and she will never deny him. She doesn't though, only watches him with quiet eyes gone sweet brown and hide gone to horsehair at the effort expended to keep herself living as her blood turns the water red around her. "What do you want?"
He tore viciously into her, his bites ripping away flesh only to release it and attack another place on her neck. Bite and tear away, bite again. She had yet again awakened the malevolent one inside him, cut into his throat in a way that had made it feel threatened and now it would take her life for it. For making him bleed into his own water, marring the flawless skin that had just been pressed so hungrily and eagerly against her moments before. She would learn not to wrong him. And then she would die.
Her blood soaked the space between them, and when he finally breathed that water into him, finally almost tasted the sweet of her blood, the cold calculation of the predator vanished in an instant. His mouth and eyes shot wide and cleared back to their dark blue-gray, hazy and unfocused, seeing red only red. He jerked away, choking and spluttering, trying to expel any he may have taken into him. Like a recovering addict suddenly bathed in their drug, he panicked, throwing himself away from her, heaving and shaking as he lurched to the shore.
He couldn't drink her, not her. Karaugh, yes. Karaugh was easy, readily available, would be so easy to kill when the time came, when she was worthless to him. He would gladly replace the craving for Karaugh with the craving for another. But Djinni... no, not with Djinni. She couldn't be trusted. She would discover that dependency, hold it against him. Starve him, let him wither away. Feed him when it suited her, when she needed him for something, make him work for it. He didn't trust her, couldn't trust her. She would use it against him. She would be gone in the blink of an eye just when he needed it most.
His heart thundered, erratic and chaotic in his chest as he glanced back out to the water. Blood, so much blood. She should be dead. She would have been if he were whole, if he could escape this impossibly beautiful straight-jacket and rip her apart. If she didn't have her magic to save her. That was what he'd wanted. So desperately wanted. To be whole. To kill her.
His eyes lifted as she spoke, as though only just then remembering she was there. What do you want, she asked so softly, as if he hadn't just tried to tear her to tiny pieces one painful inch at a time. He jerked his eyes away, burned, locked them to the ground between his arms as he lay there trembling. He'd almost killed her. She should be dead. She would have been. What do you want, she repeated, and he could only shake his head silently. He wasn't answering that. Would never answer that.
Her magic was double-edged and sharp. Look what had happened the last time she asked him that. A cave, he'd said. And got a whole lot more than a damn cave. Her magic backfired on them, it created and stole away. Stole his self-control. If he answered her this time, honestly always honestly, he wasn't sure there was anything to stop him from killing her. Taking her, drinking her, really killing her.
He sprawled to his side with a tormented groan. Why do you do that, he whispered mournfully. He'd always had impeccable control, except that weird thing with Nayl, whatever the hell that was. But always so in control. Djinni seemed intent on breaking it, on unleashing things she couldn't possibly understand. She would never want to push him if she truly knew. Why must you taunt it, he said in a voice that perhaps only he could hear. Quiet. Defeated.
Why do you make me hurt you.
come down to the black sea swimming with me go down with me, fall with me, lets make it worth it
