"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 can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
Since he had been spit back into the wildflowers (when the lion had roared and charged and with a blink of an eye he was back into the world he knew), he had been avoiding his Seneschal. There wasn’t one definitive reason of why. Part of it was what he had discovered about himself in that outer world, the epiphany he had about what lived within him. Another was the growing restlessness and sense of distance that he felt growing between them. Built on a seed of mistrust planted by Reave regarding the Heir of the South. Speaking of the Heir… his tentative meeting with Cheri in the meadow, that conversation of a wary truce…
There was no one reason he had been avoiding her but he knows he cannot do it forever.
Despite the jumble of his confusion, the mixed bag of emotions that he still can’t fully (refuses to) understand, he cares deeply for the striped mare. She had been the first in many ways. The first to follow him when he had claimed the Pampas, the first to see worth in him that he still doesn’t always see in himself. She was his first lover and he cannot deny that space, however big or small, that she takes in his wilted little heart.
Most of all Aela was his closest friend, the first one he could consider as such anyways. And that meant something regardless if they both liked it or not. It is a late summer day and the sun is high in the sky as he parts the wildflowers with his broad sable body, adorned in the familiar dust of glittered gold with the added new addition of the sparkling gold stars patterned across his chest. Spring had passed quietly with none of the repercussions he had worried about from his fall activities surfacing to haunt him. His craving for the golden Empath had not ebbed in his time away from her and it surfaces now when he spots her familiar figure in the heart of the Pampas, stirring those muddled thoughts and feelings into a new frenzy.
They have both been keeping busy in their own ways. Would she be angry with him when he tells her of his trip to Hyaline? And that he had done so out of his concern and worry for her? What will she say when he brings up his meeting with Cheri? Would she lie to his face and insist not knowing the thread of blood that ties those two together, the one Reave had informed him of? Would there ever be a line he could cross that would bring her true feelings to the surface? Would he ever know where exactly they stood with each other or was this a tentative dance they would do for years to come?
Questions, so many questions.
“Aela.” His voice is gruffer then usual but it carries a hint of warmth that he carries just for her. She is stunning in the sparkling golden sunlight, radiating beams of hazy brightness behind her as if they came from some inner glow of hers and not from the burning star in the sky. He can feel a certain wariness running an invisible hand through the golden ribbons tied into his raven mane, as if sensing this conversation might be different to ones from the past.
If Obscene had been absent from the Pampas, Aela hardly noticed.
The Guardian of Taiga had been missing, and she had been utilizing that opportunity to travel through the Northern Forest more often. She usually did anyway, on her way to visit with Reave. But the trail she took was often on the edges of the wood, where the fog was thinnest and a horse could hear the River running nearby. Now, she walked through the heart of Taiga and there was nothing beating in it anymore.
Yanhua and his herd was gone. The woods were still. She traveled through the haze of the mist to Nerine and back through without being stopped once. It seemed like the Forest of Giants really had turned to one of ghosts. All those plans that Aela had for Taiga - the revenge she was going to take for the North forcing her to remain there so long - vanished like so many of its inhabitants had.
Her brother seems to be full of news. He mentions that Nashua is nearly distraught over the theft of his son. And then it gets more interesting: Gale had been the one to steal his nephew. (While Aela is still unsure of what her half-brother has done to her, stealing Nash’s youngest boy is something she finds amusing.) Aela had mentioned to him of her own thefts, Enoch from Ischia and Islay from Islandres. Nothing had come from Tephra; no warnings, no threats.
But then, there had been the visit to the Den and her precious discovery of Fyr.
She had been meeting with Islay, the girl finally settled enough that Aela had managed to garner a few answers from the painted mare. A few more days' time - and perhaps a little… unwinding from the Pampas poppies - and the former Chieftain might finally be receptive to Aela’s deeper questions about her magic. It makes the fire in her veins spark at the thought, at the chance to pivot shadow against flame and she wonders about the discoveries that might be made there.
Aela feels his apprehension long before he speaks. The emotion wafts through the air; something stronger than the usual floral scents of the Pampas. Lifting her refined head, the golden female watches Obscene approach with a careful stare. How had he been spending his spare time? It certainly hadn’t been with her.
More leisure? More inebriation? More women?
"Obscene,” she replies evenly, with her lovely brow raised slightly as his memories of Cheri and Gale and Reave swirl between them. "I see you’ve been busy.”
I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
He had not missed the new scents and faces amongst the flowers and so he finds his characteristic smirk as he replies jovially enough. “I have.” His crimson gaze looks her over thoughtfully before he steps closer to her, closing the small distance between them to press his muzzle to the curve of her jaw. Regardless of the conflicting emotions and uncertain thoughts he had regarding Cheri, he did care deeply for the striped mare before him. However much creatures like them can love another. “As have you.” He murmurs before pulling away and creating space between them again. Different to the way he had once plundered the golden plains of her skin in discussions like these before but things had changed.
He had changed...a little.
And he was focused on what he needed to tell her, of those memories that she was already piecing together.
It was just a matter of where to start. He has no intention of keeping any of his recent meetings from her but everything that he had been up to in recent months was a mix of good and bad and so he is uncertain of where to begin. So he starts with what she had been doing as he glances over the flowered meadows of his territory, catching a few figures silhouetted against the golden summer light. A flicker of warmth reaches the bright red of his eyes as he scans the beauty of the land, the Pampas were an idyllic place to live after all and they had created something here. Something tangible and real. Something he can't imagine having done with anyone other than her. “I see we have some guests. Anyone in particular I should be greeting personally?” He asks as he brings himself out of his reflection of pride and looks at her again.
He had intended to leave it there until he catches the constellation scattered across her haunches. How had he missed that before? He steps towards her again, his muzzle running along the pattern as his eyes darken. As he glances down at his own stars glinting across his chest. “Where did you get these?” He asks quietly, turning his vibrant gaze back to her with a penetrating stare.
Aela allows herself to linger near him as Obscene presses his dark lips against the curve of her golden cheek. It had always been a pleasant feeling - not one that she ever had create or alter - and there is no difficulty on her part to let the Prince greet her so warmly. The memories in his mind start to fade but the Empath clings to them, making a point to store them away because she has questions of her own.
What had he been doing in Hyaline?
Reave had told her a little of his discussion with Obscene, but Aela found herself wanting the Prince's interpretation as well.
And Cheri, well, Aela imagined his soul must be still be soaring from their meeting, always eager to take whatever he could get from the Loessian woman.
But for now, they start with her and Aela moves her pale lips to lightly trace his muscled neck.
"Any that you'd like." The slender mare tells him when she finally pulls away. "The Ischian that I brought seems to need some convincing that the Pampas is far more beautiful than his island." Aela says with a lilting voice and a coy smile, "but the Islandres leader I've brought you seems to be settling in quietly." That had been a particular point of pride with Aela. Not only was the Pampas filling with the gifted and beautiful, but they were also capable of holding the powerful. "I kept hoping that Tephra would do something," she continues to her leader, "but they've been as quiet as Taiga of late."
Comfortable in the presence of Obscene, Aela doesn't mind revealing her disappointment as they both gaze out across the fields of wildflowers.
She means to question him next about Gale, but the onyx-and-gold stallion is grazing her skin as he traces the glowing constellation on her skin. It had made her think of Skandar when it first appeared, and it had made her appreciate the marking thinking it had come from the Goddess. Aela's always known that she was marked for greatness but to see it shining so brilliantly on her skin had been a wonderful realization.
Until she remembered Skandar and how it had been months since she had last seen the demigod.
"I thought it was a dream," Aela reveals quietly, as she notices the same mark on his dark chest. "A strange place with all kinds of monsters." Her mind fills his with the beach and the battle, with Carnicus and the Kraken, with dark-maned lion and the sound of its breaking bones as Aela managed to crush them beneath stone. She reaches for the stars on his skin and follows the trail against the broad front of his dark body. "She marked you as well."
I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
There is no denying his attraction to the striped Seneschal and it goes beyond her physical beauty. She is a dangerous and deceptive woman, an enigma he’s never been able to solve. As her lips find his neck he visibly unwinds, the uncertainty and resentment fading piece by piece as it always does when he was so close to her. However they both seem focused on other things today as she pulls away when he does to answer the question he had asked of her. “A leader?” He asks, visibly impressed. She had been busy, hadn’t she?
He didn’t know much about the sub-kingdoms of Tephra, they hadn’t interested him as a child and they don’t much interest him now, but holding on to one of their leaders sparks an idea and he makes a mental note to seek out their captives as soon as he is able. “Does this leave Islandres open for the taking?” He asks, two ideas now in his head. What would it mean for them to take one of the islands? What if the Pampas became more than just a sub-kingdom to Loess? Just as Aela hated the North for reasons she kept to herself, he hated the ash-lands and everything they had stood for. All the lies and memories that he wishes he could forget. Destroying that place doesn't sound so bad after all. She brings up the quietness of the area and he sees an opportunity here (one of many) to discuss one of the important things on his docket. “Tephra might not be quiet for much longer.” He says to her, fixing the mare with his bloody gaze and watching to see if he might wipe away her disappointment. “I’ve met with Gale.” He says, waiting with interest to see how she would react to this and then going forward in recounting the entirety of that meeting to her. Including the deal that the Curse and he had discussed. “Shall I pluck the child from the kingdom?” He finally asks her, loathing the thought of his hooves hitting those black sands again but unwilling to let anyone else collect the filly. The child that they may or may not return to Hyaline.
As his lips trace the constellations engraved across her haunches they both think of the Pampas Champion that they had not seen over the past few months. Both recalling the star-touched stallion with a mirage of mixed feelings. When she speaks of the dream he finally pulls away, catching the way she looks at his own chest with recognition. “But it wasn’t.” He responds darkly, unhappy that she too had been pulled into that other world. Wondering if they had both faced the same monsters or if they had battled different things. “It wasn’t a dream.” He says as she reaches for him, as he focuses on the way she traces the stars and growls softly with approval. “She marked you as well.” She says and he is confused, wondering who exactly she is. After Carnicus it had all seemed to glitch out and go wrong and he can’t really remember what he had seen before he had been whisked away and returned to the flowered lands.
However he can still see the black dragon staring at him. He cannot forget its serpentine smile.
He pulls away from her again as he remembers what he was, what he would become, a fate he cannot change. And it brings all that mistrust and suspicion back to the surface to the point where he needs to know once and for all just how much he can trust her. “Your brother paid a visit the other day. I wasn’t aware that you two seem to be related to the whole of Beqanna.”
08-18-2021, 03:31 PM (This post was last modified: 08-18-2021, 03:34 PM by Aela.)
She nearly purrs at his question of her theft of Islay.
"They call themselves Chieftains, I believe." Aela says, herself nearly humming with approval. Her theft of the two-toned woman had been unplanned - and it had certainly been a test of her physical powers and limits - but the Pampas had one more resident to add to its Court that boasted the bold and the beautiful. "She had mentioned that there was another one," she continues, leaning slightly into Obscene, imagining that he must be as pleased with this turn of events as she was.
"Fenwe?" the palomino murmurs, and then reaches to lightly graze a familiar spot behind the dark stallion's ear. "I could try to bring her back for you," she continues on, imagining much of what Obscene does, though her impish voice implies that wouldn't be the only thing she would be willing to do for the Prince. What if the Pampas became more than just a territory of Loess? What if it became a kingdom in its own right? The idea was a thrilling one, and Aela was reminded of what Reave had told her.
That Obscene had played with the idea that Nerine didn't need to belong to the North. A rather intriguing idea to Aela.
Her blue eyes turn sharp when she glances up at him again, as he mentions that Tephra may no longer be quiet. He explains his meeting with Gale and Aela says nothing, allowing the stallion to tell his interpretation of the encounter rather than look for the moment in his memories. She'd warned him against it, at least until they knew more of what Gale was and what he could really do. It had been a bold move to seek the shapeshifter out and some part of Aela was surprised that the brindled stallion had left Obscene unharmed.
But the mention of a deal makes her wonder if her half-brother is like this trickster prince, with an affinity for mischief and the possibility of mayhem.
Aela can feel his loathing for Tephra, simmering beneath his skin like its volcano, and the striped mare decides to stoke those flames. "You should," she tells him, coming to slip prettily beside the Pampas leader. Aela continues, "Keep her here as a show of Gale's good faith until we know for certain what he's planning." She doesn't miss the part where her half-brother states that returning Sickle would ensure the Pampas' safety, and her mouth presses into a thin line. "Besides, she could be a playmate for Fyr," she adds absent-mindedly, imagining the little boy crafting his flames.
After they steal Sickle, Aela decides they will raise the stake.
"And bring me with you to Tephra," she says, coming back to the present, "two is always better than one when it comes to steals."
There are other things to discuss. It doesn't surprise her that the dream wasn't really a dream. Aela had woken up with the ability to bring flame forward, something she had never been able to do before. The images were so real, so vivid, and as more time has passed, she has seen those same pictures in the minds of others. How many of them had been taken to that other world? And how many never made it back?
She shudders, imagining that fate.
Imagining many things, and then Aela feels the creeping sense of doubt preying upon her mind. It's not hers, but the nagging emotion doesn't settle well with the golden mare. It never has and she rarely allows it to linger. This is Obscene's doubts - after he has been the one making deals with Gale and pacts with Cheri - creeping on her conscious. He mentions her brothers, one of many conversations she'll have about them in the coming days, and there is a reason why Aela hardly mentions them (or the rest of her 'family').
Something she might have told him, if he had simply asked.
"How could I have forgotten to mention that?" the slender mare says, trying to keep her temper and Obscene's suspicions in check. She smiles, though it never reaches her blue eyes. They glitter, bright with the emotions that she rarely allows herself to feel. "My father attempted to drown me before I was barely old enough to stand," Aela says. "And then my mother foisted me on the first nurse mare she could find." He wondered why she had never mentioned any of her other relation's and so Aela harshly tells him with the anger rising as flames around her white ankles, "Apart from my grandmother, Reave has been my only blood relative to acknowledge me."
For reasons she had never understood, they had been forced to stay in Taiga. (She would later learn it was because of her father. A monster, they deemed him. And as Aela gets older, she simply thinks that he was a man with a monstrous desire.) She had mentioned Reave to Obscene because he is the brother that mattered, the one that Aela has considered an ally and a friend. The rest could be swallowed by the Taigan fog for all she cared, or perhaps Gale would do her a favor and tear them all apart.
But it's not them that Obscene was concerned with, was it?
"Perhaps you might mention this truce with Loess, since I wasn't aware of that."
They doused your soul in water, but the flames raged higher. And they called you devil's daughter, such a pretty liar.
I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
She teases him with whispered promises of steals and he shudders pleasantly beneath her warm breath, enjoying how close she is against him. For a moment his meeting with Cheri is forgotten, chased away by the sweetness of the flowers that clings to her golden pelt. He finds himself wanting to raise that same wanting in her, one that she seems open to by the implication in her tone, as he growls low to her… “What if Tephra was to lose one of its territories? Guide me Seneschal.” He demands, low and gruff as his muzzle trails lazily down the length of her neck, pinching the skin near the base of her mane through blunted teeth.
It doesn’t take much to convince her when it comes to the deal with Gale. He had never doubted that it would, knowing Aela’s natural affinity for stirring the pot. However he is torn on returning the girl or keeping her for themselves. Although they had both purposely left out exact wording regarding Sickle’s final destination, it would be a game of chess to see how they interpreted each others meanings. One that could raise them high or bite them completely in the ass. He figures the first step is getting the filly in the first place and then worrying about the rest of it after.
He almost misses the word “playmate” but he refocuses on her even as he brushes over her star speckled haunches. He responds to Tephra first. “I wouldn’t dream of leaving you behind.” He mocks her gently, laughing softly into the sun of her skin. “Fyr?” He finally asks her, not sure if she had said fire or fear and confused by both meanings in further reflection. “What’s a Fyr?”
The mood shifts and everything turns on its hinges as they break apart and face each other. He can see the flare of her temper in the coolness of her oceanic eyes despite the smile on her lips. He in turn only seems to visibly harden as his own gaze sharpens with displeasure. It is only the fire that first distracts him from the clicking of scales as they scatter across his smooth skin. He catches it out of the corner of a crimson eye as if flares around her hooves. His own temper cools enough to catch her story and he finally loosens a breath from his tightly wound chest and flexes a muscle in his jaw as she mentions Loess, instantly catching on to the true meaning of her words.
“I was getting to that.” He responds coolly, watching her carefully as he tries to assess the root of her irritation. “Cheri as the new Heir of Loess has some plans that might interest us. She’s arranging some sort of gathering with some of the North to discuss it. I believe your brother will be in attendance.” He pauses, considering her sullenly for a moment. “Obviously your attendance would be appreciated.”
He falls silent for awhile, watching the way the light plays across the curve of her face and feeling himself at a sudden invisible crossroads. She is beautiful but as much as he wants to touch her... he can't seem to unwind that firm knot of doubt in his chest. He can relate to the golden mare better than anyone. Being abandoned by their families, being born different. He does feel for her, that subtle pain that they both ignore and pretend doesn't affect them in the least. Yet he can't shake this feeling, this invisible wall that he seems to slam into when it comes to her. “What are we doing Aela?” He finally asks, unable to keep the question to himself anymore.
Obscene shudders beneath her touch - and despite that the way she can't fight off so many unfamiliar feelings between them - this is familiar. The attraction between them is like wildfire; once the spark lights, there is no stopping the way that desire burns through them. For Aela, it flows molten through her veins and the palomino presses her gilded skin suggestively against the onyx stallion.
"What if the Pampas were to gain one of those territories?" she toys with the ideas much as Obscene toys with her silken mane. Aela has liked the idea of the Pampas as territory - much because like her title as Seneschal - it kept the wildflowers out of any direct line of fire. Loess hovered over the blooming meadows much the same way it did over blazing Sylva, shielding their treacherous reputation from any outside retribution. But their numbers were going, through steals and other means. Their little territory was growing with just as Aela promised: the gifted and the beautiful and some part of her thought, "What if the Pampas became a kingdom in its own right?"
But she doesn't speak of it further, because there is still the steal concerning Sickle and the outcome of that yet to reveal itself.
If they returned Sickle to Gale, would it afford the Pampas any kind of real protection? Or would her brother simply laugh in their faces for their naivete? Having a Tephran princess in their custody could become a bargaining chip, she thinks. A territory from the western kingdom in exchange for its daughter.
And it's easy to continue to allow herself to fall into their usual habits, allow the flames to kindle throughout her entire body. The breeze in the Pampas holds a chill - a reminder of the coming autumn - and she likes the way that the Prince serves as a buffer from the cold. For a moment, she is content to give way to his want. Until the laughter against her skin dims and she can feel his confusion rising in the air between them. It doesn't unsettle Aela. She never had any doubt that she would object to the child she has claimed as her own. It was another body for the Pampas, and perhaps in time, a possible heir.
"He is mine," she says simply, pressing the memory of the little buckskin boy into his mind. There is a small flower that he summons from flame, and it warms the heart in Aela's chest as it swells with pride. It stays there, until they move to the topic of Loess, and the palomino doesn't bother to hide the start of a scowl or the flames that have started to burn around them. Aela has always been a practical creature, though, and reminds herself that nothing good will come of losing her temper with Obscene.
She reigns it back in with a simple shrug of her shoulders, replacing the emotion with a subtler one: the contentment that had been there earlier.
Loess had plans, and while the part of Aela that was always infinitely curious about politics and the way they rippled out across Beqanna, she eyes the Prince hesitantly. "If you would prefer I come, then I will." She finally offers as the last vestiges of her anger flicker out. "But Nashua is far more likely to smite the ground I stand on, than talk politics on it." The Empath doubted he'd talk much at all, given that the current rumors were that the Northern King rarely left his Isle these days, secluded away with his grief over missing family members.
"We're going to steal Sickle," Aela tells him finally, understanding what he was asking but unable to provide him with any other answer. They had blurred the lines between them, and to her, she had never minded. They cultivated their desire much like they did the Pampas, and Aela had never doubted that either would grow. She had stolen, recruited for his territory. She had made no agreements with other kingdoms, made no promise that would implicate Obscene or his Pampas. And she had done nothing to jeopardize his rule. To Aela, she has always known that her heart would be the reason that started wars and toppled kingdoms. It was a flame within her - much like the ones that still blazed nearby - that once it met its match, there would be no stopping it.
Obscene always seemed to struggle with the scope of her dreaming, drawing limits where Aela would have none.
"What more do you want?" she asked him quietly.
They doused your soul in water, but the flames raged higher. And they called you devil's daughter, such a pretty liar.
I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
It is always easy to fall into his desire, the one thing he has never doubted is her enjoyment in these entanglements, that she likes it as much as he does. Over the course of two years he has familiarized himself with the curves of her body and he is an expert at finding those places that might illicit more from the small devious mare. She presses against him and he in return curves himself around her. As if nothing had changed, as if it never would.
She reads his thoughts effortlessly and he whicker’s softly into her mane with approval, teasing a loose strand of her wild blonde hair as she speaks the idea aloud. “Would an island please you?” He asks her quietly, a coaxing question meant to allure her in more ways than one. “Better yet, shall I bring you the redwoods on a silver platter?” A gift, for her loyalty and the hard work she had put in. He knows that the Pampas wouldn’t have risen nearly as quickly without her, a fact that he has never denied. Together they had turned the simple territory into something else. Something bigger than the both of them.
It only makes the uncertainty between them that much harder.
As for the situation in the East, there is not a doubt in his suspicious mind that Gale’s promise to leave the Pampas untouched is an empty one. It’s a thought she could easily pluck from his mind, if only by looking at the skepticism in his eyes. Only a fool would trust the words of the devil and he trusts the navy stallion as far as he can throw him. Which isn’t much at all. Holding on to Sickle is a dangerous path but a tempting one. Depending on what they find in Tephra, he wonders if information would keep the thing in Hyaline off their backs even more so than a child that Gale hadn’t bothered to take himself.
The plotting between them dies, for now, as topics change and he realizes that he’s missed quite a bit himself in his time away from her. The boy she shows him makes him still and that flare of jealousy baits the snake within when she calls the colt “hers” but it fades quickly beneath the confusion that floods in. The boy holds the same spots as his mother and for a moment he wonders…. No. He hadn’t been gone that long to notice if Aela had grown round with child. Besides, she had made her thoughts on autumn shenanigans quite clear. It takes him a second, past the shock of jaguar dapples, to watch the colt raise flowers of fire and he can clearly see the outline of the Den behind him. As the image fades, he doesn’t miss the pride in her gaze which is another new surprise to him. He hadn’t taken her for the motherly sort.
What else had he missed about his Seneschal?
“Well done.” He finally says (truthful enough for the child was obviously powerful and beautiful), still perturbed by the colt’s uncanny resemblance to his own family line as well as the way he wielded his fire so deftly. He makes a point to find this boy later and see him in the flesh, oblivious as always to the scattering of scales raising patterns along his midnight coat as his temper begins to churn and spread.
Speaking of Loess only makes it worse.
The fire is new. He’s sure he would have remembered it from before and perhaps he had thought it a trick of the light. But now it flares around them and he thinks he catches flames in her eyes even as she is quick to extinguish it. He is thoughtful as he considers her, despite the creeping tension, and wonders where those had come from. His father had once been wreathed in flames and where one might flinch from them, he only steps closer. He can feel the edges of contentment where he was sure there had once been anger and he frowns slightly as he looks at her. “If the North has a problem with your attendance then I will firmly remind them of the favor I did for the Isle.” He says quietly, still shielding her from the brunt of the chilly winds despite the distance that had grown between them. The healing of the star mare and her gruesome broken body still linger in the back of his mind, an image he recalls when he reminds himself how lucky he is to no longer be mortal.
And then they arrive to the inevitable, the conversation they had been beating around the bush for months if not longer.
When it came to Aela, he had willingly submitted to her whims and destructive whimsy time and time again. It had never been a problem before and in certain context he would continue to let her pull his strings. But he no longer wanted to be only her puppet. Over the course of their complex relationship she has worn many titles. Seneschal on the surface, friend and lover just below, and on a deeper level something more that he still couldn’t find the words to say. The blurred lines hadn’t mattered before but now they suddenly did. He had not missed the way his two elite would huddle close to each other the few times he had caught them scheming in the distance. And while the star studded stallion often kept to himself, he hadn’t missed that subtle connection between the two when he had first met the mimic. He had seen it from the very beginning. When he had looked at him and saw himself reflected back in more ways than one, his strengths and his weaknesses. The Pampas Champion seemed to easily fit against the pieces of her where he struggled to connect.
Neither had a right to claim anything on the other. Both were guilty of their own discretions (he much more than her) but the tentative truce that had somehow arisen between himself and the crystal Heir of Loess had hollowed something more in him. And the piece of himself that Cheri had managed to pry loose now left him exposed to certain elements that he hadn’t felt before. She speaks of Sickle and his gaze darkens. Yes, they were going to steal the girl but her deflection is duly noted and hangs heavy in his chest, wrapping around the shriveled thing that he assumes must be his heart.
And then she asks the question that brings it all to a grinding halt. What did he want?
“You.” He finally says, unwavering as he steps close to her again, his muzzle possessive against her golden cheek for a moment before he swings it away and brings it to his chest while arching his broad neck. “I would have all of you Aela. Not just parts of you.” He finally confesses, his crimson eyes blazing as he smirks at her and writhes with a new uncomfortable feeling that has nothing to do with the serpent within. “But that’s not possible is it?” He finally says as he looks past her to the expansive land of hill, stone, and dying flowers around them.
“How is Skandar?” He finally says (a little too calmly) when the pause becomes pregnant enough, when his knowing gaze falls back into the brilliant blue of hers. It hadn’t seem to matter before, each of them turning a blind eye to the blatantly obvious. He didn’t want to turn his head anymore. If anything Aela had done her job well on him after all. She had stoked his ambition, had made him see the possibilities of himself that had been submerged beneath a dark murky surface, had made him want just a little bit more.
Once he had thought the two of them would rule the world.
They still just might but not in the way he had originally thought or hoped for.
It is easy to fall into the rumblings of his desire. This is a game that the pair have played time and time again, and the outcome always yields a mutual benefit (or so Aela thought): the two of them come together in more ways than one to make this once-empty territory a thriving one. Their numbers were growing, they were gaining a reputation, and they came together in an understanding that came from the twining of limbs, shuddering sighs, and gasping groans.
Aela has never made it a secret that she wishes no crown; the weight of them can make a monarch an easy target when things go awry. Obscene had no ambition when they met, whereas Aela had plenty. It seemed like such a simple thing, the way that they could work together.
So why had it become so complicated?
She supposed that she could thread through Obscene's emotions, and find the strands of doubt. She could find a way to change or alter them somehow, a mistrust against Loess? It wouldn't be hard to redirect it to Tephra, knowing the history of that place through the red eyes of the Pampas Prince. But the deeper that Aela goes, the more she knows it's not just doubt. There are other emotions: jealousy, hurt, anger. They are buried deep within the dark chest of the onyx-and-gold stallion beside her and as Aela considers what she might do.
Does she even want to?
Her blue eyes turn perilous when Obscene reveals what he wants. You, he says, and the palomino feels the line in her golden brow furrow. That wasn't a surprise. Aela was used to being wanted, but this was somehow more than that. This went further than desire and lust. She had felt it before, Obscene's searching heart, and the way that it had tried to brush against her own. It had wanted a place to settle, but Aela isn't a mare for settling. She never has been and she never will be. She is made for praise, and she is crafted for cunning.
"If I gave all of myself to you," she tells Obscene, while a thousand storms blow across the brilliance of her gaze when she levels it on him. "What is left for me?"
He would have her give everything to him? And what would he do with that?
Aela had dreamed of grandeur since she had been a girl. She had dreamed of empires - of toppling them just for the sake of tipping scales, a breaking and re-making of something better - and grafting new kinds of Magic. She wanted to know what the limits of their world were and why; she meant to press every possibly boundary and limit that this life would throw at her because she has always known that she is much bigger than it. It's a path that her grandmother had warned her about, that she has seen Magicians decimated for.
"Anything is possible," she finally tells him as Aela pulls herself away from him. "But you have to be willing to work for it." She went missing each autumn, and the last two seasons they had been together, Obscene had never gone searching for her. She knows that she has been evasive over the years, slipping through his words when he had wanted something definitive. He has never demanded an answer. Aela might have placed those barriers between them, but Obscene had never bothered to knock them down. He had turned to his nectar and other women, which she hadn't minded.
She had always assumed it was part of their understanding.
There was a fight in Aela's soul, and for her match, she knew it would somebody who have never accepted those things. They would have considered Aela as much their due as she considered her eventual godhood was.
But Aela won't speak his name.
Not to Obscene, not to anyone.
They doused your soul in water, but the flames raged higher. And they called you devil's daughter, such a pretty liar.
![[Image: Obscene-Pixel.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/fTkjKh9Q/Obscene-Pixel.png){kind=tracking}
