"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
I call him the devil because he makes me want to sin (and every time he knocks, I can't help but let him in)
With each day, he grows.
At first, it had been slow, the gradual sloping of shoulders and lengthening of spine and then all at once, his body seemingly erupting, shaping and hardening. No longer was he a young boy with wild aspirations and promise in his dark eyes; now he stood on the brink of manhood, most of the coltish good looks bleeding from him to be replaced with something hard and dark and seductive.
He is wildly aware of his appeal, of the grace of his step, the wicked attractiveness of his smile, and he is rather proud of it. He likes the dark onyx of his heavy horns, their beauty growing more majestic and power the older he grows, thickening at the base and sloping backward, resting like a crown upon his princely head. He likes the sooty gold of his coat, at once lustrous and ash, gleaming and beckoning. But, at the end of the day, it is but another tool in the arsenal of the Krampus.
Like his father, he is an artist, and he rather likes the canvas that ripples outward as he surveys Beqanna, often wandering from the grey wasteland of his father’s kingdom. He is a sculptor, and he likes the feel of clay beneath his palms, the way a certain amount of pressure can turn raw material into the shapes of his dreams. Rhae was his first masterpiece and as he stands here, arrogantly lazy, he can still feel the proverbial clay beneath his fingernails. It is deeply satisfying.
Of course, this is when he sees her and he cannot help the way his gaze follows the youthful slope of her as she walks. He wonders if she is innocent; he wonders how much she has seen, how much she has experienced. A single shiver races down his spine at the idea of the untouched material. With the cavalier attitude of a man snuffing a cigarette with his heel, he shakes lightly and moves forward.
He comes up her side, unseen, reaching her faster than any man has a right to. “Hello,” he says softly underneath his breath, standing close—too close. “What brings you to my forest tonight?”
while collecting the stars, I connected the dots. I don’t know who I am, but now I know who I’m not.
She wanders as she often does, filling her days and nights with the wonders of a world they call new, though it is all she has ever known. She has seen the forest and the meadow often enough, both with and without the sister she is so willingly bound to. She has seen Tephra and her volcano, has waded into her hot springs and seen the magma dance like falling stars in the cracks of the dark rock. She has even seen Taiga, just once while visiting Ava, and beheld those immense and ancient trees, the fog that fell like clouds trapped beneath the foliage.
But there are places she has not been, things she has not seen, and it is this curiosity, this welling of wonder in the core of her chest that pulls her from the reaches of sleep and the dark of starry skies.
She is like liquid copper when she spills through the trees – silent but for the occasional snap of a young sapling bent beneath dark hooves. It is the softness of spring in the bristling green grass underfoot, the damp sponginess of thawed earth that swallows the sound of her steps as she passes by. The lowest branches reach for her, thin knotted fingers hidden beneath the guise of tawny buds and green sprouts, but her wings have not forgotten them and remain elusive and melded to the curve of her sloping ribs.
In the dark she cannot see him, that stain of dark and molten gold made wet and silver in the glow of cold stars – cannot feel his eyes when they find her shape and trace the delicate hollows carved from copper and indigo. It is only when he appears beside her, when her mane dances like rust against her neck in the wind of his sudden arrival, that she notices him at all.
It is reflexive when her wings lift and unfurl, dissolving from soft feather to the sleek and formidable leather of copper and gold dragons wings. They are imperious when they rise, wicked in the gleaming of steel talon and ruby scale, arrogant when they settle (only slightly) like a cape across her spine. There is something about his cold beauty that makes her uneasy, perhaps something about the way he had appeared as though born from the heavy dark of night. But there is something else that draws her in, that wretched curiosity still glowing in the pit of a bright and delicate chest.
Her instincts whisper predator, but she had not met one yet.
Did not fear them like she should.
“Your forest?” She echoes, taking a small step back from skin that smells like heat and dust, from horns like curling obsidian atop that dangerous gold head. It is only to regain some distance, to more easily trace the quiet power in the sloping of his shoulders and the curve of his neck – she lacks the air of uncertainty that should carry her further still from the sharp beauty of that wicked smile. Instead, and with a faint smile of her own etched into deep and gleaming indigo, she says, “I was looking for something,“ a pause and she tips her chin at him, exploring those dark eyes and dirty gold angles of a face that might have been carved from marble, “or maybe for someone.” In the cold dark she slips toward him again, the soft of her nose brushing dangerously close to the hard muscle of a dusky gold shoulder.
I call him the devil because he makes me want to sin (and every time he knocks, I can't help but let him in)
He is a predator, but he doesn’t think of himself that way. He prefers to think of himself as an artist; to think of the beauty he creates, crafts, from Fear. It isn't carnage—it is life. He takes the threads of their Fear and weaves a tapestry of majestic proportions, untangling the life that they thought they had to make something new. It is glorious, it is monumental. Pride swells in his chest just thinking of it.
At her question, he smiles, smoothing dangerous angles from his face so it is nothing but handsome, the darkness that surges beneath the surface trapped in the black bruises of his eyes. “Yes. My forest.” Well, technically his father’s as he was the first Krampus, but Bruise didn’t say that yet. For tonight, and with her, the forest was his, and he would treat it as such. It was what he made of it that mattered, after all.
She surprises him by opening the distance and then closing it again, her mouth hovering over the hard muscle beneath his sooty gold skin. She is making this easy; easier than he anticipated. He makes a soft noise in the back of his throat. “You have found someone,” he whispers low, leaning down to whisper into her ear, lips brushing the edge of her. She is beautiful, thankfully. It makes all of this so much easier.
When he moves his gaze to catch her own, he locks on the pale green of them. Instantly, he is transported back to the Mountain, when life had been so new within him; he is back with that mare, the green of her eyes startling before they had rolled into the back of her head, the Fear claiming her as she hit her knees.
His pulse rises in his chest, excitement brewing.
Mine, he thinks. She is mine. Finally.
It takes all of his willpower to not just claim her outright. To remember that art is a process, that it takes time and effort. Instead, he steps closer to her, wraps around her, nose pressing into the almost-gold of her coat. Deliberately, he reaches up to the find the strands of the Fear that he feels so tangibly and plucks his fingers over them, strumming them once. His gaze sharpens on her, wondering how she will react to the slight tug of the Fear. Not enough to feel terror; not enough to warp her reality, to change her perception.
Just the faintest of stirring in her heart.
Would she balk? Ignore it? Lean into it?
He moves from her then, unnatural grace and speed as he walks along one side, curving behind her and then coming up the other; the motions deliberate for him, but, in reality, fast. Appraising her, like an artist who finds himself inheriting a block of marble—something valuable, too valuable to treat crudely. He reaches over, pressing the soot of his lips against her jaw and tasting her. “My name is Bruise.”
02-06-2017, 10:52 PM (This post was last modified: 02-06-2017, 11:53 PM by exist.)
while collecting the stars, I connected the dots. I don’t know who I am, but now I know who I’m not.
It is impossible not to notice how beautiful he is, not to notice how the starlight gleams against the wet gold, how his face is strong and sharp and nearly regal with that crown of bent horns atop it. It is impossible, too, not to feel that flutter in her belly, the betrayal of uninvited butterflies batting holes in her stomach when his eyes dissect the mingled calm and uncertainty waiting like a mask in the hollows of her near-copper face. “It isn’t.” Is all she says, disagreeing despite that charming smile that appears against that smooth, gleaming face. It only deepens the unease that has started beating in her chest alongside her heart. And then, as if it mattered, as if it changed anything, “I’ve never even seen you here before.”
She regrets stepping closer as soon as that sound appears from the back of his throat – and again when those lips brush against the edge of a delicate, curving ear. Her eyes return immediately to his face, to his much darker eyes, and that ear disappears uncertainly into the tangles of rust mane just behind it. “Why would I be looking for you?” She asks quickly, frowning at the way her voice sounds a little breathless even to her ears. He has her rattled and she doesn’t understand why, doesn’t understand why despite the prickling of her skin and the wariness in her chest, something coaxes her closer still. Her voice is soft now, less breathless, and the faint smile that appears is enough to make those green eyes flash like emeralds. “Are you someone special?”
His eyes find hers and it takes all of her willpower not to look away, to keep them from flitting out of reach, jumping through the night like flickering green sparks. But something happens then, and she can see the change in his face, like the hardening of molten gold and this time she does look away. The night is a relief, cool and clean and it settles her despite the way her heart is thrumming wildly in her chest. But it is not enough to soothe her when he appears suddenly and silently beside her, weaving his body tight against her as he circles around to press his nose to the copper of her waiting skin.
There is a small gasp trapped in her chest, a sharp exhalation of breath that she holds onto until his lips are against her flesh. It escapes her then, like the whoosh of a loosed arrow, and she forces it in his direction. Her heart is a hammer tapping holes into her chest, her pulse the drum-beat to a song she has never heard before. It is reflexive when she pushes against him, using barely sheathed teeth that are meant to force him away – though his body is immovable and firm and yields only as he chooses.
She is appeased when he steps away, but the relief lasts only a moment before he is back by her side and moving at an unnatural speed she cannot fathom. At this her wings unfurl, arrogant and furious, hanging curved and wide to force him back and away again. Even in the dark their fury is not well-hidden, a gleaming mess of ruby and cooper and long, hooked talons. But she is not her wings, and even as they stretch in the night, cupping starlight and drenching it down her spine, her face is soft and uncertain and only a little sharp. “Why?” She asks, barely able to push the urgency from the note of that starshine voice. “Why ‘Bruise’? Of anyone in the world, Exist knows most intimately the importance, the relevance, of a name.
I call him the devil because he makes me want to sin (and every time he knocks, I can't help but let him in)
She doesn’t ignore the Fear—doesn’t pretend it doesn’t exist—and he is pleased by that. She was smart, his newest pet, and that pleased him. He could not stand when they pretended it did not exist, as if their insides were not melting against their bones, their cells snapping like rubber bands. Still, she also did not let it cripple her; she just respected it, blossomed beneath it. What a good little flower. Good little pet.
He purred with pleasure at her responses, wrapping himself around her more, pulling her deeper into the shadows of himself. “You weren’t looking hard enough,” he whispered, his voice barely audible as it connected the bridges between them. “I was always here.” His mouth traced the whorls of her hair and the slope of her forehead, moving her forelock to the side so that he could see the brilliance of her eyes.
“I saw you,” he lied, although it was believable in the smoke of his voice. “I always saw you.”
Perhaps he did. Perhaps he has been waiting for her, dreaming of her eyes.
Perhaps she was going to be his greatest conquest yet.
“You didn’t know to look for me,” he pressed it into her neck, her throat, new truths that he formed in the limited space between them. “That’s okay. I won’t be terribly hurt by it.” She didn’t know to follow the edges of her fear, the yellow brick road that he laid out for her—the crumbs in the forest. She didn’t know to hunt down the beast underneath her bed at night. So he came and found her. He uncovered her.
“And yes—I am special.”
An arrogant smile curled his handsome lips, ghosted across his cruel features. His pianist fingers played along the threads of the Fear again, finding the edges of it and skimming them lightly. He didn’t want her to feel terror—but dread. That would be delicious. What if he could make her feel Fear when he wasn’t at her side? He hadn’t toyed with that idea before, but he did now, stepping away into the darkness and then pulling the Fear more deftly. Could he make her ache with absence? Tremble at the thought of it?
He skirted around behind her, the shadows clinging to his slender frame, draping over his shoulders like a cape. He eased up on the Fear, let it go completely as he came up her side again with alien grace and ease. He appraised her wings but did not fear them, giving her enough space as he turned to face her, close enough that he could smell her, feel her breath. She was sweet—untouched, youthful, beautiful. His.
“I named myself,” he said coyly, pleased she had asked, pleased that she wanted to know. “When I was young, I met someone who helped nurse me.” She was beautiful too. Naive, innocent. He shivered at the memory. “I bit too hard,” an understatement, his shark smile widening. “An error of youth.” He took another step closer, breathing her in, tempting her closer with the flicker of his dark, unreadable eyes.
“She said I bruised her and then…” he laughed under his breath but didn’t finish the sentence.
“She had your eyes.”
He wanted to trace the edges of her face, but he also wanted her to choose it. It was important that she choose this—that she be as committed to the art as he. Of course, if she didn’t, he would have a back-up plan, but for now…he wanted her to make the choice. So he breathed gently, finding her gaze and holding it with his own, his darkness lapping against the back of them. “Why ‘Exist’?”
02-16-2017, 01:03 PM (This post was last modified: 02-16-2017, 04:23 PM by exist.)
while collecting the stars, I connected the dots. I don’t know who I am, but now I know who I’m not.
They are inseparable in the dark, knit together by flesh and starlight, seamless with his body pressed to hers and his mouth against her face, her neck, her throat. If she is being honest with herself, it is not just fear that flutters in her belly, not just fear that makes her skin ache and her bones tremble against him. It is the heat and the closeness and the echo of Leliana’s confession, of the man who pressed kisses to her skin and longing into her chest. But this, this is not it. Exist is certain.
He purrs and she pins her ears again, though she does not force him back, does not forfeit his lips against her skin, not just yet. You weren’t looking hard enough, he says, pushing his mouth against her forehead, brushing the copper aside to reclaim her burning, emerald eyes, you didn’t know to look for me. She does push him away now, not hard enough to move him, but enough to reclaim less than an inch of cold night air between them. “I wasn’t looking at all,” she tells him with a frown, her voice soft and sharp, uncertain and unwilling, “I don’t make a habit of looking for the things that go bump in the night.”
It isn’t entirely true, especially not now, especially less true with his mouth pressed to her forehead.
But the lie comes easily enough.
He disappears into the night and his absence is so sudden, so unexpected, so jarring that she stumbles back a few steps before she catches herself. Her ears unpin from her mane, slipping uncertainly forward as she lifted her head to peer out into the dark. But there was nothing out there, no shapes, no sound, not even the wind in the trees. It is eerie and she is unsettled, her refined copper face drawn tight in long lines of slender bone and hollows made to capture shadow. The first thing to find her, to break the stillness, is a long, unsettling shiver that races along her spine. It settles in her bones like the cold of deep winter, carving out the marrow until there is only fear inside of her.
It is like waking up in a nightmare, in a world that is too dark, too quiet, all wrong. It is like being at the mercy of waking up. If he were to slip back against her, to push his mouth against her ear and fill her up with his heat and the thrum of his voice, the world is gone, it is just us now, she might believe him. Fear is strange in that way. All consuming and illogical, a stain on everything it touches.
She almost calls out to him – not for him, never for him – but she is stubborn and she is silent, even in her fear. Instead she is stiff and erect, elegant like carved copper in the way that she strains against the dark, against the fear that he has planted in her belly. It is only when he eases alongside her again, coming from an entirely new direction (and it takes everything inside her not to show the surprise she feels in her chest), that she softens and settles and finds she can breathe again. He doesn’t touch her though, not this time, and the absence forces a different kind of ache into the curve of her chest.
I named myself. He says, and he is pleased, she can see it in the flash of his sharp eyes. But his story unsettles her, furrows her brow and forces her back one, two steps. But he follows her closer and so she stills again, those green eyes narrow and sharp against the cruel beauty of his face. He tells her how he hurt the mare, laughs, tells her that they have the same eyes, and she flinches. “You’re cruel.” She says, and it isn’t a question, isn’t an accusation though it should be. And then, warily, “Had?”
He is calm and quiet, breathing easily in the dark in deep contrast to the way her sides heave and her heart beats a tattoo against her chest. But she does not move to close the distance between them, does not move to press her lips to his face, to encourage him to do the same. She is only still, only wary. Why Exist? Her brow furrows and she turns her face slightly toward the dark, slightly from his eager eyes. “I would’ve died on the mountain,” she says, and those green eyes shift to find him again, “but someone told me to exist.” A pause and she watches him appraisingly, indecisively, still until she isn’t, until suddenly her lips are pressed against the curve of his jaw, the heat of wet-gold skin. “So I did,” she breathes against him, pulling away after one reluctant moment, “and I am.”
Then, suspiciously, and with bruises in her eyes, “What happened to her?”
What happens to someone who trusts you.
I call him the devil because he makes me want to sin (and every time he knocks, I can't help but let him in)
“Tsk,” his tongue presses against his teeth, clicking. “That’s a shame.” His voice is velvet now, honey as it pours from his mouth and finds the spaces between them, as he whispers secrets for only her. “You should look more often,” a breathy whisper as his mouth finds her temple, rests there. “They are fun.” He pulls back just slightly, finds her eyes and holds it, not bothering to hide the darkness that orbits there, the dip and rise of each constellation shadow as it clings to the strength and purpose of his gaze. “I am fun.”
She melts under his touch the way he expects, the way he craves, and pleasure blossoms like a garden in his chest. She was such a good lovely. His eyes darken with his satisfaction at the way breath billows out of her at his return, so much so that he does not lash out at her accusation, at the sharpness in it. “I am an artist,” he corrects her, his voice steel, unyielding to her. He was simply the truth, and he would not bend.
“Cruelty is but a tool,” he doesn’t know why he is educating her, why he is bothering to pull the veil back so that she could see the truth, but it is important that she sees—that she understands. “Art requires that there be sacrifice,” a rare passion runs beneath his words, rippling there like a stream, and it brings a light to his dark eyes. “A knife is cruel,” he can feel the tension, the live wire under his flesh, “until it is used to whittle, until it is used to carve.” He wants to reach out to her—wants to close the distance, but he waits, endlessly patient. “I am a knife, and I use the tools at my disposal to carve, to whittle, to create.”
He picks up the threads of the Fear again, almost absentmindedly, his eyes not leaving her despite the fact that his mind wanders elsewhere, despite the fact that he is humming low and deep under his breath, taking the landscape and morphing it. The trees grow wider, thicker, their bases coming to root against one another. Whatever nearby could-be companions melt away until there is only them, until it is just the two of them. He smiles his crocodile smile at her, wide and flat and handsome, glinting in the night.
Her question (Had?) rolls off of him easily and he immerses himself into her story, into the death that once clung to her; he imagines, for a moment, that he can smell it on her, a phantom trace of it that still wraps around her curves and sinks into forest depths of her eyes. But he doesn’t move, not until she finally closes that distance between them, until she collides into his side, and his mind billows outward with pleasure, forcefully pulling upon the violin chords of the Fear. He reaches for her, claims her, pulls her tight into his side. She has made her choice, he thinks, and that matters. She has made her decision.
Heavy-horned head dips as skillful mouth traces along her jaw, down her throat. Each brushing of his sooty lips branding her. “It doesn’t matter what happened to her,” he says, because it doesn’t. He has now relinquished his hold upon the green-eyed mare and replaced it with something far sweeter, something he curls around and pulls near to him, even as his mind continues to warp and change the landscape around them, molding it into the patterns of her nightmares. “What matters is what will happen to you, Exist.”
