Who is this creature he has created? It cannot be said that he does not remember her as she was when an infant. He does. Tunnel remembers how plain and scrawny she had been, and the snuffling stumbling way she sought him out in the dark like a blind pup. Small, sweet smelling, stalwart brown eyed babe. The beast had considered killing her and has wanted to destroy her many times since that night. Her skin and bones and flesh make him clench his teeth against the buzzing sensation in his jaw, he hurts her because he wants to pull her apart. He does not forget that he has ‘raised’ her, but her image flickers ever more clearly into that of a woman. Shroud has never been his ‘daughter’ even if she is other than what she would have been without his abducting her.
Tunnel shifts himself away, using his weight and sheer strength to try and drag Shroud to the ground but she resists him. A promising stumble is quickly corrected and his exhausted pet plants her feet and bears up. She expects his fury and he nearly releases her to pull her down by an ear. No part of her ever escapes his violence but her wings and her face, a face that she now stubbornly turns toward him as the wings curve into scythes of acacia once more.
Irritation does not melt out of his look, he is not a fairy tale beast. The unsettling grey of his eyes only darkens to hematite or the shadowy part of storm clouds as she inspires something more. Relinquishing his grip on her neck happens just as suddenly as the shift from feathers to thorns. Tunnel demonstrates no intention of surrendering to the will of his plaything. Black limbs shift quickly and heavily and the stallion pivots close to her again, his muzzle dragging up the side of her arched and sweaty neck. The wings and their thorns do not drive him away should they fall against his blue hide and draw his blood when he sidles up against her. Shroud’s scent has always appealed to him, but this time he’s actually looking for the opiate richness he finds beneath the sickness and familiarity. If he had missed it before or if it had only risen after he’d begun to touch her is not for the monster to know. His skin is hot where it presses to her feverish side, but she may not notice for how hot she herself burns.
She settles to the ground once he is close and the stallion follows after with controlled ease, heedless of any wounds inflicted on him by her vicious pinions. Tunnel’s limbs are tucked beneath and close beside himself so that the sabino girl might lean into his larger frame. Her pelt is whorled and scraped from his earlier ministrations, a pattern as mindless as that he now leaves behind. Black barred ears laze and shift as he grooms her, her words, meant to annoy him, falling into them as he grooms her back and side. Breathing her in surreptitiously, tasting the change in her scent, he does not let it so distract him that he cannot take time to provide her a growling reply. “No, I didn’t. You haven’t ever needed me to spell out the rules.” His teeth pinch the relaxed muscle behind her outside shoulder but he lathes his tongue over the place shortly after, unclear to the hypothetical onlooker if it is something akin to grudging affection or the doting of a lion on paralyzed prey. There is actually distant amusement in his voice when he continues abruptly. “That isn’t one of them.”
As if the rules were written somewhere within either of them. He is a monster and few distinct rules exist beyond the whims of his tempestuous and violent temper.
She is not a girl again when the feathers return (leaving his skin twitching in the wake of their trailing). Tunnel considers demanding she rest, but there is still an itching need in him to touch and bite, to know she hurts in silence, obedient and possessed. Shroud’s muzzle rubs against the velvety skin of his black shadowed blue chest, she nips and he ignores her though his muscles twitch in chest and shoulders. You never said I couldn’t… A snort is interrupted by the bold force of her teeth against his skin and his eyes are still dark when they flick to her brown ones. A snarl wrinkles Tunnel’s lip though and he does not say a word only snaps his teeth at her coy expression before drawing back, powerful neck arching to allow himself to regard her in silence. If she has another quip for him, or more teeth he permits it but his gaze smolders. Before she can annoy him too much the stallion reaches his muzzle out to roughly meet her own. His mouth is beside hers, and he angles his head quickly to nip at her lips, breathing his words against the corner of her mouth. “Go to sleep Shroud. When you are free of this pollution there will be a great deal of time to determine the intricacies of what you can and cannot do.” He is rarely so verbose, but on the occasions that he is, it seems to coincide with a shift between them. From foundling to pet, from pet to…
Black nostrils flare, violence that is not violence writhing beneath his skin and tingling in his lips and tongue... Not violence, though what it is feels close enough. It should be a brief thing beside his need to dominate and rend (it usually is when he desires a woman) but instead he burns.
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves
as though we were drowning inside our hearts
@[shroud]
