A child of the sun, prodigy crafted by Solis Himself, a lithe and serpentine specimen built to survive the harshest climates of Solterra. She is an oasis to a thirsty traveler, refined by the grit of sands that dance in the wind; a colorful cocktail of mexican red clay, the white-hot glare of the midday sun, and the black of an unfathomable desert sky at night. Her body is a treasure trove of culture and secrets, one who dances with the ghosts that haunt her, a wraith of summer heat and mirrored mirages.
And even though she is as wild as mother nature herself, she is apprehensive of the ocean.
Fever stands a few yards back from the shore: sands stretch for endless measures behind her, the shade of a few palm trees her only refuge from the fat sun that burns in the sky. The expanse of water in front of her is a tropical shade of blue, the waves in the gentle tide sparkling like scattered diamonds while seafoam collects on the sand like a pearl necklace.
Like all beautiful things, Fever is drawn to it. She is enamored with the way the shore pushes away the sea but always pulls her back in, like a forbidden dance between two lovers who were never meant to be. It demands her attention, the way a wild dancer would, beckons her in with a promise of cool relief for her hot skin. Yes, the ocean seduces Fever, but she cannot find the strength to ever meet her.
In the slave houses, her mates would speak of horror stories of those who had drown and how they would never be able to meet Solis in death. Just like being buried, drowning is not a noble death - there is no honor in having the ocean keep your body.
Yet, there was once a time where she had promised a dear friend that they would one day play in the ocean together.
But she had abandoned him, and she was certain he had moved on to frolic in the sea with someone else. Perhaps she would find his ghost in those waters - she could succumb and perhaps find him at the bottom of the ocean floor with open arms, a waltz awaiting her. Her mother could be down there as well, screaming out to Fever with a voice that would go unheard. How would Fever know she wasn't down there unless she looked?
An ache squeezes her heart in an invisible vice as she lays in the shade alone; the mare tries to distract her wandering mind by watching the water giggle at her, admiring the seductive ebb and flow of the tide, letting the tantalizing salt in the air try to tempt her into taking a step into the unknown.
A son of the sun, the Solterran child stands amidst the sand and lets it play upon him. Like the gold that drips upon his skin, the gold of this world of his drips over the brown of him, too. Beige seeks to devour that which it cannot have, searching for some part to keep for itself, even if it is only his bones that remain once all else is gone. But he does not shy away from the Mors, does not let her intimidate him lest he rolls over and dies right there. Toaru knows that no mere desert should take him down, no average mortal would deter him from the path he's chosen. And he has chosen.
No better than a bastard-born to his mother and father now, he is perhaps the last Irellis to walk under the Solterran sun, to bask in Solis divine glow. And he would spit on his parents' very grave had he known where it was if they were even allowed such a thing after everything that has passed. His nose turns up in distaste as he walks by dune after dune. Time ticks on, and still he feels as though he is frozen. It does not touch him, only the heat knows him in the way it makes sweat drip down his skin. Slippery jewels of liquid that the grounds greedily drink up as they fall. Every pearl lost to something bigger than he will ever be. He is fine with that. He was never meant to be larger than life, he was only meant to live it as well as he can. And today is rare.
So rare.
Far behind him, the city slumbers as waves of heat roll in like the tide, washing over their land. Like any good soldier, he braves it, inch by inch, until flimsy palm trees offer him shade and respite against the harsh rays above. Gladly he takes to them, dappled from the holes in the leaves and the light they let through. It bathes him gold and black, streaks him in sin and shadow. But he is no shadow. He is no monster from the past.
Perhaps, he is still just a boy dreaming of a future with a girl who promised the world. There are days he thinks that the rotting gold of the city matches the shade that her eyes were. Most days, he tries not to think much at all, for the stallion is sure that the little girl he knew is dead somewhere. How could she have survived those streets alone for so long? A frown further permeates his face, and even with his brow relaxed, he is an image of disdain and discontent. Set upon the beach as a demon (and there are many tales in the city that would paint him as such), he stalks from his shaded perch into the ocean's embrace. It takes him as a lover, basking in the silk of his skin, pulling his hair teasingly, so invitingly. Deeper he wades until his chest is half-submerged, until the push and pull and undertow remind him he is alive. He is alive. And his life matters. What he is doing matters. With this knowledge he burns, he is ignited and furious and turns that fury toward the shore. The dead may rest, but he cannot. Not yet. Not when there is strife and hunger, not when there are slaves and children beaten in the streets and paraded about. Not when Solterrans are treated as toys, not people. They had seen monster after monster, the silver brute having been the last, and it is not enough to watch them fall. So he pushes from the ocean; the distance from his previous shoreline retreat matters so little to him, for he would walk world after world if it meant he could bring peace and prosperity to those who have never known such sweet things.
He expects the sand and the silence, the wind his only companion to string him along and sing in his ear. He does not expect a body on the ground covered in gold and black veils. He does not expect the familiar crowning of horns spearing down a familiarly red neck. This is not a ghost he expected at all. Ears flatten, nostrils flare, and he pauses with a grimace (oh it hides so much, it paints him a coward in its own right) staring right down at her. What pretty tricks the desert can play after all.
She briefly believes with her whole heart that the heat had finally taken her from this world, that she lay dead amongst the fronds and sunshine -
Because there he is.
And he is so beautiful that it kicks her in the teeth.
He emerges out of the waters like a specter of the sea, the crystalline salt and surf sparkling on his dappled body, the gilded markings that drip down his antlers like liquified sunshine - they carve a mandala shape that is akin to the sun around his equally golden eyes. She remembers studying the intricacies of his face like a foreign language, determined to engrave every detail permanently into the gallery of her mind. Fever's breath remains caught in her throat as she scrutinizes this body - this man - who had aged and matured like a ripe fruit. She remembers him gawky, thin and boy-like, impetuous and ready to fight the world.
She is pleased to see the triangle of small white dots on his shoulder - it was one of her favorite spots to put her nose when she needed to lean on him.
They would have followed each other to the ends of the world - she promised to deliver him to paradise.
When his feet hit the sand, the breeze curls around his body and carries his cologne to her nostrils. It is in that moment, that the familiar spice of his skin, painfully affirms that she is not in the afterlife.
Toaru is here in the flesh.
She rises from the sand in one fluid movement, the grains falling off her body with little effort, the bells on her thigh chiming softly in the air. The air between them is dead - she listens to the waves and the desert foliage whisper in the wind, but the calls of birds had ceased, everything stagnant as the tension begins to fester.
The mare stretches out her neck, her black nose pushing towards him, drinking in that smell for one last confirmation before receding into a curled arch - a rattlesnake posed to strike, her golden eyes a narrow slit as she watches him grimace at her. Fever can't help but choke on the guilt that is trapped in her airway, she wishes to swallow it and reach out to him; the flattening of his ears and his stoic posture screams unhappiness.
She doesn't blame him.
She failed him.
She wished to spill her guts, confess why she never showed at their rendezvous. But he couldn't know that she hid away imperative information for their entire relationship - their friendship was constructed on lies, the foundation of secrets bound to fall out from underneath her. He is unaware of the horrors she endured the night she was supposed to run away with him.
How many times did you wait for me to show up?
Alas, she matches his energy - she doesn't want him to think that she missed him - she doesn't think it wise for him to know that the sight of him restored all hope in her of finding her mother. She moves just beyond the shadows of the palms, just so the sun of Solis would kiss her chimera skin, but no closer to him in fear that his proximity would cause her guard to falter and fall prey to his stare.
She says his name like silk, it drips from her mouth like nectar from an eager flower. "Toaru."
Her own duo-toned ears pin against her head, though her lips are veiled by the glitter-sheer fabric of her face mask, they curl into a smirk and she speaks to him with a pretentious scoff, "I thought you were going to leave this city behind."
All too eager and sweet, Fever unspools towards him like a skein of yarn unwinding, letting herself reach and reach and reach and then... She comes up short, retreating back into the lengths of herself to hide and play coy once more. And it is a game. For he has seen the soul of her, and she of him, and they are no strangers to one another's tricks and truths. Once, perhaps, Fever knew him better than anyone else in this world. There are times, he knows, she still might. But today, in this moment, they are both grown beyond that; they have come so very far from street rats with dirty faces and silly, gap-toothed smiles just looking for a place (or a person) to belong. Every sinew of her says he no longer belongs. From the narrowing of those hypnotic, golden eyes to the sultry turn of hidden lips, he knows the woman can no longer be his home. No longer a port in the storm hammering away at his sails.
Toaru wants to sigh. Let the weight of the world fall out with his breath as it used to when they were young.
He does not.
Standing tall, resolute, his head tilts only slightly, angling as though to read this new snake before him that wears the skin of his former friend. Is she still his friend? From this distance - physically, emotionally, soul-shreddingly far from her - it is hard to tell what is and, what was, and what will be. So he steps closer, daring her with that burning gaze to try and skewer him upon her horns. "I thought you had died," he returns just as softly, looking behind her as though it would show her corpse upon the streets. It does not. And she did not. And some part of him is grateful that their burning deity, as wrathful as he could be, did not take her from this world too soon. "I should have known you would not..." and if it is a compliment he does not say so. How does one compliment a ghost? A memory? A smoke trail back to the past that will be blown away as soon as he turns his head? You do not. You simply exist and move forward, keep walking and running until it is gone and does not matter. She does not matter. But this is a lie. It will always be a lie because she has always mattered; from the very first moment they met, she mattered. Wherever her soul went, his did too. And when she did not show, when his soul still walked beside hers, he did not feel it fall into the oblivion as he thought it might have were she ever to leave.
"I cannot leave, there is still a world to build," he says at last, wondering if she'll remember at all the city they'd planned to make all those nights while looking at the stars. Somewhere beautiful.
Somewhere perfect...
Regardless of those beside him or behind him, Toaru still marches forward, heedless of the consequences, into a future of uncertainty and endless beauty. The tears will not matter. The strife will fade. And when he sees the smiles of children and people who lost their voices somewhere along the way, then he will know that it is all worth it.
When they were younger, Fever believed Toaru carried the sunrise in his eyes; they were gold just like her own, but his was a shade that lifted her spirits like dawn breaking the horizon, like the color of the light that shimmies and sparkles on the surface of the ocean bottled and saved for a rainy day. The kind of sunlight that parts the misery of storm clouds and whispers a promise of a rainbow.
And yet her own reflection in those eyes was alien.
She was now just a stranger to him.
His eyes no longer held the same warmth – and they warned her, dared her to continue her charade. As he began to eat the distance between them, panic was aflutter in her breast, her gaze breaking from his face to quickly dart to her peripherals to seek an exit. How fickle she was to already be searching for evasion.
She knows there is nowhere to run.
When he speaks to her about dying, she momentarily hesitates, her eyes glossing over with the sudden flood of memories of her attempt to meet him that night: she remembers being apprehended, she recalls fighting the need to call out to him, she relives her sweet mother paying the price for her daughter’s disobedience.
I did die that night.
Knowing she could not slip away out of his grip, she lifts a hind foot and stomps it in place, the bulk of her tail attempting to swat back and forth, agitated and feline-like; it was a subtle warning in response to him coming closer. She was not afraid of whatever anger he harbored towards her, in fact, it was well deserved, but she was mortified of what words might come out of his mouth, knowing that he still might have the power to soften her, to weaken her walls.
She remembers their city – she was too naïve to be talking as big as she was, full of herself, high on hopes of creating paradise, for holding his hand and leading him away from this starving kingdom. Somewhere where the children could run free without rationing their energy in worry of when their next meal would come, somewhere where currency was as unvaluable as the dirt under their feet, somewhere that Fever and Toaru could count the stars all night without being interrupted by the ghosts of their families.
But for now, her apology was an animal caged in her teeth and she was not yet keen on letting it loose.
“Oh, Toaru, tsk tsk-,“ she purrs in false charm, “You thought I was dead but yet Solterra still stands? Why, if it were the other way around, I would have burned this city down for you.” There was a hint of solemnity in the spice of her voice, though the scythe of her smile was still present. Was she questioning his loyalty to her?
The sarcasm drips from her words,“I’m absolutely thrilled to hear you’re still parading around with those fantasies.”
Fever begins to angle her body away from him, testing his reaction, whether he’d let her walk away or demand answers from her. Perhaps he wouldn't entertain her games at all. “Tell me, honestly now, have you been spending your days wasting away? Are you enamored with the love of your life? Have many children? Lost the gall to get out of this place? What really holds you here?” She continues to cut away little by little, each question laced with the intention to aggravate him, hoping to get some information out him - praying that his answers wouldn't break her heart in the meantime.
Alas, her last statement is flawed in delivery, her coy guise slips temporarily, and her voice is raw as she realizes he still should have sought paradise without her.
“You were supposed to leave that night.” she says softly, the hint of a whine choked at the end.
All Fever ever wanted for Toaru was a good life.
He deserved everything that his younger self wished for. It crushed Fever to know he stayed behind.
All she ever wanted was the image of his smile forever painted on his mouth.
Between them is the world and it snatches their breaths away, intermingled in the winds that will not return to them, if ever it will pass through Solterra once more. With his advance, she shies back; eyes dart from his own burning gaze and he wonders what it is she fears. Does Fever truly believe he could ever bring harm to her? Part of him wonders the same, but he knows (he thinks he knows) that she will be forever safe from him. Of all the faces, the people and places, Fever alone could be spared from it all. And if it is futile and he should fail, she should not crumble beside him upon the city that broke them both and built them up again. But he cannot watch her burn it. Cannot watch her stomp her pretty little foot again and huff out indignantly, almost like a girl throwing a fit.
But this is a woman before him, and clearly she knows that she is anything but a girl anymore. Their youth was ripped from them long ago and far, far too early. There are scars they wear and bare and scars they hide. What is it then that she hides behind the purr that slips from her lips? He wants to lean into that purr, that silky soft voice that's meant to entice and leave you wanting. It is the voice of a fever dream, just like her name. Clearing his throat, his brows lower as he asks "Is that all you want? Fire and death and bloodshed?" There are ashes on his mouth, there are cigarettes on his skin again (he remembers them well, the nights he was borrowed and traded, sold from man to man to woman to man. The face never mattered in the end,) and he can't help the disgust that must be etched on the corners of his mouth. Now it is his turn to stomp a hoof, digging into the ground and scarring it just as they both were. "What about the kids who were just like us, Fever? What wrongs have they done to you?" He can barely hiss out the words, hardly get past the red haze clouding his eyes, his judgment.
She would kill them without hesitation.
He thinks of the girl clinging to her doll, her mud-smeared face full of tears when Toaru takes her from her brother in the alley. It is a brother who would not rise. A boy he was too late to save. Toaru thinks desperately of the colt that's brash and bold and dreaming, that's more trouble than he might be worth but has a sparkle in his eye that hasn't quite been stomped out yet. He thinks of the faces of those who would kill each other for a scrap of bread; the thousands who are not pretty enough to be a slave, and so must sell their children to feed their husbands and wives and parents, just to make ends meet.
He feels the rage rise; it is a tide that washes towards her as she walks away. Trailing her, a shadow with every step she takes, he listens and can only roll his eyes. Snaking forward, he pulls at her tail to stop her, coming forward with his broad shoulders and bleeding horns. They were barely anything to write home about when they were young, but he has grown into his own skin just as she has. Now, he uses that to walk around her; circling, assessing. What would she make of his heated stare as it passes over her like a piece of meat (and he hates himself for it, for the way his skin would crawl if their positions were reversed.) "If I said yes, would you be jealous? Would you swish your pretty tail and bat your pretty eyes and hope to hypnotize me again and again?" There is a cold laugh. When did it get so cold? Why is he so cruel when every cell is lit up with joy just knowing she is not dead. When did she become so unkind?
Stopping then, face to face, nearly chest to chest, he meets her eyes unflinching and asks in earnest "What would you really do if I were happy, Fever?" Because he doesn't know that he is happy; he doesn't know if he's been quite happy since she left. But he has survived, made ends meet, and gotten by each day. Without her... Why had it been without her? Chewing on her whine, on the final admission of sorrow in her voice, it nearly makes him fold. He should lament, he should stop this silly charade now. There are so many should-be's that never will be, and so he looks to her mouth guiltily, he moves the sand aimlessly instead..."Supposed to doesn't cut it anymore. Stop living in a dream," he says because it is the kindest truth he can give her. While his tail lashes the sand behind them, he can't quite meet her eyes again. Not yet. Not when there are so many things he wants to say, so much building and building in his throat that it's nearly raw from not screaming... But he can't.
He can't watch her suffer and tear them both down. Never did he want to see her frown as she does now.
Toaru had always excelled at stoking the fire inside of Fever.
The bite in his words stung like a slap across the face, yet most of Fever was pleased to have him angry with her. She wished for him to hate her, lamented over his scowl of disgust, knowing it would be easier on them both if he thought her the villain.
It is not hard to imagine her fat and swollen with sin – she is gluttonous with an insatiable appetite, full of wrath and war for those she has deemed unworthy of mercy. She was destined to be a manifestation of spite and envy, a specter of malicious intent.
And yet, Fever thinks briefly of the twin girls who she pays to occasionally braid her tail – she listens to them giggle as she feigns snoozing; their childish whimsy infectious as they day-dream and prattle about life beyond the canyon walls, beyond the glitter of the ocean, wondering what fruit might taste like if picked from the tree.
Does he really believe she wouldn’t deliver them to paradise as well?
Good. Let him.
“You’ve always been so self-righteous. It’s a good thing there are good men like you in this world to smite wicked witches like me.” A chuckle bubbles from her black lips, her narrowing eyes a cocking gun. “I bet you’d be beautiful in the glow of the fire you’d burn me in.”
Their reunion had turned into a hazardous game of cat-and-mouse, treacherous tug-of-war, testing who was going to fold, to bend, to break, who was going cave first and be honest? Their banter was becoming less cordial and gradually growing hostile. Fever may be the one to inflict the wounds, but Toaru was carrying the salt.
She expected him to bark at her for trying to turn away, sure, but she didn’t think he would come in closer and use his teeth to pull the hairs of her tail. In a wild and liquid motion, she pirouettes and snaps her own porcelains in his direction – ears flattened to the back of her skull, gaze set in a glare as she questions the audacity in this man.
She can’t help but wonder what he would have done if she kicked him in the mouth.
It tickles her fancy.
But as she was busy contemplating her next move, just like that, Toaru changes his tactics, and he is now a shark circling blood in the water. Again, he surprises her with his own coldness, his own spitefulness that would rival her own. A fraction of her was pleased he had the balls to speak to her like that, the other couldn't help but frown at his unhappiness with her. She brushes off her own feelings quickly, inhales sharply, and watches as he inspects her. Fever is familiar with gawking, yet for some reason, this felt more invasive than her usual clients.
Alas, she chooses not to let it bother her. The woman makes sure to emphasize the sinuous dip in her spine as she curls her neck into a swan-like arch, her lashes fan and flutter in the sunlight like monarch butterflies. The fire in her rages as he pokes her with his own questions; he still knows her well enough to assume she’d be wild with jealousy; he remembers her possessive nature. So, she ignores those words, instead she asks with feigned innocence, beguilement flirting with her lips as she giggles dangerously, “You think I’m pretty?”
She coos to him in a saccharine, mocking voice. “I’m glad you think so highly of me, I can’t say the same of you, though. My expectations of you have, well – “ she pauses, her eyes a finger tracing the muscles in his legs, tip-toeing up the strong and masculine curve of his neck as she eyes his height, “They’ve fallen a little short.” Her lower lip is a pout before metamorphosing into a devious simper.
Fever braces herself for whatever retaliation she might face for poking the bear, the white on his face suddenly looking less like an uncharted map waiting to be discovered and more like the bleeding of war-paint.
And when she would find a moment in the dust, when things had become quiet and still once again, she would snake her head closer to him, so that she was just out of reach, where the heat of her breath could mingle with his dappled cocoa skin of his ear. She whispers to him, hushed and pained, so quiet so that the sands of Solterra could not hear the secrets that slipped from her tongue.
He breaks her - just a little.
“Stop living in a dream?” She asks with a breathy desperation she had long forgotten she held. “You stupid boy, you were my dream. I would have spilled my own blood if it meant a promise of your happiness. I would have broken my bones if it meant I could see you smile, Toaru. I would have been a weapon for you to wield against your enemies without question, and I would have been a prayer of salvation had you needed it from me.”
There were few things that would satisfy her in this world. She pulls away from him and turns her back on him, avoiding the scrutiny of his gaze. Her brow furrows, a silent curse as she scolds herself for her bout of weakness. She had let him get to her, and it infuriates her.
“I would have left with you if I could have, but I suppose that doesn't cut it for you now either, does it?”
She is a boa, wrapping her way around him bit by bit and squeezing tighter and tighter. He lets her. So Fever bites again and again, her words shredding ribbons of him, flaying him to the bone; every syllable spit out is another tear in their tapestry. It's almost with a desperation that he threads every bit of their unwinding story back together; piece by piece he stitches her back into his life regardless if it is love or hate that binds them. She could take the air from his lungs and he would let her have the last of it. How can she not see that in his eyes? Are they so cold, so dead, so changed that she has forgotten what it is to read their future they carved together so many years ago from every minute change in them? She must have because she continues with laughter, with growls. A reign of terror, a monopoly of madness. And his eyes widen marginally as she spews out her own poison for him to swallow down. He stumbles, wishing desperately to rip the veil from her head and let the light in again... "Is that all you think of yourself now?" Toaru did not know how much that thought would sting him, but it does.
Like salt to an open wound, that she should paint herself evil is what upsets him the most. He could almost bring himself to kiss her just to get her to be quiet, but he knows in this state she's more likely to bite his tongue off if he even tries. As she lunges toward him (rightly deserved) he does not shy. Should she bite him it would be a scar he would remember fondly - it would prove that Fever is still alive somewhere in this wicked world and that it is not so lonely anymore. Not when his first friend, perhaps his only friend, is still out there with a smile and curved laughter lighting her face from time to time.
So he circles her instead, he crowds into her space and smells the spice of her breath as it washes over him. Before him she preens, exposing herself as a feast for him and him alone. If only that were true.
Lips curl in some cruel sneer and it is clearer than the day pouring down on him that he is not impressed. He cannot manage to push her away, not when he's come so close, and instead she drags from his lips a shattered prayer he must have told her or whispered a million times before. "You've always been stunning and you know it," if only she hadn't grown into something so wretched to use it against him like this. For he is still a man, and his heart still aches as he watches her flirt. How many others has she put on this exact display for? "We can't all have such lofty egos and balance as carefully as you, little dancer," he counters with a growl. Noting how she looks down her nose at him, noting how she smirks and braces herself, noting how she expects him to snarl and roar like a beast.
"I am not the monster you want me to be," Toaru states at last, his chin drops just slightly as though he's near ready to turn away, to give her this battle and let her claim her victory if it would please her. He's only ever tried to please her, hasn't he? From silly stories to a world where she could wear satin and silk, where she could eat like a king if she so chose. All of it for her, for those children that didn't have a choice, a voice... Can't she see it anymore?
He is ready to leave her on a sigh, on a breath he can't quite seem to take back in, but she moves more quickly than he with that serpentine neck. Slithering near, Toaru can smell the spice of her breath, and feel the heat of her cheek that is so close to his own. As she whispers, broken and bleeding, he ever so gently presses their cheeks together and lets her confess. Lets her break against him, and he will be the coast on which she can wash up on over and over again. He would catch her. No matter her sin or folly. He would let her press herself into his side and curl up with him in the cold hours of the night, and then he would let her disappear again. "I waited years, Fefe," he whispers it into the skin of her neck, pressing the truth into her very skin and hoping it would sink in. Some part of him, perhaps, is still waiting for her in that alley to show up. "I'd still wait years for you to come home again," he whispers between them only after she retreats and turns away. If she wished it, he would let her go. He would let her burn her Solterra and he would pick through the ashes for their paradise. What more does she want when he would still give everything he has?
![[Image: 45505141_kShAGp5UVRG2Lvt.png]](https://f2.toyhou.se/file/f2-toyhou-se/images/45505141_kShAGp5UVRG2Lvt.png)
