what a dumb little lamb
Gold catches green in a game of cat and mouse, a wicked challenge and delicious smile in those distant eyes that Juniper can’t quite make out. Only the flash in her direction – she knows that Fever knows she is there. It excites her, and she meant to keep no secrets despite the night that closes in around them. Somewhere down the end of the street, someone lights up a cigarette and lets the match tumble to the ground with the ashes on the end after a long inhale. Her nose wrinkles ever so slightly in that direction before smoothing out when words snake through the air as Fever snaked through the crowds. Her voice is sandstorms and satin sheets – sultry and seductive. She was meant to be nothing more than some dream someone had in the middle of their nightmare.
Juniper knows this is not a nightmare. She knows that she is perfectly awake and charmed by the shock that registers as only a moment upon sanguine features that are quickly schooled. Well-trained. Schooled in the art of entertainment. The hierophant is instantly captivated, dove-grey mouth tilting up further for only eyeless windows left to look at. Those dark holes are nothing like the flame that burns within the woman before her, and that heat that licks over her skin is electric if nothing else. If that were all she needed for the night it would be enough. Chin tilts toward her chest, her neck arches prettily, and she is a bird put on display, knowing how she looks and what affect she has on another at almost any given moment.
This is a goddess-girl in love for a night, half-mortal, half holy, entirely predator and prey.
“It is an honor to be so memorable,” she says softer than the kiss of a snowflake over each eyelid as they close. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but even Juniper knows hers is as lovely a weapon as any other that she has. Even the sharpest smile or coldest shoulder could topple nations. Perhaps Vespera knew that when she blessed her daughter so generously and sent her into the heart of a nation as ready for war as they were anything else. Now though, now that the tyrant has gone, it has been so quiet. Too quiet. Even the Halcyon, without Marisol, has fallen into a slumped form of what it once was. Their trainings are sloppy, and one by one the priestesses she’d come to call sisters went back to their temples, waiting for a time they would be called upon once more. With a sickened stomach she’d left Terrastella, letting her heart beat more heavily for their lack of fire and passion and commitment than it ever did for her dark bull demanding he leave for her safety.
She needs to warrior no keep her safe.
She is a warrior and would save herself.
The flash of teeth, the first sign of a bite, as Fever begins her self-guided tour over the many attractions lain out for worship and praise that lie heavily on Juniper’s silken skin. It is not untoward, nor unwanted, and she flicks her hair over the other shoulder so casually it is hard to think the move could ever be calculated. They clash so beautifully; if Juniper cannot have war in the skies then she would have war with the heart. Where she could wear blood and smile as it dripped, Fever would hide it upon her own skin and call her wounds nothing more than freckles left over from her past.
Seduction is an art form, an understanding between two bodies, and both dancers know it well. When one moves perilously close, the other sways in and out. Dipping nearer, so close to brushing, to touching, before swaying away again so only a breeze and sudden chill is left betwixt the two.
At last, eye to eye, Fever looks down to Juniper, and the goddess-girl glances down her nose, beneath a dark storm of lashes, into the flames of salvation and hell. “Do I seem so dissatisfied, little dancer? You pleased me greatly,” words escape on a breath, a sigh, as the mare reaches forward and runs her lips along the side of Fever’s neck, pressing gently to the base and across the top of her chest. “You’ve mastered your art well, I would think your instructor quite talented and would fear you’d surpassed them by far.” Flattery and honesty mix together so easily, they slip from her tongue as sand between fingers and she can feel her heart beat with each chime of the bells along Fever’s thigh.
Now, she pauses her perusal, a careless caress into the other’s skin, remembering the press of her sister’s in the swamp, the curling of their bodies so freely along her own. A den of vipers. Each of them were poisonous and beautiful and loved her just as much as she loved them. Fever is not so unlike them save for the smell of sand and Solterra pressed into her skin, her soul. It was pressed into Toro’s too, and even he loved a wretch like she. “Even lambs come home to feed when they’ve strayed too far from the flock, and I am no lamb.”
She is positively wicked for a moment, in the flashing of some passing light as a door opens and closes she could be a thing of nightmares – her face cast in harsh shadows both hollow and full, weeping and furious, but she is not furious nor afraid. Juniper is unsure, tonight, what exactly she is. Lonely perhaps? But even that should have driven her home to a world of wonder and warmth, not into the home of her once-love gone astray. “Tell me, do you pray?” Because she could – oh Juniper could – pray to Vespera for understanding and forgiveness when she presses her body into the gentle folds of the other’s. Solterra holds no particular cares for Terrastella, but Juniper always seems to find a bed beneath his burning skies.
Juniper knows this is not a nightmare. She knows that she is perfectly awake and charmed by the shock that registers as only a moment upon sanguine features that are quickly schooled. Well-trained. Schooled in the art of entertainment. The hierophant is instantly captivated, dove-grey mouth tilting up further for only eyeless windows left to look at. Those dark holes are nothing like the flame that burns within the woman before her, and that heat that licks over her skin is electric if nothing else. If that were all she needed for the night it would be enough. Chin tilts toward her chest, her neck arches prettily, and she is a bird put on display, knowing how she looks and what affect she has on another at almost any given moment.
This is a goddess-girl in love for a night, half-mortal, half holy, entirely predator and prey.
“It is an honor to be so memorable,” she says softer than the kiss of a snowflake over each eyelid as they close. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but even Juniper knows hers is as lovely a weapon as any other that she has. Even the sharpest smile or coldest shoulder could topple nations. Perhaps Vespera knew that when she blessed her daughter so generously and sent her into the heart of a nation as ready for war as they were anything else. Now though, now that the tyrant has gone, it has been so quiet. Too quiet. Even the Halcyon, without Marisol, has fallen into a slumped form of what it once was. Their trainings are sloppy, and one by one the priestesses she’d come to call sisters went back to their temples, waiting for a time they would be called upon once more. With a sickened stomach she’d left Terrastella, letting her heart beat more heavily for their lack of fire and passion and commitment than it ever did for her dark bull demanding he leave for her safety.
She needs to warrior no keep her safe.
She is a warrior and would save herself.
The flash of teeth, the first sign of a bite, as Fever begins her self-guided tour over the many attractions lain out for worship and praise that lie heavily on Juniper’s silken skin. It is not untoward, nor unwanted, and she flicks her hair over the other shoulder so casually it is hard to think the move could ever be calculated. They clash so beautifully; if Juniper cannot have war in the skies then she would have war with the heart. Where she could wear blood and smile as it dripped, Fever would hide it upon her own skin and call her wounds nothing more than freckles left over from her past.
Seduction is an art form, an understanding between two bodies, and both dancers know it well. When one moves perilously close, the other sways in and out. Dipping nearer, so close to brushing, to touching, before swaying away again so only a breeze and sudden chill is left betwixt the two.
At last, eye to eye, Fever looks down to Juniper, and the goddess-girl glances down her nose, beneath a dark storm of lashes, into the flames of salvation and hell. “Do I seem so dissatisfied, little dancer? You pleased me greatly,” words escape on a breath, a sigh, as the mare reaches forward and runs her lips along the side of Fever’s neck, pressing gently to the base and across the top of her chest. “You’ve mastered your art well, I would think your instructor quite talented and would fear you’d surpassed them by far.” Flattery and honesty mix together so easily, they slip from her tongue as sand between fingers and she can feel her heart beat with each chime of the bells along Fever’s thigh.
Now, she pauses her perusal, a careless caress into the other’s skin, remembering the press of her sister’s in the swamp, the curling of their bodies so freely along her own. A den of vipers. Each of them were poisonous and beautiful and loved her just as much as she loved them. Fever is not so unlike them save for the smell of sand and Solterra pressed into her skin, her soul. It was pressed into Toro’s too, and even he loved a wretch like she. “Even lambs come home to feed when they’ve strayed too far from the flock, and I am no lamb.”
She is positively wicked for a moment, in the flashing of some passing light as a door opens and closes she could be a thing of nightmares – her face cast in harsh shadows both hollow and full, weeping and furious, but she is not furious nor afraid. Juniper is unsure, tonight, what exactly she is. Lonely perhaps? But even that should have driven her home to a world of wonder and warmth, not into the home of her once-love gone astray. “Tell me, do you pray?” Because she could – oh Juniper could – pray to Vespera for understanding and forgiveness when she presses her body into the gentle folds of the other’s. Solterra holds no particular cares for Terrastella, but Juniper always seems to find a bed beneath his burning skies.
@Fever | "speaks" | notes: <3
rallidae | art
