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Private  - cause I don't see what you see [Tenebrae}

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Played by Offline Sam [PM] Posts: 306 — Threads: 50
Signos: 900
Inactive Character
#11


take this burden away from me
and bury it before it buries me


Love is a conqueror. It conquers your common sense, leaving it in tattered scarps. Love is a dictator, a force screaming out what you should do, say, feel, while you are left with no choice in the matter. Love is not something to be worshipped or prized. Not when a heart is so fickle.

Time turns to stone, hard and immobile, and it closes so tightly around her that for several long moments she cannot breathe. She feels paralyzed by the impossibility before her, by the treacherous heat of hope that flares beneath her skin and fills her stomach with a strange, foreign warmth. There is something else there, too, something she has noticed for some time. Affection. She feels it too often and for too many, so desperately craving their love, their touch, their attention. Elena doesn't know why she feels this, this need to touch. She wants to bury herself beneath his skin and leave all her worries behind. It didn't matter that he was still a stranger, that he was perfectly wrong for her, if anything she slinks closer to him. There is a feeling of want and it churns inside her.

She finds these fleeting feelings, these distant thoughts, but they are gone before she can hold onto them like butterflies to another flower. And Elena is left as a confused little girl with an empty butterfly net. Her body yields into the pressure of his against hers. She inhaled and his scent came with it, something heady and chilled, and dark, all just part of what made him, him. There is a pressure in her chest that does not ease, does not quiet, only grows, consuming all of her as she turns toward him, hungry. She shouldn't want him here, and she did. Elena is still that stubborn child.

Elena has always been insistent. She had a stubborn streak a mile wide (“that child is rebellious,” Rishiri had said, “Elena is a bit resistant towards her lessons,” said Cherish. But, Beylani had not had the heart to deny her precious daughter anything, and therefore labeled it as stubborn.) So often Elena will stick to her resolve and her mother would finally just sigh, the sign that Elena had been waiting for that she had worn her pale mother down. (The sigh was always followed quickly by a kiss to the forehead and a returned kiss to the cheek.)

That insistent nature is seen in the moment she presses her chest closer to his and holds him tighter like he would slip away. Elena for so long has looked for the touch of her parents in the arms of men, and she has turned up empty handed with nothing but the cold, only to remind her of just how foolish she had been.

There are alarm bells ringing, warning lights flashing, but they fall upon blind eyes and deaf ears as they hold each other. She feels suspended in the moment, trapped between each breath and each pulse of her heart as it stammers ineloquently against her chest.

Can Tenebrae hear it?

Hold me, she says inside her head.

They have ghosts hidden in their eyes, both of them, they may be buried deep, beneath layers of laughter, or bravery, or happiness, or duty. But they are there all the same, placed there delicately, but deliberately to shine back out. It is a look that many do not know, are unfamiliar with, but as one orphan looks to another, the gaze is familiar—hauntingly so. But even despite this, the way those ghosts peer out of his own eyes into hers, there is solace. Her heart flinches, a deep and penetrating hurt.

How were they taken?
He asks.

She wishes he hadn’t.

“Death,” she answers almost bitterly, the venom on her tongue sounds foreign as if she were speaking in tongues. “Illness, murder, it doesn't matter anymore,” she says. None of it was right, none of it mattered anymore because what was done is done. Elena has not forgiven the world for taking them, and nor has she forgot, she has simply accepted. She has reached that final stage of grief, but there she remains and there she will stay. Forgiveness is too hard and to forget is too painful.

The golden girl can still taste his skin on her lips even after she pulls away. It was like shadow, like dirt, like sea air, and desire. He presses his brow into hers once more and she closes glacier blue eyes to steady herself. She wants to let loose, cave into her desires, her wants, her temptations, but— blue eyes open like clouds clearing. What would she change? She can taste his breath on her tongue as air is pulled into her lungs. It tastes like danger and darkness, and Elena greedily snatches it all and it rolls precariously on her tongue like a forbidden kiss. The question reminds her of another who had asked her something similar, in a secret meadow, with clouds passing overhead and the echo of a waterfall in an ancient valley. ‘Would you change anything that has happened, Elena? Would you do something over?’ She smiles, then, because after all these years her answer remains the same. “I don't think I would change anything,” she says solemnly, it is a hard answer to believe it, even Elena is shocked as it falls from her lips. “But I’d give myself one more night beside a lake, searching for the evening’s first star,” she says, vague, but when she looks to the Denocte man she knows he will understand. A chance to spend one night with parents that are long go. One more night.

But there isn't enough magic in the world to do that.
Elena has tried.

Her eyes were not always such a pretty blue.

“It is not your fault,” she says, it is instinctive. Elena has always been a healer, it has always been her talent, and when she cannot find a salve for wounds, she uses that golden tongue as a replacement. She pulls away once more to look at him. “Who took care of you?” She dares to ask. What did he do? Was he all alone? Thinking of this is far cold than any shadow, any winter wind. “I can take care of you now.” A plea because she hurts and she cannot let another ail because in the end, Elena is selfish in the way in which she needs to be needed. Those blue eyes search his face for any emotion, any light that can emerge from the shadows and then she folds into him like a paper heart.

so take away this apathy
bury it before it buries me




@Tenebrae (sorry for the novel!)




[Image: ddvotwe-59302ba6-6a81-47bf-9846-30c5a5db...0iFb4PvyXE]

let's light this house on fire
we'll dance in the warmth of its blaze
pixel made by the amazing star





Played by Offline Obsidian [PM] Posts: 189 — Threads: 28
Signos: 110
Night Court Battlemage
Male [Him/his/he]  |  Immortal [Year 500 Summer]  |  16.3 hh  |  Hth: 37 — Atk: 43 — Exp: 74  |    Active Magic: Shadow-Forging  |    Bonded: Thia (Shadow-creature)
#12

T  E  N  E  B  R  A  E

On my body, the grace of shadows
and in my heart: all Hells


 

She surprises him in the way she says she would not change anything of her past. Hers had been full of grief and sorrow. Yet the smile upon her lips was assured, even when her answer comes low and sombre. Tenebrae watches how her lips shape the words and they fall, heavy, from her tongue. He feels the weight of them tumbling down, pulling upon the threads of her past. Do they twinge in her soul, is that why the corner of her lips are turned down, down, down?


Such sorrowful smiles. Such deep, dark gold along her gilded lips. Elena’s is the colour of temples, where travellers go to weep and rage. He thinks of Moira and her tears of light, filling, overflowing in the Night Goddess’ chamber. If Elena has ever had any of those feelings, she keeps them locked away within her box of supple gold and fragile bone. 


He cannot read into her, not with looking. But it may be there in the way she seems to climb into him, in through his skin, his eyes, his nose. Idly he wonders if the press of their brows is too much, too needy. But she does not yield. Elena does not stand back so their breaths no longer mingle nor their eyes no longer document the close up features of weather-worn cheeks and sun tainted lashes. 


He is glad they are close when she remembers how her parents disappeared. There is now poison upon her lips, he exhales at its sting. Again he wonders how many orphans he has made. The spoils of war were always costly, a thousand years upon his knees repenting could never make up for love-starved children.


She says nothing to him and he wonders if she knows that he has killed. If she did, would she still be pressed so close to him? Would she still taste his skin upon her lips and not shudder? The tragedy is, even if she did, he knows he would likely do it all again, if Caligo should only ask. 


“I am sorry.” He breathes and it is not enough. No amount of anguish that groans through his voice would ever be enough for her loss. He can tell she is already healed, but for the niggling of scars. He would reach for them, if he could, ease them as she eases his. They push, they pull, they give, they take - even as they cling and climb into each other’s skin. 


It is not your fault. She says and he smiles small and sad. He says nothing, but there is a promise between them, a voice that calls out into the shadows they cast upon eachother’s bodies, I will tell you one day, along with my name. That voice speaks a vow that will sear itself upon her soul, if Elena lets it, if she dares.


“I looked after myself.” Tenebrae gives her a truth at last. “I scavenged and stole,” A street urchin’s smile crosses his lips. It gleams dark and impish in the light. His shadows stir with the awakening of a scoundrel’s past and his magic skips and sneaks about her limbs. 


I can take care of you now


Tenebrae is smiling, smiling. He laughs a low chuckle. It is a black noise, sleek and lazy as a panther. It curls around them like a cat. “Oh but who will care for you, Elena?”


You, Elena, who trusts too easily.


You, Elena, who wants too much.


You, Elena, who walks into darkness and does not fear for her own soul.


You, Elena, who asked a boy if he would catch her if she fell.


And he, he is the boy who said he would catch her.  “Maybe we can care for each other.” And the moment the words are out that urchin smile is fading. His expression grows as sombre as hers had been. There is a weight upon their words again as their words seem to bind them together atop the cliff.


He takes a breath, deep, deep, deep and tells himself it is not to drink her in one last time.Filled with the salt of her skin (the sea), the glow of her skin (the sun), the bright of her eyes (the sky), Tenebrae pulls away from her. The world returns in sharp relief and he wonders when it had faded into nothingness. He did not notice. 


“If you want to remember,” Anything at all, “you should come to Denocte’s lake one night and watch the stars from there.” He reaches, as if to touch his muzzle to hers. His breath is something like a kiss upon her burnished lips.


He came to her hungry and feral and he leaves, quieter, his shadows a calm cloak across his flesh. But he is more unsettled than ever. He is hungrier than ever.


I want, Elena, He had said. I want.



~~
eeee Thank you for another lovely thread <3 I shall just casually go and start the next one now xDD



@Elena - <3
 ~   ~   ~   ~   ~










Played by Offline Sam [PM] Posts: 306 — Threads: 50
Signos: 900
Inactive Character
#13


take this burden away from me
and bury it before it buries me


“Tell me again,” she had begged, because she knows he is preparing to leave (his stays are shorter and shorter as the war progresses) and she wants to keep him. Oh the story of Persephone and Hades. Elena had found a weird fascination. It had only been years later as she stood in the land of dead things and a dead host that she thought that Persephone did not eat the pomegranate willingly. But, she thinks perhaps, (as she watched the dead man walk to his lake, her captor and yet the object of strife in her current relationship) she savored it. Savored every moment. Savored the giving in.

She feels it now, she feels like Persephone as Hades placed the pomegranate seeds within her mouth and as she presses her brow back against his it is as good as done and Elena has doomed herself once more. She blinks those eyes full of bruises, and she cannot bring herself to regret her decision. Her coat shimmers in the saturated sun; all fire and halo across her skin. She longs for the sun she thinks, even while she dances with shadows.

There is hurt that still bruises her heart and memories that play over and over again as he offers condolences. “Don’t be, you did nothing,” she says almost forcefully. He did nothing. She did nothing, as her mother lay filled with sickness, while her father was murdered. She did nothing, and she has had to learn to move past the guilt. She cannot blame a child for their actions, even when that child is herself.

She wants to melt into him, to fall, to bury herself within him, but the golden girl cannot move her brow from his own. The action so familiar in the same way she has done such a thing with a crimson cousin. She listens to his story, his hardships, and she remains motionless. “And you are still here,” she says, there is relief in her words even if she doesn't mean for there to be. He was here. That was all that mattered, that he was here, in shadows and sun with her.

Who will care for her?

She wades in an ocean of grass that grabs at her ankles and threatens to pull her down and drown her in memory. And though it doesn't succeed, and though she does not drown, the memory comes all the same. ‘You had someone to take care of you?’ His words that he said as he took a chilling step towards her. ‘It seems you must have.’ And the way his voice dripped across her skin like slime. Another step closer. ‘Though they might have done a better job.’ And his breath, so warm, but it sent shivers down her spine as he touched that pretty, golden neck of hers.

“Maybe,” she says, breathes, a tremor of remembered fear in her voice. And then he pulls away and in an instant he distance between them is like a chasm, and Elena cannot stretch her hands to meet him in the middle, it feels impossible and impassable. Her brow furrows as he speaks, there are words left unsaid on each of their tongues.

There had been this undying hope that he would come.
And he had,
And now he leaves again.

Elena looks to her cliffs, to her ocean, moving towards the ledge only the last of his shadows disappear. Did he mean it? Would he catch her if she fell? She wants to topple forward, to tumble into the water below, to fall and fall and fall, all to bring back a boy of shadows that will only break her in the end, shatter her in more ways that an cliff side ever could.

so take away this apathy
bury it before it buries me



@Tenebrae (anytime, dear, love threading with this boy!)




[Image: ddvotwe-59302ba6-6a81-47bf-9846-30c5a5db...0iFb4PvyXE]

let's light this house on fire
we'll dance in the warmth of its blaze
pixel made by the amazing star





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