12-30-2017, 10:15 AM
like the sun swallowed up by the earth
His auburn skin shivers with delight at every touch of her pale, warm lips against him - many night he had dreamed of her (though not like her visions - his dreams are muddy and hazy, and barely he remembers them once he awakens, save for the feeling it leaves him when he opens his eyes). And now she is here, like she always says she will be, as unwavering as the stillness of the heated spring below them, his light within the darkness, his beacon when all else fails him. She speaks his name and he unravels, his memories taking him back to their nights in the plains beneath the fire-lit sky, starlight and moonlight beaming down upon their bodies as they had danced together, two souls intertwined within the darkness and shadow of the world. Beneath the weight of the crown, he had often reminisced of the simple days and nights spent with her ancestors, and the memory would soothe the aching of his soul, a salve upon the unrest within his heart. Though only a few months have gone by since their goodbyes in the grassland, so much has happened in between - he hadn’t thought that Tangerine would have a third eye on his life, for he knows not how her precognition works exactly besides it always being extremely accurate. The winged man has been tempted and tested, baited with the desires of the flesh (his mind had been on Wound, the delicate woman with a sad smile, who Warrick felt as if he needed to protect and guide her, to have her blossom beneath the Tephran sun). The battle between his gentle spirit and the way he is expected to rule Tephra with an iron fist, to protect and serve, to harbor those within the borders and to remain just. He had felt himself starting to slip away, thread by thread, especially when Ellyse announced her and Dahmer’s move into the great Sylvan forest, leaving him feeling weak and vulnerable beneath the volcano’s steady gaze. But with Tangerine by his side, all worries and travesties melt away and there is only her, only them, and everything in the world is now set right.
‘I can never stay away…’
He knows this is true, because every time they are apart she finds her way back to him, her soul calling to his, and his to hers, the other not truly whole without the other. With a deep huff from his nostrils he breathes into her mane, happiness alighting in the great blueness of his gaze, his muzzle still unable to part from the honey-gold and alabaster of her curved neck.
‘...because I love you.’
The words spoken alone do not shock him (because of course she does, he hadn’t doubted it for a second, and he knows that she knows his love for her knows no end), but hearing them on her lips, hanging delicately in the humidity caused by the underwater spring and their beating hearts, he sighs deeply with contentment. “I love you, Tangerine.” More than the crown, more than Tephra, more than anything. His confession is robust in his throat and chest, deep with passion and longing. There is a burning desire, a need stirring deep within him that can only be brought by her alone, and he steps backward to follow the path of her spine with a warm and parted mouth, his great wing still fluttering tenderly along her back.
She is as wayward as the wind and he is as sturdy as the volcano that rumbles above them, but she will always return and he will always be there to welcome her.
Their reunion lasts well into the depths of twilight, their coupling bathed in the glow of the stars peeking through the tiny holes in the cavern, steam rising around them from the water as well as from their intermingling bodies.
It is early morning, where dawn is not yet over the horizon, but Warrick wouldn’t have been able to tell because he is so engrossed in her. The darkness of his mane clings to the coiled muscle of his neck, his deep whispering and deliberate kisses finding her face as they lay beside each other, his heart returning to a steady beat at last.
“My wild one,” he murmurs with adoration, lipping at the ivory and black of her mane behind her ears as his eyelids sleepily hang halfway over his burning blue gaze. “Things in Tephra have changed,” he muses quietly, relaxed and comfortable in her embrace. “How much have you seen?”
Warrick
@[Tangerine]
