"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
11-04-2017, 09:54 AM (This post was last modified: 11-04-2017, 02:23 PM by kahzie.)
Isobell
i'll wait for inside the bottom of the deep blue sea
The words she should be using to thank Ivar for taking her home have yet to formulate in her mouth. For now she stares at the rising sun, walking next to the scaled man, hoof step to hoof step. He glistens in the glow of a fresh autumn morning. She finds her silver eyes would rather look upon him than the sunrise.
"Ivar," her words are weighted with something, perhaps sleepiness for the night's festivities, "thank you for walking me home." She gives him a small, sleepy smile with the tilt of her head before pressing her muzzle rather politely against one of his scaled shoulders. She is weary with sleep and her hooves feel far too heavy but the painted mare moves along the stallion's left side and near the water.
The night had been rather magical despite the way the pale king had eyed her flesh. Isobell felt the hunger in those red eyes crawl around her brain and attempt to grasp the most tender parts of her body...but Ivar had stepped in and whisked her away like a true prince (of Sylva haha!). Isobell giggles softly to herself as the exhaustion was almost overwhelming. Tired?" She asks knowing damn well he is but the temptation to curl up next to his body was something she thought was worth asking a stupid question for. She is lightheaded and giddy as the after affects of her inebriation are slow to wear off and surely he would like to take a rest.
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
He is silent the entire way back.
From the forest of Sylva, across the Loessan Hills, along the mountains of Hyaline: Ivar does not mutter a single word. The scaled stallion does not look at Isobell either; his flinty gaze is unwavering on the trail ahead (and from time to time to the sides to search for danger – but never back to Isobell).
He had seen a shadow in the sky for a moment, a bit of darkness, but he had quickly looked away. There could be danger on the hills, after all, anything might hide behind the bluffs.
It is not until they reach the northernmost realm, not until they’ve descended the zig-zagging cliff trail and are deep into the heart of Nerine does he stop. The sand stretches ahead of him, grey and seemingly endless where it curls east along the shore. The beach is empty – these are the quiet hours just before dawn – and Ivar and Isobell are alone.
She speaks at last, breaking the silence, but he does not look down to meet her gaze.
“You shouldn’t have been there at all.” Ivar replies to her gratitude. His temper is worn short by exhaustion, and his hold on it is especially tenuous this close to the sea. The fresh memories of burying his face in a dark mane beneath the waves rises unbidden, and he turns suddenly toward Isobell, who is giggling slightly with the remnants of her inebriation. A gentleman would step away, so Ivar closes the space between them. She feels especially warm against the chill of the autumn wind, and for a moment he is perfectly still, soaking in the sensation of closeness.
“I should go back to Loess,” Ivar says against her neck, his warmth breath beading tiny bits of moisture on the pale hairs of Isobell’s coat. Their embrace is intimate, but seems to lacking the overpowering lust of their most recent exchange. Seems to, at least, were Ivar not silently enticing her to ask him to stay. It has been some time since he’s spent the night (what is left of it anyway) in Nerine, but there is an allure to the thought of using hypnosis to tamper with Isobell’s dreams.
i'll wait for inside the bottom of the deep blue sea
"No you should come with me tonight...today." She is breathing against the soft scales of his skin, smooth and polished though they are surely smudged by her breath as she does not fight the feel of his body against her. There is a rush that she cannot yet explain that warms her skin, blooming in her breast. She feels like a woman possessed as the words are escaping her dark lips before she has time to secure them (she wonders if she really wants to hide them anyway despite the lovely buzz in her head).
She presses back against the thickness of his neck, silver eyes watching a pulse just beneath the scales with fascination. She closes her eyes and rub her face in the edges of his mane, burying herself in his scent. He is different than the other boys with their loud laughs and gawking stares. Isobell shoves it all away to drown against his skin and the too warm of a night with the bleeding of predawn colors across a cloudless sky.
'I know, I know, I know..." She whispers the words in return to his scolding for her presence in Sylva but she murmurs it all away with her dark lips, weaving them into his mane and hiding the syllables behind the cool scales. She doesn't want him to leave and though her brain is foggy and too light, she lightly draws the rivers of his sinew and muscle up his neck before ending ehr exploration with a lightly place nip where his jaw bone connects to his throat.
She knows she should not be out here by the river with him but Ivar is not a strange boy after dark. He is Ivar, son of Stillwater and Djinni, but under the soft glow of an early winter sky, Isobell feels like a woman under his gaze and drinks in the way he feels against her skin. "Don't go...it's too late to leave. You should rest." Her voice vibrates as she mouths the words quietly with parted lips against the scales, dreamy and soft.
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
“Alright.” He says against her mane, the word sighed in defeat despite his lack of protest. He expects her to continue forward, to lead the way to whatever cave she shelters in, where he will stand guard. That is what their previous interactions have told him that she will do. She is, for some undeniably frustrating reason, resistant to his charms. When she does not, but rather draws nearer, runs her nose along his jaw, he remains still. His scaled skin quivers beneath her touch, but he does not react otherwise, not until he leans forward and presses his scaled mouth to her throat.
The pulse of her heartbeat is hammering against his tongue like bird beating its wings against a cage.
It would be easy – it would not be the first time – but there is, inexplicably, more value in keeping her whole.
The inconsistency, her inability to fit neatly into his two classifications of other is maddening. She tastes like prey in his mouth, but the ravenous hunger that constantly drives him is curiously subdued. He wants her beneath the water, he realizes, but he does not want to leave her there, empty-eyed and lifeless as he has always left the others.
“Isobell,” he says quietly into her neck, drawing away only to better run his jaw against the smooth ridge of her crest, “What are you doing?”
He could accept disinterest – perhaps she preferred women or bays – but the way she run hot and cold and in circles around him is inexplicable. She wants him, he knows she does, and yet she alternates between keeping him at a distance and taunting him the way she does now. His weariness and the doubt in his control as a result of the nearby water has him irritable even as he runs his muzzle ever so gently down the slope of her shoulder. She is irritating too, with her refusal to submit when they both know she should, that she wants to, that he could make her happy.
Another gust of wind bears down on the pair, a reminder of the coming winter. They are past the season of procreation (Ivar would know, having taken a fair number of chances at fatherhood), but the last vestiges of autumn remain in the fading pheromones of her skin and the lustful light in Ivar’s eye as he presses his teeth down painlessly on her withers, gripping her firmly as though to remind her of exactly what she is toying with.
11-04-2017, 01:03 PM (This post was last modified: 11-04-2017, 02:23 PM by kahzie.)
Isobell
i'll wait for inside the bottom of the deep blue sea
And she shakes off his silly grip upon her withers. She challenges him with a sideways silver eye, giving a shimmy under his sharp teeth to loosen and slide away from the heat of his mouth and tongue with her body sliding smoothly down the curved scales and even giving the place where his tail meets his flesh a little tug.
He asks too many questions and seems to talk too much when all she wanted but to just listen to the rhythm of his heart drumming inside his chest. Perhaps she wanted to show him something more...to open herself to him...but he manages to dash it all away with a lolling tongue and smoldering touches. The long catch of tail flicks across her hind end idly before settling back into position as it lay draped prettily. Isobell looks over her shoulder at the scaled stallion as he seemed to question himself...
Perhaps it was best if he DOES go to Loess like he had suggested earlier. She allows a few breathes to pass before pivoting with narrow eyes and a renewed taste for his skin. She is young and the wildness of the sea and salt crept along her soft curves as she neared him, silver eyes gripping his own with narrowed slits and stand just in front of him s she had to look upwards to his taller stature. "And?" She confronts him, her heart racing and her skin shivering from the cold...or the frustration of his scent on her skin (she isn't sure which).
"What is it Ivar? Who is it?" The young pied mare demands. "What or who you keep your company with is no secret. Their names are riddled with pox, covered in fleas, and doused with pig squalor yet you lay with them...why is it that you came to me tonight? You, of all, found me in Sylva." Her words are not meant to be kind. "What do you want with me, princeling?" She speaks with flared nostrils and liquid quicksilver flooding her eyes. Her feminine features harden as she questions the stallion with a jutted chin and squared shoulders.
Isobell shorts with a huff, her eyes roll and she shifts her weight away with rolling hips so the stallion is off to her left hip. 'I can find my own way home from here." She remarks flatly as she turns her back on Ivar and heading towards Nerine.
11-04-2017, 02:22 PM (This post was last modified: 11-04-2017, 02:23 PM by kahzie.)
Trigger Warning: possible non-consensual sex
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
Shaking him off is possible only because he lets her, and he wonders if perhaps she considers herself victorious. The thought is curiously endearing; she thinks she can beat him. How…adorable.
The emotion is so very different from the two he knows – lust and rage – that he is momentarily stunned, watching the beautiful young mare as she presses herself against him wantonly.
And then, all of sudden, she is different again. This is the inconsistency he feared, the fire and ice that she hurled alternately in his face. The words she throws lack the barbs she intends (he is rather proud of his conquests), but he clearly recalls a saucy-eyed Isobell calling another woman jealous. The irony is amusing, at least until she turns away, clearly not intending to flip back to hot as quickly as she had descended to cold.
She really is leaving.
That’s not acceptable.
With a growl, the scaled creature lunges forward. He drives the point of his shoulder into her ribcage, forcing her toward the water even as he hypnotically commands her to not feel the pain. The nips as he falls behind her he does not soften, but they are closer to encouragement than command, he knows she’ll continue toward the waves. That’s where she belongs.
They move farther out to sea. Out to where the waves break against rock that erupts from the sea, where she has footing but nowhere to run, no way to escape. She feels like magma in the black water, and he loses himself in her heat. There is no time for consent, no time for paltry concerns like a woman’s autonomy. The kelpie wants her, and so she will want him too. The tactile hypnosis takes the edge off her fear, tells to her relax, enjoy, be mine mine mine.
Ivar is not aware of the firm hold he has on her crest, the same grip she’d slipped out of only moment before. The coppery taste of her blood is delightful, but it does not awaken the ravenous hunger that he is accustomed to. Instead he demands she not feel the pain but only the pleasure, the reasoning behind such actions unfathomable even to the piebald stallion. All he knows is that she belong to him, and that it is past time she knows it.
i'll wait for inside the bottom of the deep blue sea
And she had thought she had beaten him. Isobell had thought she had shaken him off like he was nothing more than a bad dream. Ivar, King of Silk Bedsheets, had been her consideration. She had driven her body against his, caressed and cupped him, wanted him in the purest way...but she is young and angry and does not know how to control waves of her emotions as well as her mother or even the scaled stallion.
She is frustrated and tired and the walk home would still be long. But before she is even able to turn, he is thrusting his weight into hers, the air knocked from her lungs momentarily as silver eyes are wide and confused. "Ivar!" She is shocked, desperately scrambling in the wetness but slipping in the squelch of mud and cold pebbles. Isobell whips her head towards the water then back at him as he is shoving her but then...then...then....
(it's okay)
The whisper is soft. The sound of raging waters echo loudly in her ears, her heart is hammering against it's bone cage, but she listens....there is a hum as everything else goes silent.
(the water)
Isobell stops fighting him as her silver eyes dull. The water, yes, the water. The cold does not bother her as she slips into the darkness of mountain runoff. The water was very cold and deep but with Ivar near her, the woman does not give such thoughts anymore consideration. Her heart slows, the water is cold, cold, cold. She can feel the grip he has but it feels more like a tender caress (she cannot see the blood that is staining the white of her skin). The water is still deeper now and Isobell loses footing and slips below the water's surface for a moment when she stumbles upon some drowned object. The blank pewter eyes never look to Ivar as they remain straight ahead, letting the kelpie guide her with his grip. She is relaxed despite it all, something unusual for the ivory and jet woman but the voice in her head is soothing and speaking like a cradle song. Her body feels heavy and light all at the same time but the teeth touch of Ivar is the only thing that feels real. She needed him close and she needed the crash of waves and the dreamless sleep that the dark waters promised.
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
Her naïve indecision he had interpreted as taunting. She was still woozy from the festivities in Sylva, and the haze in her eyes made her even easier prey, made her seem all the more sultry. He’d expected no fight from her, so for a moment he is frozen. She looks back to the rivershore, panic in her eyes for just an instant and he feels his chest tighten and…nothing. She’s moving back toward the water, and what little bit of morality he has is assuaged.
The water around them is icy, and it splashes above their heads in a brackish mist. Fresh water from mountain snow mixes with briney seawater, stinging his eyes in equal parts. Every now and then he sinks entirely beneath the water. Those moments are glorious – silent and serene – all the better for the silver-eyed girl beside him. Ivar wants to spiral around her, to swim in a way that is impossible in this equine body.
(damaged.)
The word repeats internally and Ivar growls low in his throat, squeezing more firmly at Isobell’s crest and feeling the water at his throat grow warmer with her blood. That soothes the rage for a moment, and he remembers the black and white mare beside him. She is drifting in the water, half-propped against a large boulder that erupts from the floor of the inlet. The skin at her withers is a mess of bloody flesh, seeping freely into the water and pooling at the back of Ivar’s throat. Her eyes are dull, and he cannot tell if he can feel her heartbeat of simply the current pulling them out to sea.
Ivar lets the current pull them, nudging Isobell from the rock and drifting farther out to sea.
He’d not meant to kill her.
At least it was her fault, he reassures himself, she’d wanted it and she’d known what she was before she’d taunted him. Ivar and his kind are not the safest choice in bedmates, but that is a given. He has never given any indication otherwise, not to Isobell, not even to Heda. Ivar has given some insight into his nature to his oldest friend, but he doubts she wants to know more. He is a monster, and he’s just another body to add to his tally.
He pulls himself onto shore, and does not even turn to watch her body sink into the sea.
kelpie mimicry | dragon scales | tactile hypnosis minimal grullo tobiano king of loess
i'll wait for inside the bottom of the deep blue sea
It must have been too easy for the stallion to let the waters consume Isobell. She had not only been a childhood friend but the future queen of Nerine. Surely, Castile, Nayl and Lior would have dashed off her disappearance with nothing more than a shrug...
She can feel nothing but the press of his body, guiding her with little nudges. The water was no longer cold. It invited her beneath the surface with loving kisses upon her chest, throat, and eventually head. Ivar is lost to her and so is the rest of Beqanna as she desires to sleep beneath the waves. Her mind is so dreadfully tired that she does not feel the crush of the water in her lungs nor even hear herself scream before Ivar has let her go. Silver eyes are rolling back as everything fades to black and she can feel the tear in her hide, her skin is on fire and her lungs are burning with seething rage for their depravity of oxygen.
Isobell suffocates slowly and painfully as she spasms and begins to float...granting Ivar's wish.
(tick, tick, tick)
Like waking up from a nightmare, she is gasps loudly and jerks upright. Her mind is throbbing severely as she attempts to orient herself. Where was she? Where was Ivar? The river...? Isobell becomes fully aware that this was not a terrible dream...she was still beneath the surface...but how was she alive? Her heart hammers in her chest but she was breathing...actually breathing. The woman struggles a moment as she is pretty certain she is dead and this was her soul leaving but she can still feel the sting of her crest and there was red in the water...first she moves one limb and then the other...
Isobell is not dead.
The painted mare can feel her lungs expanding despite having felt her own mortality not long ago. The water, though dark, is not cold and she regains control (at least temporarily) and determines the way to shore despite the inky dark. Isobell does not understand what in holy hell was going on but she wanted to be on land.
Her legs are shaking as she drudges onto the shore. She is saturated and there is a fat line of red, red blood spilling down her left shoulder as she coughs, chokes, and desperately inhales air through her lips. Her hair is plastered against her skin and her tail is pasted to her trembling legs as she sweeps her head from one direction to the next. Everything hurts as her body racks painfully at trying to breath and maintain her balance...but wait...
Ivar.
Ivar, pretty as ever, is a bit down the shore line and moving away from the river. "Ivar!" She halfway chokes on his name, the syllables shredding her raw throat. The woman starts to take a few paces towards him with burning silver eyes. Isobell does not feel the small patch of scales that have begun to begun to grow behind her ears and along the edge of her mane and down to where her shoulders lay in ruin by the same very elongated canines at are growing unnoticed in her own mouth at that moment. She is a beautiful sight (dare we say more beautiful?) as she is rather upset with Ivar and had every intention of have discussing the matter of her drowning.
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
He feels the scales beneath his lips, picks at them with his curious teeth. Not impenetrable, he finds; they are a softer version of his own. He hums quietly in interest until he reaches her bleeding shoulder, and there he pauses. It doesn’t hurt he tells her (that is nothing new) but he does not add that she likes it, the way he had below the water. Maybe she doesn’t like it; maybe only he did.
That thought is uncharacteristically generous. Most of what he is experiencing is uncharacteristic.
The scaled stallion inspects each inch of the piebald mare, and finds her perfectly whole. If she is more lovely he does not notice: she is still the same Isobell, but different.
Better.
She’d drowned and not drowned all at once. That is impossible, he knows, but here she stands in front of him, dripping and wet and very much not drowned.
That stirring inside him strengthens, grows louder and more insistent the longer he is nearby. He does not have words for the sensation. It is not love. It is some odd concoction of loyalty, devotion, passion. But it isn’t love. He cannot, not the way she wants, the way Heda wants. They expect too much of him, expect him to be the man without the monster, as though the two could ever be separated.
Ivar does not consider it a weakness; if anything he is stronger without it.
“You’re mine,” he says with confidence. “You feel it now.”
The water has changed her – or perhaps he has changed her. She is Isobell, like before, but better. She is a water creature, like he is. She must feel that. She must feel the pull of the sea.
They had swam together as children, but that was before. Before adulthood had matured the monster, before Isobell became…this. Whatever this was. His memories of it are foggy, clouded, like most long ago memories are. He wants to refresh them, wants to know what it is like to slide below the water with Isobell beside him.
They should go out to sea, he thinks, and reaches out to touch her shoulder. They should lose themselves beneath the waves. He should teach her to swim, to float, to hunt. He should, he will. He steps forward, and the sea laps at his white knees.
“Come on.” He says, beckoning her out to sea. They need not ever come back to land, he knows. They can find their own land, an island, far beyond the horizon. They do not need Loess or Nerine. They don’t need Beqanna at all. They can leave now, leave it all behind. Leave forever.
kelpie mimicry | dragon scales | tactile hypnosis minimal grullo tobiano king of loess
