"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
As the ocean comes into sight, Ivar's focus shifts to the water ahead. The woman beside him is no less intriguing, but he has eyes only for the moonlit water they wade into. It is tepid against his pale legs, matching the temperature of the air on this warm autumn evening. Ivar lowers his head to the surface, his pink nostrils fluttering curiously. It is less silty than the sea he'd left behind, but does not taste so strongly of iron as it does in Nerine. The water is entirely new, and the kelpie smiles despite himself, taking a moment before glancing back at Kagerus.
She is answering the questions he'd almost forgotten asking (he forgets most things in the sea, where only the present matters), and Ivar tears his attention from the sea to return it to the mahogany mare. The kelpie has never liked magic - at least the intangible kind. He prefers dangers that he can see and touch, and in turn, destroy. Kagerus speaks of magic stronger than her own, but to Ivar they are all stronger than anything he might summon. His only gift is an extension of his charm; most times it is no stronger than the spell he can cast with tempting words and dark eyes.
He wonders if Kagerus is aware she does something similar, speaking of experiencing one's wildest dreams as though it is as simple as wading farther into the sea. He knows the colloquial meaning of having dreams, but he is a creature that rarely does. His sleep is deep and rarely complicated, and the only images he has ever seen in them are sex and water and death.
Ivar tilts his head as she narrows her eyes, his broad shoulders moving up and down in shrug.
"Show me," he tells her. "I want to see what a Queen of Hyaline dreams about.
I know my lies could not make you believe in my dark times, baby this is all I could be . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
@[Kagerus]
okay so i literally had 90% of a post written and then i refreshed the page accidentally so i rewrote this and it is much worse but at least it is done and not deleted!
and in my dreams I've kissed your lips a thousand times
Speaking of experiencing one's wildest dreams as though it is as simple as wading farther into the sea.
As he is accustomed to the embrace of the waves, so too am I accustomed to the caress of the dreamscape. They both thrum with an energy and a life that both Ivar and I seek, but will never truly understand. As he is one with the sea, I am one with the dreams - and yet we are separate entities still, only visitors in habitats that tolerate us at best.
There is magic in the ocean, a power that he must be in awe of: just as I am in awe of the dreamscape.
Show me. I want to see what a Queen of Hyaline dreams about.
My narrowed eyes glint as the hard line of my lips spreads into a dark smile. How simply he requests that I transport his mind out of his body, as if to do so is second nature to me... And it is. Perhaps that is why I'm smiling.
"You will be powerless before the hands of this Queen," I whisper, eyes sparking in the dark moonlight. To the tune of the waves sloshing gently against our stomachs and legs, I step towards him, never breaking eye contact as I reach to connect our corporeal forms. "But I promise not to harm you..."
My eyes close exactly as my mouth finds its mark on his whithers, and instantaneously we are falling to sleep. With an eager vengeance, the dreamscape tears us from wakefulness to sleep, causing a plummeting sensation that I bask in fullheartedly. To the less experienced, terror may be inspired; but I never break contact with the kelpie, intent on showing him that which he has asked for.
Silence.
My eyes open to a realm yet unexplored even by me. A glance upward reveals the strange glint of the sun against the topline of the ocean, hundreds of feet above us. My arms and legs float adrift in the current, unphased by the warmth that surrounds me on every side. With a deep inhale, the water flows through my lungs as seamlessly as the wind through long hair: its viscous nature leaves my insides tingling, but the pain of drowning is absent. Anything is possible when one dreams, after all.
I glance to my right, glimpsing the obscure shadow of Ivar's consciousness as I allow it time to form it's own shape. My lips curl gently at the sight, a hand reaching out for his.
Welcome, I murmur from my mind to his. The water's warm.
Plz do a tactile hypnosis while Kag is touchin him @[Ivar]
06-20-2018, 08:30 PM (This post was last modified: 06-20-2018, 08:33 PM by kahzie.)
I V A R promising everything i do not mean
She smiles despite her narrowed eyes, and the darkness in her expression sends an anticipatory thrill dancing through his veins. It is not often that Ivar relinquishes control, and it is even less common for him to let go of the reins entirely. She tells him he will be powerless, but no one ever is. He doesn't believe her promise - hasn't he said the same thing a dozen times to the pretty skulls the litter the ocean floor? - but he doesn't need to. For all her cautions, the kelpie has never truly known the icy rush of fear, and he cannot appreciate her warning for what it is.
Ivar is the danger; to be in danger is all but unfathomable.
Had she not pulled them under Ivar might have done the same - indeed his pale mouth is stretching toward her throat even as the darkness breaks over him.
It is not unlike sinking beneath the waves, he finds, though for a dark while he cannot feel himself. When he is pieced together again, it is in a place not unlike his own dreams, and he he breathes the tepid water into lungs that are somehow smaller than before. Ivar doesn’t have words for the shape he wears here, but he drifts as easily as he always has. Kagerus – for that pale thing must be her – reaches out to him with an unfamiliar limb, yet he reaches back with one not so different.
Their fingers twin together, and Ivar tugs her toward him effortlessly.
“Make it colder,” he tells her, because it seems speaking aloud beneath the water is an easy feat in a dream. And then, because she had told him he was powerless and he wants to see how right she was, he slides his free hand across the narrow width of her shoulder and collarbone, settling with his thumb on her throat and his fingers around the back of her neck.
“Stop me,” he tells her aloud, while at the same time whispering the opposite command into the back of her mind. Gently and firmly, he presses down on the fragile skin of her throat, a dark curiosity in his fathomless brown eyes.
I know my lies could not make you believe in my dark times, baby this is all I could be . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
and in my dreams I've kissed your lips a thousand times
For all that he has never experienced fear, I indeed have. The knowledge of one's own death by the hands of a life not yet even fully formed tends to cast a shadow over one's ability to maintain positivity and confidence; not that Ivar would know. Or not that I would imagine he knows; by his dark gaze and the expert subtleties of his body language and normal language too, I can only guess that he's sired half of Beqanna. Or that he wants to, anyway.
Of course, I don't catch the way his fanged teeth reach for my throat as darkness embraces us; I have no way of understanding my true danger, for in my dream world, it's as if nothing can touch me.
Except - except him.
A shock runs through me that I'd not expected as his fingers deftly entangle in mine. When he pulls me closer, possessive and skin to skin and effortless, my breath catches. As if one's breath could catch under water, and yet mine does. Make it colder, he commands, and it's as if there's nothing between my powers and his will. Around us, the water's temperature plummets, and across my every surface, goose bumps rise.
Words tingle at the edges of my lips, but the weight of his hand sliding across my shoulder and throat latch silence them. My eyes blink and widen in confusion and surprise - he's catching me off guard, he's taking advantage of me, he's - but in the next moment, my mouth pops open from the pressure of his grasp. The glimmering darkness of the ocean is nothing compared to the darkness behind his eyes, tempting and gorgeous and there.
Stop me.
Two emotions rise up within me with the ferocity of starving wolves next to carrion. One wants desperately to taste each individual bud of Ivar's tongue, while the other screams in outrage at this intense and unexpected onslaught of temptation against me. As the voices in my head caterwaul, my body becomes frozen, drifting closer and closer to Ivar as my breath remains caught in my water-filled chest.
I love you.
It's neither of the voices in my head; instead, it's hers. And by god, her voice will always hold more weight than any of mine combined.
The heartbeat before our lips collide, the world around us snaps. The water surrounding Ivar suddenly drops as if from an enormous and instantaneous cloud, though I remain suspended in the water. His pale figure lands with a hard thud against the concrete ground I place beneath him. I do nothing to soften the blow, nor do I allow him an inch of my powers. The darkness of my expression has lost it's playful nature; for though this is a game, I'll be damned if I lose.
"I told you you would be powerless," I snarl lowly through clenched teeth. Along each of his fingers, the atoms of skin suddenly tear; gruesomely, the flaps tear back with an agonizing slowness until a half inch of raw flesh is exposed. The concrete already takes on the red hue of his mortal blood; I try not to listen to whatever noises he makes.
"Beg," I whisper, jaw unclenching as a smile unfurls across the lush curve of my lips. "And I will make it stop." My finger flicks in the cold water, and half of his fingers receive another full inch of flaying.
Perhaps this will teach him not to pursue queens so goddamn adamantly.
@[Ivar] I will 612% change this if anything doesnt sit right :| but kag is aNGRY
06-21-2018, 11:16 PM (This post was last modified: 06-21-2018, 11:16 PM by Ivar.)
I V A R promising everything i do not mean
The sudden ice of the water brings a delighted grin to Ivar’s dark face, the hairs on his barely covered skin standing on end from the cold and unexpected arousal. The warmth radiates from her skin in the frigid water, and his hand that is not wrapped around her neck releases her fingers to slide along the raised gooseflesh of her arm. Almost everything about her is unfamiliar in these shapes, but Ivar would recognize the black fervor in her eyes in any skin. It’s mirrored in his own expression, and in the hand that drifts lower down her pale body, ghosting against the skin of her ribcage, her hip, heading lower still.
Ivar bends his neck, tilting his head toward hers as he pulls her closer. He can almost taste the sigh of submission he knows is coming, and then the world drops out from under him.
There is no water, just cool air and a rapidly approaching stretch of hard grey. Muscle memory as a horse seems to have translated into this shape as well, and he lands with his palms out, though the impact drives his chin into the ground as well, and the concrete rips at every inch of his exposed flesh. Ivar rolls to his back with a low hissing: “Fuuuuuck.”
Something is wrong with his hands, he realizes, and holds them up in front of his face to see the flesh peeling away from them. A glance up reveals a Kagerus smiling just out of reach, her words of a moment ago (I promise not to hurt you) seemingly forgotten. Ivar closes one hand over the other, pressing the bleeding appendages to his chest as though the pressure might stop here.
“Come down here and say please,” he says through gritted teeth. “And I might think about it.”
I know my lies could not make you believe in my dark times, baby this is all I could be . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
and in my dreams I've kissed your lips a thousand times
He's an expert of persuasion, a god of flirtation and sex: I can almost taste it on his lips and fuck can I see it in his eyes. Where his hand had been (low and firmly grasping and hungry) tingles, the sensation imprinted into my skin, echoing softly as I attempt to regain my composure. The separation helps that - and hearing his low curse helps even more.
It doesn't lower my arousal any, but - it's more of a hunger now, anyways. He ought to understand that.
Just below me, Ivar's human figure rolls to his back, glancing at his fingers as I flay them. He doesn't cry out; my teeth reclench in frustration. How dare he withstand the pressure of my will. Some satisfaction does diffuse through me at the sight of him clutching his blood-stained hands together as if that will protect him; but of course, he does not beg. Something tells me it will take more than blood to make him beg.
Come down here and say please, and I might think about it.
Oh-ho, darling boy; what a request you make, trusting so foolhardily in the prowess of your simple masculinity. It's quaint, really; but god, it makes my blood boil.
Snap.
A long hallway stretches before the man, grey walls and a low ceiling with dim white lights. Of my corporeal form there is no evidence, and for some time, I leave him that way. At the end of the hallway, a red door looks temptingly approachable; but no matter how fast he runs or how many steps he takes, it never comes any closer.
Frustrating, I know.
Then, knowing that he will simply laugh at my little game, I send voices to whisper from within the walls. They spew out dark words and threats, insults and insinuations. They begin almost unnoticeable, climbing their way to subtle until their presence is almost undeniable, and yet, still somehow within Ivar's own head. Smiling, though I have no shape, I add my own voice to the din:
With his hands cradled to his chest, he stares up at Kagerus. She is still floating, suspended in the water that stretches impossibly tall and still. Her hair drifts in the current and despite the flayed skin of his hands the need to twine his fingers through it doesn’t diminish at all. It would cling to him like seaweed, he knows. Slick and cold and thick, and a pulling back a handful of it would bare the pale column of her throat to his hungry mouth.
He’s imagining that when the empty sky is suddenly much closer than it had been, and Kagerus disappears entirely.
To Ivar, who has never seen a ceiling, the sensation is akin to being trapped in a cave. Even on his back, he can see the crimson stark against the grey, and he rolls to his feet. That’s the way out, he knows, it must be.
But does he need to leave?
This was a dream, after all. What is the point of going anywhere if he’ll never really move?
Kagerus had shown her cards too early, and despite the monsters snarling on the reverse side Ivar still remembers her hand. He’s smiling when he hears her voices amid the whispers, and he cranes his still damp head at the ceiling. Ivar isn’t sure where she is – or if she’s not here at all – but he doesn’t doubt she can hear him.
“I said I wanted to see your dreams,” he says, though he remembers not to shout it only as the words begin to leave his mouth. “This is what you dream of? I think I’d rather have the empty sea.”
I know my lies could not make you believe in my dark times, baby this is all I could be . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
and in my dreams I've kissed your lips a thousand times
He stands there uselessly, not interested in playing my game. It's frustrating at first, but slowly, an idea dawns upon me that makes up for how useless my ideas have been thus far. Perhaps it's true; perhaps he will not know fear, no matter how I go about torturing him. I consider allowing him a stale mate, but the delicious taste of the idea formulating in my unseen mind beckons too sweetly for me to deny its call.
Perhaps I am still feeling the effects of his hypnosis.
Unlike before, the world does not change in a snap. Without reason or rhyme, water begins pooling along the floor of the hallway, gradually rising until it swallows Ivar completely. A more natural hum replaces the chorus of whispers, a very dim light seen from above. The hallway disappears next, leaving the man suspended once more in the place I'd brought him first. From the shadows of this watery world, my conscious reforms, covered in shivers - with nothing to hide them.
My dreams are soft, Ivar, I murmur from my mind to his, prefer the intimacy of this communication far more than spoken word. Our figures drift closer together, though only the force of the dream propels us; there's no tugging or bated breath. The swirling locks of my dark hair entangle themselves in his fingers, fingers that are healed now (for hadn't I promised not to hurt him?)
Knowing that I have little time before the ivory of my bare throat commands his next action, I close my eyes and dream my consciousness in two; an exact replica. One stays in this body, and the other finds shapelessness in the ocean around us, preserving my life should the one inside the naked, delicate girl's body be ended.
06-22-2018, 01:11 AM (This post was last modified: 06-22-2018, 01:12 AM by Ivar.)
I V A R promising everything i do not mean
It is quiet for a time. Ivar, so used to the water, does not realize it is even rising until his calves are submerged. The only current is up, a reminder of the falsity of this world, but it is water. That’s enough of an improvement. He doesn’t struggle as it rises and closes over his head, though he does watch the dim light stretch and grow until it is the surface of the ocean overhead again, and the tug of the tide returns its familiar pull on his bones.
That’s better.
The whispers have faded, replaced by the comfortable beat of his own heart in his ears, and then by Kagerus’ voice. She’s there, Ivar finds as he turns his head. His body follows, pushed by hands that are miraculously whole again. (He’d wants to see the water red, but this is not his dream).
With her within reach Ivar does not hesitate, and he pulls her toward him has he had in the beginning of their dream. This time he is more careful, and one bare leg twines around hers, keeping her evermore anchored. His broad hand finds her hip again, and the curve of it fits against his flawlessly. The hand entangled in her dark hair pulls down slowly. This is exactly what he wants – what he had wanted.
She dreams of drowning?
This is his own dream, too. The body he wears is not quite his, but it is broad enough to dwarf the slim shape that is Kagerus in a way that is primal and satisfactory.
So why does this feel like a trap?
His left hand slips up the curve of her waist as his right – still tangled in her hair – cradles the back of her neck. The warmth of her skin in the cold water sends an electric thrill across everywhere they touch. Even knowing she might vanish in an instant, Ivar cannot help himself. It’s not enough for him to want this. She’d be winning too, and even a tie is less than what he wants.
“This isn’t any different from the hallway,” he tells her, the word for that closed place coming from some unfamiliar part of his mind. “How do I know this is what you dream of?” How can he know if this is what she wants? He certainly wants it, but he’d have thought someone as bold as Kagerus might have bolder dreams. Perhaps she needs encouragement. “Prove it.” He tells her, the demand coursing through every inch of their tangled bodies. Ivar doesn’t know how she might fulfill his demand (he’s no dreamweaver), but he does hope it will be with a sudden wantoness of this sleek creature in his arms.
His right hand reverses its climb, slipping round her to sink his fingers into the supple flesh of her backside, hoisting her farther up his body even as his left hand holds in her place.
“Prove it.” He says again, as the hunger finally weaves its way through these unfamiliar neurons. She is not the shape it knows, but her pulse is quick and her blood is warm. It is not familiar with this dream world, but the hunger doesn’t need to be. It only knows
(want. need. mine)
I know my lies could not make you believe in my dark times, baby this is all I could be . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
and in my dreams, i kissed your lips a thousand times
He is bold in his actions, as I expect him to be. The strong pull of his hand brings my body right into his, and he even goes so far as to snare my legs with his; the gesture is quaint, but I allow it to continue, only smiling a girlish smile up at him as I allow myself to melt into his skin. His hands roam over my naked skin with the easiness of a lover, a fact I begrudge him, though not visibly. It's imperative that he believe me to be absolutely domesticated, bent to his will.
But of course, this Ivar is no fool: the kelpie who had come to Hyaline by lake is as sharp now as he was then, and I expect no less.
How do I know this is what you dream of?
I smile again, whimsical and lazy. Prove it.
Although he hopes that his push of hypnotic energy might result in the spreading of my legs and tilting back of my head, it does quite the opposite. The sudden urge to rush to my final stage of this dream overwhelms the part of me that wants to tease him and lead him on first. The silly smile I wore is suddenly gone, my eyes opened and looking into his with a severe intensity. Does he deserve to see my true dreams? A part of me is hesitant, but the other wants to prove a point.
It will mean losing this exchange, but in its own right, vulnerability in the face of an intimidater is a success.
Prove it, he says again in a tone that suggests that, should I disobey, something sharp may befall me. Despite the involuntary flutter between my legs at the forced thought of that interaction, I decide to give him what he asks for. It's not what he wants, but, in this lifetime, it rarely is.
From within his grasp, I slowly dissolve. In his mind's eye (a dream within a dream) the lake of Hyaline appears, the sun rising just beyond the crest of the northernmost mountain. He remains suspended in the ocean, and he might glimpse it if he refocuses, but I impress most upon his the scene. It is still and quiet, and indeed, it is where I often find myself during dreams.
The scene glitches; there's a splash along the coast of the lake.
Suddenly, as if he were the one dreaming my dream, the pain of drowning fills Ivar's chest. But there is nothing he can do to reach the surface, although the bottom is close enough for him to stand. I embed in him a will to stand and live, but grant his body no power of movement; the burning intensifies, the scene blackening slightly from its first-person perspective. As the light of the sun glimmering from outside the lake dims, a figure appears; her face is familiar to me, but perhaps not to him.
It is Solace.
I send a thrill through his heart, a thankfulness so profound that he's quite sure he will live. As Solace dives beneath the waves, the drowning mare's mouth reaches for her, the first she's moved since voluntarily slipping into the water; but instead of support and life-saving maneuvers, a hoof suddenly falls onto the mare's chest.
Panic; feelings of panic and drowning.
As the darkness threatens to overwhelm Ivar's/my's/my dream's vision, Solace's face comes into focus, except that her face is now that of Rapt's. The change won't make sense to Ivar, but it will leave him needing to vomit as he drowns.
At the last, four words seep into his mind:
You should have died.
---
We awaken where we'd stood originally, I with a gasp. The sides of my body heave as I drag in lungful after lungful of air, desperate for it's life-giving abilities. Although I'd made sure not to actually kill either of us as we relived my repeating nightmare, the terror of its contents still left me shaken and nearly crying. Trembling, I attempt to regain my composure before glancing to Ivar, dreading and curious of his reaction to the truth of my dreams.
I want to say something - but for now, I stand there in silence.
@[Ivar] :| let me know if I need to change anything
@[Solace] u should probably read this.
![[Image: kag]](https://78.media.tumblr.com/2e8039018ce4dff6112c167ec23e886a/tumblr_p72zjit7wC1s5a0qvo1_100.png)