The Solterran sun beat out a furious, vicious rhythm upon the Crow’s back. The sky, cerulean blue, stretched on and on, higher and higher. There were no clouds to offer respite from the unrelenting summer sun.
 
In the stark heat of the day the denizens of Solterra toiled. Raum’s skin drenched iron grey as he wove his way slowly back toward the Rapax river. Sweat beaded across his skin turning it slick and warm.
 
There were no shadows here to bask in, except for the meager spattering of thin, scanty trees that rose here and there. Their shade was paltry and never had Raum yearned more for the cool of Calligo’s shadows. He was as far from her magic and her influence, as he could ever hope to find himself. Where Rhoswen may have found the sun, so he only lost the thrall of night.
 
Blue eyes scan the dusty landscape of rolling dunes. It glowed gold beneath the sun and with disdain the Denocte boy wondered if there was any place here that was not a lustrous gold colour. 
 
The Denocte Ghost moves with grace, even as his muscles labour and his body grows weary. It was a blessing to have this natural strength from his days as a spy with the Crows… Not that those days were over now, they were just changed. He was here, not for money, but to help his brethren Crows. If there were secrets to be found, he would find them and return them to Denocte.
 
Blue eyes, as piercing as the sky overhead, take in the line of trees that bordered the river, carrying the desert from a parched and barren world, into one of lush grasses upon the banks of the river. Slowly he lowered himself into the waters. They were cool, blissfully so, resisting the heat of the sun as they drifted idly by.
 
In the midst of the river, with the waters licking at his abdomen, he cannot stop his gaze from passing, just once, to the south flowing waters and the mountains that rise beside them. Even here he could see Calligo’s shadows and his skin craves their cool, cool touch. Homesickness was a pang he had never had before, but suddenly it strikes deep, twisting into his abdomen. Regrettably, ignoring the aching pain, Raum lowers his parched lips to the water and he drinks and drinks and drinks.
 
@Rhoswen – holy moly this is the /worst/ ever! I am so, so sorry :( 

 

It was a marvel how he managed to turn this girl to ice.
 
He supposed he could spend a lifetime watching the way her fire dimmed and frost began to creep across those storm-fierce eyes. Her dancing, wild flames cool to ash and embers within his presence. And yet, his words are her gasoline. The silver crow knew how to light her like spark upon his gasoline words. He had never been a firesinger, yet, for this Solterran girl, he would learn. Rhoswen would scold him. She would burn him, but he would learn.
 
She moves nimbly, vibrantly, beneath this sun, even when her crimson skin is darkened silver and slick with sweat. The sun smiles, hot and heavy, as it weighs his limbs down with heat. It is effort, it is torture, for the boy of night to be here. Yet to watch this girl flourish, a creature born in the black, in the star-strewn sky of night, is infuriating.
 
Fire steps close to him, the sling swaying across her back. He continues his work, listening as her body hisses with the effort it takes to step close to him. And yet she does; they are magnets; night and day set to dance together, to push and pull forever and always.
 
A smile, as black as pitch, creeps its way across his lips as she stands near to him, stiff and reluctant. She has rebuilt herself, ever the slumbering volcano again. The fire girl simmers, smoky and dangerous, but quiet, for now.
 
“Water?” The Crow offers her simply, when she tells him to go home, when she says he does not belong here. Rhoswen is right, of course she is. Solis is no god of his, this desert with its scolding sands seeks to drain him of everything. He has no shadows here, he is exposed and weakened and the dunes as they laugh their sandy laughs.
 
He places a bucket between them, his ocean blue gaze finally finding her. Electric blue eyes see the ice within her own and the gleam of summer heat across her skin. “You really do thrive here.” He observes roughly, disdain flaring, chasing the heat across his silver skin. Turning to the sling upon her slender back, his voice lowers for her ears alone, “If I returned home, who would you annoy then?” Smoothly he takes the cloth and buckets from her, “Besides, I am not sure who will kill me first, the heat, or you… I am curious to find out.”
 
With that he is gone, returning to the water with her buckets, her sling. Just his words remain to bite along the shell of her ear. 


@Rhoswen dum dum de dum

 

Raum once thought of them as a comet and a planet set upon a collision course. The longer she near him now, however, the faster the Crow is coming to realize that they were planets. Always together, never apart, bound and tethered by a bond that pulls them close, keeping them there but never pulling closer.
 
Watching her slip into the water, he cannot help but marvel when the water does not hiss, does not steam about her skin. Rhoswen is the deadliest kind of fire, worse than the sun that sinks into his skin, threatening to melt it from his bones. This girl works deeper, her fire would burn a soul and his is already blistering.
 
“I had.” He murmurs, something akin to resignation whispering in his words, as he drops her buckets into the water for her. Words play upon his tongue, desperate to be asked, filled with the sharpness of a knife for all his resentment. But, instead of loosing them, his eyes flit to the surroundings. He wishes for no more attention upon him, upon her. Safety here is for him to be perceived as uninteresting in every way. He was more exposed than he ever had been and the girl of fire was a renegade in his plans. One he had hoped to avoid.
 
Fool.
 
Haughtily she pushes past him, the flick of her tail catching across his chest. It is not often he was caught out. It is not often someone else moves faster than he. The sun was making him slow, dulling his senses.
 
Lifting his head swiftly to avoid her dismissive tail, his own ears fall to his skull like tumbling towers.  The crow, silver to her crimson, is aware of her standing close, firestone within the fleeing waters. Rhoswen’s stormy eyes contrast the blue, blue liquid of the river. Every nerve strains to ignore the creature beside him and smooth his skin of dispassionate silver, as sleek and uncontainable as the water that flows by.
 
Her threat demands his attention, pulling it from where he worked to fill his buckets. They flit to her for a moment, but it was a moment too short for a retort for her own final, retort comes like smoke after a blaze.
 
Her sideways glance is enough to miss the water snagging within her bucket, pulling the sling and opposing pail downstream. He lunges closer to her, catching the runaway bucket with a hoof, lingering close, too close. They are light to dark, water to fire. He stays just long enough to murmur, “So you say, Rhoswen. Best to keep your eye on your buckets if you wish to stop a Crow interfering.” Then like moonlight he is gone. The space yawns open between them once again, as if they were never there, so close; little more than fire and ice.
 
 
@Rhoswen  ha! I think he might have just flirted, in his own backhanded kinda way.

He sees the blush as it creeps along her cheeks, he sees the way she dips her head, hiding behind a crimson veil of curled hair.
 
With a retort that snaps like a whip, Rhoswen breaches the chasm his withdrawal had drawn between them. For all that her retort cracks like a whip, it’s sting, its bite, is gone. Now, all her flame-licked words do is pull a smile from his lips. “Were you always this distracted?” The Crow counters, eyes lowering to her bucket pointedly.
 
He wades through the river as liquid as the waters rushing past. They push him back towards her, but their efforts are not needed for he suddenly hears the splash of water as she pursues him.
 
That dismissive snort has him tilting his head to regard her, the sway of her body, the length of lithe, lithe limbs and the fire in her eyes. He renews his efforts filling his own buckets, even when she tails him, even when its all his eyes wish to do to watch her as though she were some undiscovered wonder of the world. 
 
The Sun Girl’s question is sharp, playful. She is the lioness set to play, with her claws well hidden. Denocte’s Ghost feels little more than a mouse in her sights at this moment. But he has been handing this creature since childhood. He knows what her claws feel like.
 
He knows Rose.
 
Despite this, he cannot help the way his eyes trail the line of her neck, the dance of her slender limbs. No one as fiery as she should be so at ease in water. The quicksilver boy stops at last to regard her as she approaches. It’s only when she stops before him, that his eyes narrow, his head lowering to meet her own before his gaze lips pointedly by her. “Forgot your buckets again, Rose?” The Crow murmurs pointedly , his brows lifted, his gaze slyly. “It’s a wonder you made it this far.” He murmurs again, half despairing, half in jest.
 
Her buckets meander their way downstream half submersed, half afloat as they bob away. His gaze returns to her, the electricity to her stormy eyes. Lazily, he lets his eyes trail over her face, close as they are. He does not rush as he takes in  every line of red-silver skin, the glow of her eyes, warm as whisky and as wild as a storm. “Hell.” He says in a voice like a purr, his look suddenly feline, dangerous. She was not the only creature with claws, the grasp of his knife upon his leg is remembrance enough...
 
“Hell, is my one word for Solterra.” There is no ounce of humour as he confirms his answer. But he does not let his gaze leave from her. He feels the torturous heat of the sun, the absence of water, of shadows, of Crows.
 
To have her here too, a creature of fire and temptation, is surely hell.
 
He turns back away from her, continuing to pull his own buckets along, collecting water as he goes. “You may wish to get your buckets, unless you are planning a trip downstream?” He calls back to the girl of fire and smoke.


@Rhoswen <3

Mm, yet here I am.
 
Why it was that those words exactly gave him pause, the quicksilver Crow does not know. Yet he cannot resolve the fact that he lingers, his eyes trailing over where the water darkens her skin to blood black – crow black. A shiver slides along his skin and it is not from the cold of the river, nor the contrasting heat of the sun. It is something else, something deeper. Something he fears, but known has lingered within him for so long. It is familiar. It is her.
 
He pushes thoughts of her from his mind, but as readily as water cannot be fully contained, so the thoughts of her will only slip back in. Rhoswen follows him and it is only when her buckets snag upon a branch that she dives downstream to catch them. She is lithe through the water and again Raum finds himself wondering why the waters so readily accept this girl of flame and smoke.
 
Hell is other people.
 
The Crow smirks, lips curling into a sly half-smile at her words. “Hmm, you always were a pleasure.” He says sarcastically, although the smile has yet to fade from his argent lips. “But I do not disagree with you.” He follows her up the bank, water sloughing from his skin, leaving it gleaming dark like granite. The Denocte boy draws level with her slender body, eyes trailing her curves. “I just think the Solterran people are the worst.” His voice is a lions purr, as provocative as a knife across her skin. Like a cat, he toys with her. Raum knows she is no defenseless mouse, but a lioness, with claws and teeth that have more than once known his blood.
 
He draws nearer to her, buckets chinking, his lips finding the slant of her damp shoulder. His touch lingers, indulgent, dangerous before he murmurs against her skin, “Careful Rhoswen, I might think you are concerned for me.”


@Rhoswen <3 <3