The beach party hadn’t noticed when she had slipped around them, sliding through the water. The sound had been masked by the waves as they lapped against the sandy beach. No one had noticed as she stood off far by herself for some time watching them all as they searched and laughed and giggled, ultimately finally finding it and playing until dawn when the light breaking over the horizon had them all yawning and returning to their families. The smile she wore was sad, but she too, turned away from the beach where she had run into him, where his intent look still haunted her, days later.
Even when the world fell down around them. Carnage’s magic felt wrong in her brain, felt too much like her father when he would make her do things. She shook it, wanting to be free from the touch of it, but she could only endure. Like she had so long in her life.
Then less than a few hours later the world imploded around them. Fear made the whites of her eyes roll but she made her way in the way that the fairies had told them to go to be safe, to be free from the plague. A dark, dark voice inside her telling her of the havoc she could do there in one of those safe havens. Hypnotizing them all to obey her, making her important and loved and sending those out that she didn’t like.
But no, she was not her father, even if his words still sometimes whispered themselves in her ear.
She finds herself in the Cove, by the end of the day. Already she can see that it is filling up with others, so many of them...but she sees some of them from the beach party and her eyes light up a little. She could never go up to them, no, that would endanger them. She hadn’t ever figured out how her powers worked, couldn’t imagine accidently using it on some one in her ignorance. But she could watch them from afar, watch how their lives played out. She stays along the edges of the water, far from others, as the cold winter sun blazes down on the Cove.
Prince.
Party.
Plague.
He is noticing a trend here even as his lanky frame is filling out with lean muscle. Sviko will never be handsome in a conventional manner but he will always be boyish and charming. Will and Rhae got all the good looks. He just got whatever was leftover for the last-born triplet.
However in the wake of the party that he’s barely partaken in, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Silver and speckled and dark - a miasma of stars in the night sky scattered across her skin, blown there like the dust of galaxies on an ancient wind. Sviko could wax poetic sometimes, inside his own head. What he couldn’t do was stop thinking about her in the wake of the plague.
So they’d gone from a careless night as children partying on the beach to uncertain teenagers teetering on the brink of a world too adult for them. But here he was - almost two, almost something more than he was. Really, what was he other than a prince that was more pauper than anything else? He could pretend but at the end of the day, Sviko was off in his own world.
Likely dreaming about skin freckled and starry.
Then he spots her!
Of course he does. No one else in the Cove looks like her. It’s instantaneous- the sight of her coincides with the twitterpated thump of his heart. Naturally his knees get a little weak (they’re still knobby but somehow straight) as he drinks in the vision of her meandering along with the whitecapped waves behind her. Then he realizes he’s staring and swallows a lump of teenage anxiety as he makes his way over to her, hoping that she remembers him.
Hoping she’s thought of him like he has thought of her.
Wishing.
Hoping.
From the too-bright smile on his face as he nears her and emits a low deeply masculine hello to the way he throws his head back in what he hopes is a regal gesture of ridding the straggling forelock from his eyes. “Bout time you showed up,” he mutters with an eye-roll and faked huff of exasperation. It dissolves into a very boyish laugh as he extends his nose to hers, leaning forward so the tips just barely brush and he has the wonderful scent of her fully in his nostrils again.
@ Achlyss ❤️
11-09-2018, 02:13 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-09-2018, 02:13 PM by Achlyss.)
She has turned towards the sea, watching as the waves as they moved, crashing against the shore. It relaxes her, the sounds of the ocean as it flows and ebbs and slides around her legs. She takes a long look down, smiling a small soft smile as she realizes that it had drawn her in before when she hadn’t even realized she had moved. The water was ice around her legs now that she did notice it. It was still nice even when it felt like pins and needles against her legs.
She had thought of him of course. But she had been sure that she had been forgotten, too easily cast aside and forgotten unless she was needed to be used, so her father had taught her. Even if her mother had done everything she could to keep her safe, to make her grow strong.
She sighs, losts in her thoughts of him and the ocean as it slide against the sand. So she doesn’t hear him, until he greets her and then she stills. Her body tensing in fear and her eyes automatically finding themselves looking at the millions of grains of sand beneath her hooves. She slides a look at him from the corner of her eyes, looking through long dusty eyelashes.
“You...you were waiting for me?” She says softly, hesitantly, and is too surprised by the touching of his nose against her own to react. Warmth spreads through her body, centering around where his nose had been and she almost, almost meets his gaze. “I did not think anyone would miss me.” Her voice is still soft, almost lost amongst the waves, and shy as it slips past her lips. She manages glances up at him, looking at everything but his eyes, allowing her eyes to roam down the line of his back to the arch of his neck.
Another small sigh of appreciation. Her nose extending just a bit more so the contact was more than the featherlight brushes against one another.
@[Sviko]
He isn’t close to the sea. Only tolerates it because of the gills hidden on his neck by long unruly hanks of mane that he never prunes back. The truth is, he’s not sure what he loves. It hadn’t been Hyaline all that much. Sure, he loves it because he was born there and spent most of his formative months there.
But if something had to feel like it home, it was the crush of his triplets. The three of them all tangled up together. Heads and legs touching and inseparable, but all that’s changed now that each of them has grown up.
Somehow he’s managed to stay off the radar and out of any lover’s quarrels. His siblings… not so much. Lovers’ tiffs seemed to be commonplace with them and well, his brother had more or less defected to Tephra and Will was busy doing whatever it was she did best - brawl and boss others around, or so he assumed. It seemed natural that both siblings would rise i to positions of power will he just drifted along, as lost as a starfish caught in the tide.
Now though, he can focus on her because she’s the only uncomplicated thing in his life. Just fearful and shy, which are not two things that he’s had much practice with. So he tries to disarm her with a smile that is still boyish in its sit on his mouth. But it’s also a little older and more charming than before.
“Yes,” he murmurs as she refuses to look at him. Sviko will be damned if he doesn’t almost lift her head just so she’s forced to look into his eyes with her own. Then her statement cuts at him and he’s lost as to how to reply. Why wouldn’t anyone miss her, ever? But he can feel her eyes finally focus on him even if she won’t meet his gaze still.
“Why not?” he asks, unable to fathom just how brittle and breakable she is even though it’s plain to see as she prefers the cold cold sea over his own warm touch. Then her nose meets his and it’s the sweetest little motion that makes him rub his against hers. Slowly, oh so slowly because he doesn’t want to scare her off.
His nose roams further afield, down her neck until his cheek lays flush against her shoulder. “It’s okay, no one misses me much either.” he admits, realizing that it’s true and he’s not all the choked up about it.
@[Achlyss] long overdue so I aged him, hope you don’t mind! ❤️
Home. Home had been her mother’s touch against her neck, soft lips brushing against the slope of her back as her teeth had nibbled away the itch there. Home was the soft careful laugh of her mother as she told her stories, chasing away the fear that her father had brought home. Home was the breath of warmth as she fell asleep, her mom’s nose hovering over her protectively. Aye, that had been home. She hasn’t felt like she had been at home since she had left, since her father had died and they had both left. She had been eager to see what else was out there, prompted by her mother.
Who she assumed hoped that the promises of the future would chase away the fears of the past.
Lyss was cautious now, careful with who she loved and how she loved them. She hadn’t interacted with many, too willing to keep her eyes on them from a distance. But him, well, he hadn’t left her mind since her eyes had fallen on him.
“I feel like I am invisible sometimes.” She says on a breath, a soft laugh that has no humor. “Once I had wished I was.” His lips travel gently, so gently across her skin that her body trembles beneath his touch. There’s a brief uncertainty there, will he harm her once he is done? Will he feel the need to make her bleed? But she cannot sense the same malevolence on him that had oozed from her father. If he had been smiling, she knew things were about to get bad for them. If he was frowning, she knew it would be worse.
She cannot stop the trembling in her body, but she is almost certain that it is not from fear, not from him. There’s a softness in him that closes her eyes and gives him control. But her eyes open at his words and she smiles a small smile. “I missed you.” She almost turns her head to meet his eyes, but instead, she presses her lips gently and hesitantly against the curve of his shoulder.
@[Sviko] no problem at all. ^_^
12-31-2018, 09:16 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-31-2018, 09:16 AM by Sviko.)
Sviko cannot even begin to guess at her thoughts. She has been be enigma to him all this time. One that he cannot seem to stop thinking about. Dark hair, peppered skin, and an affection for the sea that he feels growing in him but lacks half the zeal that he senses is in her. The sea defines her as if she was a fabled siren… but he has to stop himself there, still feeling her shoulder beneath his cheek.
Something in him tells him to tread slowly with her, as if she was too wild and might spook at any moment. He sure didn’t want her to run away, afraid he might never see her again if he stepped wrong in conversation or deed. So he listened, flicking one golden ear back to the sound of her voice that came up out of her so small and quiet even as he stood right next to her.
“Why?” he asks gently, not quite understanding why someone as sweet as her would ever wish to be invisible. He can feel her tremble and he stops his exploration, having no desire to cause her trepidation. Sviko sensed a fragility in her that needed a calm slow touch despite how fervent and fast his heart beat at the sight and smell of her. He knew what was happening; had seen it in his siblings - this change to the world they had always known as themselves and each other.
It was an expansion of thought and feeling, especially towards someone not in relation to them. The kind of someone could become just as important as a sibling but wasn’t exactly that - he just couldn’t bring himself to even think of the word at the moment but he knew it had four letters in it. Four very important letters that condensed it down into one very important word.
She’s still trembling and he’s not sure how to make it stop but his mouth climbs to the nape of her neck, and he begins to comb his teeth through the curls and clumps of mane and windknot there. He can feel her lips find his own shoulder and linger there, but the hesitancy makes itself known and so he continues to pull on her hair lightly before grasping at her withers with gentle teeth that groom not bite. Sviko almost questions if she really missed him (usually no one does, or they never voice it) but he can hear the truth in her tone and finds himself smiling between mouthfuls of her skin.
“Mmmppff,” he mumbles before again. “I think I’d be sad if you didn’t.” it is a bit of light jest as he brings his face towards hers so that he can look in her eyes - let her see just how much she’s already gotten under his skin. He wants to ask her things like where did she come from before that party on the beach, and why is she alone, but he doesn’t. There is time for that later, when she trusts him more to talk about those things.
@[Achlyss] mwah!
No he couldn’t understand the monster that she had faced and lived through. No one could unless they had lived through it, been in the darkness day after day. She didn’t expect him to understand. She knew that his childhood had been full of fun and family and laughter...love. And she didn’t want that darkness that she had seen, been apart of to touch him or to mar him in anyway. No, it wasn’t something she ever wanted for him.
It was why her eyes didn’t quite meet his.
Why. Such a simple question, a simple word. She almost wonders if she should answer it, but she pulls her lips from his skin and looks out towards the sea. Her voice is quiet, lost amongst the crashing of the waves on the shore but she pauses, and shakes her head before she starts again, louder this time.
“My childhood was not full of light and love.” A small sad smile, her eyes lost amongst the waves but not really seeing them. “I have this ability to hypnotize others, and my father thought it was an excellent ability to use on the mares in his herd. Especially the ones he didn’t plan on keeping around.” His lips were soothing and when his teeth started to lightly groom and fuss along her mane it eased her muscles, stopped her trembling and the words fell from her lips like a waterfall.
“You see if I didn’t do what he wanted me to, my mother would pay for it. She tried to be strong for both of us, tried to keep me from doing what he made me to do, but he was always stronger.” A soft sigh, her words catching as she said the words out loud. “I don’t want to accidently use it on you too. I don’t want to see your eyes glaze over as I tell you to do what I want you to do.” A small shake of her head and she wanted to look at him, to see the sorrow in her eyes, to see the truth. But she didn’t dare.
“He never hurt me like he hurt momma, at least not physically. But I had to do bad things, and sometimes I still replay their deaths in my head.” She doesn’t notice the salty tracks of the tears that she has down her cheeks. Not many, just a couple. Just enough to release the pressure from the feelings inside her. “I’m drawn to you, want to be with you and maybe fall in love with you someday.” If she wasn’t already halfway there anyways. “But I’m scared to hurt you, I’m scared to let myself be vulnerable to you because I don’t know you.” Her head tilts towards him, her eyes not quite looking at him. “My name is Achlyss, by the way.” She says her words softer, a small smile curling the corners of her lips before they found their way back to touch his skin.
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