[mature] we're setting fire to our insides for fun; ophie

[adna]

and if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones
‘cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs

She slips into silence, into the darkest corners of Beqanna. 

She slips away from her family, from whatever friends she can pretend that she has, from everything that she has ever known. She falls into the undercurrent of her depression, of her rage, and she finds that she can hold onto the diamond core of it there. She can cling to the edges of her fury at the way that her life has turned out and she lets it harden her, she lets it wear away at the soft edges of her until she is her father’s daughter. She lets it strip away her youth until she is a young mare with harsh eyes and no smile.

It is easier when she can pretend that this is all she is.

It is easier when she can close her eyes and feel the edges of her fangs against her mouth and let that be the beginning and the end of her. The poison that drips onto her tongue is sweet and she wonders if she could simply drink it down, dose herself, let it rage into every branching edge of her veins.

Would it bring the darkness?

Would it pull her under?

She is not quite ready to know, although neither is she ready to dismiss the possibility altogether, and she instead lets herself contemplate it for a while—moving through the edges of Beqanna but not quite letting herself get trapped within it again. That is, until she sees him, that faint glow of a halo and the gold of him  drawing her forth from the shadows into the proximity of the common lands. She is older than the last time that they had met and while the lines of her face remain as lovely as her mother’s, there is something that sharpens it, an undercurrent of rage that she doesn’t quite turn on him. 

She walks closer to him, head lowered and just a hint of fang showing against her lip.

“Ophanim,” her voice sounds strange as it wraps around his name. “It’s been a while.”

adna

we're setting fire to our insides for fun
collecting pictures from a flood that wrecked our home

[Ophanim]

Ophanim

There’s danger looming on the horizon but he either doesn’t notice or he simply doesn’t care enough to do anything about it. Instead he stands there, wings spread to gather the warmth of the sun as it reflects off all the glowing gold across his body. His eyes remain closed as he listens to the breeze rustling through the trees and the sound of newborn children at play off in the distance. For him, all is at peace. Even at the sound of someone approaching, he does not move or even blink his eyes open to watch her as she draws closer and closer. The slow turning halo just keeps hovering over his head like a constant satellite.

But then she says his name and it is a voice he remembers rather easily. “Adna!” he replies with a smile before even turning his head to see her sad eyes and reserved demeanor. While she keeps her head low and establishes a distance between them, he is quick to bridge that gap and nuzzle his face to her cheek in a warm welcome. The scales hidden within him flourish across his skin to mimic hers as they turn all his gold and white to a fiery red and black. He has yet to master his mimicry, though, so the color is just a bit off as he examines her curiously.

“I’m sorry if you’ve looked for me. I’ve been… everywhere and nowhere I suppose,” he offers with a laugh as joyous and regal as Sunday morning Church bells. “What about you? Did you run away from home?”

His voice grows softer with his questions as he watches her curiously, those golden eyes searching every curve of her face for some clue as to her thoughts. Ophanim’s wings slowly curl against his side as his ears turn forward to catch her every word. She is all thorn and brambles. Adna keeps her sharp edges and yet she permits him fleeting glances into her soul when she speaks. How strange that she is so much more coarse than Starsin and yet softer at the same time. Maybe that’s why he visits her more than most others, gives her the second place in his heart. (He knows Starsin sits on the throne with him twisted around her finger. Ophanim could never breathe those three words to anyone else. But if he did, then Adna might be one to hear them.)

“Does it help if I said I missed you? Or is that stupid?” he says as his smile returns. He knows isn’t the brightest of the bunch or even the bravest when it comes down to it. Ophanim isn’t the best at anything but he finds some comfort in that fact.

@[adna]

[adna]

and if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones
‘cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs

He is calm, like a river, and she wonders what it must be like to live a life so unaffected by the things around you—to simply accept what comes, what happens, as another part of the day. She cannot live like this, no matter how she tries. She simply feels everything too strongly—whether it be love or joy or even hatred. It seeps into her bones and fuses with every atom. It transforms her into the beast of the day, and she wishes that she could have his tranquil nature, the ease with which his lips tip upward.

Perhaps it is this that brings her back to him. Perhaps it is jealousy of him, a desire to unlock the secrets of his easy manner. Perhaps it is some deep-seated hope that being near him will allow her to pick up on the secrets of his soul; perhaps she hopes that, one day, she too will be able to smile so easily.

Regardless, she has not picked up on such secrets yet, and she is left feeling open and vulnerable before his blue ocean eyes. “I haven’t looked,” she says bluntly and only after such things have left her lips does she wonder if they are unkind. Her mother would never exhale such things, she thinks with shame, but she has long since forfeit any hope of growing into her mother’s calm loveliness.

She is not to possess such grace, such a soft heart.

But neither will she experience the pain her mother has—that is a promise to herself.

At his question, she laughs but the sound is dull and she looks down, brow furrowing and the corners of her lips dropping. “I ran,” she rolls her lean shoulders, “but I don’t know if I have a home to run from.” She looks back up at his confession and something rolls across her features, an undercurrent of something that she can’t quite name. “I don’t deserve to be missed,” a glimpse of fang against her lip as she studies the depths of his gaze, “but I have missed you and I don’t deserve to miss you either.”

adna

we're setting fire to our insides for fun
collecting pictures from a flood that wrecked our home

@[Ophanim]

[Ophanim]

Ophanim

Ophanim used to be more emotional as a child. Each time he cried, though, his mother used to brush his fluff of forelock from his face and tell him how time was wasted being upset. She insisted that he pick himself up and get back to enjoying his life. Jenova had a way of letting things roll off her shoulders that passed on to her son. He is aware of the way Adna clings to her woes, though, as they seem to be the only constant in her life. He doesn’t blame her for this drastic difference between them. Instead, he likes getting to see things from a different perspective.

When she says she hasn’t looked for him, he blinks at first, surprised by the callous response. But then he laughs when she seems to realize how blunt her words were. Ophanim quickly forgets once she moves on to the next question and gives a hollow laugh. The angel boy steps closer and lets his wing extend to lightly cover her back. He doesn’t curl the appendage around her, however, but offers it like a hand on the shoulder.

“Home is less important than the people you feel at home around. Or at least that’s how I see it,” he says with a light shrug of his shoulders. “But why do you feel like you have to earn these things?”

He lightly touches his lips to her cheek as he voices his concern, exploring the inches of her skin down to her neck. Something about his scales pressed against hers is comfortable and he likes the sound they make as they slide against one another with each subtle movement. Without thinking, he kisses at her skin and immediately freezes after. How reckless, how foolish to let himself get to comfortable like this.

The angel boy steps back as his wing retreats back to his own side while his cheeks burn hot with embarrassment.

“I-I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I.. We’re not like that,” he quickly explains, but what’s done is done. The memory of her warmth across his lips lingers there as he watches her with shuddering breath. Of course there is want but his heart yearns for the mind reading star girl back in Loess.

And yet.

And yet, his eyes roam across Adna’s body as though seeing her for the first time. She’s more beautiful than he had noticed when they were younger but she deserves more than he has to give her. Still, he will give what little he has left over when Starsin gets her fill of him.

@[adna]

[adna]

and if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones
‘cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs

There is something of a promise held in his soft voice. Maybe not a promise of forever, or even an extended period of time, but of escape. Of something gentle and easy. She has no way of knowing that his heart is hopelessly tied to another. She has no way of knowing that he is twisted around the mind readers finger, but it doesn’t matter. Perhaps she, like her mother, is destined to want that which she can’t have.

Perhaps she is cursed to love things from afar.

But he is close now, the warmth of him hovering over her, around her, and she closes her eyes for a second on a sigh as she slips into it, letting it rise within her chest. “I have never been give anything,” but that’s a lie and she knows it. Something like shame hits her, leaves her breathless. “That’s not true. I had a beautiful home when I was a child but I lost it. It didn’t last. Maybe it never can.”

She shakes her elegant head, the same delicate features of her mother shining through the serpent. She exhales slowly as his lips find the curve of her neck. Her breath hitches and then she feels a flush of something unfamiliar as he retreats. Her sage green eyes open slowly and she studies him, wondering at what made him jerk back, at the sudden, cold distance that opens up between them.

“We aren’t,” she agrees, her voice soft—too soft. “But we could be.” She frowns and looks down before looking back up beneath the curls of her forelock. “For tonight maybe.”

Enough time to make her forget this ache in her chest.

This jagged need to find acceptance in the curve of his body and the fever of his mouth. It is a dangerous, reckless thing that pushes her forward again, her fanged mouth finding the masculine angle of his jaw and lingering there. He smells sweet and she feels a tightening in her belly, something like relief to find this—an escape, an opportunity, a momentarily reprieve. “Please,” she whispers against him as she steps into his haloed presence once more. “I just need to forget. I need to not think tonight.”

adna

we're setting fire to our insides for fun
collecting pictures from a flood that wrecked our home

@[Ophanim]

[Ophanim]

Ophanim

He should have learned his lesson last year and he certainly should have gotten the point when Meraxes showed up in Loess looking just like him. But Ophanim has pretended to be happy so long that the holes in his heart have grown irreparably massive. His mother never visits. Starsin never stays. His father is dream of a memory from childhood. The angel boy would cry if he ever stopped forcing himself to smile and laugh. In the dead of night, he stands alone in vast fields as empty as he is, and he wonders if it will always hurt this way. He wonders if it ever gets better.

Will his face ever match what he feels?

Maybe that’s why he feels so safe with Adna. She wears her pain right there on the surface and forges it into an armor to keep her safe from everything he welcomes into his life. The serpent girl could snap the neck of anyone who tried to add more sorrows into her spine while he rolls out the welcome mat for it. He could learn a thing or two from her but he’s never been quick on the uptake anyway.

But we could be.. For tonight maybe.

He swallows hard and suddenly this is his first time all over again. Because this matters like it did then. Not in the same way, but they are kindred spirits who are destined to intertwine from time to time. Ophanim steps close one more and presses his lips to the corner of hers – gentle, careful like she might break. He forms a little trail down her neck and over her spine so she always knows where he is without looking. When he reaches her hips, he hovers there for a moment and watches the way her scales reflect the light.

He takes a deep breath to steady his nerves and then gingerly lifts himself onto her. His feathered wings curl forward to hold her close but never too tight. Ophanim feels his breath suddenly turn to panting as his hips meet hers, greedy for this and everything she has to offer. The angel boy closes his eyes and tries to show at least some semblance of restraint for her sake. Her body makes his skin feel like static and Ophanim has to bury his face in her mane to muffle the sounds of his moans. As his pace picks up and he grows more reckless, her name finds its way across his tongue as though it is the only word he knows anymore.

As a sheen of sweat forms across his skin, that electric feeling of pleasure runs up his spine and he gives one final jerk of his hips. His chest heaves for breath but he remains buried inside her for a few moments more. The angel boy plants a final kiss between her shoulders and gives a faint whimper as he slides off her back. His wings hang, exhausted, against his sides.

“I’m.. I’m going to stay in Loess. Maybe someday you can live there too?”

He doesn’t say that he wants her too but his eyes are hopeful. Once again, he lines himself up for hurt and waits patiently, gratefully for it.

@[adna]

[adna]

and if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones
‘cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs

Adna has so many lessons to learn that she doesn’t even know where to start. How does one learn how to live a life that is not plagued with sorrow. How does one learn to live a life that is not constantly weighed down with the need to run away, to find hope in tomorrow, to find some ability to lose yourself.

But she doesn’t want to be smart now—she doesn’t want to learn a lesson.

She wants to make mistakes, and she wants to make them with him.

So she does. He begins to touch her, to find the curves of her, and she makes a soft noise in the back of her throat. Something like a growl, or a hiss. Something that is predatory in its roughness and yet delicate in its fragility. It is something that she clings to; this duality of need and want, give and take.

She leans into his touch, a shudder running down her spine as heat flickers to light in her breast. This is dangerous, she knows. This is a game she should not be playing. This is going to hurt. But she wants it to. She leans into the knife’s edge and hopes it breaks the skin. She hungers for that taste of devastation.

When he lifts himself, when he enters her, she can only say his name. It whispers out of her serpentine mouth, flickers between her fangs, and she focuses on the feel of him against the scales on her back. The feather light touches of the wings against her sides, the sweat the builds beneath her mane.

She says his name—again, and again.

Until it a noise, a murmur, a moan.

When it is finished and he slides from her, she wonders at how she could feel so empty. She feels a pain that is nearly exquisite in its beauty, piercing through her ribcage. This will not last.

“I can try,” she says quietly, but even as she says it, she knows he will never truly want her.

No one ever does.

adna

we're setting fire to our insides for fun
collecting pictures from a flood that wrecked our home

@[Ophanim]