[private] i'm not going to change, so stay out of my way. || pollock

[Ellyse]

i'm not going to change, so stay out of my way.

i don't need you to understand that i'm already saved.

   The gentle caress of summer weaves its way through her ruffled feathers as a quiet breeze touches delicately along her pale golden skin, eliciting a long and drawn out sigh from her parted, whiskered lips. She is alone, pressed against an old, brittle oak with her tightly bound wing scratching an insatiable itch against the dry bark – a quiet presence hidden away within the thicket; seeking solace for her rampant mind. 

   An uncomfortable anger stirs beneath the usual stoic intensity of her feminine features; her hazel eyes laced with arsenic and her tongue lined with cyanide, lying in wait. There was a part of her – however small – that felt betrayed; deceived in a way. She had not been given any regard, nor notice as to what the thought process was of the one who held her heart. There was no grudge beneath the surface of her frustration – Lucrezia was more than suited to lead, to guide, and she herself did not care for the crown of thorns in any capacity. It had been the right decision, but one that had blindsided her nonetheless.

  Such fact did not take away the raw, tender hurt that lingered in her chest in the days following, and still her heart aches, bruised from the burdensome weight of feeling estranged. Invisible in a way, though it only serves to infuriate her further, as she had never craved anything but to be a looming shadow tucked away in the background.

   The shadows beckon her forth and she falls into temptation, savoring the way the temperature drops as the sun struggles to peek through the heavy pines that shelter her. She prefers the dim, dark rhythm of the night, in which she is unrestrained and able to move swiftly, yet the thick brush and tightly wound foliage of the forest is a beckoning mistress to her in the heat of the day. Alas, the sun has been ensnared in the delicate entanglement of dusk, slowly falling behind a yawning mountain, its bleak light giving way to the drapery of a darkened, starlit sky.

   The scent envelopes her long before her mind can comprehend the complexity of it – stagnant, wretched - death, and though her heart seizes for a moment within the wrought iron cage of her breast, a faint rumbling of delight stirs inside of her. Death, a scent she had long been well accompanied with. She had manipulated many a corpse in her youth, articulating her ability to twist and bend bones, admiring their density and the tender (delicious, though she had never admitted it to anyone) marrow that lay within.

   As her lungs fill with oxygen and her senses become overwhelmed with the heavy stench, her dark hazel eyes search the descending darkness – and her breath hitches in the tightness of her throat, recognition of a broad, menacing figure causing her heart rate to steadily rise.

”You,” she breathes, with nary a rustling leaf to interrupt the pregnant silence, her tone oozing malice. ”I should have known you might be skulking around in the dark with nothing better to do. Get out of my way.”

Ellyse

@[Pollock] - you have full permission to do whatever you'd like to her during the course of said thread. :|

[Pollock]

Enter again the sweet forest
     Enter the hot dream
       Come with us

His unsolicited advice would be to cast off the anchorage of love –

That nasty, insidious bastard of weakness and trust;
He had untangled himself from it a very, very long time ago. It had been in him, perhaps, as it is in everyone. The instinct to foster it – the way it guides, like Polaris bright, to mother and mother’s warm side. (The original love.) That had turned to ash in his mouth and when nobody swooped in to keep his heart warm, it had hardened and cooled and then it had turned vile and

here we are.

Now it festered inside a box locked tight and buried under a hundred leagues of clay and memories pressed into fossilization. What little of it that had clung to the dead ends of his brain had mutated – as all good things do in his particularly rancid genetic soup – these freaks were what made him clash with such violence against the barbed body of Lirren, or the dark body of Syntyche, seeking the thrill of owning some parcel of her; the same thing that drives him to pick endlessly at Sinew’s defenses, holding her close if only to make sure she becomes nobody but his ever again.

Like touch, love is an ugly thing for him; brutal and corrupt. It couldn’t hurt him that way, as it had hurt her.

That would be his advice, if he didn’t enjoy the way it drove her to him.
Funny, she is not the first woman of Tephra to find his darkness in a trying hour.

(Darkness calls to darkness – he would bet, if he were a betting man, that both of them were darker than they seem. Most are. Some fight it. Some fight it victoriously.

Some just need encouragement.)

She smells sulphurous and sweet. Tephra is rich and blossoming, and she carries that with her on her skin and between the rows of clean, pretty feathers. It is a welcome smell, one he had hoped he would find again. Preferably alone, and so she cometh – perhaps unaware of how her scathing tone and biting eyes arouse a hydra of hunger in him. 
‘Hm,’ he grunts, as she spits at him, with not even a hint of honorific on her tongue. Impolite.

“You should have,” he leans against an old tree, one well scarred by his restless horns, “and so it might have been wise to keep to the light. But you didn’t.” Foolish. “Why are you here, then? If not to sulk – hmm, unless it was not an accident.” 

The gift-giver runs his tongue over his always-dry lips, “Were you... looking for me, Ellyse? Have you grown sick of your king?”

the gift-giver

[Ellyse]

i'm not going to change, so stay out of my way.

i don't need you to understand that i'm already saved.

  Her eyes follow the deeply etched markings into the old, fragile wood – frail, brittle bark has fallen away, revealing the tender flesh of the fir, which is unyielding to the force of his weight as he rests the girth of his body against it. The hollow of his cheek, the terse ridge of his jawline – and the curling mass of his thick, heavily ridged horns (with thin, coiling remnants of pulp and dust clinging to the edges); he is a sight to behold. She does not waver beneath the weight of his stare, and soon, a kindling of an ever-burning flame ignites when the dancing, golden flecks of her own eyes meet with the empty voice of his own.

  A stirring emerges within the pit of her belly (discomfort; an instinct urging her away from him – a plea she would not entertain), and the muscles lining the rigid bone and its tender marrow become tense and taut. The surface of the pallid skin that lay along her shoulders is soon split, bone sliding past the sinewy tendons and soft tissue, bristling in long, languishing lines of sharpened osseous matter – spikes carved out of her own bone contouring her shoulders, down along her breastplate, and back towards her withers – coursing down the length of her spine.

  ”The darkness does not belong to you,” a snarl emerges from her lips, a sneer tugging at the corner of her pale mouth. ”you underestimate me, Pollock.”

  Why are you here, then?

  His words are soft, weaving through the heavy silence enveloping the diminutive clearing, and within each carefully spoken syllable is a hidden meaning – he cared little for why she has stolen away into the shadows; the sardonic tone of his timbre unveiling his boorish temperament for her to feast upon.

  ”I doubt that I am here for the same reason that you are,” she breathes, sinew and bone shifting as the bleak sunlight reaches the edges of her pale skin, illuminating her cheek and the hardened stare of her irises, set intently upon him. ”your wasteland is barren and dull – even the King of nothing must long to spend his time in less of an eyesore.”

  Slowly, his tongue presses against the ridges of his chapped mouth, but she does not shy away from his stare, boring into him with her own intensity. Though her heart presses urgently against the solidity of her rib cage (adrenaline coursing through her veins, leaving her enthralled, inebriated by something she cannot discern), she sidles closer to him, the stench of rotting death pervasive, swathing her in its vulgar heat.

  With her breath warm and sweet against his cheek, and her voice low, ”You are nothing but an unfortunate interruption in my day, Pollock – an unpleasant surprise,” a pause, and her gaze searches the flattened line of his mouth, craving to see the way it will inevitably twist and change with the weight of her words - the tension between he and Lucrezia had been palpable, rife with hostility. ”and regrettably, your highness, you are behind in the times and ill-informed. Magnus no longer holds the title. Lucrezia does.”

Ellyse