Nestled amongst her wings he lived, like a child, a hatchling in a nest, huddled to his mother’s chest. To him she was kind, to him she was accepting, from her he kept his darkest secret and he would until he died or until someone told it for him. Perhaps she already knew and did not say. She loved him that much, then; loved him like nurse-maid, more than father, more than Raum’s people who turned out to only hate him.
Seeing her was like all the bliss in the world ballooning in his ribcage.
He didn’t have words for what it was like to touch her. El Rey tried, time and time again, to put on paper what he felt about Juniper. He could almost give life to what it was like to take life. But love? Love was different. He had to be told what it was, and only having someone else’s definition of a word…it had to be unlearned before he could make it his own.
He read her his words, sometimes. A long time ago he showed them to his loved ones. He desperately wanted Juniper to love his words like she loved him. They were the same thing.
The end of Raum and his rule had not done so much to Rey as his own actions had been. So much pain inflicted. So much blood. An echo to his past in slow motion, agonizing, nothing inflicted for victory so much as power. I control your body, it said. I control your life, and only when you wish death was upon you shall He come for you, and only if He wishes.
There were no words for the darkness. Some words he could find for love, but the evil - it was an insidious thing that seeped into his veins like Eshek’s light and he was only beginning to understand that it had been evil after all. Denial and naivety went hand in hand to protect him, but now the blanket was torn away by living corpses carrying pitchforks and screaming. Give me back my son, they said. Give me back my husband. Give us back our loved ones.
Was it wrong to indulge in that which he had torn from so many others?
The literal could be given lettered form. Reality was abstract and so both love and evil could be given some explanation and yet it was never true. The actions of them, the killing, the holding - these could be said.
El Rey would have to feel it within himself before he could explain anything to anyone, especially when he was not there.
The autumn light shimmered down on the words he’d written, as if to expose them for what they were not (true, honest, from the heart/gut/soul). A cool breeze rustled auburn leaves and soft, soft feathers. El Rey watched the sleeping beauty beside him, his Juniper, for whom he had no good words.
If he is the darkness, then oh, she is light. The taste of cotton on a summer wind, the splayed wheat stalks heavy and ripe, ready for the autumnal harvest, the sun burning down, the laugh of a ghost from your past on the breeze. She is light, light, light and freedom.
Sleep does not crease her brow, it rests gently on her parted lips, her upturned face. It is a body that reaches for him, for the warmth he provides, for the protection he gives, for the love she offers. Like a snake, the Pegasus winds into him in her sleep, presses close, breathes down everything that is El Rey and sighs out everything that she is until there is no she and him but them; a single thing twined together in the soft light that filters through her swamps.
There were rumors, she'd heard. Such terrible rumors. But Juniper is not one who was taught so very well how to hate; only how to love and love and love even when that love was set on fire, even when it was plunged into the ice, even when everything about it said "this is wrong, he has sinned, this will damn you for eternity," for she only learned how to love and love and love. Like the laughs she gives as freely as her sweet, sugary smile.
So when Rey asked her to come in that childlike hand, the one that curled letters and her name all the same way and made her stomach do funny little flips, the goddess-girl could do naught but answer her sweet bull.
His sigh now that presses into her shoulder before his nose presses into the down of her feathers goes up, travels to her ears, pulls thin, golden whiskers on their currents, and wakens the priestess. Doe-eyed and lovely, she looks up, up, up the dark side of him, the swollen side of him, the guilty side of him where blood once splattered, and finds those equally dark and tender eyes. Where his body is muscle, she finds his heart in the dark, pulls it from him like nectar from a flower. He is her flower, and she is his sweet, soft, stinging honey bee. “Have you slept at all, my earthling?" she croons, still not quite in the world of waking, still somewhere in the fog, but her concern for him bleeds out like the cuts he placed upon the skin of so many. “What is it you're thinking? Let me think it, too."
“Speaking.”
And their lips the secret kept,If in ashes the fire-seed slept.
The way she nestles against him, softer than silk, like petals, browning and crushed beneath the gentle nose that would take in their scent. He would form one being with her, if he could, but they are close to it. Not enough, never enough.
”Have you slept at all, my earthling?” Her earthling, her dirt-bound man, grave-bound man, never the gravedigger but the one who readies the living for the coffin, the pyre, et cetera. ”What is it you’re thinking? Let me think it, too.” How could such a request be denied? He could deny her nothing, nothing but the truth - the one truth, comprised of many truths - but he could offer her false words, broken words, those that failed to describe the thing that filled his heart with feathers and petals and honey.
”Again, I am trying to put you into words,” he said. ”But I cannot. You are beyond such things, you know.” El Rey tore his gaze from her to look upon the poetry, but its meaning slipped away as driftwood on a current. Driftwood has never been beautiful, nor are his words. They are carved from stone with bloodied fingers, cut from flesh with a rusted dagger - austere, unforgiving, and violent.
”Some things that I have seen, done…cannot be put to paper, at least not by my hand. Perhaps…perhaps a god could do it.” He stared off into the swamp, their home, full of creeping things and sleeping things and love, so much love.
@Juniper ”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“ I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,
"Of course," she hums, "I am one of Vespera's Priestesses. We are an enigma; we know all and see all, we love all without restriction nor restraint. How do you put into words that which is divined by a goddess, my sweet, sweet dark love? How does one portray a goddess in the flesh, or those she chooses to send her messages through, those whose eyes and skin burn and bleed for her, whose minds are given over wholly so that she may live and prosper through us, and on even more so into the people?" Her answer is so simple and so complex, given with the tinkling of petal-soft laughter pressed into the fold of his neck. Pale nose traces his breastbone nearest her, and the Pegasus girl leans ever closer as though to meld them into a being of dark and light evermore.
Again he withdraws even as he burrows nearer and nearer. Again her heart flutters and she presses her lips to the brow that falls against her neck.
Rey breathes her in like he looks at the stars - yearning and so full, ready to be emptied and remade. Everything he does draws the goddess-girl closer, and so the wisp of a thing only shakes her head and smiles. "Here, what you have done does not matter, my sweet bull. Here, you are only mine and I am yours. Nothing else need be thought of. Wipe the stains from your skin, wipe them and let yourself rest. I can see fatigue on your brow and wipe weariness from your skin."
She pulls from the trees drooping vines, letting them wrap like a golden cord about their necks. "Let me take the weight from your shoulders, and whisper to me in our grotto these words only a god should get right. You'll say them perfectly, and I'll tell you of our future after, my sweet bull."
“Speaking.”
And their lips the secret kept,If in ashes the fire-seed slept.
“Ah, how you make everything sound so beautiful.” She was poetry always; she breathed in the ugly beautiful world and breathed out Juniper, all wonderful things and kindness. To have found himself in a goddess’s embrace…that was not a fate El Rey could have imagined for himself. He should be hanging now, or headless and rotting, or otherwise cursed to be alone and hated. And he was hated, oh! How he was hated. But not by Juniper. So it was when she spoke of what he had done that his breath caught in his throat. The black bull of Solterra, of Denocte, of Raum’s court, could only be laid low by this woman, this one goddess woman.
I can see fatigue on your brow and wipe weariness from your skin. She said it as a commandment, a seer or saint or martyr or messiah speaking; and the Goddess spake: I wipe weariness from your brow.
”Do you know, then?” he asks, and it hurts him to do so. He does not want her to know. But if she does, she does, and she still loves him for it. Could a man be any more undeserving?
And as a pagan creature commands, so the vines drip from the roof of the world and wrap around them like necklaces, not nooses, but it crosses his mind.
”If you had no wings you would be able to send my troubles alight,” he says. ”I love you, Juniper. Tell me our future,”and let it be the one you deserve and that I share.
@Juniper ”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“ I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,
"Do you want me to know?" She counters, softly, sweetly. Judgement is saved for those in death and those on trial - she is not an executioner, she is no saint. Juniper's lips are pursed, her eyebrows drawn together. "I know what you tell me, El Rey, and I will stand by you and face whatever comes, no matter what has been. You and I," she whispers into the shell of his ear, "we are a team. In harmony, in sync. You are the air that lifts my wings, you are the earth that grounds me. Your sins are mine and mine should be yours. What you say and what you do and how you rise or fall, all of it I will still cherish. All of you I will cherish."
Her eyes travel to the leaves that glitter above them, her thoughts in the sky, in the swamp, in the temples so far away. "You're beautiful to me, El Rey. Your heart is strong, your soul is stained and still trying. You are so brave."
She kisses the curve of his neck, the bend of his horns. "We will be happy," she tells him, conviction in those tones. There is no room to question whether what she says will come to be or not. "You and I, El Rey, will build a family. There will be others who love us, and should our hearts be open there will be valleys sewn with it. We reap what we sew, and the future is ours." Juniper is lost now to the possibilities, to the days of the future and the days of the past. A nest of girls swarming together, learning together, loving together. Bodies pressed against bodies.
Never has she been alone. Never does she wish to be.
"There will be little bulls you'll have to show where to walk and where the quicksand in life lies. There will be little acolytes I'll bring to my sisters. There will be freedom and passion and adventures. You, my love, will never be alone. I won't let you be sad and mad without you knowing where you can turn." And so the wind blows, and the girl hums, and she smiles at him like he's hung the moon in the sky or the sun among the clouds. El Rey may not be her first love, for the girl has loved so many things first, but he is the one she loves nonetheless.
“Speaking.”
And their lips the secret kept,If in ashes the fire-seed slept.
credits @El Rey excuse me while i dust off the rust here
All he can do is listen. Her words are like nectar, yes - always - but there is power in them, and conviction, and all of the things he never thought he would have, never even knew were there to have - and she is pouring them all into his chalice, his heart. The black bull leans into her kiss like it is a sacrificial blade. They could have children together. They could be happy. They could have love, eternal love, and share it. All for these she says as commandments, prophecy.
”You, my love, will never be alone. I won’t let you be sad and mad without you knowing where you can turn.”
Everything she spoke of was a comfort to him, and for a moment he could forget. A long moment, and a longer one yet. The black bull pushes into her, his eyes closing as the peace of her envelops him, as it always does, the quiet strength of divinity between them.
”Let us rest, then,” he says, and it feels like her words, ”knowing that we will always be.”
@Juniper | a closer for you <3 ”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“ I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,
'Let us rest, then, knowing that we will always be.' She listens to his words and hums, hums softly and sweetly and lowly. His word is like a law, something she does not wish to go against. Her sweet, wonderful, dark, hidden bull is safe beneath her wings and she longs to always keep him so. Even if she knows his sins, knows why it is he cries, knows that his heart is not yet whole, not yet healed, she also will tell you that she knows with all of her heart and soul that she will protect him.
El Rey is hers and no other should hurt him.
In time, she thinks, she will piece his dark puzzle together and sew blackhole thread in the gaps of his tapestry, effectively closing old wounds, cauterizing those that would try to bleed. Juniper is not her goddess, she is not Vespera, but by Vespera's heart, she loves more fiercely than the goddess does and lives more passionately than her deity might. The beautiful thing about mortals is their fleeting lives, packed so full of emotion that a god cannot possibly feel everything a mortal feels within their entire existence, within even a century of it.
No. Their love is precious, El Rey is precious.
So she dips her head under his, snuggling tightly into his side until her breaths sync with his, her heart beats as his does, and she drifts into a fitless slumber only he can provide.
This is her heaven.
This is her dream.
This is her home.
“Speaking.”
And her lips the secret kept, if in ashes the fire-seed slept
