anyone;

[Atrani]

Atrani

Rhonen’s touch is gentle. Father’s is rough.
His voice is gentle. Father’s is grating.
He is inviting. Father is frightening.

A breath catches in her throat, thickening the lining until she has a lump forming. She doesn’t need eyes to sense the tension and to taste the ferocity that is swirling in the air around them. It permeates through her skin and suddenly her body quivers, not with fear, but with uncertainty. Atrani has no real fear of this black, unseen world, but she finds herself worried for Rhonen. Father can be cruel, but he can also be so loving – so possessive – to a fault. ”Don’t hurt him, daddy,” she pleas, but it’s late slipping from her mouth. Suddenly father has jerked away from her. There is a coldness where he abandoned her side, but he quickly returns after she hears the shuffling of hooves and bodies. Blindly, she rotates her head so that her ears may better drink in the noises, but it ends just as quickly as it began.

Father is leaning against her again, holding her, warming that chilled area he had abandoned. She knows it’s him because of his touch – so rough, so forceful – and finds her thoughts reaching out to wonder what Rhonen’s embrace would be like. But no, father wouldn’t allow that. Not now, not ever.

”Rhonen,” she enjoys the way his name rolls off her tongue and how it sends a child down the length of her spine. ”I hope you’re right,” because she wants to be beautiful; she doesn’t want to be the monster that she envisions herself to be. Grotesque, blind, scrawny (all due to her malnutrition now). Those are the few select adjectives she has chosen for herself, and so, to hear the term pretty directed toward her elates her.

A smile curves her small lips and her brows raise as she tries desperately to imagine where Rhonen is and what he looks like. ”I don’t want to go,” she affirms to both males while stepping away from father’s comfort and reassurance. She wanders to no one, instead slipping away from both of them until she takes pause and glances over her shoulder to where they may be. ”Please no fighting,” but it is too late, ”this world is bitter enough without fighting over a little creature like me.”

Because no matter how sweet Rhonen is, and how much she wants to believe she’s pretty, the eyeless image of herself is nothing short of horrifying.

dove into her eyes and starved all the fears

picture by haenuli shin- HTML by Call - words: ________

[Rhonen]

rhonen

molten eyes and a smile made for war

Their skin meets for a second while he speaks to her, affirms that she is beautiful, before the rush of air and the pain of their bodies meeting. At the impact, he loses the fragile hold he had over his newly reclaimed powers, and he can feel the oily rush as Conquest’s dark power rushes through him, flowing into Dovev where their bodies meet. The chestnut boy knows enough to duck his head, taking his throat away from the snap of the dark stallion’s angry teeth, and though he falters back a step between the force of the blow and wincing away from the man’s bite, he does not fall. Young he may be, and lithe, but he is tall and strong and healthy. Fire seems to burst where Dovev’s rake down his neck, and he returns in kind by snapping his own jaws at whatever part of Dovev he can find that is flesh and not bone. When the come apart, he is breathing heavily, and feels his powers sink back into his chest. Rhonen doesn’t know what it will cause, or how long they touched, but he is certain that it had escaped his grasp and he feels sick to his stomach, forcing it back inside himself, afraid that he will affect Atrani.

He should never have touched her. He is broken and his touch is poison, like this. His touch is poison, again.

Atrani reinforces these thoughts as she steps away from both of them, and Rhonen is sure she sees now that he is as much a monster as her father, and wants nothing more to do with him. He is shaking, wound tight, expecting another attack from Dovev with every shaky breath he takes. This is not his first combat situation, but it had been different in the quest-world; the evil had been clear-cut and he was fighting for his life. His twin had not been there, and neither had this shining girl.

Rhonen’s heart leaps in his chest when she says she does not want to go, his eyes lighting with a joy he doesn’t often remember to feel, at contrast with the way he shivers at the feeling of blood dripping down his neck, revolting him just as much as the smell of blood on the monster had. The next words are her pleading for them not to fight and he forgets, or pretends to forget, Dovev, leaning towards her but not moving his feet. He can’t touch her now, with the poison under his skin and the blood on his neck. He would be no better than the monster. “I’m sorry,” he says helplessly, because he doesn’t know what to do. He wants to clash again with the monster, unleash his full power until the man falls quavering at his feet, but her request has him motionless instead.

Toli; I'm gonna leave it up to you how/if Rhonen affects Dovev with his power. He just got it back after all and he hasn't had much practice so it would be really weak, or it could be strong because he was so emotional. Up to you. :3 Basically it could cause any disease - boils or a rash or a cough or rabies or whatever you wanted. Rhonen wasn't really thinking of anything in particular, lol, just being angry and destructive.