[P] but I'd risk it all just to be with you

[Raum]

 


He think he might hate her. Every step beneath the unrelenting sun was a torture, yet she had asked to meet in the oasis and so, he went. It was, at least, a little easier in Winter than in the Summer. All too fast he had forgotten the ferocity of the summer sun and so cursed the Winter one just as fervently.
 
It felt like time slowed, ticking his time away in the desert more languidly. But at last he reached the Oasis, its glittering pools a mirage to his sun-drenched eyes. Gods he missed his dagger, his scarf – even if the very idea of a scarf was stifling in this heat.
 
Quicksilver slick, he moves towards the water’s edge and drinks. It is there that he sees her reflection, perfect beneath a tree’s shade. Was there even a part of her that did not thrive beneath Solterra’s light? A breath, a resigned sigh, slips past his lips.
 
Sated, the Crow draws back from the water’s edge, his cobalt blue eyes never leaving the flames of her skin, the wildness of her eyes. Their confessions still stir in the air between them, pressing out against his skin like razor kisses. Oh there was nothing simple about he and his fire-born girl.
 
He does not need to look around him to know there are few others who dared to make the journey out to the oasis this day, so when he reaches her, his lips lower, smoothing along the line of her brow. Oh she burns him, sets him alight to mold as she pleases. His lips are lit like coals and there is nothing that can cool him. It is a surprise when he exhales and he does not breath smoke like a dragon.
 
“You called for me?” The Crow asks as he stands above her, consumed in the shadow of her tree, drinking in their surroundings. A Crow’s instincts will never leave him, he remains on edge, even as he stands above her, lost in the scent of her too-hot skin.


@Rhoswen <3 <3 What is this? Raum being affectionate? Excuse me whilst I die of shock ;)

 

[Rhoswen]

Rhoswen ►

 
Solterra's dawn had broken through the everlong darkness like a dove sent aflight to seek land: neonate, hopeful. With the splintered gold came too the promise of redemption; a prayer murmured in the suffusion of early light eddying, percolating, over the infinite dunes: gold upon gold. Let this day be better than the last. Too long now she had avoided the sight of him, though their truths hung still upon her shoulders like a cross too heavy to bear. Rhoswen loved him, had loved him so since the first drop of summer rain, but, you see, time was never on their side. It swung over their heads with an ever-threatening chime, looming lower and darker with every peal; would this untouched love live to see the end of winter? Secrets hissed between them, serpents beneath sand and shadow, and Rhos knew if whatever this was should stand a chance of survival, the greatest secret of all needed to be revealed. And so, upon the wing of the earliest hour she had swept out into the desert before the heat of midday could deter her appeal for privacy - though not before slipping a note beneath Raum's door.

Pregnancy was not what she had expected, if she had expected anything at all. It was not gracious nor feminine, it did not endow her with waves of happiness or saturate her thoughts with maternal love. It had, however, accomplished many other (most undesirable) things. Her body was a battlefield, wrought with hormones and changes that, as a materialistic girl, Rhoswen found difficult to endure. There was no hiding the deep swell of her flanks anymore without great creativity - this alone could explain her increasing absence from court. For she did not wish to be the object of discussion, at least not for this! A child would change everything, it already had, and the girl of rose and flame was not nearly ready.

The auburn-skinned woman reached the oasis at last, her back screaming a song she had come to know so well and in answer, she eased slowly into the cool oasis to ease the dull pain throbbing on all cylinders. Early she had come, but with good reason; to embark upon such a hike, even at this time of the year, in her condition was foolish at best, suicidal at worst. For a while, Rhoswen bathed in the gentle touch of Solis' water, relieved of the weight that hummed around her abdomen, until her lids began to droop and a dousing of fatigue came pouring over her marbled brow. Beneath the wild flora, then, the red lady settled; the shade protecting and concealing her just enough. Minutes ticked into hours as Rhos dosed quietly, breaking every now and then to graze at the sparse grasses lining the oasis banks from where she lay until at last, the horizon parted before a lone ironcast silhouette. She'd recognise those shoulders anywhere. Her stomach was a cauldron: bubbling with all the words she had prepared, all the anxiety that had lain dormant in the glucose of her blood. 

"You called for me?"

Raum touches her crown and she cannot stifle it a moment longer, drowning in the solitude of her secret - their secret. Upon capricious avian legs Rhoswen stands, stepping back so that the ghost may absorb the sight of her entirely. Eyes of smoke brew darkly, lingering on the edges of a sad, violent storm: this was no ordinary circumstance, and Rhoswen could not feel the happiness of it, not for one moment. Almost as if in response to it's mother distress, the child within flinched - reaching out with a tiny unformed limb to cast a silent ripple across one sanguine flank. Rhos twitched one ear back, but did not break her gaze with Raum - so unlike her to be withdrawn, almost fearful. It was only a matter of time before Solterra's snakes sunk their venom-laced fangs into her lover's neck, the traitor of their court, and what then? She had been a damn fool to let their intricate affair play out so publicly, had she forgotten the barbarism of Day Court's history? 

It is all she can do to utter the cracked, damning words.

"What are we going to do?"

@Raum

[Raum]

 
He hadn’t looked and had not thought to.
 
As his lips touch her brow, burning against the skin of his fire-hewn girl, Raum does not think of all the ways she is too still and quiet… The Crow ignores the way her eyes are the dark of a summer storm. She is its still air, as metallic as the silver of his skin, and, like a storm, Rhoswen forever steals the breath from his lungs. He knows he cannot weather her, yet he stays, exposed and open beneath her might. Her lightning will shock his blood and her thunder tremble the skin from his bones.
 
And still he stays, to weather what he can.
 
Fate slides its fingers about his heart of black and feathers, and there it squeezes as Rhoswen rises. The ghost feels its weight, its heavy press, but he is too enamoured with this girl to ever look beyond her conflicted eyes. But fate demands to be fulfilled and pushes his gaze beyond the roiling grey of her gaze.
 
Raum is the Crow who watches. He is the orphan who learned to study from the darkness and in its silence, learn secrets and murder. In such darkness, in such silence, in love he has come to know this girl as well as he knows the flesh upon his own torso… but she is changed.
 
Raum is joy and he is horror. He is savage pride and wild fear. Her swollen sides, so alien upon a body that should be slim lines and sharper curves, tell a story he already knows the ending for.
 
What are we going to do?
 
Such words, small and broken and yes, so damning, are lost to silence and eyes that stare and stare. He studies her like she is some terrible wonder just revealed to him: a beautiful herald of death. His death.
 
Raum is falling down, down, down. The earth is opening and gravity pulls him into the dark of a cave whose bottom is an eternity away. His crow heart pecks and pecks at his chest, but not even that wily thing could free itself from his ribs. Truth is twining like weeds around his heart and it is more terrible to realize his alliances have changed.
 
What were they going to do?
 
Ha! So many things and yet, “Nothing.” The Crow says, soft like silver.  He steps close to his girl of sand and flames. He tastes the smoke upon her skin, the rippling heat of her presence. Burn him, burn him the sun seems to cry as it banishes Calligo’s shadows. But the boy is bold and his touch smooths along her cheek as he draws her into an embrace. Only his heart beats a whisper of danger, danger, danger to her own.
 
“What more do we need to do when we are both Solterrans?” That silken lie tangles itself into the secret shadows of her hair, framing her ear. Then lower, in a conceding murmur, a truth passed in a stolen moment between a Solterran girl and her Denocte lover, he says, “We will make it work.”
 
And it is a most frightning vow.

@Rhoswen <3 <3 

 

[Rhoswen]

Rhoswen ►

They were cursed, surely. Their love was a blackened sky, a calamity waiting to ravage their universe. Her poison had a heartbeat and a pair of ocean eyes, where was the antidote for that? Rhoswen couldn't welcome the flood of his gaze, nor the gentle rhythm of his breathing so close to her skin, for her mind was a theatre of war: a dance had begun that she had never intended to participate in, yet here they were, dancing all the same. The red woman closed her eyes as though to shut out the walls that were closing in on all sides, shaking her head in a disbelief that drowned her still. How could she have let this happen? What would her father have said? Oh, Iscariot. He would have touched her shoulder with a lined, indomitable hand, imparting wisdom she had only heard ever fall from those auburn lips.  Iron eyes awaken, lids rising to reveal a depthless grief. She missed him; it was an ache that she could never discard, nor did she wish to. Alas, Iscariot was gone and she was alone. 

No, that was an untruth. For here Raum stood, shaken but unyielding in the face of change. Great, inconceivable change. Nothing would ever be the same. The ground rattled beneath the weight of it all, and Rhoswen shook her head again, the crackling inferno within her ribcage building higher and higher with each passing moment. The air hums, pulled taught by the momentousness surrounding them like a heavy fog, until it is broken by a voice she could never forget. Raum stepped closer, the heat on her skin hissed from the cool of his touch on her skin, and the breath in her chest hitched as time hung suspended. Rhoswen pressed gently into his narrow embrace, listening somewhat incredulously to the syllables drifting into the caustic air, we will make it work. Words she had desperately needed to hear, and yet still they did not soothe the fret which continued to escalate - louder, stronger - rising to a crescendo that assaulted every sense. 

"For all our sakes, I hope you are right."

@Raum eeee stressed rhos is stressed :p

[Raum]

 

He wonders how he is still here. How her fire has not consumed him and the sun not melted the skin from his bones…
 
Yet he is here, still. And Rhoswen is soft against him, soft and so full of sorrow. She is flames along his skin rippling, crackling warming. Pressed close, their skin hot and thin between them, the Crow feels the racing of her heart. It is a hummingbird’s wing, so much smaller, so much more fragile than his. He knows there are no ways in which he will not protect it. There is nothing that he would not do for her and fear of that trembles in his bones.
 
It is not the first time he thinks of Rhoswen before his Crows. His betrayal runs deep, it is engraved in his bones and she holds the scalpel.
 
They stand together, no, he thinks, they cling together. Over the crown of her auburn head, Raum drinks in this land of sand and sun. There is nothing of comfort here, nothing but the comfort he finds now and even that is a floundering sea. It is a well running dry.
 
He closes his eyes and there is no respite, for she is there too. Yet, here, in the quiet of himself, this girl is a phantom and a promise. The fire of her skin reminds him of how they will destroy each other, how their love is too big for either of them and how they are both too obstinate to let the other win.  He was detined to fight this girl, tooth and nail and
 
In his mind the ghosts of her walk back to him, as weary, as thin as she has been all the times she has reluctantly returned to him. For that is what they did, Rhoswen and Raum, they faught, they pushed they pulled to be apart. Always she returned to him and always she hates herself for it. He is poison in her veins, he will arrest her heart, but by the gods he would make it beat again: fierce and wild.
 
The storm of them is a dark and fierce thing and it gathers upon their horizon. It steals the breath from their lungs. Where, oh where can they go from here? He knows, he knows where they can go, but he knows it will summon the storm of her. It will bring lightning to the earth – it will strike along his spine and into the very heart of him. He was made to weather her, no matter how many times her wrath will strike him. “Come to Denocte with me.”
 
He might have whispered the words, might have cooed them into her ears as though she were a flighty doe. But he knows her better, this storm-ravaged girl of his. He knows the fire that smolders within her and threatens to melt him into quicksilver. Rhoswen has forever molded him, this sister of his brother Crow. He is shaped for her, but she does not recognize it. She does not want to want him. It would be easier for all, if they could deny their hearts.
 
His eyes trail over where her body is larger, where truth swells bright and brilliant and true. “Does anyone know yet? Will you tell them it’s mine?” He asks softly and gently; now he has to tread carefully, now he has to think. For Solterra to know is for the three of them to suffer if the truth of his deception comes out.
 
Fate had a bitter arrow and an echoing laugh. The timing could not be worse, the truth of it is in the racing of her heart, the downward curve of her silken lips. “One time.” He says to her, to fate, to the skies, to the silence between them. “Your brother is going to kill me isn’t he?”


@Rhoswen Sorry, it's super sketchy and full of errors <3 <3

 

[Rhoswen]

Rhoswen ►

She did not want to admit that his presence drew together the loose strands of her fear, tying them tightly around hands that had seen moonlit reverie and death beyond. She did not want to feel cooler at his caress, nor sense the magma of her blood slow into a rhythm that did not beat with dread; but the truth was that Raum accomplished all these things and more with heavy words and a steadying press. She was a house on fire burning from the inside out and only this Corvus man could put it out. 

"Come to Denocte with me." 

It was Raum's prayer to break the summer solstice, a call so ancient and perennial she felt as though it might as well have been tattooed across the pores of her skin - an inescapable chant to slather at her heels no matter where she should run. Rhoswen could have snarled and barked with wolfish vehemence at her lover's imperative, but she was weary of the fight, and wearier still of the distance roaring between them. She had always found it difficult to love, especially when her paramour's allegiance was pledged to the enemy of her kingdom, and as such she had never showered Raum in endearments nor affection. Iscariot's daughter was hard and hot and aloof; it did not come naturally to care. Of them both the crow had always been more open, more tender, but the truth of it all did not lie in words, it was weighted in the events of months past. 

You see, the bloodsilver girl had silently given everything to Raum. In the heat of the day she had chosen the shadow, at the break of dawn she had stepped away from the horizon, and before Maxence's suspicion she had faithfully, bitterly, kept Raum's secret. Everything she had done had been in his name, and the child was all but proof of her love for the wrong man. 

Rhoswen leaned away from his embrace, but refrained from curling back a sharp barb at his request. From the moment she had recognised the signs of her condition she had been expecting those very words to fall from his mouth, and of course, then, she was prepared. "I can't..." she replied, her voice tempered by strength and weakness, "My home is here, in the sun and the sand." Even as the syllables entered the air Rhoswen felt them bend and splinter beneath the fear of Solterra's wrath. If they were to unearth Raum's truth, and thus her betrayal, what would become of her child? Sanguine curls bounced as the mare lifted her chin in reactive defiance, "if you leave without making a ruckus, it will be fine. Nobody should ever need to know." Rhos barely believed herself; all it would take was one Solterran envoy to spot Raum on Denoctian turf to put two and two together. 

"People have eyes, it isn't easy to hide a stomach as wide as this you know," astringent mirth laces her voice, stormborne eyes catching the crow's gaze, but it vanishes as quickly as it had come, "we were foolish. We should have been more careful, whether I tell them you are the father or not they will already have made their own assumptions." Rhoswen sighed, the dread seeping back into her bloodstream - though not before throwing a musing quip back to Raum at the mention of her brother, "a girl can hope."

"Reich is the least of our problems, Raum. You have to promise me you will leave Solterra without getting into any trouble."

@Raum a promise he can't keep xD

[Raum]

 
Raum knew what would come of his request. He knew her answer even before she spoke the words. He watches her face paint its emotions upon his soul and wonders what went wrong. How, exactly, had this girl been born of sand and sun in a land where they were only born of inky darkness.
 
He looks to his fire girl, to the salt of her skin, as she breathes a little more heavily and tires more readily than he has ever known her to. Already their love is weighting itself across her slim shoulders. It is swelling in her abdomen too; what an error they had made! He does not think fatherhood would ever pick him. Should tell her to find someway to be rid of it? But those words promise to be ash in his mouth and something awakens. It is visceral and bright. It throws shadows back and lights his blood like gasoline. Raum is ascending, fast and wild and a smile begins to curl at his lips. It is joy limning his bones and turning him bright, bright, bright.
 
There is pleasure, in those lips of his. It is small and shadowed and fleeting, but it is there. It is there even as Rhoswen denies him, curling her body against his. They are heart to heart and Raum cannot feel his for the rhythm of hers. There is no tandem heartbeat here, their twin hearts are a cacophony, fighting, pulling warring. Rhoswen’s is a savage thing within her chest, it thunders like rain from a stormy sky and he thrills to have her wild heart so close.
 
The Crow sighs against her skin, smoke across embers. Her mane fans, silk tendrils rippling like flame. Where is the black of their fire? Where is the moon to ease the heat of them? He looks up, blue eyes falling into an even bluer sky. Like a droplet into an ocean his gaze is consumed. This world is vast, and of all the places she has to run to why here? Why was his love sculpted from sand? Why him? A crow in love with a flame.
 
“You can.” This corvid creature counters as soft as midnight wings sweeping up her spine. That voice is velvet and whiskey to warm their fractious muscles. “But you don’t want to.” He answers for her, daringly. In every way he assumes to know her and in so many he gets it wrong but maybe it is to hear her fight, to feel her heart run faster, faster. He should never bait a lioness, but oh he keeps going with Rhoswen. “Will you deprive our daughter of her father then? There is no protection for either of you here when I am gone. You know this, Rhoswen.” Light up his blood sings to her, static crackling along his skin. She is too still, too weary.
 
Those words whisper softly into her ears and along her skin. They are the hand upon a riled cat’s spine; he aims to soothe her, but never tries hard enough. Raum longs to burn and she will always grant him that. He should send her a rose every day from Hell.
 
The Crow is smiling before she is, and it is maybe the closest he can get to something genuine. It is a scythe upon his face, wicked sharp and promising blood. Oh yes, he baits his daylight lioness ever more, “You ask a Crow to not make a ruckus, to promise to stay out of trouble?” The blade of that smile scores along her cheek, up and up to the shell of her ear. “Rhoswen, I think you might not know me at all.” Intimate whispers, full of knives, just for her, his love, his life.
 
For once they have not stepped apart. He and Rhoswen are still heart to heart, a ricocheting of beats and blood and love. Then, his smile is gone and he is more serious, he is the quicksilver boy threatening to melt away into the black like assassins might. “You know I cannot promise you that.” It is a whisper, soft and so full of unspoken lamentations. 

They fall apart, for to stay close to her is danger and life. He turns turns, leaving, and knows it might send her from him.

@Rhoswen She can slap him.

 

[Rhoswen]

Rhoswen ►

Rhoswen did not miss the shadowing of Raum's happiness; it caught her off-guard, sweeping her off small elven feet. It couldn't be helped: her surprise. For her paramour was not a beast strung together by simple pleasures or whispering joy, he was an enforcer of a law written by Crows, a killer and a thief. The blend of excitement and cheer that eased its way across those pale marbled features brought a curious expression to Rhoswen's own face, studying him with a stare that was riddled with caution and hot bewilderment. He was happy? -- to be a father? Of the two, Raum had always been the more straightforward, the more forthright, and with this truth it should not have been hard for Rhos to understand the blooming of exultation in her lover's lungs. Too blinded, I suppose, by her own misgivings and regret: she did not want to raise a child, not now (perhaps not ever) but, of course, it was too late for thoughts as violent as those, far too late. Her heart belonged to the desert sun, and she burned with a fever that ran and ran and ran.

You can. But you don't want to.

Eyes thick with storm roll to the heavens as their mistress thwacked her tail into the air, derision pouring from her gaze as it lands back to Raum. "That, too." She hadn't been expecting anything less than a fight from him; blood had to be drawn, one way or another. Time had shown Rhos that the Crow deliberately chose not to understand her plight -- for a reason she could not seem to decipher. Perhaps the truth was too hard to swallow, and the fabrication that Rhoswen had turned her back on Caligo out of pure bullheadedness was instead a more palatable picture. Rhos knew she didn't care what he thought, not anymore, she was beyond caring about the opinions of others -- especially Raum's. But when the bleached man spoke again, murmuring of deprivation and protection, it was a step too far. Pale smokey lips peeled back to reveal a row of teeth that gleamed like the moon's skin, and with one swift movement Rhoswen speared her head forward to snap pointedly at Raum's exposed cheek, hoping to tear his skin and his pride. 

"You underestimate me, clearly," she growled, retracting her dainty head set high upon satin shoulders.

But he smiled again and Rhoswen could not stay furious with her moonlit assassin for long. He is the Ghost to haunt her beneath a canopy of stars and sunshine akin. His words are nothing but knifelike disappointment wedged in deep between her ribs, but again, there are words she knew would come. Rhos was a Seer when it came to Raum, reading his thoughts and whims - if only to ask her questions and hope they would change anyway. "A Crow should know when enough is enough."  She sighed then, tired of the games they had played for so long. "Would it be so hard for you to put me before your precious band of crooks, for once?" Her voice was calm, knowing his reply would be laden with quips and indignation, and it was, potentially, a hypocritical question - but then, in Rhoswen's mind, she had put him first. His very undetected presence in Solterra vouched for that. "What must I have done in a past life to fall so in love you." Her delicate, razor-sharp words born to etch across Raum's skin in a moment of surprising tenderness; their romance was nothing short of volatile. 

But of course, like everything between them, it did not last. Like flame upon bone-dry earth Rhoswen leapt away from Raum's flank, twisting with unsurprising grace and speed before casting one more glance over her shoulder at that blue-eyed boy as she slipped through his fingers once more. Homebound.

@Raum <3 -edit to include rhos exit-