all the weight of my intentions; offspring

[isle]

out of the woods, out of the dark

She rests tucked close to his side, as she prefers to do, with her cheek pressed to the beating of his heart because sometimes this is the only sound that can lull her to sleep. Without the ice beneath his skin, without the magic of winter in his veins, he is so, so warm. She likes him this way, but she knows that the absence of the ice in his heart feels like a knife wedged there, so she likes it less. He has fire now, just as he had possessed the snow, and she thinks it must rage inside him like an inferno because he burns with it. There are some nights, nights when even his thoughts leak through the cracks in his dreams, and he is fitful and fever-bright beneath her lips. She tries to soothe him, to trace constellations in kisses against the uneven dark of his skin, but even this is not enough.

He is fitful again tonight, and his heat wakes her from a quiet slumber. She shifts to brush her nose along the curve of his jaw and her eyes are dark and soft beneath the furrowing of a concerned brow. Thoughts leak from him, not full thoughts, just bits and piece of incoherent story, fragments of something larger. They are as they often are, thoughts of the Kingdom, of the booming population, of the weight of it where it settles like a world upon his shoulders. She sighs and touches him again, brushing the forelock across his brow to watch the restless flickering of his eyes beneath those dark, heavy lids. There are more thoughts now, and these must be more heavily guarded because they come short and staccato, strings of words pulled together with no meaning. Stalls, blades, beasts, and his fever deepens. Every once in a while she catches her own name, like the beating of an irregular heart, and selfishly, selfishly, it curls the corners of her mouth into the same-quiet smile she saved just for him.

But then another string of thoughts follow, a trail of bullets through her chest, and she finds quite suddenly that she cannot breathe as the last word wedges like a burr in her throat. Infidelity. She reels away from him reflexively, not with anger or disgust, nothing so dark from the delicate brown mare, but with a confusion that burns painfully in the pit of her stomach. There is a moment where she stays, where she is frozen in place and her eyes fall like dark bruises over the savage elegance of his slumbering face. But the word comes a second time, and then a third, like he is as trapped by it as she now is, and it is enough to undo her. As though a tether had been undone between them, she springs away to the mouth of the cave, pausing once to see that little Eoine still slept peacefully nearby, that Offspring still burned where he slept, where they had slept.

Her heart roars again, the sound of agony silenced, and she turns from them both to disappear into the approaching dawn. She hardly notices the snow as she races through it, hardly notices the bite of frigid winter against her skin after having been curled so close to his warmth for so long. She flies past the wall and notices none of its beauty, and then through the narrow gate, trying desperately to outrun the thoughts that seem to pick themselves out of the dark of her confusion. Time passes in a jagged mess, it steals minutes and hours, it pulls the sun up above the trees so that at least she can see without the dark, without branches leaving more welts across her chest and neck. She runs until her sides heave, until she cannot breathe anymore but it is alright because she doesn’t want to, because breathing feels like choking on stones. She runs until sweat is damp in the hollow of her neck and her flank, until her eyes are rimmed white and wild because she is not enough, because she will never be enough. She runs and she runs, but she cannot outrun the agony in her chest.

But then, impossibly, he is there. He is there, and if the silhouette had belonged to anyone else she might not have noticed, but he is hers and she is his, and she knows him. Anguish swallows her and she feels hollowed out in an instant, but even as she slows to a ragged halt she cannot take those quiet eyes from his face. When she looks at him she is wounded, when she looks at him she is undone. She wonders at all the ways she had let him down, wonders which had been unforgivable. But then her eyes do drift, they wander because it hurts, and it is only as they wander that she realizes where they have come to rest. It is the place they first met, a quiet placed carved out from the rest of the meadow, the place where she had broken and he had let her crumble against him, protecting the pieces as he knit her back together. She isn’t ready for the searing flare of affection that bursts open in her chest, isn’t ready when her heart reaches for him again. Her eyes flash back to his face, wild and uncertain and she tries to understand why he’s doing this, why he came at all if he doesn’t love her anymore.

“Offspring-” she says, she begs, she closes her eyes and crumbles because nothing has ever hurt as much as she hurts now.

i am well aware of the shadows in my heart

[Offspring]

LET ME IN THE WALL YOU'VE BUILT AROUND.

WE CAN LIGHT A MATCH, AND BURN IT DOWN.

  The fervor is difficult to hide away, and the fever is impossible to shake. The fire burns from within, festering and blistering beneath his puckered, pink scars and dull, dreary obsidian pelt. A gentle sheen of sweat often wears thin across his body, and his muscles often tremble and quiver as rippling memories tear through him. Each one is a scathing reminder of the way his flesh had been torn away from his body; a white hot fire that had once burned across him and caused his skin to bubble and blister beneath as the heavy fat deposits and sinewy muscle melted under the heat. Even when his heavy lashes rise and he stirs to wake, his muscles clamor and his heart pounds within his chest, and still the fire burns from within.

  Though the frigid air had once soothed him because it had simply been a part of him, now it consoled the heartbreak that fractured slowly over the entirety of his being. Stripped away of his icy being, there is now nothing but a caustic heat in its place, leaving him aching for ice against his flesh and a frigid breeze to mellow his rampant mind with its gentle caress. The restlessness often stirs beneath the surface of his solemn, stoic presence, and he swallows the discomfort wholly - but with her, within her gentle embrace, within the quiet confines of their cave and as his mind finally slips away from his grasp, he breaks. Each and every night, he twitches and stirs, tormented with the echo of every heavy scream, the loud ringing of imminent death, and soon it becomes too much.

  Too much, and suddenly, she has seen within him. Fragmented, jagged pieces of torture, of fury and blinding hatred. Of searing agony and anguish. A fleeting moment in time when his sanity had been lost to the thought of losing what had been most precious to him (but she does not see this tightly guarded secret; his heart shattered without her and yet he had not admitted what her disappearance had done to him), he had allowed himself to unwind. His guard had fallen, and he had fallen weak to the lust and anger simmering hotly beneath the surface. He had come together with not one, not two, but many - his carnal desires met, and yet the emptiness of prolonged woe remained.

  Though he remained tangled with her since the birth of their sweet Eione (precious perfection), the guilt still festered. It could not remain hidden forever. 

  With a heaving gasp, he stirs, his thick neck lifting suddenly from the frigid stone he'd been resting his cheek upon. His searing eyes search the darkness as his lungs fill and empty rapidly, his heart pounding against his straining rib cage. The same heavy sweat lingers over his body like a dense blanket, and trembling, he draws himself to a stand. She is gone. Absent from his side, though their pristine, quiet daughter sleeps peacefully only a few paces away. He gently presses his damp cheek to hers, nudging a tuft of her mane before he plunges into the bitter cold of night. The moon remains high, lingering in the sky, though a dense gust of wind presses at his behemoth mass as a brutal reminder of the winter that still remains. 

  Though it has begun to fade, her scent is heavy near the mouth of the cave, and a looming dread begins to settle in the very pit of his belly. Glimpses of his dark nightmares remain, and he knows - she has seen something; perhaps too much. His heart aches, and he knows that he must follow - he cannot be foolish enough to let her. Not this time.

  With a gentle rousing to Australis, he ensures the safety and warmth of his youngest daughter, and his heavy, sinewy legs pound heavily against the permafrost-encrusted plain as he launches himself across the valley. The dense foliage lining the border, nor the icy barrier can keep him as bay - she will not slip away from him, not this time.

  The evening soon fades away into the gentle caress of another morning, and after many weary miles and hours, he bathes his shining, sweating form beneath the pale sunlight of day. The sky shifts into an array of colors, and soon the many scars that litter his massive body are tinted a gentle gold from the blinding light. His breath remains tense, even as he quietly paces along through the gently weaving path - but her scent remains, lingering on the foliage she has so carelessly brushed against and the heavy steps she has made, and he knows it will not be much longer.

  She tires, and though fatigue courses through his veins, he maintains. At last, he sees her - the sunlight painted across her splattered two-toned body, highlighting the gentle slope of her spine, the feminine curve of her jaw and his heart aches for her. A watchful eye follows her, his heart beating raggedly within, his mind rampant. Her doe eyes meet his, and she is undone, and he too becomes undone. Wearily, he moves forward with a still-heaving chest, with wildly blinking eyes, until he is a mere step away from her. 

  Her breath is sweet and heavy, as his own is, and his voice is laced with more pain, regret and sorrow than words could ever even hope to give life to. "I am so sorry, Isle," He says at last, his tone trembling with emotion as he searches her broken features, her shattered eyes, her fractured self. "it was a moment of weakness - I," He breathes deeply, but it falls so shallow on his endless lung capacity, and so he remains breathless. "I thought you had gone away, that you had left me."

  The confession unravels him, and hot tears pull at the powerful, seemingly unbreakable King's pleading eyes, trickling down his cheeks with white hot fervor. 

 "I have endured so much .. so much," He murmurs, swallowing heavily. "but I could not - cannot bear to lose you. There is no excuse for what I have done, and there is so much -" (too much) "- you do not know, and I have wronged you in so many ways. But there is not a day .. not a single day that goes by that I do not love you, endlessly - please, don't go," His voice drops to a whisper as he reaches out, whiskered lips trailing gently across her jaw, though he is desperate to draw her near to his burning body. "don't leave me. I need you."

OFFSPRING

THE FIRE AND ICE KING OF THE TUNDRA

[isle]

out of the woods, out of the dark

For a moment they are little more than statues, monuments to the grief that turns their dark faces to stone and sorrow. She is glad he is still, glad because at this distance she cannot feel the warmth that radiates from the furnace of his body, cannot smell the sweetness of winter and sweat against the black of his gleaming hide. She knows these things would break her, these things that were no longer hers to love- though she would forever. So she is glad that he is still, glad that she cannot reach him. But then he does stir into motion, muscle and sinew rippling beneath the scars and old wounds, and her eyes flash wild with betrayal when they fall against his face. Don’t. She thinks, she wills him away, if only because she is weak, if only because she loves the pain that knifes through her with every step that carries him closer, closer.

He stops when he is mere inches away, close enough to taste the scent of his skin on her tongue and feel the warmth of his body embrace her as it had a hundred times before.  He is close, but she cannot reach him unless she takes that last step- and she won’t. She cannot. Standing this close it is easy to see the push of his ribs against his sides with every ragged breath he takes, easy to see the sweat that dampens his shoulders and the way his eyes burn like living coals. She almost misses it in her grief, almost misses the agony in his face and the way his body strains for the same closeness that she cannot stop wanting. But this does not make sense. It is easy to believe that he had stopped loving her, easy to believe that at some point she had stopped being enough. But the truth she thinks she finds sinking in the bottoms of eyes as red as trapped fire is so much harder to swallow. It feels like looking into a reflection, like seeing the truths of her own heart etched carefully into the shadow of his face.

I am so sorry, Isle," he says, "it was a moment of weakness - I,. He pauses and he is breathless, but before he has a chance to continue she is shrugging away from this unbearable closeness and shaking her head. “No,” she tells him quietly, closing her eyes to keep him out, closing her eyes as though the image of him isn’t forever burned into the core of her memory, “you don’t have to be sorry, you don’t owe me anything.” She speaks and she wonders if she sounds as hollow as she feels, but she cannot hear herself over the roar of the blood in her veins. There had been no promise of monogamy, no vow of anything more than loving one another. But then he continues and her eyes flash open to touch every angle of a face that seems to crumble even now as she looks on wordless. There are tears that gather and fall from broken eyes, tears that leave trails of moisture as they follow gravity through the angles of his dark face. It is too much for her, too much to watch him hurt like this and even though she doesn’t understand what he means, why he thinks she would ever leave him, she closes the distance between them.

She does not tuck herself beneath the curve of his neck because she still doesn’t understand, because she doesn’t think that place belongs to her anymore. But she touches her nose to his and steels herself against the way her heart explodes in her heaving chest. Her lips are more hesitant than they have been, more unsure, but she traces the paths of a dozen tears until all she can taste on her tongue is salt and sorrow. Her nose lifts to his forehead to push his forelock aside as she had a thousand different times, and her eyes close because this motion is as familiar as blinking, as easy as breathing. When she pulls back - though not away this time because she is weak, too weak – she hopes that his sorrow has been eased, that no new tears will stain his face. “I don’t know how to leave you,” she says quietly, still confused because she cannot remember the days she had slipped out the gate to stand and watch dawn paint the ice wall red, “you are my heart.”

It is like a dam in his heart breaks because the words that come pouring out are nearly enough to drown her. She gasps and it is a ragged sound, and she stills again only when his lips find the curve of her jaw and follow a path they’ve traced a thousand times before. “You haven’t lost me, you’ll never lose me.” She says once she can remember how to speak again, and her voice is nearly a whisper, a ragged, breathless sound that makes her flinch to hear. “I don’t understand, Offspring,” she says next, and her furrowed brow disappears beneath a tangle of dark forelock, “you want me to stay?” Her heart heaves and thrums and beats wild patterns against her trembling chest. She can feel that wild desperation returning again. “Please,” she says and she finds that she is begging again, “don’t ask me to share you with someone else, it’ll kill me Offspring.”

But I’d do it for you. She doesn’t say, because even just thinking about it makes her heart erode away in her chest.

She closes her eyes and drifts closer again, made more selfish, more greedy by the confession of love on his lips. But this time she slips closer than before, close enough to press the dark of her nose to his chest to feel the way it raced beneath her touch. “I love you, Offspring,” she says, she breathes, “if you ever doubt anything, never doubt that.” And then she pauses, quiet, remembering words she had forgotten when they disappeared beneath the others, swept away by the tides of emotion struggling between them. “What else?” She asks, and there is a little steel to the soft of her voice, a little wariness to know more than this. “What else don’t I know?” But even though her words are brittle and her voice is edged, she doesn’t pull away from the feverish warmth of his body or the pounding of a heart she knew so well. A whisper then, barely loud enough for him to hear, a truth that burns in her mouth, "I will always, always need you."

i am well aware of the shadows in my heart