02-20-2019, 03:08 AM
Shroud expects no pity - only pain, the kind that he is so good at administering and the kind that she craves wantonly. She also knows that the plague will offend him but he will not cast her away; he can’t, as much as she never wants him to and this will only bring more punishment down upon her but she relishes it with a sinisterly tinged happiness - the kind that is a thorn-prick of blood from a rose, just a tiny painful kiss.
His breath on her spine is hot. The kind of heat that makes her, a dirty small weed, turn to the powerful sun contained in his look and touch. He’ll burn her in such perfect brutal ways and she waits for it, as he draws her closer to his chest. Even she has noticed how she fits against him in new ways, how his skin feels against her own, and how her looks are less callow and slavish and more girlishly coy - as much as they can be, given the fevered glaze to them and the dark affection she feels for him.
She laughs! He has noticed, but how could he not? The plague is reward and punishment enough for not heeding her one true master’s call. Still, he indulges her with his wandering touch as his lips march over her damp skin. Craven, she shivers - not from plague, though maybe just a bit, but mostly from his possessive assertion that she is whole and his. “Just a little,” she chokes out around laughter and plague-tickles in her throat.
This could earn her punishment and pain, but as she licks a little of the bloody spittle off her lips, Shroud knows she doesn’t mind. It means more time with him, as his. Instead, he pushes past her in that usual way that denotes boredom and she gives him a long dark indecipherable look before obediently following him to the river. He makes his demand and she acquiesces for the time being; the drink long and slurping and maddening.
River-water both cools and burns her arid throat, and a look of pain and distaste mingles on her face. Her reflection of sickness is dashed by her own hoof as she turns back to face him, eyes burning fever-bright. “I have been to Pangea.” she murmurs just before the excitable flutter of her wings, as they shift to thorny extensions of interlocking acacia branch. Pale feathers are gone, replaced momentarily by muscle-memory of the moment she lashed and slashed.
Her entire frail self begins to shake, to split in tiny tears from the wicked bite of thorns that leak beady sanguine tears down her sides. Then the effort exhausts her, pulls a haggard cough from deep inside her as she turns back to the river, contemplating bathing herself or worse, just giving in to the pull of the current in the middle that rushes on by. Shroud can’t leave her monstrous blue master though, and she simply says to him - “I’m tired.”
Her voice comes out small and strained, almost like a plea.
@[Tunnel] long overdue! ❤️❤️❤️