[private] Offspring

[Offspring]

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

  His gaze steadies upon the curve of her wing, tracing the finely preened feathers layered across the broad surface. Each vane gently flutters in the soft, gentle breeze – a warm one, laced with the thick, stifling humidity that often permeated the volcanic island. He is quiet, while his heavy, scarlet eyes following the muscle stirring beneath her dappled skin, where a mottling of jaguar markings lay, wrapped around the length of her slender legs, and draped over the slope of her spine.

  He does not pine as he once might have in his youth – he is war-torn, aged mentally, and he had seen and known too much in his time to be so easily distracted by the temptation of sex and carnal desire. Yet, though there is no hunger in his gaze, there is a deep stirring of attraction hidden beneath the surface of his thoughtful gaze; she is beauty, intellect, and brawn encapsulated.

  He can feel her own gaze tracing the thick muscle and the deep ridges of his scar tissue. He is usually able to ignore it – it certainly was not the first time that his appearance (foreboding and intimidating, with a dark, fiery gaze, and a blackened, marred physique) had drawn the stare of another – but he cannot suppress the faint inkling of edginess stirring inside of him. He is usually indifferent to his own appearance. He has had many years to adjust to the girth and breadth of his body, and nearly as many to grow apathetic toward the puckered, pink scarring littered across the inkiness of his skin, or the unusual color of his eyes. And yet, he is not indifferent to how she perceives him – and his gaze shadows her own, seeking her approval, yearning for her appreciation. It had been a long while since he had longed for such.

  He can see the sudden shift in her mood, as the faint smile worn on her dark lips wanes into a thin, straight line, while her eyes become distant and brooding, reflective of the heavy memory resting as a burden on her mind. When his skin touches her own, she is brought back, stunned and with a hitch in her breath – and though she tilts her cheek away from him with a narrowed gaze, her breathlessness is not lost on him. Alas, it is a fleeting moment, gone as quickly as it had come, and a steady rhythm is found within his hefty stride and her prowling gait. Nerine is mentioned once again, and the memory of Nayl snarling at him, spitting harsh and criticizing words, stirs ire within the tautness of his chest.

  He did not respect her.
  She was foul-tempered, and immature.

  He would tread lightly, though, his words plucked carefully as his gravelly voice expresses only a fraction of the truth.

  ”She has much to learn about decorum,” he murmurs, his gaze steadied upon the volcano once more while wind more forcefully weaves its way through the thick tendrils of vegetation lapping at his legs. ”and restraint. She chose to belittle me and disrespect me, rather than speak to me as one leader to another. A shame,” he muses, his darkening gaze heavy upon her. ”Nerine could be a force to be reckoned with, with the right leadership.”

  He is quiet then, listening to her soft banter (eliciting a deep chuckle from within his chest) and her introspective words; no King or Queen had ever been without flaws. He, most certainly, had many. She is accepting of her own, and there is a faint tug of a smile along the crease of his dark mouth. Deeply buried memories of a love long since lost to him surfaces, lingering in his mind as he reminisces over how such a terrible lack of intimacy and honesty had set the love shared between them into a blistering inferno, leaving little else but ashes and dust in its wake.

  He longed for such honesty, for such clarity.

  It is a breath of fresh air.

  ”I was hesitant to begin again, when the Reckoning ravaged the kingdoms. I felt that I had lost so much; that too much had changed. I never thought that I would ever feel as complete as I did within the Tundra, but alas,” he murmurs, his chest rumbling with laughter. ”here I am. As much fire as I ever was ice. The irony is not lost on me.” He pauses then, the heaviness of his gaze searching for her own, listening carefully – he can sense a question hidden within her carefully constructed words, and he shook his head, as his tangled mane fell across his broad forehead.

  ”My father is dead.” I made sure of it, he doesn’t say, his gaze falling to the stillness of the water before him, studying the deepest scar lain across his chest. Ages old, and faint, but a reminder of a fate he had long ago sealed. ”He has been, for a long, long time – from another land, in another place. Rest assured, there is no relation. My eyes came from my mother,” and there is pang – an ache! He had not thought of her in so long. ”rest her soul.”

OFFSPRING

another zealot with the weight of the fucking world