Starless is the beach. the watery tide. the ocean's roar, thrums violently between the ragged, ermine-bathed rocks. Surf water, & salty brine mixing with the wet froth of malevolent seas, that didst tear the shore & the earth, ravenously. The vision, churns, with each release. mad & reckless. Euphoric, the taste. The endlessly, rough desire between moon & sea.
turbulent, azure waves how they might thrash. how they might dance, tumultuous. Surfs, tortured, against each forthcoming & screaming tide. Everafter, they shall whisper, hungrily; the undead sirens of the sea. Can you hear the thrum? Can you feel her heart beat? The frothy waves. The languid chill of water, & revel in her immense power. Her beauty. O, would you live in this kingdom by the sea - with me?
The ocean, ever mesmerizing in her violent angst. An allure, unlike any other, as seductive trance after seductive trance. The rhythm of water, twists in its pale & darkly, shimmering essence. Abandon. release. Breathe in. breathe out. The heavy curl of waves, gathering like an aqueous gown, folding glamorously. the push. & the pull.
Soaked, bone-white jaws, tugging in the fang-filled glee of leviathans' who yet roams yond the vast, chimerian currents. As opal moonwater, dances beneath a pale, devil's crescent so bright, & softly eerie. Glittering a pure, porcelain smile upon the still-radiant blackness of evening. It is starless & dreadfully, dark; yet, from darkness emits the purest of moon light. The sweetest nightsong.
Solitude, lingers here. Breathes here. Hunts here. swathed, in the chilling image of sinister beauty. Hot, is the ebb & flow of oceanic humidity. Sticky fingers, how they might paste their misty, opalescent trail. Collecting silken lilac strands, upon the soft nape of lithe flesh. Our dark angel, euryale boleyn, so adores the sea. The ocean's wrath, hers’ to savour in its reckless passion. She revels in that intensity. It is in these harsh moments of endless calamity, ironically, does she find her calm. Her inner peace. her temple.
Sleepless, restless nights blend into the obsidian fold. The dark tides of forbidden dream, after forbidden dream. & in her smooth, feline wrath, Her scarlet physique weaves with tiger-purrs through the lush, watery decadence of the bay. Through the midnight heat of eventide. Elegant limbs ghosting, with feral grace, as supple calves caress the roughly, flowing reeds. Their grass harsh, ashen-verdant against the sultry elegance of crimson flesh. Rough to touch & wet with after-rain.
Euryale is caught in the throes; she has abandoned her former castle. the delicate curtain-robbed walls of an Athenian temple, which had once sheltered our salem witch queen. Wandering, yet again. Desolate (forever feral) heart, Seeking the empty solace of the woods. Of the deep gales of wind & mother earth, however torrid, & violent.
The scent of oceans, still lingers upon her flesh. The scent of that enigmatic deep & soft, grey sand. She moves into the forestry, into the lush mangroves till her travels take her far & deep. Where dreams wage war with the darkest corners of the heart. The mind. The soul. This new earth. This vast terrain full of endless hills, vistas. an opportunity lay here, and she seeks it out in the way a lone wolf seeks her pack. one day, she will have her heart's desires, she thinks. she laughs, delicately.
Never only the danger of it - though that is always a part. Asterion, born a dreamer on a quiet shore, has always loved the mystery of it. The constant sameness and constant change, the way it is like the moon, always there but never alike from one night to the next. Sometimes a whisper, sometimes a roar - sometimes still and sometimes ravenous.
The sea is his confidant and his courage, and now it is within him, too, in that that secret place where magic lives.
Tonight the king descends the path down to the shore in the dark. He is not afraid of missing his steps; he knows each one by heart. Already he can hear the sea and it is a hungry thing, sucking at the rocks, pulling at the sand, wanting and wanting. Asterion is not afraid of this, either; he wants, too, though he does not know quite what. That is why he comes - he has always found his answers somewhere in the pause between waves.
But the waters are too rough to step into; even in the starless dim he can see the white caps, pale as arctic wolves, all froth and hunger. So the bay follows Euryale’s footprints (though he does not yet know it) back inland, into the knotted, twisting roots of mangroves and jutting limbs of cypress, the outer reachers of the swamp. The smell of salt does not fall away but thickens, and sheltered from the wind it is almost warm, still damp - it feels to his half-slumbering mind like living in a monster’s mouth. Still he is unafraid, still he knows his way. Asterion has spent nearly two years untangling Terrastella’s secrets, though he knows (and is glad for the knowledge) that there are many more.
It is her laugh that alerts him to her: the bay stallion freezes, one dark ear twisting, his breath falling soft as he listens. It is not a laugh he knows, and neither does he know why it raises a strip of hair down the nape of his neck.
Still he turns toward it, stepping carefully now over the tangling limbs (he does not know them so well as the salt-spray rocks of the cliffs). When he sees her it is only because of her color - so bright, so strange, even beneath the shadows and the boughs and the starless night. Her face is as pale as a skull, and he tilts his own, his dark-eyed gaze steady on her, his breathing like the sigh of waves on a quieter beach.
“Hello,” the king says softly, wonderingly, into the heavy, briny air between them.
Maybe he ought to be more bold (or maybe more afraid), but that was never his way.
THE SEA IS A GREAT DRAGON. IT FEASTS UPON THE SHORE, eating at the boulders with each tidal pull.
THE MOON, SHONE UPON THEM. THE MOON, INVOKES HER SPELL. A GENTLE, VELVET BREATH, UPON THE SURFACE OF THE RAVENOUS SEA. AN IVORY DISC FULL OF PURE, REFLECTIVE LIGHT, FLASHING AGAINST THE EDGES OF THE CALIGINOUS BLACK. OUR DARK ANGEL, SAVOURS ITS MERCURIAL HUNGER. THE DOCILE ILLUSION, WRAPPED IN MOONLIT VIOLENCE. THE BEAUTY OF THE SEAS, MAY WHISPER IN ITS ENDLESS ALLURE. IT'S CALM; HOWEVER, FLEETING. TILL THE WAVES RUSHED, AGAIN. CHURNING FROTH, IN ALL ITS SAVAGE FERVENCY.
THE THRUM. THE RHYTHM. THE SMASHING OF WAVES AGAINST TORTURED ROCKS. HOW THEY RISE AND FALL, HEAVILY; LIKE THE SLUMBERING HISS OF WATERY DRAGONS, CARESSED INTO MOTION BY THE OCEAN'S CURL. THE BESTIAL HEAT OF AN OPAL MOON-NIGHT, AND ROAR OF OBSIDIAN OCEANS, CAME WITH EACH SIGH OF RELEASE. AND SHE WONDERS IF HE COULD HEAR THE WHISPER OF THE BLACK SEAS? IF HE COULD TASTE THE SALT ON HIS LIPS? AND SAVOUR ITS BRINEY STING, FULL OF CRISP, WHITE SAND AND BEACHSIDE FRAGRANCE AND CARNAL REVELATION?
O, OUR DARK ANGEL REVELS IN THE FORCE OF THE SEA. SHE LOVES ITS TEMPERAMENTAL SEDUCTION. ITS DIVINE MIGHT. THE PUSH. THE PULL. THE THROBBING CALM. THE ENDLESS TEMPEST. EURYALE MOVES AS FREELY AS THE SEA. HER SILKEN BODY SLIDES, FORWARD. WRITHING, FROM MOONBEAM TO MOONBEAM. SLENDER FANGS, LAVISH THE MAIDEN'S SOFT, SCARLET-HUED LIPS. HER MOUTH, CURLS WANTON AND EMPTY. PALE, WITH VAMPIRIC ELATION. A LASCIVIOUS SMILE, TOUCHES THE ERMINE CURVE OF HER BEAUTIFUL, CERAMIC MASK - GLINTING SHARP, IVORY KISSES; SWEET, WITH MALICE, AS SHE SIGHS LIKE A WOLF IN THE BLACK, BLACK EVENING. THERE IS BLOOD UPON HER PALE BREAST, FROM THE ANIMALS SHE HAS DEVOURED. BONES, BY HER FEET.
THOSE LONG, LITHE CANINES SHONE ROSE-RED, UPON HER INVITING, BOTTOM-LIP. SHE IS FULL OF VENOM AND HER BEAUTY IS THE WILD, THAT RUNS FREE IN THE FORESTS. UNTAMED. FERAL. FULL OF RAPTORIAL COMMAND, AND HUNGER. SO IT IS WHEN SHE SENSES ANOTHER'S WARMTH AROUND HER, THAT SHE SO COVETS THAT WARMTH IN HIM. SHE CRAVES THAT HEAT. HER VOICE, IS AN ACIDIC CARESS. FULL OF DELICIOUS VENOM AND PREDATORY LONGING. SHE TURNS TO FACE THE DREAM. THE MALE TENOR, SOFT UPON A MIDNIGHT BREEZE - HER VISAGE, PALE YET WITH APATHY.
"WHO ARE YOU?"
EURYALE ASKS, SOFTLY. HER VOICE IS A DARK, SILKY CARESS, STRETCHING FORWARD LIKE THE COME-HITHER CURL OF WICKED FINGERTIPS. PLAYFULLY, LACED, IN CARAMEL ENTICE; LIPS, CURVING IN A ONE-SIDED, LUPINE SNEER. HER MOUTH, BOTH SHARP AND DELICATE IN THEIR SENSUOUS INVITATION. LET HIM COME. LET HIM LINGER. LET HIM FEEL THE FUR OF THE WOLF AND HEAR THE MELODY OF HER VENOM.
AS THE MAN STEPS INTO HER DARKNESS, SHE CAN FEEL THE SILK-HAIRS ON HER NECK, BRISTLE. HE IS EVERYTHING TENDER AND GENTLE AND MYSTERIOUS. HOW HE LINGERS, GRACEFULLY, AT THE EDGES OF HER PERIPHERAL VISION. CAUGHT, IN THE MOON'S FLOODLIGHTS. HE IS YET A SHADOWY FIGURE, OF WIRY ATHLETICISM; TALL, LEAN, AND FULL OF DARK, MUSCULAR ANGLES. HIS BODY, WERE ILLUMINATED BY THE CURVING LIGHT OF THE MOON. HIGHLIGHTED, IN THE BRILLIANT SHIMMER OF THEIR ASTRAL RADIANCE. AS ABOVE, THE HEAVENS' WERE DEVOID OF STARS; SO BELOW, THEY SHONE UPON THE MUSCLES OF HIS BACK. CARESSING, HIS BODY IN A KALEIDOSCOPE DREAM. HER EYES, MOVES ACROSS THE DARK SWEAT OF HIS BAY FLESH. THE FRACTURED LIGHT, HUNGERING LIKE PALE FINGERS ALONG HIS SPINE; BATHING, HIM IN A SEA OF NOCTURNAL STARLIGHT.
HE HELD HIMSELF WITH A GENTLE, UNWAVERING CALM. A PERFECTED COUNTENANCE, OF KNIGHTLY COMPOSURE - ACCENTUATED, BY THE PLAYFUL KISS OF MOONLIGHT, AS IT TOUCHED HIS SWARTHY ARMOR MADE OF STARDUST; DESCENDING, HIS WAIST IN LONG, THIN RIBBONS OF ABANDONED LIGHT. IN HIS SHADOWY ENTICEMENT, HE DREAMILY BECKONS FOR HER. A SENSE OF MYSTERY FOLLOWS HIS SINGLE WORD. YET HE IS NOTHING MORE THAN A FLEETING CARESS, STOLEN AGAINST A GILDED, DOCILE BREEZE. EURYALE CALANTHA, IS MADE CURIOUS BY THE SUDDEN MANIFESTATION OF HIS GENTLE IMAGE. HE IS NEAR ENOUGH, A DREAM WITHIN HER GRASP; AND SHE TAKES IN HIS SCENT, THE WAY AN ANIMAL MIGHT PRESS INTO THE VIOLENT ZEPHYR. DELIGHTING, IN THE ROUGH FRAGRANCE OF HIS MASCULINITY.
"I'M EURYALE."
THE SHE-WOLF BECKONS. SHE LURES. THREADBARE CURVES, DANCING DIM IN THE STARLESS EVENING. INTO THEIR TIDAL VOID, SHE POURS OUT HER SOUL. THE SACRIFICIAL OFFERING. INTO THE SAND. INTO THE EARTH. UNTIL SHE ABANDONS HERSELF IN HER NUDITY, AND WEARS NAUGHT BUT HER OWN BLOOD AS A VISCERAL DRESS. EURYALE STANDS IN FRONT OF HIM AND DRINKS HIM IN WITH SOFT, BEMUSED FEMININE LAUGHTER. TOGETHER, FILLING THE DARKNESS BETWEEN THEM WITH HIS WHISKEY HELLO & HER SILKY BREATH. SHE HOLDS HIS GAZE, WITH A CALM FEROCITY. THOUGH FAR MORE DELICATE. FORE LEGENDS, HAVE WHISPERED THE FABLE; THE LORE. LEGENDS, UTTER OF THE SIREN'S BEAUTIFUL CURSE. OF MEN LOST AT SEA. PULLED INTO THE COLD ARMS OF MURDEROUS MAIDENS. OUR SHE-WOLF, WONDERS WHAT KIND OF MAN, IS HE. THE KIND THAT GIVES. THE KIND THAT TAKES. OR THE KIND THAT RUNS AWAY.
The salt is always in his blood, even when it is not worn on his dark lips.
Asterion’s breath is the sigh of a slumbering sea, and his veins are only currents, pulling inexorably down to his dreamer’s heart. The moonlight has long ago left its mark on his skin in the strands of silver in his hair, the dapple of dusk on his shoulder and hip. The king carries with him the sea - but oh, is that cold, thrashing darkness within him, too?
Against that backdrop of crashing waves, dulled but not diminished by the tangle of root and leaves behind them, Asterion watches her approach.
The bay is not familiar with a danger such as hers. He has faced monsters, he has faced snakes, but he has never faced anything where such intentional beauty and danger meet. Her laugh, her smile, the blood on her breast (which first he’d taken for only moonlight on another shade of red across her foreign hide) - all of these encourage his heart to beat faster, his eyes to be wide and wary. Yet Asterion does not give ground; he only tucks his chin nearer to his chest, watching her with a gaze darker than the space between the stars.
He may yet be a dreamer, but he is not so foolish a one as he was a year ago. Girls under the moonlight are not so tempting as once they were, especially when they smile sharp with iron, with blood.
Who are you?
Her words are like jasmine, sweet and dark and soft at the edges like petals. One of his slender ears flicks back - the pulling, rough-throated sound of a wave retreating from a cave in the rock, the cry of a shore-bird. He thinks it is strange, to hear a gull after dark. But his eyes never stray from her.
“I am Asterion,” he says, as simply as he has always given his name. He is no king, in this moment; just a man alone beneath the moonlight, his footprints swallowed up by the waves. Even Cirrus is sleeping, her thoughts apart from his own.
Euryale, she names herself, and he tilts his head. It is not a name he might have expected form her; it puts him in mind of a songbird, yur-a-lee, and he wants to try it out on his own tongue. But she has come nearer (though he does not remember her taking a step), and though they are of a height something about her, perhaps the bone-pale of her face, the blood on her chest, makes her seem to loom up out of the dark.
Asterion has heard the legends, the tales of horses who live in the sea, who change once within the waves. The ones who do not eat oat-cakes and sleep in the city. And he wonders, oh he wonders, if he has finally met one.
Even so he cannot summon fear. There is still a boy in him, a boy who dreams of being a knight, and that boy says adventure when the rest of the night whispers run.
Instead he extends his neck, his breath spilling warm between them, and says “Are you one of them - the kelpies that come to shore beneath the moon to feed?”
THE CHILL OF THE OCEAN, REFLECTS THE CHILLING ENDEAVOURS OF THE MOON. HOW GENTLY THE MOON, GLISTENS. BECKONS, IN HER IVORY GRANDUER. REFLECTING, SHARDS OF PORCELAIN LIGHT, ACROSS THE DARK TASTE OF HIS FLESH-ARMOR, MADE OF STARDUST AND POLYCHROMATIC DREAMS. YET THERE IS A DARK SIDE TO THE MOON; AS DARK AS BLOOD. DARKER THAN DEATH. EURYALE CALANTHA, WONDERS IF HE WERE LIKE THE MYSTERIOUS MOON - AND THE SEA - BOTH GENTLE, AND VIOLENT, AND BEAUTIFUL IN EQUAL MEASURE. BUT WHERE WAS THE VIOLENCE IN SUCH A SWEET BOY, AS DELICATE AS THIS? WITH DREAMS ON HIS LIPS AND STARDUST IN HIS EYES?
LIKE THE MOON - WHOSE IVORY CASTLE, FLOATS IN THE SKY; LINGERING, BEYOND EACH CLOUD OF DOUBT. IN THIS WICKED FOREST HOUR, BETWEEN THE SHADOWS OF HIM AND HER. BETWEEN THE DARKENED INTIMACY OF THEIR NEARING BODIES. BETWEEN THE SOFT, YET DEADLY INTIMACY, OF LAMB AND WOLF; HE WERE THE MOON, AN ETHEREAL REFLECTION OF SUBSERVIENT FRAGILITY, AND CALM; SHE, THE UNTAMED AND MALEVOLENT SEA. CURLING OUTWARDS. THIRSTY FOR VIOLENCE.THIRSTY FOR REDEMPTION. HUNGERING FOR ALL THAT SAND AND SHORE.
O, ONLY HER OCEANS WERE A BRIGHT, ARTERIAL, PULSATING CRIMSON. OCEANS OF WARM, SMOOTH SENSUALITY THAT FLOWS WITH BLOOD AND HONEY AND VISCERAL DECADENCE. THE KIND OF RAW, ARTERIAL CLARET THAT IS BRIGHT AND FRESH, AND JUST FLOWS AND FLOWS. KEEP ON GIVING. KEEP ON GIVING. COURSING, VENOM THROUGH THE VEINS OF MEN AND ANGELS AND GODS. A LOVELY, SINEWY SHADE OF DEVIL'S CRIMSON. THAT SEEMS TO MOISTEN HER FUR, WITH A SLEEK, WET, SYRUPY SHEEN. STICKY, LIKE DEW; POISONED, BY ALL THAT VIOLENCE. ALL THAT BEAUTY. ALL THAT HUNGER.
DRIP. DRIP. DRIP. THE SLENDER HOURGLASS OF EURYALE'S PHYSIQUE, SWIMS IN A BRIGHT, RED SEA. ONE FILLED WITH THE TASTE OF VERMILLION SANGUINARY AND SONGS OF DEATHLY SCREAMS. IT DRIPS AND DRIPS, UPON HER BREASTBONE. FEATHERING, AGAINST THE TONED CURVATURE OF HER THIGH. FLOWERING, AGAINST HER BOSOM, LIKE THE GROTESQUE PETALS OF A ROSE; TANGLED IN TOO MANY THORNS. TOO MANY BONES. TOO MANY SKULLS. CAN YOU SMELL ALL THAT BLOOD AND IRON, ON HER? ISN'T IT DELICIOUS? DANGEROUS, EVEN.
"ASTERION."
EURYALE BREATHES, SOFTLY, TASTING THE DREAM BETWEEN HER JAWS, SAVOURING ITS KALEDESCOPE FLAVOUR. TASTING HIS NAME ON THE PINK CURVE OF HER LITHE, MOIST TONGUE. HER BREATHING IS SWEET, YET RAPTORIAL; THE BREATH OF A WOLF, FALLING INTO PLUMES OF NIGHTSMOKE; PLUMES OF DARK ANGELS AND JASMINE, WITH HER BLOODLUST CURLING DELICIOUSLY INTO THE AIR. SHE WANTS TO TASTE THAT NAME AGAIN AND AGAIN; REVEL. IN THE MYSTERY OF ITS EXOTIC, GRECIAN SOUND - THE DELICIOUS LILT, MADE SENSUOUS BY THE THROATY PURR OF A WICKED SIRENS' VOICE. FULL OF WILD, RECKLESS ABANDON. WHISPER. TASTE. CONSUME.
"THE OCEAN HAS HER WICKED ANIMALS,
BUT I AM NOT ONE OF HER SEA CREATURES,"
EURYALE WHISPERS, DRAWING HER CRIMSON LIPS TO A FIRM, SENSUOUS LINE. VOICE LIT IN THEIR GENTLE, FEMININE CHIDING. THE SONGS OF HER CRIMSON CURVES, TWIST; SO AS TO BETTER FACE THE MAN JUST AS HE NEARS HER OWN FRAME. BRUSHING AGAINST HER DARKNESS WITH A DARK, STIRRING BREATH OF SEA-FOAM AND SAND-DOLLARS. HE SHADOWS THE GIRLISH SKELETON OF HER RIBCAGE. THE HIGHLIGHTS OF HER WINE-CURVED FIGURE, ACCENTUATED BY THE SULTRY FEVER OF THE MOON. SEALIGHT, DANCES UPON THE MELANCHOLIC BREEZE; REFLECTING, IN THE MILK-CHOCOLATE OF HIS DREAMERS' EYES. FOR A MOMENT, JUST A MOMENT, EURYALE IMAGINES SEEING THE REFLECTION OF BLOOD IN SUCH SOUFUL EYES. BLOOD. MOON. SEA.
"THERE ARE WICKED ANIMALS
IN THE FOREST, TOO.
I FIND THE FOREST ANIMALS MUCH MORE...
APPROACHABLE AND INTIMATE, HOWEVER."
HER RUBY GAZE DARKENS, AND THOUGH A DELICATE SMILE TOUCHES HER LIPS, THE VERY FANG-FILLED SMILE DOESN'T TOUCH THE EMPTY WARMTH OF HER EYES. SHE WATCHES HIM WITH A SIDEWAYS GLANCE; A LAZY, PURRING FELINE CURIOUSITY. THE WAY THE MOON, DRIPS, INTO THE SWARTHY STRANDS OF HIS LONG, THICK MANE; DRAWING DEEP SHADOWS UPON THAT GRACEFUL NECKLINE. SHE PULLS HER GAZE ACROSS HIS SHOUDERFLADES, THEN. RED RUBY, RAKING, AGAINST THE STARRY SURFACE OF HIS MALE TORSO, WHICH GLISTENED OF FARAWAY UNIVERSES. FARAWAY GALAXIES.
"ASTERION... ARE YOU FROM THE SEA
- OR FROM THE STARS?"
There is a part of Asterion that is like a moon-shadow.
It is almost never seen; he rarely ever wanes so far. But even as a boy he had known that there were no adventures without blood, no heroes without villains, no magic without cost. Such things are further from him now, perhaps, than they had been as a colt; but there are still moments (on the battlefield with his teeth set, or at the Summit surrounded by gods and stone) he is reminded. He has always admired dangerous things, always loved them.
She is dangerous. He had guessed it at first, as soon as he saw here there beneath the dappled moonlight - but now Asterion knows, the way he knows when a fox is near. Still he does not (cannot?) draw away, only stands and watches dark-eyed and quiet as a seal.
His name on her lips feels like a fly shuddering on his skin, like the reflection of a star rippling on cold water. Light shattered into pieces. “Euryale,” he says in return (the way he had wanted to before), and there is something like a smile in his voice, though he can feel his heart beating like a bird’s.
When she claims she is not one of the kelpies he is not sure that he believes her. The bay king has learned, at least, that not every stranger he meets gives the truth, whether they wear a crown or a dragon or nothing at all. There is the crash of the sea behind them, after all, and the brine still sharp in his nostrils. One of his dark ears turns.
But then she continues, her voice the whisper of sea-foam over jagged rocks. The moonlight catches something, a flash of white at her mouth, and is is the first time Asterion notices her fangs. He knows then she did not lie. “I have heard no stories of them,” he says, and his voice is no whisper but it is soft, soft, the murmur of the tide. Like the tide it pulls, insistent, and there is something like a challenge in it, or a question.
Her gaze rakes over him, more intently than the moonlight ever has watched him. She is nothing, he thinks then, like the others he has known: she is not a summer storm, like Aislinn, or a phoenix like Moira or a lion swallowed up by a unicorn like Calliope.
She is a wolf, and she is hunting him.
It is almost enough to make him turn. But Asterion has never been a coward (though he is often afraid), and he draws in a deep breath as her attention slides along him like a finger. And then she asks her question, and the king forgets about retreating to the waves. For a moment he is quiet, and then he tilts his head toward her and the ocean sighs.
she likes the way her name sounds upon his lips. it sounds almost like a songbird and not syllables that drips from his slender jowls. his masculine baritone, wraps against her name like moon-water and silk; dark, lovely, liquid taste. she is drawn to him the way wolves are drawn to pale, effervescent moonlight. she is drawn to him in dark, pagan ritual. soft. sensual. moonlight. he is the dreamcatcher to her wolf. she wants to soak in his divine blood. bathe, in his moonglow. taste, the fever dream of his lips. pressed, roughly against her own lips. she wants blood, to pour. his. hers. embellished, temple walls cooing ravenously, from an altar of raw, unadulterated worship. their ocean red, how they'd pour. they'd pour. streaming, wet red beneath glittering tombs. she is the empty vessel with which he fills with his blood; she imagines this and, all more.
she imagines drops of redwater, flowing from her curves. scarlet rivulets, swimming, into moist sinkholes bound for the scandinavian oceans of a gaping hell. as the cool, evening zephyr touches, her lips. she tastes its keen, arctic flavour. its frigid kiss of sugar ice like sweet, acid trips. its an icy, brine taste that wets her moist tongue with promise, and anticipation, and animalistic devoir. the oceanic balm, were savoured by the pearl enamel of her hot fangs. the ragged breath of her razorblade lips whispered of hexes, and beautiful disease. their serpentine curve, glistens wetly, against the rabid curl of her insisors. insisors, that ached for the breaking of skin. for the taking of flesh. she wants him in ways wolves crave intimacy and deadly desire and need and touch. touch. t-o-u-c-h.
where his beauty shone, in starry moonlight and flesh, abandon; hers' mimicked the devil's succubus. unholy desires - unholy passions, made manifest. fore her beauty, is carved in the devil's image. all fervent hourglass. all raw, immaculate hunger. chiseled, in the wild allurement of angels. euryale, purrs, a blood-red angel purr. carved, in sinewy slenderness, and predatorial want. she soaks up light and shadows like a rabid promise. a wolf's promise. in the feral eve, waning moonshadow, touches the delicate curve of her smooth, cresent lashes. a soft silver moonshadow, that descends the curve of her face. her hourglass frame. coiling, against her smooth curves in wet rivulets of pale ivory, and vermillion paint.
how fervent their blood-red allure. soaking, up moonshadow with each hiss of radiant light. soaking, up darkness with each whisper of intimacy. the same darkness and moonlight, that wrapped for his body, and clung to his frame. ached, and ached, and ached to taste him. threw rivers of nightspell, against his flesh. spilled, gilded silver against his ribcage, with all the assurance of heaven. he is delicious; with heaven, breathing against his lips. with heaven, lingering against the stardust of his skin, like the pale scales of a summer snake. crawling, in a garden of wildflowers. sleek, and serpentine in its beauty.
euryale calantha eats him alive with her ruby eyes. her hunger, were a sensual mistress. her hunger, pours into the wrathful fires of her soul. a salivating, howling hunger. that ached of violence, of blood, of intimacy and eternal want; everything, he isn't, and the siren in her knows this. apart of her wishes that he were more like her. then they would howl together in violent desires and fervent moonsongs. when her feverish blues, ghosts her flesh in lucid, weeping kisses, they kiss him, too. her alluring blues - soft, deadly blues. primal coils of jade-blue, violently, twisting amidst the silken crimson of her flesh; coiling, like glass snakes against the deep, glowing curves of her spine.
against her body, they sigh and wither and moan, along the bounty of her hips. the slender back of her thighs, accentuated. in sharp threads of porcelain and ghastly, voluptuous white. all coagulating in floodlights of blue. euryale, oozes of aerial sensuality; sensuality, written in alluring flesh and sinful scripture. her ghost curves - maneuvering with carnal ease - floats, like hissing pythons on the bayou. long, hungry floating blues, drifting along the sinewy inbetween. slithering in rivers of azure; till they all but mirrored and shadowed the man's steps. draping, his muscularity in oceans of neon mist, that clung like old ghosts to the sinew of his frame and reveled to touch him.
euryale, breathes blue against his sleek form. euryale is of the devil. she is carved by the devil's lust and comes, breathing, in the form of a she-wolf. lucifer, moves in her. how Morningstar kisses might descend her soul and flesh. o, and how she hungers for, nearness. raw. glamourous. violent. touch. so when she feels the lasting shadows of his gaze, chasing the shadows of violent beauty. when she feels the lingering heat of his dark, swarthy eyes peel over her, like breathless deaths. seeking the warm corners of her red, red lips; she cannot help but curl her lips upward in laughing realization, bubbled mirth gilding her sirenic voice with harpy guile. what captivates you so? her smiles. her fangs. her teeth. were he gazing at this? o, all the better to eat you with.
"perhaps, nobody has asked the wolf..."
her voice, ebbs with the seawater. her voice yearns to find the elegant spaces between his ribcage; to count the bones of his body with each intimate whisper. recollect the details of his flesh with each phantom kiss of haunting need. and when she closes the distance between them. her soft curves were nothing more than a velvet sigh - a delicious caress - against the wiry muscles of his lean body. as if to say; feel how sated i am - that you need not fear a well-fed predator. she savours him, with her eyes, instead. imagining the red taste of him, against her tongue. she savours the smooth abandon of his voice. the soft notes of their deep male tenor, lulling her into temporal calm. the heavenly gentleness with which he exudes; the angelic, the starry, the divine - they all lived in the beauty of his flesh. in the universe of his voice. he is benign, courteous; a gentlemanly touch of perfected calm. she realizes then like a wolf in love with a lamb, that he is no prey at all; that his beauty is too delicate, too precious to consume.
fore he is soft like summer rain; like grey-blue mist, on the spring mountains' breeze, tousled by swan-wings and eagle feathers. He is noble like a forest hawk. the lilt of his husky voice, traverses with a soft temperance. touching, her ears in a smooth caress of gentility. she feels the delicate smothering of his serenity, wrap like a hand petting around her throat. the softness of him, fills her jaws like a lucid dream. in this tender moment, euryale calantha whispers against him. ruby gaze, flashing fiercely. her lips were close to his ear. purring. breathing, carnal breaths. she wonders if he will run, now. with her, this close. with her breathing, warmly, against his neck. he is the dreamcatcher, to her wolf. the moon, to her sea. if he should leave her in the darkness - with no light, nor song, to follow; but the wildness, of her own heartbeat.
"who are you really?"
She asks with her eyes. her body a gentle brush in the foreboding shadows; a gentle brush, against his. Beneath moonlight, where wolves share scared songs and commit to primal dance, is where she'd hope to find him; between the darkness of the oceans, and the riveting beauty of the hallowed moon.
"As a young girl I loved dancing beneath the moon, where starlight swayed with the rhythm of my body. With leaves in my curls and the earth upon my skin. I still do. I dream of the moon every night. The ocean - or stars - do they do the same for you? In your dreams, do they make you feel alive?"
He does not yet wonder if the moonlight has led him astray, or if the waves were sighing out a warning against the rocks as he turned into the darkness of the trees. Asterion has never known a woman like her - a wolf or a witch or whatever she is, that she looks at him so, with promises in her eyes that all end in blood.
For the first time he thinks that Florentine would call him a fool, to see him now, and Marisol would curse him outright. For the threat is undeniable in the glistening curve of her teeth, in the arch of her neck, in the pattern of the snakes that twine so sensually along her hip, tangling over and through themselves like the reaching roots of the mangroves. And even so Asterion cannot find it in him to be afraid, for his curiosity outweighs his wisdom, and the heat of her blood is catching in his.
The king may call it fascination, but the beat of his heart knows better - it is want that stirs in him, dark and low and strange. Want for the way she moves, the way she looks at him, the way her voice traces like fingers down his neck, down his back. He does not quite know what it is he wants - to taste the salt on her skin, to scrape his teeth along her shoulder, to see if the wildness of her might make him wild, too —
All this time her eyes have not wavered from him. She watches him as the moon does, unblinking, though her lashes drift down over the red of her eyes like thin clouds might veil the moon. But no space separates them; she is near enough now that the silks she wears (thin as sighs, soft as secrets) brush against his skin with the cool kiss of a breeze. The summer night is alive around them, and the sea still rushes at his back, but it is fading, fading against the blood-rush that echoes instead in his head.
Her words are almost lost against that background noise, the way all his senses seem taken up by his skin, by his eyes. Yet one of Asterion’s ears slants toward her, and almost a smile slants in turn across his face. “I would ask the wolf,” he breathes, just as soft, and for a moment his eyes catch the blood-dark of hers. That is when she asks her question, when he can almost feel her skin on his, and all thoughts of any other kind of beauty but the beauty of wolves is near-driven from his head.
Nobody, he wants to say, or only a dreamer, but neither of them are true any more. Asterion is no longer a boy, to play at being a knight and drift from world to world like foam on the waves.
He does not want to remember the roots he has made, the ties and responsibilities that have ground him like an oak. He wants to be untethered, he wants to drift like a ghost along this laughing, wanton stranger, and take the things he never had the courage to ask for. But it is not who he is.
I am the sovereign of these lands,” he says at last, like a sentence or a vow. “I am the king of Terrastella.”
Asterion straightens unconsciously as he says it, and the moonlight picks out the silver in his hair, the star-shine on his shoulders. Yet his eyes do not turn from Euryale, and when she speaks again he is just as rapt. “Is that what you were doing tonight?” he asks, caught between the curiosity of a boy and a man. Still he has made no move to touch her in turn but oh, how his gaze follows her movements, how his skin shivers when the gauze of her ribbons drifts near.
“Not only in my dreams,” he says, and at last turns his eyes away to look back to the sea. Through the thicket of trunks and the tangle of limbs and the sighing leaves he can make out the moonlight on the waves. The tide has come in fully now; the night is quieting. “They are why I am here now. Too long apart from them and I -”, the bay king falters. He forgets he stands before a wolf, bare before her hunger; he forgets he is in danger, or in want. Only his blood remembers, coursing quick and hot beneath his dusky skin. “I forget myself,” he finishes, and when he turns back to her they are near enough to share breath.
The fabric of your flesh, pure as a wedding dress
Until I wrap myself inside your arms I cannot rest
The saints can't help me now, the ropes have been unbound
I hunt for you with bloodied feet across the hallowed ground
she is feral. she hunts hearts. she devours songs. the violent hunger in her, howls with frenzied lust. she is a fallen angel of devilish need and wanton sensuality. she wants everything and nothing at all once. she destoys everything she touches and calls it 'love'. across her scarlet lips, breathes the devil's promise. the devil's wants. how fervent her allure. how fervent her touch. all seductive caresses, and sensuous hunger, lathered in divine heat and carnal warmth. everything she does is with fire. with passion. with ecstasy. with war. her fearsome eyes, rake over him. like the metaphoric curling of nails, malevolently groping against skin. scratching. teasing. bleeding. scratching. teasing. bleeding. aching to pierce his body, and tear the soul from the beautiful darkness of his flesh. aching, to see him come undone by the violence of her kiss.
i could make you wild. i could set you free. she almost wants to whisper. to curse him. to damn him. to send him crashing into the earth. drown him, in a fury of wrath and need and lust. she could almost taste his surrender, upon her lips. taste the heat of his blood, moving across her tongue like a thousand damnations, whispered by violent gods. she imagines how she'd love to hear his blood, singing. cooing, against her lips, in the haunting need of unadulterated ecstasy and vicious want. how near they were. how close they were. mere breath away. a kiss apart. she, breathes calmly by his side for all their cold, tense-filled embrace; yet her heart pounds with all the hunger of a wolf. all the ruination of a predator. even the nearness of him captivates her lupine senses. holding, her iron heart in a choking fist of wicked desires. even the closeness of him pulses, violently, throughout her body in hot, wild waves of unbridled desire - a desire to see him, covered, in oceans of blood.
into their caress, she leans. she presses the way a lover might. she leans into him, so that she may feel the muscles along his lithe body, and savour the intoxicating wine of his sensual warmth. she could almost taste his skin upon the sleek edge, of her viperous tongue; enveloping, her fangs in a fine mist of deep, deep red. she could almost taste the misty spray that would coat her pale, slender throat and drip across her jaws, and breastbone; all that decadent, visceral red - running, down in thick rivulets of hot, tantalizing warmth. she could almost taste him. taste him. she purrs in the moment of their revelation. the sensation of predator against prey. of wolf and lamb. and yet when he speaks, he pulls her from her violence, with the sweetness of his song. he draws her in, with the gentleness of his voice. his words lace against her skin with silk and dare and promise. whiskey, serene; a siren lull of their own; calm, masculine, oozing of exquisite tenderness. she has never known such tenderness in a man - only violence, only war, only wrath - and perhaps that is why she finds him so captivating. he is everything she has never known in her life.
with a ravenous, predatory stare, she fixes him down. she watches the effervescent moonlight as its sweet, silver glimmer trails the boyish curve of his soft, dark lips. the silversong that drifts like wild ecstasy across the seas, reflects off the ocean's bottom-floor. it is their fervent seaside breeze, and shifting waves of light, that smothers his bottom lip and tugs for the beauty of his soul. his flesh. his heart. she finds herself enamored by the gentleness of his sweet, almost innocent nature. fore she has never known such innocence; not even in herself - not even as a child. she watches him as a paramour might watch a rose come, undone. unfolding, slowly; beautifully - each petal, accentuated by spring rain and wild, immortal kisses.
"you don't look like a king,"
laced, in sensuous poison, her whisper ghosts across his cheekbone, with taunting inundation; finding, the delicate curve of his ear, even as he straightens upright with newfound courage. her voice, breathes along him in a sinister caress. drifts their violent nectar against him, in the midnight darkness. her voice begs to catch against his skin; to touch him in its sirenic caress and coat him with lust. her voice, aches, to pry apart the soul from the gentle cradle of his limbs; to drape his lungs in a sea of deadly, saccharine honey. how her azure drips, against him in a sensuous curtain of smooth, gilded ribbons. in whispy, undulating threads of thin, gossamery smoke. the threads of blue, floats eeriely between them; like dancing serpents, locked in an eternal intimacy of tongues, and scales. as always, there is that hunger in her voice. that fire in her song. she is delicious. in the way she moves. in the way she speaks. in the way her curves, runs across him; with thrill and wickedness, and a soft, bewitching sort of violence; as though she intends to taunt his youthful naivety, with the fiery wrath of her sweet laugh. to make him run wild with the beauty of her sins. feed you to my wolves.
"you look more like a prince.
young. handsome. perhaps, naive -
sweet enough to,
kiss."
o, but she would take more than just a kiss.
"Yes. Out here, between the ocean and the moon and the forest, I feel free. I need that, always. I guess we both do, don't we?"
she sighs with tenderness. she sighs with longing. and when he finally turns away to gaze at the rolling tides of water, she moves away in turn, sliding past him in a hush of voluptous azure. the spell is broken, as the ocean draws its final breath across the beach. the ocean has come to reclaim their prince; the prince of the sea. apart of her wants to stay. to see where the night might take them; if the sunrise would be as red as his blood. as red as their flesh.
"I hope to see you again."
For a breathless moment she pauses, eyes locking upon his. her aerial feathers of cerulean blue, still clinging to the last of his flesh; till they wither, and curl, falling away in a silent hiss of emptiness. returning, to embrace their volatile mistress in a haunting serenade of passion and laughing wickedry.
"King."
Be careful of the curse that falls on young lovers
Starts so soft and sweet and turns them to hunters
A man who's pure of heart and says his prayers by night
May still become a wolf when the autumn moon is bright
When they press skin-to-skin at last a breath escapes him, small and slight; it might have been a sigh. Oh, Euryale, he thinks, her name still like birdsong in his mind, lush as a nightingale. And Asterion does not pull away.
To touch her is to stand in the surf and feel the crash of the spray in time with the beat of his heart; it is to feel a riptide tug at his feet, urging him away (away to danger, away to drowning). Her skin is soft in the summer night like a petal just unfurled, but he does not miss the muscle beneath. It would be easy, he thinks, to let her lead him through the night - to guide him across treacherous paths he would never tread alone, deep and deeper yet until even the dawn could not find him again.
Oh, in that moment he wishes she would; for the first time he understands why Talia wanted so badly to burn, to drown, to die. But his golden twin never had a city sleeping beneath the restive moon, or another soul bed down beside his own, sharing a secret corner of his mind.
Asterion has never been truly free.
But Cirrus is sleeping, and so is Terrastella, and he pushes them from his mind as she pins him with her blood-bright gaze. He does not quail beneath it; he meets it, bold and wanting - ah, but he does not know what he wants, except to wish he might for a night be unmoored. Never has he met eyes so openly wanton, so hungry - he might blush if he were not well beyond it, might feel embarrassed if they were not already pressed like pages for ink to mingle. Instead he only wonders if her skin tastes like the ocean, sweat like salt and brine, or more of earth and iron. Instead he half-expects (and half hopes) to feel her teeth against him next.
Instead she speaks, and her words surprise a laugh from him, brief and coarse as a fox’s. The cicadas hum around them, agreeing with her; Asterion agrees with her, too, even as the truth she whispers pierces his heart like a sliver of silver. “You are the first to say so,” he tells her in a whisper rough as sandstone, low as a thing that curls dark and secret beneath the soil and waits to grow. Her voice in the shell of his ear raises a shiver along his neck; he wants to take her ear gently between his teeth and tug. What is it a king should look like? he wants to ask, wants to demand - let me show you how I rule - Ah, but that is not him either. It is a midnight fantasy, it is white-capped waves in a summer storm, it is a dark dream that will dissolve with morning.
What she says next only reinforces this - that he is pretending, that his business is not in thickets of reaching mangroves hidden from the path the moonlight makes on the water with a wolf who makes him wish to bare his throat.
“Yes, he is too quick to say, the word like a prayer from his lips, and does not ask what else it is she needs.
She sighs and her silks sigh against him, too, there and then away; he does not remember the night being as cool as it is when she is gone. All at once the night rushes in again, the thick smells of saltwater and swamp, the night-birds singing and the breathing of the sea. But when she speaks he meets her gaze and oh, there is a an ache inside him, a hunger for an appetite he never knew he had. It is the same hunger that compels him to watch the autumn sea for kelpies, to walk the midnight swamp for a sign of the Ilati. It is the part of him that has always believed adventure meant danger.
Almost it compels him to ask her - command her - to stay.
Instead he nods, though he never drops his gaze from her. Asterion wants to name her as she has him (he will fall into fitful sleep in the cold silver of dawn, the way she says king still in his ears with an echo of her laughter) but he does not trust himself to speak. Better silence than foolishness, better to let the ocean speak for him in sighs, in whispers.
Better to turn away at last than linger forever, until he gives in to the promise of her eyes, her skin, her teeth.
@Euryale this was such fun, thank you! I can't wait for their next thread. :)
