This keening soul;
I see that somebody taught you how to swim, Leto. I’m sorry I didn’t keep my promise.
She has become a monster and a priestess and a witch and yet none of those things has erased her feelings. Regrettably. Even now, made primal, wicked and wild she still feels. Even when she does not wish to care, even when the song of his blood is enough to make her want to taste him, when the trembling stars are enough to set her blood alight and imagine what transcence is (above the sea, the earth, the clouds). Even when she does not wish to care, his words steal the brilliance of her smile. It grows dimmer, darker. Unfettered joy becomes chained by aching memories she thought she had long ago let loose.
She has changed, yes. She does not wish to linger in the past, yes. The twinge of her stomach, the piece of her that still feels like a woman, not a monster, feels foolish and sad. She has always expected more of him than he was prepared to give. She destroys herself with the hope. He disappoints her at every turn and yet, she searches him out and turns to him when he searches her out in turn. The monstrous parts of her strangle her sorrow; she is reborn, content and alive in her fateful rebirth. It should be all that matters…
Leto laughs, rough and lyrical as the tide that pushes ashore. “Should I accept your apology, Asterion?” In a thousand watching mirrors and worlds she turns to him and tilts her head, watching with eyes vast as galaxies. “Do you deserve to feel shame for not keeping your promise to me?” Leto prowls to him and her sigils ripple, coming alive as light refracts from black glass across her skin. The air fills with magic and fire. The salted air lays itself across her painted lips. Leto does not flinch when he touches her. But her gaze watches as he licks the salt of her skin from his lips. She burns, the air hisses with the heat of her star-fire blood. She glows and glows and glows. “Do you want me to be angry with you? Will it help?” Beneath the bells and bones of her hair she watches him, his smile. Is the curve upon his lips remorseful? She laughs at last, her smile beautiful and hungry. So many questions she asks him. Always she expects from him. Always he disappoints. But not now. Not ever again.
Leto slinks closer still, feline, tribal, hungry. She presses her hot cheek against his and whispers, giving him an answer in the wake of her questions. “You were never meant to save me, Asterion. I was destined to drown and be reborn into this gift.” The gift that sings in her blood, that turns her into the sea, that seduces and enthralls and captures prey as deftly as any mythological siren. Leto has become creator and destroyer. So she does not draw away from him, not as she once had when she had been a forest girl unused to touch. Now she yearns for it, craves its softness, its heat, the way it lifts a delectable pulse to fluttering wings beneath the skin. Her eyes close, his taste sweet across her lips, his pulse a wet hum in her ears. She desires…
@Asterion
Anyone! | "speaks" | notes:
