"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
04-20-2023, 08:57 AM (This post was last modified: 04-20-2023, 09:00 AM by Ashhal.)
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
One could almost get used to the way the land here seemed to change like a delta in the spring. Almost. Unless that one was Ashhal. He would never fucking get used to it. Yet here he is, day in and day out, trudging through this endless life as though he has nothing better to do.
He doesn’t of course. Which would be some bullshit if he could be bothered to care anymore. And if he is bothered, he sure as hell wouldn’t admit to it.
So, turns out, he is really fucking bothered.
Which, much to his eternal irritation, is what had brought him from seclusion in the depths of the forest. But damnit all to hell, even he could be struck by boredom. Truthfully, he’s not sure whether he’s looking for a fight or fuck, but he’d figure it out when he got to that point.
With a stretch of his wide, pale wings, he launches himself forward, the backdraft causing leaves to dance around him as he heaves himself into the air. For a short time, there is only the wind against his scarred skin and the brisk bite of autumn as he re-acquaints himself with the act of the flying. Beneath him, the trees fade, growing sparser until the sun-dried grass of the meadow stretches before him.
With a sharp dive, he hurdles to a clear expanse, wings snapping wide to catch himself just before he pitches into the ground. A few running steps slow his momentum until he finally skids to a halt, dust billowing around him. It isn’t until he has walked off the rough landing and settled his wings against his ribs that he realizes he isn’t alone.
His features darken instantly, lip curling in distaste until, much to his surprise, he recognizes the frost-coated lines of his uninvited companion.
“It’s you,” he grunts, dark gaze flashing as he eyes her with mild antipathy.
Despite the recent upheaval and general unrest, she managed to find herself feeling undeniably bored.
The land was tossed into chaos, but not the particular brand of chaos she preferred. Everyone around her was in a constant state of turmoil; the seas rose and then fell, taking lands along with it and relinquishing its hold on others; it made existing feel exhausting, leaving little room for much else. They were simply trying to get by, and for once Stargaze left them all to their own devices, taking to solitude and rarely leaving it.
But today that solitude is interrupted, and not at all quietly or gracefully. The sound of someone landing nearby—based on the force of the thud she assumes it’s a horse—causes her nerves to bristle just slightly, an irritated sigh blowing through her lips. She swings her head to pin the intruder with a sharp stare, only to see an equally irritated face gazing back at her, and all at once her frigidity melts into a delighted smile once she recognizes him.
“It’s me,” she echoes him, but in a voice far more jubilant than his own coarse greeting. If she was at all deterred by his surly attitude it does not register on her face. It is not so much that she has nerves of steel, or that she thought herself incapable of having her feelings bruised—she just knows that if he really aggravated her she could shatter him to pieces and be on her way before he had the chance to regenerate.
That is of course not a part of her plan; she is not quite so easily riled the way her mother could be. Starsin did not have the patience for anyone’s mood besides her own, meanwhile Stargaze had been born with an almost grating ability to ignore everything and everyone, just as she chooses to ignore the silver stallion’s thunderous stare and step closer all the same.
“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Ashhal,” she says, purposely letting the word pleasure roll off her tongue with a lilting purr and ending the greeting with an amused, knife-sharp smile. She wears her usual coloring today—vibrant blue-green shot through with black, illuminated by her glowing dapples, and glistening with frost—but she is not sure how long that will last; he had seemed to really hate it last time she changed colors, and he was clearly in too good of a mood already and needed it to be dimmed a little. “I see you are just as jovial as the last time I saw you. Your happiness is as bright and contagious as a plague.”
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
The chipper quality of her voice when she replies to him causes his ears to flatten and his nostrils to flare with suspicion. No one is ever happy to see him, and the fact that she sounded delighted to find him here struck a nerve. Not that it is particularly hard to strike a nerve with him, but this one is less common than the others. This one has a faint thread of confusion attached to it.
He could just fucking walk away, he thinks. His feet work perfectly fine. Hell, he could even fly away. His wings also work great. And yet, he does not. Despite the way the feathers of his wings ruffle with annoyed discomfort, he remains.
Is he really that fucking desperate for company? Impossible.
“Is it?” he bites back, though now he eyes her much more speculatively. The way her tongue had rolled over the word ‘pleasure’ definitely gave him ideas. Ideas she had no doubt intended, but he really isn’t a very complicated man. And the way she smiles at him, even serrated as it is, draws a familiar tension through him.
He steps closer, his body bristling with a different kind of danger now, though his dark gaze remains just as flinty as it had been. Deliberately, he invades her space, looming in a way that almost simultaneously repels and attracts. The corners of his lips quirk up in a smirk that contains no humor. “That’s me, a fucking ray of sunshine.”
Usually she has some idea what she is doing, but with him, she is unsure.
She does not often plunge herself into things without some kind of plan, or at least a vague idea of what she is looking for (companionship, pleasure, something to explode….the possibilities are endless), but there is something about him that makes him nearly impossible to read; he is unpredictable, and she still has not figured out how best to navigate him.
He is not her usual target—he is far too cross, and while she does not require a pleasant disposition he is unusually bad-tempered, even by her standards. Men are not typically so difficult to soften in the presence of a pretty girl, yet her coy simpers and banter hardly seem to faze him.
She cannot decide if she is curious if there is more to him—either something kinder, or maybe even something far worse—or if she does not really care to dive that deep.
What she does know is that he is far more entertaining than anyone else right now, if only for the fact that he is standing there in front of her.
“I suppose it remains to be seen, but currently, I am pleased,” she says with a laugh and something like a shrug. “It’s possible I may change my mind and decide that your company is insufferable.”
She does not pull away when he crowds into her space, though instinctively she reaches for her power to shatter—she does not actually call on it, but instead merely touches it, as if to ensure it is there and ready—and while her bright blue eyes sharpen to something nearly frigid she does not give any other indicator that he has almost found his way under her skin.
Instead she only smiles that cheshire cat smile, angling her head towards him as she says sweetly, “Sunshine and rainbows is exactly how I would describe you to my mother.” And then she steps away from him, once again lengthening the space between them as she continues nonchalantly, “So, what kind of grand adventures have you had since I saw you last?”
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
She is a decidedly strange creature. Normally women fall into two categories with him, those who find his aggression attractive for some gods-forsaken reason, or those who can’t wait to get the hell away from him. She doesn’t fall neatly into either. Oh, she flirts well enough, but the way she pulls away slightly at his threatening approach tells another story.
Yet she doesn’t seem inclined to leave either.
If Ashhal were a better man, he would back up and give her space. But he is not a better man. Not even close. So far from it, in fact, that the brief flash of uncertainty serves only to ignite a dark thrill deep in his belly. She had just unwittingly drawn forth the darkness that lingers too close beneath his skin. Tempted the creature that wants nothing more than to feel her willing submission beneath a touch that is none-too-gentle.
Though her smile teases and taunts, her subtle retreat belies it. He should let her go, but he doesn’t. Instead, he follows, though he does not try to lessen the distance any further. His voice is a low rumble when he speaks, taunting her as she had him. “I don’t think this is going to be something you’ll want to describe to your mother.”
His wings lift slightly, a subtle sign of his rising aggression, though this time it has little to do with annoyance. If he were at all a man of humor, one could almost imagine he was teasing her. Almost. If one could ignore the thread of dangerous intent humming through his tensed limbs.
He shifts then, ever so slightly closer. Close enough he could touch her if he chose. But he doesn’t touch, instead lingering just a breath away. “You don’t really fucking care about what I’ve doing though, do you?”
She would never admit that she was not nearly as worldly as she liked to appear, and that he had read her correctly when he keyed in on the way she had so subtly shifted back from his advance. It was not exactly out of fear; she did not fear much, not when she had the ability to fight back by shattering someone to pieces, or to flee by dissolving into fairy dust. She was not afraid of him hurting her—at this moment, she is almost certain a fight is not what he is after.
But while her sharp tongue and time-bomb temper were not an act, she was not nearly the temptress she liked to play at.
She could lure them in easily enough, changing her color in an attempt to capture their attention, but she changed her mind just as quickly the moment everything started to feel too real.
It had never gone far enough that anyone had actually touched her; she had always made sure of that. But when he follows her movements and she catches the way his dark eyes flash, there is a moment where her heart leaps unexpectedly, but she does not back away again. Instead she offers the same sharp smile, pretending that her pulse is not an electric hum within her veins when she retorts, “Well clearly you don’t know my mother, she would love to hear all about this.”
In a single breath he has shifted closer, so much so that she could have reached out and touched him — or he could have touched her. There is a part of her that wants him to, but she does not want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that. So she ignores that magnetic pull that is telling her to step into him, leaving that breath of space between them, her voice now a low purr with him being so near. “Why is it so far-fetched to think I would actually care? I mean, I wouldn’t say that I care on a deep, personal level, but I am curious.” She exhales a soft breath of laughter, and withdraws away from him a step. “But fine, then. Don’t tell me.”
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
When she doesn’t retreat again, his eyes darken dangerously. His lips pull into something that could almost resemble a smirk if it were not so cruel. For the barest moment in time, he thinks she might have chosen to bend to his whim. Her cutting retort draws only a grunt from him, though it may as well be a laugh. It’s as close to genuine humor as he has ever managed.
The lack of fear in her glittering gaze is alluring. Tempting, if only because it stirs a desire to see what it would take to turn those star-bright eyes from flashing defiance to willing surrender. The urge to touch is so strong that, for the briefest moment, his scarred muzzle closes the breath of space between them to find soft flesh.
Then her fucking words register. He stills, his breath deceptively stead and even, belying the sudden tension humming through his body. Slowly, he pulls back, his eyes now sharp, like the jagged edge of splintered flint, as they meet hers. If she cared to look closely enough, she would be able to see the broken edges he guarded so zealously with his anger and violence. She would see the man who didn’t believe he was worth even the small amount of care she expressed.
“Then you would be the first fucking one,” he grits out, lips lifting in a sneer as he takes a step back, putting physical distance between them even as his words do the same metaphorically. Anyone who had ever claimed to care before hadn’t done so for long. Not when he was so good at shattering whatever ill-conceived, doe-eyed adoration they managed to summon for him. "Your curiosity is wasted on me.”
Anger did not come from nowhere; she knew that. Growing up with a mother like Starsin she had learned that quick tempers and sharp edges were honed by something, and she is sure that Ashhal is no exception. But just as she had learned with her mother, she would not ask questions—he was already quick to press that rage-sharpened knife to her throat, and while it was entertaining seeing just how irritated he could get, she was not actually trying to completely infuriate him.
Maybe she was just a natural at it.
She tries not to show the nervous tension that pulls through her at the feel of his skin against hers, but before she can even figure out the way that she is going to react (feign indifference, or perhaps let herself lean into it the way she so craves), he pulls away abruptly. For a moment confusion flashes in her bright blue eyes, noticing the way his own gaze has grown colder than she had previously thought possible. Her nerves harden into something more defensive, energy humming beneath her own skin in preparation—to either dissolve herself into fairy dust and disappear, or to dissolve him.
When his anger remains limited to serrated-edged words and frigid stares rather than anything physical she allows her guard to lower just slightly, her shoulders dropping a fraction as another smile quirks at the corner of her dark lips as she takes him in with a tip of her lovely head. “So far you have done nothing to make me any less curious.”
She leaves the space that he had put between them, glancing down at the ground that rests there before flitting her gaze back up to his face, and continues, nonchalant and unbothered as ever, “The old lands that came back. Are any of them of any interest to you?” She asks, seeking perhaps a less dangerous way to learn anything about him.
