• Logout
  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


    i know i've dreamed you
    #1
    “I’m tired of Tephra, of the quiet.” Crowns had said abruptly the previous morning. She’d studied him with silent green eyes and watched him for some clue of the thoughts behind his brilliant blue eyes. But there was only the hush between them, then. Sabbath had let it stretch out for a while longer before giving a shrug of her scaled shoulders.

    Should we just uproot the entire family and migrate on a whim, then?” she asked him, intending to dismiss his childish complaints until his face lit up with excitement. The harsh scowl of her face had softened so easily, and she gave a sigh as she turned to face her other children. Katarine only blinked up at her, intrigued by the conversation but uncommitted to any possibilities in store for the clan.

    Now, in the golden light of morning, they arrive in Nerine en masse - Crowns, Sabbath, Varick, Riptide and Katarine. Vulgaris and Leliana and their entire brood form a small herd of their own, all chattering away and smiling at the thrill of such a sudden move.

    Her children waste no time rushing off to explore, but Sabbath finds herself breaking away from the group to admire the cliff’s edge. The wind is harsh against her cheeks and it pushes her forelock from her face, revealing the red dapples around her broken horn and the wild green of her eyes when they catch the sun. She already misses the thick humidity of the jungle. Still, she can never deny her children whatever their heart desires. Her ear swivels to catch the sound of Varick approaching and she turns her head to face him. There is the briefest upturn at the corner of her lips that anyone else would miss.

    Do I spoil them, you think?” she asks with a defeated laugh. They both know the answer. Crowns had asked for his father when he was ill and she had never let Varick leave after. Their marriage is owed entirely to her maternal weaknesses. She nips gently at his cheek when he comes close enough and then settles beside him.

    Varick, do you know what I like best about you?” she asks more seriously now. Sabbath pauses just long enough to cut him off if he tries to answer, “You’re unlike anyone I’ve met, before. You don’t ask anything of me, you don’t try to change who I am. You never have.

    She keeps her eyes trained on the way the waves crash into the cliffs far below them. Her voice is sterile and she’s careful to keep the words from coming out soft or revealing any of the emotion behind them. But then her shoulder leans into his and her muscles relax, just a little.
    may my enemies live long                                  so they can see me prosper.
    sabbath
    @[Varick]
    #2
    so make your siren's call and sing all you want, I will not hear what you have to say --
    Having no attachment to any particular land, Varick had not hesitated when the family had decided to move to Nerine. When he had first left the island waters he had been born in he had had every intention of exploring as far as he could go, even if it meant leaving Beqanna. Settling in Tephra had not been the goal, and had he not met Sabbath the moment he found its shore he likely would not have stayed for more than a few days. 

    For someone that so badly had longed for freedom, he had been all too willing to essentially shackle himself to her side, though the only prison bars were ones of his own making. He knows Sabbath would not stop him should he ever leave; her pride would never let her do such a thing as asking him to stay.

    Luckily for him, and perhaps some days unluckily for her, he had no intention of leaving her.

    It’s why he trails along dutifully when she caves (easily, he notices with amusement)  to Crowns desire to leave Tephra, falling into step alongside her. If anything he was pleased at the thought of being somewhere colder, somewhere that the sun did not so easily melt away the frost of his scales. Nerine had a wild, ruggedness to it that he could appreciate, with the sheer cliffs that dropped suddenly to the crashing waves, and the overcast skies that always seemed to be threatening rain.

    His eyes follow Sabbath when she separates herself from the group not long after they arrive, and he hesitates a moment before following her. The dim sun catches the sage-green of her eyes and illuminates that whisper of a smile, and his heart rattles inside of its cage at the sight. He always found her ferociously beautiful, but anytime she offered him even a glimpse of softness he became enamored all over again. “Yes,” he answers her with his own crooked grin, the kind that does not quite show the sharpness of his teeth. “But, they’re pretty fantastic kids, so they deserve it,” he says while making only a half-hearted attempt to dodge her bite against his cheek. “Though I may be biased.”

    He falls quiet though when her tone turns serious, and though her eyes are focused on the waves, his are focused on her. Getting her to reveal even the smallest pieces of herself has been a process; one that he often fails miserably at, and he has learned that it is better to simply keep quiet and accept whatever she offers without trying to ask for more. Even though he would readily cut himself open and let her see every darkness and insecurity that he himself harbored, he knew it was not ever going to be so easy for her.

    “I guess I always assumed what you liked best about me went by the names of Crowns, Katarine, and Riptide,” he says with a quirk of his lips, using his own humor to soften the lack of emotion in her words. But at the feel of her shoulder leaning against him, slight though it may be, he grows more solemn. Even with the cold of Nerine her body felt warm in comparison to his frosted scales, and the feel of her against him sends a tremor up his spine that forces him to clench his jaw to keep from reaching over to caress her. “I love everything about you, Sabbath,” comes the low baritone of his voice, shifting his weight just enough to press lightly back into her, his muzzle skimming against her neck. “I would never want you to change.”
    VARICK


    @[Sabbath]
    #3
    When she was younger, she would have sworn that she could never leave Loess. Then Tephra became her home and she thought that there, surely, she could be loyal forever. It was where her family became whole again and she learned to let her soft side show every now and again. But now she knows that wherever her children go, she will follow. No towering jungle trees or steaming hot springs could ever ignite the devotion she has for her little family, for Varick.

    Sabbath manages a rare laugh when he confirms that she does, in fact, spoil their children. She’s well aware that she is weak against any of their pleas or wants so long as it doesn’t seem to involve any danger. Her eyes briefly find his when he says they deserve all this. Somehow, Varick becomes even more attractive when he agrees with her like this.

    His words send an electric shiver up her back and she averts her eyes back to the ocean waves. A short gasp pulls through her teeth at the feel of his lips over her skin but she says nothing for a while. There is still a creeping fear when he says things like this, a quiet terror that he will be ripped away from her somehow. It’s why she pushes him away so harshly at times. As if she could simply tear them apart herself and find comfort in that sort of control. But he always comes circling back, gentle as ever, and she knows she is doomed to care for him forever.

    You terrify me,” she says, so soft the words are almost lost in the sound of the ocean’s tide. “You show up on the shore one day and you wouldn’t die, and now I can’t imagine living without you.

    She doesn’t say that she loves him and her tone is not delicate the way she would like it to be; but her lips find the corner of his and she breathes a sigh of defeat. They both know how she feels even if those words struggle to come out at times.
    may my enemies live long                                  so they can see me prosper.
    sabbath
    @[Varick]
    #4
    so make your siren's call and sing all you want, I will not hear what you have to say --
    She laughs, and he wonders if she has any idea how captivating he truly finds her—if she realizes that she has him fully ensnared.

    He could compare it to a spider trapping prey in its web, only, he crawled there willingly, and did not plan on leaving.

    From the moment her fangs had hit his scales he had been enamored, both by her beauty and her utterly terrifying fierceness. She did not need him, he had known that from the moment he met her, and truthfully he did not want her to need him—but oh, how badly he wanted her to want him. To want him to stay, to want him to be the only one to receive her scathing glares and secret smiles.

    And he knows that she must want him, even if she doesn’t always admit it, or else they would not currently be here, together, staring at the same sea from the face of the same cliff.

    Above the dull roar of the waves he hears her voice, and just like any other time she speaks, the rest of the world falls away. There is a cold clenching in his chest at not only how softly she speaks, but at the words that she says. Her touch against the corner of his mouth sends a tremble across his skin, his frost-covered scales seeming to shiver themselves in response. Emboldened, he trails his own lips up, across the familiar curve of her cheek, before he presses a soft, lingering kiss to her temple. “I promised you I wasn’t going anywhere,” he whispers in earnest near her ear, his jaw momentarily tightening at how badly he wants to tell her she doesn’t have to be afraid. He doesn’t, though, because he knows that she knows; he knows that he has shown her in all the ways that he knows how that he loves her and will always stay, and he knows that she is trying.

    Instead, he draws back just slightly, skimming the edge of a sharp tooth against the crest of her neck as he says in a way that is both teasing and mildly taunting, “Besides, we both know you can't kill me. Nothing gets past these scales.”
    VARICK


    @[Sabbath]
    #5
    Where would she be without him at her side? Would she be half as happy, would she know even a fraction of this bliss? It seems impossible to imagine not having him sleeping next to her, now. An existence without Crowns, Riptide, or Katarine seems unimaginable and she’s grateful that she won’t have to know another moment of her life without them in it. And all of this is hers because she tried to rip his throat out for daring to come near her home. It almost makes her laugh aloud to think of it.

    She wants to flinch away when he touches his lips to her cheek; but she stays still and spares a little of the trust he’s built with her. Sabbath allows him to trail his touch her skin and even kiss her face where she likes it best. Her head dips down to expose her neck to his tooth gladly.

    “If I really wanted you dead, I could’ve done it. I guess a part of me has always been soft for you,” she says with a hint of feigned disappointment. It had crossed her mind to ask her mother to shed his scales, to give her teeth that could not be denied. But then Crowns stirred in his fitful sleep during that awful fever and she knew she could never be without Varick. He was too kind, too patient, too right for her to die and leave her alone again.

    “Kiss me again,” she commands him, her voice stern as she turns to face him once more.




    Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)