[mature] this life, it feels like a prison || tantalize

[Offspring]

You're looking at an absolute zero;
I'm not the devil but I won't be your hero.

  His mind is elsewhere, drawing out a memory from the deepest and darkest recesses of his tired and weary mind – he had been wary of the stranger, sheathed in ivory, where lies are birthed from the hollow of his gullet quicker than carbon dioxide escapes his lungs. Yet, he had not seen him since, nor heard any mention of him – he was striking in his appearance (much smaller than he, but with a commanding presence and a wickedness about him that had not been lost on him); unmistakable. He is quiet for a moment, mentally recalling the insidious way in which his forcibly saccharine tone had betrayed the truth of his intentions, before falling away into scathing malice, with venom seeping from his tone.

  He is pulled from his brief reverie by the gentle sea breeze, filling the space that had once been closed by the proximity of his lips to her jawline – he did not know what had stirred him to move closer to her, nor what had driven him to press the plane of his broad face beneath the crook of her neck. She had not spurned him, but she had withdrawn, wary and uncertain of his intention, perhaps – and there is a soft knot of uncertainty welling up within his stomach. He did not even know what his intention had been; he had simply moved closer, uncaring what the consequence may be. He felt a kindred spirit within her. Carved of iron and steel, independent, unbending.

  It made him reckless.

  He is suddenly all too aware of his own foreboding presence, of the shadow his behemoth form lay before him on the ground, outlined in the pale moonlight shining from above. He becomes withdrawn himself, his gaze peering out into the wide-open ocean as the void that lay between them increases as his self-awareness rouses to the forefront of his mind. He does not say anything to her, just as she said nothing to him – each burned by their own experience, wary in the delicate dance that the heavy scarring (emotionally and physically) left in its wake.

  Her words, careful and deliberate (her mind is elsewhere as well, with worry knit heavily across her brow), interrupt him from his thoughts, and quietly his gaze is pulled away from the tranquility of the ocean and into the gilded depth of her watchful eyes. ”Amorette,” he murmurs then, his voice barely rising above the sweeping gust of wind rising up from the canyon below. ”I know little of her but she is close to Magnus – an adopted daughter, perhaps, if I recall.”

  He pauses then, the edge of his mouth drawn up with faint amusement, reaching the core of his blistering, fiery eye, flickering to her own with a rumbling chuckle. ”I forget that you have been absent for some time. Magnus and I – I would consider him an ally; a friend. After the Reckoning swallowed the entirety of what we had all known, we had to venture to a distant mountain, to plead with the fae for their grace and understanding.” He says, his voice a whiskey-rich rumbling baritone, reverberating in the thickening air. ”Magnus and I came together to seek refuge, and were given the volcanic islands to call our own. Thus, Tephra was born. I only sought to establish it, and left it to Magnus, though I never truly left the island itself – the volcano is all that I have.”

  He is quiet then, his mind drifting to another time, another place – as it so often did.

  ”Magnus left some time ago; I have not seen him since – and as for Gryffen, well. He is not the first to cause trouble, and he will not be the last. I have not known you for long, but I can already tell that you are a force to be reckoned with – and if I had to place a bet on either one of you, my answer would be you every time.”

OFFSPRING

another zealot with the weight of the fucking world