"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
She carries memories of him fondly. As though they had met on pleasant terms and parted on the same. As though he had not ripped her apart and then let the crows eat their fill. As though he had not brought the smiles forth from the shadows to smile upon her as he rented her apart, until she cracked like the spine of some ancient book, as though his magic did not completely overwhelm her flimsy, pale gifts.
And still—and still.
She finds that she smiles when she thinks of the memory.
Something dark and twisted, a prick from a rose’s thorn. Poetic, almost.
This time, when she finds him, she is older—as is he—but not by much. Still, when one is young, the months pass quickly and the consequences are immediate. Her coltish legs are longer, her fine-boned face beginning to lose some of the softness of youth. There is all the tell-tale sign of her aging. The ivory that begins to sprout from her very flesh, the barest hints of it showing on her chest, her forehead, her shoulders. The whispers of the plates of it to come, the gift and the curse that would cover her body.
When she finds him this time, there is more knowing in her eyes, but poison on her tongue.
“You said the next time would be my turn,” she says with a girlish smile, her silver bell voice belying the request as she draws near him. An angling of her head as she remembers the destruction and pain.
11-20-2020, 09:09 PM (This post was last modified: 11-20-2020, 09:09 PM by crowns.)
CrownS
Sabbath has begun to accept that he is not the sickly newborn she used to lie next to each night, counting his breaths for fear the next would not come. Without her careful guidance, he has quickly grown careless in his wandering and he pushes his limits a little further each day. And this one will be no different. He intends to let Rosebay do as she will with him because he wants to know his own weaknesses. He wants to stare long and hard into Death’s face and know that it cannot touch him.
So when she arrives, he tucks all that magic awake and bids his wings goodbye. They fall from his shoulders with a splash. Suddenly he is just a plain thing, save for the rich sapphire blue of his coat. He watches her and he smiles, an expression brimming with warmth and excitement buzzing in his bones.
“I did! And a promise is a promise, Rosebay,” he says, his voice now a pitch lower than the last time they saw each other. Crowns still wears a short mane, but his chest has broadened and the angle of his jaw is growing sharper with time. These days, there is something dark lurking in the corner of his smile when he watches her draw near him.
“I’ve known you as prey, but I want to know you as the predator also. Won’t you teach me?” he pleads now, bridging what little space is between them. He pushes the short length of her forelock back in a delicate kiss. Crowns wants her to think he’s handing her the knife so she can butcher him. He wants her to not even notice the way he worms himself under her skin and takes root there like a fever dream. And when all the smoke and mirrors are over with, he’ll bite into her heart like the first apple of autumn and toss her aside when he’s through.
If she is surprised that even his wings fall away, it does not show on her pretty face. If she is excited at the prospect of biting into the apple of him, it does not reveal itself. Instead, she waits prettily, quietly. She sits and watches as he walks closer, reveling in the hint of gravel in the back of his throat, the promises of shadows that would come with his age. The darkness that she would enrobe herself in with time.
He reaches for her and she makes herself immaterial, walking through the intended kiss to his other side. She turns then, going to face him with a small simper curling at the edges of her mouth—a reminder that she was not the plaything this time, regardless of whether he had to restrain himself to make it so.
She doesn’t walk away though, not while she feels this anticipation on her tongue.
Instead she takes a delicate breath, feeling the way her lungs nearly tremble with excitement, with the way that her entire body seems to shimmer as she comes back into form. Looking at him, she feels the enthrallment spread, taking root quicker than before, as happens with practice.
“Follow me, Crowns,” she murmurs, crooking a metaphorical finger as she leads him forward, moving deeper into the meadow and then into the corners, where the plants grow more lush, where they crowd onto one another. She has been studying, and asking questions, and she knows exactly what she is looking for, so she doesn’t hesitate when the glimpse of the slightly drooping pink flowers catch her gaze.
She looks back to him, maintaining eye contact.
“Take a bite,” her silvery voice commands as she motions to the foxglove.
There is an itch in him to wrench her mind open and see all the things that she feels, if she will not show them. She wants to yank her back to something concrete and force her to let him kiss her face. But he draws a slow breath in through his nostrils and reminds himself that he must take turns and be fair. So he treats this as an exercise in patience as well as a test of his own mortality.
He follows, just as the thread is guided by the needle, as she leads him through the tall meadow grasses. Crowns smiles contently as they approach the little thicket of plants all pushed up against one another. The little pink flowers hardly stand out amongst the leaves and other blooms. What makes them so special, he wonders? Her words draw his bright blue eyes to hers.
Take a bite.
And so he lowers his head, grazing on them and whatever else is near the pretty little petals. They taste bitter and medicinal despite their delicate aroma. Still, he devours them all until he’s certain their flavor will have him heaving up until even the bile of his stomach is depleted. When he lifts his head, the pupils of his eyes are already razor-thin as they contract in on themselves. There is even a wheeze whispering into his breaths already.
“Now what?” he asks, stumbling as he tries to stand upright. It is only seconds before he finds himself tumbling to the ground as his legs give out. His body trembles as his chin twitches upward every few seconds. Was this what death felt like? An agonizing ache settling into every muscle even as he begged them to be still? Crowns wonders if Rosebay will make it better or if he’ll have to cut their fun short.
But he waits. He creeps closer to the edge and peers long and hard into the darkness there. Would Death reach for him?
She watches with a placid face, nearly sleepy. There is the faintest of smiles that touch the corner of her delicate mouth, her pretty brown eyes deceivingly apathetic as he devours the flowers. She hums just slightly when she notices the effects start to take place, when his pule contract, when his breath turns to wheezing, when he begins to stumble. “Wait,” she answers on an exhale, barely making noise at all as she continues to watch the poison begin to whip through him, lacing through his very bloodstream.
So this is what she had asked for.
It was fascinating to watch it take hold of him. Fascinating to see it take the boy to his knees—and were she not fond of him already in that toxic way of hers, perhaps she would wish it take him further. As it were, she does not wish death upon him. Just the blessed awe of watching his body tremble and jerk, his legs giving out. She watches him convulse with a studious, detached air that gives away none of the pleasure that ripples through her—the excitement that clutches at her very throat with possibility.
Finally, when she feels as though she has seen enough, she walks closer to him, pushing through the grass with her slender body. She reaches down, keeping herself material this time, and presses the rose petals of her lips to his forehead—letting them linger there against the dust that has accumulated there.
“Thank you,” she breathes, sincere for once. “That will be enough for now.”
What she does not say is that it will never be enough. That she is content with just this sampling because it is a faux version of what she truly lusts for. The next time that he stares at Death, it will not be because of the poison she has found and dug up for him. It will be because of what she herself has wrought.
The world becomes a blur as his eyes refuse to focus on anything in particular. And yet, somehow, every detail is painfully sharp. There is a soft, wet noise as his tongue chokes into the back of his throat with every twitching of his head. But he holds on and lets the poison seep further into him. He can feel the serpent of his magic awakening, yet he holds it down. Not yet. He hasn’t found the limits of this body yet.
Even when she presses that sweet kiss to his face, he does not release himself yet. There is still light in his eyes and he manages to swallow an occasional breath. His heart begins to hammer against his ribs as it tries desperately to push more oxygen into his bloodstream, yet there is none to be found. His lungs have given up. A dull ache forms across his temples as his skin begins to grow cold for the first time in many, many months.
He holds on until his knuckles are white and the world is but a pinprick of color, miles away from him now. Then, all at once, he lets the dam burst. Fire licks across his skin with a spitting hiss as it purges his every cell of the foxglove. It drags air down into his lungs and steadies his muscles as his eyes blink open.
And he is laughing.
Crowns stumbles up and gives his head a little shake as he tries to stifle the joyous fit of laughter bubbling from his chest. The flames calm and extinguish finally as he turns his bright blue gaze to her.
“Do you think I’m strong enough to bring you back from the dead?” he asks her quite suddenly, stepping close so his lips are a breath away from hers. “Should we find out?”
It is fascinating to watch him sink further and further into death.
Fascinating to know that is what poison could do—that is what it was capable of.
She thrills at the sight of it. Thrills watching him buckle under the pressure of it, and she wonders how much he has to hold back to keep from crushing it. She did not know the full breadth of his power, but she knew it was substantial. Knew that it eclipsed whatever gift she had been bestowed and would eclipse it still, even if she was granted whatever it was that bubbled in her veins when she returned to the fae.
After all, he had ripped through it before like wet paper.
Shredded her power like it had barely existed.
So there is fondness at watching him hold himself back to let Death steal upon him. Fondness that he would give her this gift—let him watch the poison tangle in him, taking apart his mortal body.
And there is laughter that bubbles in her veins to match his own when he stumbles back to life.
When he steps closer again, bringing them within just a breath, she nearly shimmers intangible once more, but holds onto her physical form for just a moment longer. “I think you should hope that you are,” she breathes, perfumed breath fanning over his velvet nose. “Because we have so much left to explore.”
More death, more life, more possibility.
But that does not stop her from lifting her chin slightly, exposing her throat.
He wonders if she would falter if he tried to touch his teeth to her. Would she try to throw up that strange cloak of hers and hide from him? Would panic settle into those gorgeous eyes when he tore it down and took her by the wrist so hard it bruised? He wonders, but he doesn’t have to learn that lesson today. Because she lifts her chin and shows him the space of her small neck where he can see her pulse just beneath the skin. Crowns smiles, delighted that it is his turn at last.
He presses a gentle kiss to the corner of her mouth and then he opens his jaws wide. Two curved, hollow fangs reveal themselves - just as he’d seen his family do - and he sinks them, quick, into her. Crowns lets the venom pour into her butterfly veins. When he is satisfied, he pulls his head back with her blood smeared ugly across his mouth.
He has seen what becomes of the things they bite. It picks them apart, nice and slow so they think they have time to run. Then they stumble and blood pours from their nose as thin as water. Crowns steps back and watches as the warmth turns dark behind his eyes. He counts the seconds under his breath to see how long it takes her to die.
Then, when she passes, he’ll count how long she is dead before he decides to bring her back.
It is a sharpened version of the usual childish games, but it is suiting for the two of them. Suiting that they make each other bleed to find out if they can, if they will. If one of them will be the first to give.
Neither do, of course, and she does not give him the satisfaction of seeing the doubt in her mind.
(She is, of course, still mortal—and it is strange to place her life in his hands.)
But he presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth and, this time, she allows it. For a second, at least, before she pulls back slightly and moves onward to the next stage of the game. To the moment when his fangs sink into her throat and the favor of poison is returned unto her tenfold. She sputters when she feels the toxin holds onto her—faster, perhaps, because she does not fight it but instead turns to embrace it.
She holds it closer to her breast, letting it sink into her without stiffening.
And it takes her.
Her eyes roll back into her head as her muscles lock. Her breathing shortens until she nearly swallows her own tongue. Until foam coats her tongue, touches the corner of her mouth, runs down her chin. She falls to her knees and then to her side, the ivory of her armor thudding as it lands into the dirt and the fauna.
So this is the other side, she thinks, with awe.
She sees the light begin to fade until there is only his face and the halo around it.
She smiles when even that flickers and the darkness claims her.
He watches her fold in on herself and then crumble to the ground. There is not even a flicker of movement across his face as she foams at the mouth, and then goes quite still. It doesn’t feel any different than his other games and he is disappointed by this. Of course, he didn’t know what to expect when he took his first life. Maybe it is a detached sort of intrigue because he knows he will bring her back at some point. He hums softly in thought.
There is some surprise, at last, at how quickly her body begins to cool without a heart to warm it. Crowns lets a thread of his magic tie itself to her core and then he tugs.
But it does not give. The door to death holds fast against him.
His brow furrows and he pulls harder to bring her back as a panic settles in. Death keeps her by the throat and seems to tighten its grip, and so he pours more of his strength into her heart. He tugs and he struggles until the ancient serpent uncoils itself and sinks its teeth into the precious light of her soul. It coils tight around her and then it rips her loose with such force that Crowns tumbles backward.
A thick sweat has broken out across his body and it is night. How long had he been fighting to bring her back? His chest heaves for breath and he looks to her, wide-eyed and fearful for the first time, perhaps, ever.
And he is unbearably tired, he notices.
"We almost learned a very hard lesson," he says with an exhausted sort of laugh.
