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+---- Thread: [P] I know no love without teeth (/showthread.php?tid=2949)
I know no love without teeth - Raymond - 12-09-2018
Rock of ages, rock of ages
Still rolling, keep rolling
***
Still rolling, keep rolling
***
The sun had risen that morning into a blood-red sky, its burning and indifferent eye bathing the Arma Mountains in fire. Neither omens nor portents, nor the straining and sleepless eyes of war-weary watchers, gave it pause in its inexorable heavenward march. And under its pitiless gaze, the world carried on as always, with all the usual players - save one.
Raymond stood stiffly in the secluded heart of the mountain range, neck arched instinctively against an unseen threat. He had done what he could for himself in the aftermath of the battle. Shoddy poultices caked the worst of his wounds and the rest lay bare; dark, swollen scabs crisscrossed his flesh over bloody rivulets left to dry and flake on their own. He cast his eyes East toward the midmorning sun, but did not see it: his mind was elsewhere.
She stirs.
He breathed in sharply. The low steady rumble of Ruth's breathing, which had slipped beneath his conscious awareness during the unbroken monotony of his vigil, flooded back to the surface like a wall of white noise.
He turned his back on the sun to where her colossal form lay nestled almost gingerly in the elbow of two adjoining mountains, her carapace a forest of wicked knives to guard the treasure lying in the center of her coiled mass. She lifted her massive head only enough to blink one sleep-clouded golden eye at him.
Thank you, my dear.
Mouth dry and body aching, the red stallion moved with as much dignity as he could muster into the cocoon of the Tarrasque's body. He did not like to worry - it left bitter ashes in his stomach - and the fear running hot and cold through his veins as the swarthy mare came into view was as much against him as it was her.
Because he could not be both in love and in control.
Because he was powerless.
But she was alive. He steeled himself against the worry that had made his own wellbeing an afterthought and said, softly, "That was reckless." But what he felt - to lay eyes upon her again, to share her presence, was not the worry that had creased his face and darkened his eyes.
It was fierce awe.
Raymond stood stiffly in the secluded heart of the mountain range, neck arched instinctively against an unseen threat. He had done what he could for himself in the aftermath of the battle. Shoddy poultices caked the worst of his wounds and the rest lay bare; dark, swollen scabs crisscrossed his flesh over bloody rivulets left to dry and flake on their own. He cast his eyes East toward the midmorning sun, but did not see it: his mind was elsewhere.
She stirs.
He breathed in sharply. The low steady rumble of Ruth's breathing, which had slipped beneath his conscious awareness during the unbroken monotony of his vigil, flooded back to the surface like a wall of white noise.
He turned his back on the sun to where her colossal form lay nestled almost gingerly in the elbow of two adjoining mountains, her carapace a forest of wicked knives to guard the treasure lying in the center of her coiled mass. She lifted her massive head only enough to blink one sleep-clouded golden eye at him.
Thank you, my dear.
Mouth dry and body aching, the red stallion moved with as much dignity as he could muster into the cocoon of the Tarrasque's body. He did not like to worry - it left bitter ashes in his stomach - and the fear running hot and cold through his veins as the swarthy mare came into view was as much against him as it was her.
Because he could not be both in love and in control.
Because he was powerless.
But she was alive. He steeled himself against the worry that had made his own wellbeing an afterthought and said, softly, "That was reckless." But what he felt - to lay eyes upon her again, to share her presence, was not the worry that had creased his face and darkened his eyes.
It was fierce awe.
***
Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.
Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.
@Calliope | Takes place in the Arma mountains
RE: I know no love without teeth - Calliope - 12-11-2018
""If she had touched me," he said very softly, "I would have been hers and not my own, not ever again. I wanted her to touch me but I could not let her."
*
Calliope does not dream as her magic cracks weakly through her veins. Only blackness keeps the thready song of her heart company. If there are sparks of white breaking up the black as her lighting runs through her body like a waterfall she never notices.
But if there were dreams to keep her company they would be bloody. Broken wings would float above her head like clouds of massacre. Monsters would linger in her shadows, their massive bodies made of house cats, lions and dragons. Thunder would gallop at her side and each curve of it would both create and destroy the form of her sister. Above it all would be a blood-moon, redder than blood fresh from the veins, redder than red.
Perhaps it's not black that she dreams of but layers and layers of red, piled onto of each other until the entire world looks black with those layers of red.
When she finally gallops out of the blackness (with that lighting bear at her side) it's only to see more scale-darkness broken up only with slim, fractured shards of daylight. Her eyes feel as weak as fireflies, bits of light and darkness and fragile enough to catch and blow away like dust. For the first time Calliope hates her body, hates all the mortal blood and bone that cannot fight until all the beasts of the words are corpses.
And she wonders, when Raymond enters into that slatted darkness, if she should hate the thing in her that looks at him and cannot feel regret (even though she knows she should). Oh there are so many things she should regret, like knowing that she would have happily died to save either of her two loves without pausing to think of the other. Instead she only looks at him and stands, shaking her body like a lioness.
“Of course it was.” She says and thinks again that she should feel something other than this thick blackness lingering over her soul. “War is always a little reckless.” Stiffly she closes the distance between them and lays her nose against his (a kiss if it came from anyone but her). She blinks to hide the feral rage that still boils like lava inside her.
Calliope tries to find the words to say I'm sorry over and over again as she traces her nose across his cheek, his neck, his spine.
The words never come.
@Raymond
RE: I know no love without teeth - Raymond - 12-17-2018
And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder
One of the four beasts saying, 'Come and see.' and I saw.
and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around
One of the four beasts saying, 'Come and see.' and I saw.
Of course it was.
He didn't bother to swallow the smile that played across his sooty lips. This was the savage queen that had fought fiends and dragons, that had bayed without fear for the blood of a heathen god. If she had been reckless, it was born of conviction and command. If she had been reckless, it was only because she had been sewn from the cloth of the Old Heroes, in whose footsteps and breaths lived the strength to bring even the mightiest of villains low.
Raymond fancied himself a relic of those old stories, too, but the stories belonged to others; he was but a shadow and a subtle knife.
His body, red stone carved with redder wounds, yielded like water to her touch, curling around her with an intimacy reserved only for times of love and war as his tail intertwined with hers. Ruth's slow, methodical breathing rumbled like distant thunder in his bones and her nose left tingles of electricity as it swept across his flesh. He leaned into the crest of her proud neck, breathing in the ozone scent that had painted the walls of whale-bone chapels and buried itself in the scales of butchered dragons.
Home was a concept both fearful and alien to the red stallion, a dead word in whose solitary syllable stood a forest of unmarked and unmourned graves, and yet he felt it here.
Not in Denocte, but here. In the moments they stole from damnable civilization.
War is always a little reckless, she'd said, and he tilted his head ever-so-slightly as though to catch the echo of her own words bounding across his racing thoughts. From her lips they had been barbed, angry, biting as she had been bitten by the recklessness that had spared her body at the expense of her pride. From his, they came with a sort of soft, stupid wonderment born of epiphany - like a lone wolf faltering as a distant howl joins his own upon the wind.
"I welcome the danger, as long as you're by my side."
He didn't bother to swallow the smile that played across his sooty lips. This was the savage queen that had fought fiends and dragons, that had bayed without fear for the blood of a heathen god. If she had been reckless, it was born of conviction and command. If she had been reckless, it was only because she had been sewn from the cloth of the Old Heroes, in whose footsteps and breaths lived the strength to bring even the mightiest of villains low.
Raymond fancied himself a relic of those old stories, too, but the stories belonged to others; he was but a shadow and a subtle knife.
His body, red stone carved with redder wounds, yielded like water to her touch, curling around her with an intimacy reserved only for times of love and war as his tail intertwined with hers. Ruth's slow, methodical breathing rumbled like distant thunder in his bones and her nose left tingles of electricity as it swept across his flesh. He leaned into the crest of her proud neck, breathing in the ozone scent that had painted the walls of whale-bone chapels and buried itself in the scales of butchered dragons.
Home was a concept both fearful and alien to the red stallion, a dead word in whose solitary syllable stood a forest of unmarked and unmourned graves, and yet he felt it here.
Not in Denocte, but here. In the moments they stole from damnable civilization.
War is always a little reckless, she'd said, and he tilted his head ever-so-slightly as though to catch the echo of her own words bounding across his racing thoughts. From her lips they had been barbed, angry, biting as she had been bitten by the recklessness that had spared her body at the expense of her pride. From his, they came with a sort of soft, stupid wonderment born of epiphany - like a lone wolf faltering as a distant howl joins his own upon the wind.
"I welcome the danger, as long as you're by my side."
@Calliope
and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around
RE: I know no love without teeth - Calliope - 12-22-2018
"nothing in life is ever fair, because life is love and war.”
*
Between them there is only blood, flesh and tooth filled smiles that are reminiscent of wolves and lions. Calliope languishes in that between and she presses them together until they are black and red and blood. Her tail twines about his like a noose and perhaps that is the only apology she can bare to give (one of flesh instead of words). Even her lighting hides beneath her flesh, cowed by the fire licking across her bones.
And for the first time Calliope feels a fire that's not fury, a fire that she wants to sink into. She wants to burn.
Each of her touches becomes crueler and colder and her lips etch her name into his skin. “Always.” The word feels like a brand between them-- fire hot enough to freeze. With Calliope everything is a bond, everything a promise. Nothing is fleeting with a black unicorn with a lion in her bones and violence in her blood.
Her lips peel back and then it is only teeth between them (and there's still feathers and blood caught between her teeth like dreams in a dream-catcher). First she drags them along his crest then his spine and she tastes a challenge on his skin. Of course to her love is a challenge, a thing she must defeat and taste upon her tongue like sugar. “Promise me.” And here she thinks about a castle of whale-bones and how he left her behind to rot at the first promise of dragon-war. Here her violence rises to the surface-- love, want and rage.
But of course she doesn't point out that she was the one who welcomed death and almost left him behind for that final adventure. Loving Calliope is very much like loving war.
Over and over she traces their names across his flesh. One name is teeth and the other kisses curved into letters. “It will always be us, until the end.” Her voice curls like smoke and soot and storm between them. She wonders if he can feel the sparks in each of the places they mold together (sparks and blood, sparks and blood).
She wonders if he can feel the storm swirling and gathering in the world between her skin. A storm that even a war could not ebb.
@Raymond