taste like a poem, like religion
My heart is cold – a cathedral, still and silent – with ghosts made of moonsong. Without soul, without warmth; only the screams of filtered moonlight, only the wild aching of bruised oceans, and the steady breath of wilderness racing like rivers throughout my celestial body. My heart is a wild animal – an animal that knows no tenderness, nor mercy. Only death, only resurrection and beautiful, wide-eyed chaos. I can feel my heart baying now, cold and lupine, singing like a wolf in the thick, ivory expanse of winter. I can hear my heart pulsing – visceral and lonely – pulsing right through me, straight and rigid. Piercing like a silver arrow pierces tender soul and flesh. You wear your armor on the outside. I wear my armor on the inside. I hide my heart like a sacred temple beneath a forbidden castle, made cold, with its endless, immortal hunger.
I hide my heart like a dragon hides its gold, its treasure – too devastating too part with, too heavy to completely swallow, but always mine, always with me – guarded. There are parts of me I do not wish the world to see. How soft I can be – how hopelessly tender. How fragile and delicate like a rose might be. But you threaten all that too, don't you? You find the shadows, you follow the path of coldness, of isolation. You follow me. With your gentleness, with your tender dreamers' gaze, with your star-wild eyes and a voice made soft by the roaring waterfalls and endless oceans you carry. You are the forest to my winter– my forest. The dreamcatcher to my dreams. And I look to you like a wolf looks to the wilderness, the moon; with hopeless want and tender aching. An ancient ache, as old as love, as wild as creation – gentle, like a kiss; soft like the brush of fingertips against your cheek. I want to bask in your embrace and call us holy. I want to hold you close and never let you go.
The universe falls before them in comatose stillness. The snow descends, like a sleepy drug. Everywhere is a blinding sea of hot-white. Everywhere is a blistering porcelain against the stark, grueling face of December. Yet still, she feels his warmth amidst all this shadow and ice. Still, she hears the gentle murmur of his voice, drifting to her like a long-awaited dream. There is a tenderness in him that smoothes down her curves like silk. The way he moves, speaks, breathes – the shadows within his gaze, the enchanting beauty of his attractive face and dark, smoldering skin – all of it, is unravelling her heart made of winter.
"Do you always gaze up at the heavens?" Her voice breathes along his skin, a soft and sensual caress that recites like poetry upon his flesh. If there is hunger in her heart, it does not show – there is no predatory want in the curl of her soft smile now – nor is there any trace of violence within the sharp curve of her alluring lips, her graceful body. If there is passion and want, it is only riddled like coy blades through a fallen angel's smile; swimming within the claret rivers of her heavy-lashed stare, and vampiric silence made holy with darkness, and allure. Euryale aches to hold him close. To pull him within her embrace, where they both might be intoxicated by the scent of their skins, caught in the timeless romance of a cruel winterstorm. She wants to tell him how she'd pull the stars down for him – or how the softness of his voice, should break her iron heart into pieces so sharp, even the universe should shatter and be unmade by her want. Her hungry tenderness. How he could be the one she follows into the twilight, the shadows – that he could be her Orion; and together they would race against the darkness – side by side, eternal and dreaming and free.
Euryale wants to tell him so many things, and yet her heart feels frigid – her voice, a ghost. "Asterion, I...." Her voice falls against him like smoke. Soft, ethereal, apprehensive; a dark whisper made of dreams – made of moonlight, and windsong. She only stills herself when he reaches for her at last. Her sword lightens from her grasp, brushing the earth in a thrumming of steel – startled by the sudden rush of heat. His heat. She returns his embrace, slowly. Unfurling like a rose unfurls beneath the warmth of his touch. Kissing the frost along his cheek, brushing the snow from where they gathered upon his lashes, and temple. The blue that weaves her physique curls around him now, tangling the length of his hair within their celestial fingertips. Her heart feels light, with a strange aching, as she brings her lips near his own. Drawing her chest against his frame, so that he too may feel the wildness of her heart.
"This can't be real," She whispers again into the narrow space between them. The way the snowflakes flutter along his brow, the way his mouth settles into a smile – the way he murmurs the word, 'free' – the brief flicker of his swarthy gaze as he looks at the snowfall around them, before returning his deep brown eyes to her. If you are so free, then why do you follow me? She wants to ask, to press the question into the curve of his neck – to seize his mouth with a slow kiss. To breathe him in, deeply. But she only smiles, dark and silent, a soft sigh leaving her lips, scarcely heard above winter's gale. "I once thought you were a knight – for all your chivalry. Instead, I now think you must be a very powerful magician, wielding such magic – all this snowfall can't be real," Into the hollow of his neck she whispers – darkly playful, taunting – taking in his scent, the rich notes of masculinity, the hard lines of muscle. Her thoughts, an echo of his; swathed in bewilderment, intrigue. Even as they stand together against the biting December-cold, how familiar his ocean-scent, his taste; his body made perfect to shadow hers.
