[private] and you will witness what the fire can undo; straia

[Straia]

sometimes we want what we want --
    -- even if we know it’s going to kill us.

They fall back into one another with ease. He feels like home, something she had not dreamed she would ever feel again. Though she has never needed anyone but herself, still, she has always wanted him. Him and none other. Even though she is not the same, filled with some strange and impossible power, she is still herself. She is still recognizable, and this...they, have not changed.

He presses closer to her as well, and she allows herself the pleasure of leaning into him. The thrones wrapped around him prick her skin as she allows it, and she does not mind the bits of pain. They are bits of him, after all. If there was anyone in this world capable of causing her pain, it was him (not that she would ever admit such a thing).

”Am I not?” she asks, her voice a bit thoughtful. Once she had been tied to the Chamber. Now she was tied to Beqanna. All she was belonged to the land that had given birth to her power. She’d been something without the magic, but with it...well it was hard to deny that she was not something extraordinary with it. ”It is so much more than a land. I can feel it, something alive and primordial, beyond even my understanding.” The heart of it was the mountain, but the whole of it was Beqanna. Something deep and ancient. Something more than they could ever hope to grasp.

His next sentiment though brings that smile to her lips, something cruel and calculating. ”I wonder if that is why I was given such a gift. To remake Beqanna into what it should be. For this is not it.” Though that seems like an unlikely dream, Straia has always reached far higher than she should. His teeth graze down her neck, and she shivers slightly at his touch, arching into him rather than away.

How she missed him. There had been children by Warship in her life, yes, though Warship had been a means to an end and nothing more. They could have all been Weed’s children, had he been around enough to offer such a thing. She is an old mare now and yet...and yet the possibility crosses her mind and they dance together once again.

He does not let the distance between them stay, and this time, she does not move away. Instead, she changes the world around them, she takes them home. Pine forests spring to life, replacing the worthless forest they stand in now. Mist clings to their hooves, winds arounds their legs. Beneath their feet drums the steady rhythm of a heart.

”Always,” she murmurs, turning her head to nip at his neck. A truth. A truth that has always been true but never been said. Perhaps death has changed her, made her just slightly more willing to admit. At least this. At least to him.

-- straia

the raven queen

@[Weed]