"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
06-07-2019, 10:47 PM (This post was last modified: 06-07-2019, 10:48 PM by Ether.)
Golden eyes watching our every move Losing time without the sun or moon
There is something in the simplicity of his life these last years that he hadn’t known he was missing until he realized he never again wished to go without. It’s almost frightening to realize something so dearly gained might too easily slip away. Perhaps that makes him more protective than he ought to be, more watchful. More devoted.
It is a thin line, the one he walks. Dangerous, in a way. The closer he grows, the more he cannot imagine life without her.
Their children grow so quickly, it seems. Only yesterday they had been watching Misfit and Haunt touch noses for the first time. Now their youngest daughter trips so bravely through the woods, already venturing further and further afield with each passing day. If feels as though only moments ago she was finding her unsteady legs for the first time.
He has quickly discovered it is a full time profession, raising children. Though one is certainly easier than three, Torryn and Wrenley had given their siblings a run for their money. Still, he finds himself happier now than he ever thought imaginable. It becomes almost easy to ignore the lingering fear of losing her (of losing them). Becomes almost a thing forgotten.
Except not quite. Never quite.
At long last, Wrenley has collapsed into an exhausted slumber, and for a moment they are given peace. With a soft sigh, Ether slips through the shadows alongside Briseis, his lips trailing a gentle, affectionate caress along hips and spine and shoulder. She is as perfect now as she had been when first they’d met. It’s amusing the think how such an introduction could have been the catalyst for what they now have. Had he told that lost boy he’d been what the woman who had run so haphazardly into him might become, he never would have believed it. But then, fate seems to have a sense of humor.
Placing a kiss on the curve of her cheek, he presses against her, reveling in the simple touch. Once it might have been unimaginable for him to be so comfortable with such easy affection. Now he only leans in, his lips against her skin. “I love you.”
I need you like a heart needs a beat but it's nothing new.
She has almost learned to settle into this new normal. This new normal where she doesn’t feel like she needs to run, this new normal where her nightmares are becoming less and less frequent. Her nights are spent safely curled into the side of someone she loves and trusts, and so she can’t even remember the last time her nightmares took her someplace strange and unexpected. Ether never let her get far; she could feel the way he wrapped himself around her as soon as her body began to tremble with the need to run, and before her mind ever had the chance to send the signal to her muscles, she was waking up in his embrace.
Over time, the images and faces that had haunted her in the dark had slowly begun to fade. Instead of awaking from a heart-shattering nightmare, she usually was stirred from her sleep by a sweet dream – his touch, his face, or sometimes their children – and only to find upon waking that her dream was completely real. She still couldn’t believe that he is hers.
When Wrenley nestles herself into the ground, Briseis cannot help but to press her lips against her small forehead. She was completely perfect, just like her other children, and yet still perfect in an entirely different way. They were all so precious and unique, and every time she didn’t think she could love something anymore than she already did, another one came along to prove her wrong. She doesn’t think her heart will ever run out of room for them.
The feel of his touch tracing the familiarity of her curves brings a contented sigh from her chest, and with a tilt of her head she reaches to meet her lips to the coolness of his skin. He presses into her, his endless black melting with hers, just like it has countless times before. She has never had a home, but she knows without having to wonder that his heart is more of a home than any land could ever be. She lets her teeth pull at his mane, before her lips press whisper-soft kisses up the arch of his neck. His voice still makes her heart somersault, still sends a wave of heat to the end of every nerve with those three simple words. “I love you, too.” She lips lightly at the corner of his mouth, and then his jaw, before curling against him again and whispering into his chest, “I still can’t believe you’re mine.”
Golden eyes watching our every move Losing time without the sun or moon
It’s easy, in a way, to hold her demons at bay. Far easier than his own. But then, he would give her anything she needed. Would be anything she needed. Would battle even invisible monsters, without blinking an eye. It’s so easy, when it’s for her. Especially if it means wrapping himself around her and holding on until she returns to him. For a thousand years, if that is what it took.
It still surprises him sometimes, that despite her nightmares, she had chosen him. Him. A creature of infinite night that would forever be worse than anything that might haunt her dreams. But to her he is simply Ether. And that is perhaps the most beautiful thing of all. To know that she could look at him and see beyond the heavy shadows that encapsulate him forever in their hold. That he could be a protector rather than a haunting predator.
So yes, it is easy. With her, it is always easy.
To see the way she so tenderly brushes her lips against their daughters small forehead is an incredible thing. He had never imagined himself with a family, before her. Had never imagined he might understand how his father felt for his mother. Never imagined that such a thing might be within his grasp. As a boy, watching his family from the shadows and feeling as though he were different (as though he didn’t quite belong), he would never have believed he might one day understand.
He revels in her touch, feeling as though it were the first time rather than thousandth that her lips have met his skin. His eyes glow a bright, fierce yellow, filled now with only greedy love rather than the uncertain caution that might once have met her. He leans closer, nose pressed against velvet black, exhaling deliberately into her skin as she tugs at the shadowy strands of his mane. And when she curls into him, repeating her love back to him, he draws her in close, pressing her so tightly against him he is almost surprised they don’t simply meld into one.
“Always,” he replies immediately, his words soft yet firm with certainty. “I will always be yours.”
I need you like a heart needs a beat but it's nothing new.
It feels like lifetimes ago since she came here.
There was the first, the girl she had been before she ended up here. The girl that was still lost somewhere in the cobwebs of her mind, the girl that used to so desperately be trying to claw her way out. She doesn’t remember who she was before, but she used to be so sure that she was someone, and that she needed to remember.
And then there was the girl that washed up on the rocky shores of Beqanna, confused and alone. She never knew how or why she came here, but all she knew was she wasn’t meant to be here. Plain and black, with no magic to call her own, and little appreciation for what others wielded. She had shied away from their vibrant colors and their brilliant displays of power, preferring to keep to herself, or staying within the safe borders of Hyaline.
It is both bewildering and somehow not a wonder at all that she ended up with Ether. Endlessly black with his glowing golden eyes, she had been drawn to him immediately. Something about the way he could disappear into the curtain of shadows had fascinated her rather than frightened her, and instead of fearing him, it was only with him that she had never felt safer. She had never seen him as a monster — not even when she had first seen that glint of sharp teeth in his mouth. He had calmed her troubled heart and diminished that seemingly insatiable wanderlust, and there was no where she would rather be than anchored next to him.
Curled into his side as she is now, it was still so incredibly clear that the reason she had ended up in this land full of strange magic was to be with him.
The feel of him pulling her closer, and holding her tighter against his chest, stirs the butterflies in her stomach and she can’t help but to smile into his neck. “Did you ever think, when we first met, that we would end up here?” Here, together, with a home and a family. With everything so perfect that sometimes she is afraid this is a new version of a nightmare — that she’s going to wake up and none of this is real. She runs her lips again along the curve of his cheek, before pressing them into the groove of his throatlatch and murmuring, “I knew the first day I met you I wasn’t ever letting you go. But I didn’t know it would be as perfect as this.”
I've learned to live with these fatal gifts and still you're mine
It’s strange, the places life brings you. The things you end up with are so rarely the things you had imagined yourself having. For Ether, the rather bleak existence he had always imagined is so far removed from everything he now calls his. So pale and hopeless in the light of the incredible brilliance that is Briseis and their children. He shivers at the thought of ever returning to that. When he hadn’t known what awaited him, it had been so easy to live on in an almost monotonous stupor. Now he does not know how he had ever prevailed.
But as he places a tender row of kisses along her jaw, relishing the warmth of her pressed against his chest, beneath his neck, he wishes to do anything but dwell on his miserable, lonely past. He would never return to it. Could never return to it.
She presses so warmly against him, delighting him all over again with the incredibly feminine weight of her, so real against the cool shadow of his skin. For a man who had long ago been resigned to the weightless drift of chilly shadow, she is so much the opposite. A beacon, despite the dark sheen of her coat.
His ear twitches as she presses her lips into the sensitive hollow beneath his cheek, whispering against his skin. He warms beneath her touch, heat tingling along his muscles, radiating from her sweet touch. She might have no thought of seduction, but his body did not seem to know the difference. He could have her any time though. Knew she would give herself to him as easily as breathing, so willing to become lost in the cascades of pleasure that never seemed to dull.
Later, he thinks. Later.
“I never would have dared to dream,” he replies wryly, his lips curving into a small smile, yellow eyes bright as he shifts to peer down at her. He drops his lips, pressing a tender, possessive kiss into the hollow beneath the delicate bridge of her nose. “I never imagined someone so incredible could want someone like me.”
He laughs softly when she admits she known from the first day she was never letting him go. If only she knew how truly wild she had made him even then. If only she had known how sorely tempted he had been to never let her leave the safety of his shadows. After a moment, he murmurs, “I knew I should never have let you leave after you agreed to follow me.”
I need you like a heart needs a beat but it's nothing new.
Anytime her skin brushed against his, it sent sparks firing to the end of each of her nerves. No matter how close she was, it never felt like enough. Just the very act of their eyes meeting — his, glowing and golden, so vibrant against the pitch black of his skin — was enough to send her heart racing and tripping. Even after all these years, he still knew how to send the heat rising to her cheeks with just a smile, or by hardly brushing his lips across her skin.
She doesn’t know what she ever did in this life to deserve him, but she would gladly endure every hardship, every terrible moment, and every day of loneliness over and over again so long as it meant she would end up here.
She can feel the hunger that she alights in him, and she does not try to hide the knowing smile that curls at the edge of her lips. But all she does is twist herself closer, lipping playfully beneath his jaw, though otherwise ignoring the way every inch of his body is already calling to hers – for now. “Someone like you?” She echoes his statement with a laugh of disbelief, her teeth grasping the strands of his shadowy mane before saying, “If by that you mean handsome and sweet, then yes, I’m incredibly fortunate to be with someone like you.”
She pauses, then, some of the glowing amusement in her eyes dimming just slightly, but only because they darken again with sincerity. Her lips reach to gently brush aside his forelock, and then press to his forehead, before trailing along the side of his face as she murmurs, “Any girl would have been lucky to call you theirs, but I’m forever grateful that it’s me.”
I've learned to live with these fatal gifts and still you're mine
The temptation of her skin pressed so warmly against his is equally delightful and enticing. But there is something to be said for the anticipation, a sharp sweetness that gives the hunger and wanting an irresistible edge. A wicked delight in such a slow build until the inevitable. He finds himself craving it, wanting to drive her as utterly mad as she drives him.
As his lips trail the delicate line of her neck in an almost absent caress, his yellow eyes gleam with warm anticipation and humor, doing his best to focus on her words instead of her touch.
“Mmmmm,” he murmurs noncommittally as she rebutts his self-deprecating statement. His lips twitch into a smile as he lips at her ear. A reprimand that is far more playful than anything with true heat. “I think you are the only one who could’ve convinced me to quit hiding.”
He holds her gaze for a long moment before drawing his nose down in a sweet, affection caress along the curve of her cheek. A gesture of appreciation far more than anything else. Finding the warm, sweet hollow of her throat, he smiles against her skin before whispering, “I also think you give me far too much credit.”
Though her memory seems somewhat selective after so many years, he remembers all too clearly the feral spirit that had lingered much too near the surface those years before he’d found her. He had not chosen to hide from the world without reason. No, he had feared himself far more than he had feared anything outside the safety of his shadows.
I need you like a heart needs a beat but it's nothing new.
There had been a time when they were both wild. When neither of their hearts knew how to beat for anyone else, but instead they just beat to stay alive. She doesn’t know how her feral heart knew to slow down long enough to get to know his; maybe it could hear the way the beats of his echoed her own, maybe it recognized the way it seemed to change and try to sync with hers right from the start. Somehow, it made perfect sense that the wild and wind-blown mustang would make her home with a beast that lived in the shadows. Somehow, it made perfect sense that the girl that was haunted by nightmares would find solace and love in the man made from darkness, with sharp teeth.
Her pulse is a distant hum as she tries to ignore the way she flushes hot beneath his lingering touch, and she ignores the want that begins to burn and ache inside of her. She knew she could change the course of their conversation with a single touch. She knew she could press into him, that she could scrape her teeth against his neck, that she could leave heated kisses against his throat and that he would take her, without a second thought. And he knows that he could have her, anytime he wanted, and that she would never deny him.
But, she waits. Her touch remains deliberately light, almost fleeting, save for the way she is still curled tightly into him. She waits, because she needs his sweet words just as badly as she needs his fervent touch; neither of which she had never dreamed she would need or want from anyone, but with Ether, she craved it. “You still hide, I just hide with you now,” she says with a laugh that fans against his neck, where her lips are busy caressing his cool skin. Between Ether and all their children, she found that she didn’t really need or want anyone else. She didn’t miss the rest of Beqanna, she didn’t miss the outlands. As long as she was with him, be that in his shadows, or in the shade of the Taigan forest, she didn’t care.
“Do you believe in soulmates?” She asks him, her voice suddenly soft, and her dark brown eyes are staring earnestly up at him. “I didn’t use to,” she is almost absentmindedly tracing paths along his neck now, and across the ripple of shoulder muscle and then back down to his chest. “But you changed my mind.”
I've learned to live with these fatal gifts and still you're mine
It used to be he never quite knew what to believe in. The world had proven conflicted, a jumbled mess he hadn’t quite known how to make heads nor tails of. He had grown in the sweet, innocent freedom of his parents embrace until the world could no longer be kept at bay. Until life had proven, many times, just how cold and heartless it could be. Until he had understood that nothing was as he had thought it had been.
Now though, now he thinks perhaps he had been trying too hard to see the world in black and white. He thinks perhaps he had been so focused on the stark differences in his realities to see the subtle, beautiful colors that had gleamed all around him.
Until Briseis.
Until one fateful day in the darkest reaches of the forest, she had fled straight into his embrace. She had found a monster and refused to believe him any such thing. Sometimes it still amazes him that all he had truly needed was her, reminding him what it is to live. Reminding him that he is more than just a boy swallowed by shadows, forgotten in heartless world.
He laughs abruptly when she calls him out, accusing him of hiding still. It’s true, though it feels much less like what it used to. “If this is hiding,” he teases, nibbling at a dark strand of her mane, “then I never want to stop.”
Her next question catches him somewhat by surprise, though he supposes it should not have. He silently considers her revelation, barely avoiding the niggling self-doubt that tells him he isn’t truly worthy of such a declaration.
Truthfully though, he had never really considered the question. He had never doubted his parents love for each other of course, but had never paused to ask if they thought they were soulmates. But as he considers it, he supposes he must believe it. They had truly been made for one another.
“I suppose I always have,” he replies slowly, pressing almost unconsciously closer to her. As though his body knows exactly what it is they are discussing. “But I don’t think I believed I had one.” The last is admitted on a breathy half-whisper, as though the very words might rip this beautiful dream from him and reveal an ugly reality he had tried too hard to forget. But as he drops his lips to her cheek, feeling the solid, delicious warmth of her, he knows this is as real as he could ever wish it to be.
I need you like a heart needs a beat but it's nothing new.
Something in the way he says he had believed in soulmates, but never believed he had one, feels like someone twisted her heart brutally in their hands. She wishes that he could see himself, just for a moment, the way that she sees him. She wishes that he understood that if it hadn’t been her (she doesn’t even want to think about that, though, doesn’t ever want to imagine another dimension, another timeline, where it’s not her), he would have found someone else. His quiet strength and the kindness that lay trapped beneath the shadows would have lured someone else in, and just like her, they would have fought forever, if that’s what it took, to be able to be called his. They wouldn’t have ever wanted to imagine a day where those golden eyes are looking at someone else, they never would have wanted those lips memorizing the map of someone else’s body, and they never would have wanted to imagine that voice murmuring sweet nothings into the tangles of another's hair.
She knows, because he is hers, and she still thinks about these things all the time.
His body shifts closer to hers – which somehow seems impossible, since they are always melted into each other, a tangle of shadow and feral black – and she responds by resting her head against his neck. “My soul, my everything, is yours.” She hopes that when he feels her heart beating, that he knows it’s for him; that when it skips in her chest, or races with want and excitement, it is only for him, and could never possibly be for anyone else. She isn’t sure why she is suddenly afraid of him not knowing, of him not fully understanding all that he is, but nothing that she does or says ever feels like enough to her. “I know that you know. I know that you feel everything that I feel, and that neither of us ever has to wonder or worry, I just…” she trails off for a moment, her quiet brown eyes searching his golden ones, before she finally she says with a demure smile and another kiss against his jaw, “I just never get tired of telling you that I love you.”
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