[private] and you will witness what the fire can undo; straia

[weed]

Weed has not desired to return to this land in so long.

He has wandered, far and free from the chains of this place, and he has discovered the kind of freedom and power and bloodshed that he had dreamt of. He returns a changed man, although one who is still so very much the same. He still longs for the kind of destruction that others flee from. He wakes with a hunger and a thirst that will never be quenched, a heart that shudders in delight at the idea of the end.

He had long since imagined this place bled dry of such curiosities—

and yet.

He finds himself back on its shores.

He remains there, for a moment. His shrewd eyes roaming Beqanna as he pulls the plants tighter. They crawl up his slender legs, drape over his shoulders. The vines prick and pierce his skin, but he has never noticed the love bites that they leave. His flesh has long since scarred and puckered beneath the touch.

It is not surprising that he sees her first.

That she is still here at all.

Perhaps, in the end, it is why he has come back at all. There is something like a shadow on the edges of his lips as he makes his way toward her, always so slow and deliberate in his movements, his thin body weaving amongst the others as though they do not exist at all. When he is close enough, he pauses, studying the way she looks the same and yet entirely different. How much has changed indeed.

“Straia,” her name jumps to his lips so quickly it’s as if he had said it yesterday.

“Did my gift to you burn with the rest of the Chamber when it fell?”

for so long have my teeth held my tongue from a venomous voice
but the poison has passed from my lips to my hands, an incendiary ploy

@[Straia]

[Straia]

sometimes we want what we want --
    -- even if we know it’s going to kill us.

She had not longed to return, either. At least, not to the place Beqanna had become, something misshapen and wrong, something lost. She longed for the kingdoms she knew, for the Chamber, for the beating of Atrox’s heart beneath her feet and perhaps, in so many ways, the beating of her own heart. Though her own heart had not been physically buried beneath the soil of her long forgotten home, it may as well have been. For what else did her heart beat for?

Ah, well, there is one other.

Like him, she is much changed and yet the same. She is still recognizably herself, though she has been made into so much more than the mare he one knew. He finds her because she wants to be found by him, because she can sense him as he returns to Beqanna and calls the plants to him, as he has always done. She had never been able to sense him before, but her power is greater now than it once was. Back then, she’d always been easy to find, for she’d always been in the Chamber.

Funny, how her name on his lips breaks something open inside her. It does not show, but she hadn’t even known there was anything left capable of breaking. ”Weed,” she says in that smoky voice of hers, her amber eyes finding his for a moment before she closes the distance, something possessive and possessed in the gesture as she nips at his mane, careless of the plants that do not hurt her anyway.

”Burned but for the memory of it,” she purrs into his skin before stepping away. “This Beqanna is but a shell of her former self, and yet, somehow I find myself tied to the magic of the land inextricably.”

-- straia

the raven queen

@[weed]

[weed]

It feels like stepping into something worn and familiar. Something formed to the shape of him, the threads of it softened by time and use. He is not a sentimental man, but he can appreciate the comfort of it, the way that it feels to have her step near him as she had always done—the scent of her like a remembered dream. And yet. Yet, it is not familiar at all because she is not as she was. She is something new entirely.

And what about her has ever been as boring as habit?

He thrills at the closeness of her, at the rasp of her smoky voice, but his face doesn’t give away such carnal pleasure. Instead it’s just a wisp of a smile on his elegant lips, something that gleams in his impossibly dark eyes. “You are never tied to anything,” he murmurs, reaching over and pressing his lips into the wildness of her mane, breathing her in slowly. “Least of all land.”

Tongue to teeth and then lip as he pulls back, the vines reaching out to her slightly. She could burn them, he realizes suddenly—not knowing how or why. He has no reason to think that she has new gifts to call her own, but there’s something about her that is different. Impossibly more powerful than before.

“But if anyone could restore glory to nothing but a shell…,” his voice trails off as he he ends with a laugh that is more smoke than figure. Teeth graze over her neck as though it had been no time at all since he had last been here. Since they had danced around one another. Since they had passed like ships in the night. Her into the legends of Beqanna and he into the wilderness. She had children by others, he knew, and although he was not a possessive man, he was not evolved enough to not feel the sting of jealousy.

He closes the distance as she steps away, his lips trailing up to her ears where he whispers softly.

“You miss me?”

for so long have my teeth held my tongue from a venomous voice
but the poison has passed from my lips to my hands, an incendiary ploy

[Straia]

sometimes we want what we want --
    -- even if we know it’s going to kill us.

They fall back into one another with ease. He feels like home, something she had not dreamed she would ever feel again. Though she has never needed anyone but herself, still, she has always wanted him. Him and none other. Even though she is not the same, filled with some strange and impossible power, she is still herself. She is still recognizable, and this...they, have not changed.

He presses closer to her as well, and she allows herself the pleasure of leaning into him. The thrones wrapped around him prick her skin as she allows it, and she does not mind the bits of pain. They are bits of him, after all. If there was anyone in this world capable of causing her pain, it was him (not that she would ever admit such a thing).

”Am I not?” she asks, her voice a bit thoughtful. Once she had been tied to the Chamber. Now she was tied to Beqanna. All she was belonged to the land that had given birth to her power. She’d been something without the magic, but with it...well it was hard to deny that she was not something extraordinary with it. ”It is so much more than a land. I can feel it, something alive and primordial, beyond even my understanding.” The heart of it was the mountain, but the whole of it was Beqanna. Something deep and ancient. Something more than they could ever hope to grasp.

His next sentiment though brings that smile to her lips, something cruel and calculating. ”I wonder if that is why I was given such a gift. To remake Beqanna into what it should be. For this is not it.” Though that seems like an unlikely dream, Straia has always reached far higher than she should. His teeth graze down her neck, and she shivers slightly at his touch, arching into him rather than away.

How she missed him. There had been children by Warship in her life, yes, though Warship had been a means to an end and nothing more. They could have all been Weed’s children, had he been around enough to offer such a thing. She is an old mare now and yet...and yet the possibility crosses her mind and they dance together once again.

He does not let the distance between them stay, and this time, she does not move away. Instead, she changes the world around them, she takes them home. Pine forests spring to life, replacing the worthless forest they stand in now. Mist clings to their hooves, winds arounds their legs. Beneath their feet drums the steady rhythm of a heart.

”Always,” she murmurs, turning her head to nip at his neck. A truth. A truth that has always been true but never been said. Perhaps death has changed her, made her just slightly more willing to admit. At least this. At least to him.

-- straia

the raven queen

@[Weed]

[weed]

They come together like tendrils of smoke, although he can feel the heat of her flames dancing along the ground beneath them, burning up near their bellies, threatening to reach for their throats. He delights in the violence underneath the whispers of it—the gentleness that gets chewed up by the need and the darkness, the way that they could never be soft with one another for long, could never lean into the sweet.

His eyes darken with something different though as she changes the world around them.

It is not the Valley he had lived in, but he had little loyalty to the place—certainly smaller loyalty than he had ever had to Straia. It was her home though; the place where he had planted that tree for her as some kind of promise that he would return. His chest tightens, just for a moment, as he takes it all in, as this new Beqanna bleeds away, and it is just the two of them in this world, this memory, of her making.

He leans down to skim his mouth over her painted neck. “Good,” he says, as if teasing her with the way that he, too, missed her. Missed the way holding her felt like pressing a knife into the neck. The way she was both life and death in these moments, as the only thing that had ever captured his attention for long.

Weed pulls back though so that he can survey the Chamber of her memory, studying the intricacies of her gift to pull it back into such stark details, every corner of it flourishing with what it had once been.

“You would not remake Beqanna into a mirror of her past,” he finally says, partially in response to the world around them and partially in response to her thoughts before. It is more statement than question.

“What would you remake her into now?”

His smile is sharp and cruel as he looks back to her, studying the elegant lines of her face.

for so long have my teeth held my tongue from a venomous voice
but the poison has passed from my lips to my hands, an incendiary ploy

[Straia]

sometimes we want what we want --
    -- even if we know it’s going to kill us.

They twine together for a while, something beautiful created in these moments when they share the same space. Beautiful in the way all deadly things are, for neither of them are creatures made of sweetness. They do not simply wield weapons, but they themselves are the weapon. In such an embrace, it is impossible not to come away bleeding and scarred.

Not that she minds.

Eventually he steps away, surveying the Chamber of her memory. Perhaps it is imperfect, though she suspects her memory of it is as true a memory as anyone could create. The Chamber had been her first love, her only true love in some ways (for all that she cared for Weed, she had cared for the Chamber above even her own children).

She lets him go, surrounded now by the pine forests she had known so well, comforted by the beating of Atrox’s heart, false though it may be, beneath her feet. "No, I would not,” she says, voice thoughtful. ”Some things, once lost, cannot truly be reclaimed.”

The Beqanna they once knew is gone. Straia could not make the fairies return magic to Beqanna as it once had been. Even if she could, it would never truly be the same. There were too many that belonged to this new Beqanna and they could not understand that which they never have. Still, she could create something better. ”But I would create something akin to it. All the lands here are the same. What of the Deserts we once knew, or the Amazons? What happened to kingdoms that stood for something?”

Yes, even she can appreciate kingdoms that were not her own. The Amazonian women were pesky thorns in her side, as were the goodie goodies in the Deserts. Still, they had put up a fight. Still, they had believed in something more than just living. ”I would remake the Chamber, in a fashion. The pine forests, at least. Perhaps Atrox will grow me a new heart…” she grins at that, matching his own wicked gleam. ”But the rest? I want others to join in. I want to give them purpose again.” She would ask. Ask them what world they wanted to create and then help them all create something better.

-- straia

the raven queen

@[weed]