SUMMER

Angkar: Wet season. Precipitation is common during the late afternoon and evening hours. Vegetation grows significantly during the summer, but flooding is a danger due to the monsoons that ravage the country. The rainforest sees evenly distributed rainfall throughout the season.

Ashoka: Desert: Extremely hot and dry. Violent, heavy downpours following long dryspells. Jungle: Hot and humid with frequent, violent rainstorms.

Morrim: Relatively hot and dry, but with a chance of thunderstorms from time to time. The heat may cause forest fires.

Soto: Hot and humid, tree cover is dense while ground growth is restricted. Thunderstorms see the most amount of rainfall during the season, and it can be very windy. On occasion, there are flash floods that can destroy homes and farms built on flood plains.

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March 30th, 2018 As you might have noticed, Elenlond has changed hands and is now under new management! If you have any questions, please direct them to DaringRaven! As for the rest of the announcements, including a season change, you can find them over here at the following link!

January 16, 2018 As you might have noticed, Elenlond has a new skin, all thanks to Mel! Don't forget to check out the new OTMs as well!

December 2, 2017 Winter has settled on Elenlond, bringing sleep for some and new life for others.

September 26, 2017 With the belated arrival of autumn come some interesting developments: new OTMs, a Town Crier and the release of the Elly Awards winners!

July 14, 2017 After a bit of forum clean-up, Elly Awards season has arrived! Head on over to make your nominations!

May 31, 2017 Summer has arrived and so has activity check! That's not all though – we also have some new OTMs for you and some staff changes!


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Elenlond is an original free-form medieval fantasy RPG set on the continent of Soare and the Scattered Isles, which are located to the south in the Sea of Diverging Waters. The four chief nations of the western side of the world—Ashoka in northern Soare, Soto in western Soare, Morrim in eastern Soare, and Angkar, the largest of the Scattered Isles—continue to experience growth and prosperity since the fall of the Mianorite gods, although power struggles within the countries—or outside of them—continue to ensue.


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    Absolution; - Aniketos -
    Topic Started: May 9 2014, 11:41 AM (658 Views)
    Shrista
    Member Avatar
    Pariah, Apostate, Heretic

    She stirred, and rolled over, seeking the darkness yet. So it had been for days, weeks. Yet for all the shifting, the weakly protesting movements that took her out of the light, the chink in the curtains chased her across the bed relentlessly. The sliver of pure blinding white that seemed to always somehow find her eyes, making her flinch and scrunch her face up even in sleep, until they unwillingly opened. She ached, body and soul, from lying down too long. Yet even with her bones filled with weakness, and bladder full to bursting she refused to get up. So it was day in day out. Sometimes she didn't bother at all, drawing the coverlet over her head and reluctantly allowing the dark tendrils of sleep to drag her back down, natural or induced.

    She'd managed to slip one of the serving women some small amount of tender before, enough to supply her with the herbs that bought on the sluggish drowsiness that kept her under. It was better than the reality for a time anyway. Here, there was the hollow feeling, the crushing failure and depression that threatened to drown her. At least in her dreams, things didn't have to make sense, she could wander aimlessly without seeing, without feeling.

    Lately not even that was a relief. The child lay slick in her hands, lungs squeezing fitfully, heart shuddering under her touch, but only because she willed it to. It shriveled, desiccated and blew away in the wind, leaving her only with her own howls of grief. A crack of blue showed as her eyes, glazed in thought, stared blankly at the opposite wall. A monstrosity was what it had been, that she would do that so unthinkingly. It was too long gone, and though the wounds of the flesh healed, those of memory, did not. Perhaps she had only imagined the violent kicks and stirring within her belly. Perhaps it had never lived at all.

    And now this...what had she returned to? It wouldn't, couldn't last, she knew. Eventually her twisted companion would recover as she did even now, and come to her in the flesh, not just her dreams. And despite her order, there were other ways to harm someone other than just the physical. Why had she come back at all?
    Weak. Unworthy.
    His face leered at her behind closed eyes, hands touching, cupping and caressing, burning hot against her skin until she writhed to and away, mixed pleasure and agony, elation and despair. Why did she bother fighting? It seemed senseless now, when he could bend things so effortlessly, force his will upon her flawlessly.
    Call to me. Let me come to you. Let me soothe you...
    Shrista awoke, her eyelids fluttering fitfully as she started awake with a soft cry, shattering the dream. One hand grabbed at her stomach, found it flat and empty, drawing her knees up to her chest and letting the sheets slide from her skin. Nothing...there was nothing but colored glass fragments of the imaginary, tumbling around her head. One hand still on her stomach, the other lifted and gripped the smooth curved tines of the horns growing from her skull, muscles in her arms tensing whipcord tight.

    What do you expect, that you'll just rip them out? Would the self mutilation make a difference? Will he love you more without them? Or will he despise you as you despise yourself?

    The bruises he'd left on her had faded, but she still dared to keep back from Aniketos, after everything, flinching at each touch and tensing every time he looked at her. Yet not in fear of him...but the daemon wouldn't come unless she called. And if she had to, would she be able to control him this time? She couldn't fool herself, since forced to make the pact with him, he'd only grown stronger, feeding from her and smothering her will under his own. It was just a matter of time, as all things were. How much, she didn't know.

    The soft skiff of the door pushing on plush carpeting froze her flesh, and she twitched the invisible tail that she could still remember having once. Would that be next? She'd just become more and more like him until she gave in, was that it? In dreams they were often the same. He changed her against her will in prickling waves of pain that didn't abate until he was satisfied. No, there was no tail, but she could still feel it, an after echo of sleep.
    The sliver of light was making her eyes water again, a bright band that lit the silver scar across her nose where it bisected her face, hooded orbs blanching but forcing herself to keep looking into it, like a penance for a sin forever unforgiven.
    She'd failed at being Drow, allowing herself to love, and a mortal at that. She'd failed at being a woman, having killed their child. She couldn't look at him now, much less speak for the shame that willed her to bite out her own tongue.
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    Aniketos
    Member Avatar
    Unter friedlichen Umständen fällt der kriegerische Mensch über sich selber her.

    Aniketos paced up and down the hall long before he entered the room, hoping she wouldn't hear his indecision. He would place his fingers on the handle to his study, momentarily determined to go to his study and forget about these fantasies. Then he would draw his hand sharply away, as if the very thought had suddenly begun to burn him, and stride down the hall to the very last of the guest bedrooms, his hand stretching for the door–

    –then: No. Nevermind. She's not ready for you yet. To hide his fault, he would head for the stairs, dangle on the edge, thinking of how they had come up these stairs one night long ago. She had asked him then if he would give a her a good funeral if she died and he, paralysed by the terror of such a thought, told her of course, only the best, with all the flowers he could find.

    But why hadn't she asked him what he would do if she lived? That had never been the thought then, he supposed, but he wished now that it had been. Maybe then he would have had foresight enough to know what to do now. But no, instead he paced up the hallway, repeating this routine of inconstancy. Well, who could've blamed them for not imagining this? They had spent their time by giving gifts and making love and drinking wine and keeping kittens, each secretly thinking that death was the only thing to separate them. They'd imagined a kind of immortality in that way, but only because they lacked the creativity to imagine any other result.

    Aniketos turned from the stairway and wandered his way to his own bedroom, fingers tapping on his lips as he ran over his list of evidences like a scholar. Surely enough time had passed for her body to recuperate, not that bodily injuries were her main problem. So, he told himself, she lingers out of sadness. But what was to be done for it? He had been careful to let her be for the most part, seeing how she shrivelled away when he accidentally touched her. She had to think, he supposed, but now he worried that to continue to leave her to this was a mistake. He lived in the same hallway as her yet now he hardly saw her.

    Aniketos creaked open the door to his bedroom and tumbled onto his bed, lying with his arms spread out like unused wings. They had hardly talked and this fact had begun to slowly wear on him. Even when he did try to lose himself in work she was there, lying in the bedroom in the back of his mind, rolling over and over and over. How could anything I say help? he asked himself, his eyes dully unfocused on the gay paintings on the canopy of his bed. Then a thought came, one that was like a shove in the back. But could it really hurt? If her condition has truly degraded then I surely can make it no worse.

    This shove propelled him onto his feet and soon he was out the door, down the hall, his fingers stretched to the handle. He hesitated, his body quivering with anticipation, then he shook the doubt from his head and rested his hand on the doorknob. There, he thought, and opened the door.

    The air in there was sour with sleep and musty with darkness. He saw Shrista move a little at the sound of the door, but afterwards she was still and silent, her back to him and her face towards the curtained window. Carefully, Aniketos trod around the bed, his eyes trained on her. In his mind he could feel her as a heavy lump of despair, sinking heavily, darkly onto the bed, shrinking from the chink of light that penetrated the curtains. Aniketos' lips quavered into a sad smile; he knew the feeling well. He had been that for months, though he had handled it differently. Some would say he had handled it worse than she.

    Coming to the other side of the bed he saw her scar-split face, all too aware of how her eyes avoided his. Her very presence abstained from him, though he couldn't claim to understand why. How was he to come close without cornering her? Aniketos bent his knees and placed his arm on the bed and his chin on his arm. Without necessarily planning it, he placed himself in that sliver of sun that had bothered Shrista so. It threaded through her hair, spilled a little over his forehead and bled into his tawny eyes.

    Perched there, his gentle smile still moulded into his flesh, he placed his other hand palm up on the bedspread. Sweat glimmered in the lines of his palm, which was clammy but waiting. Aniketos didn't quite have the words at that moment, but he hoped that if she wanted them, he would.
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    Shrista
    Member Avatar
    Pariah, Apostate, Heretic

    It never seemed to matter what light she saw him in, whether it be in radiant blinding sunshine or the murky gloom of a room behind drawn curtains, he was always beautiful. Something about him always drew he back, a moth to a solitary flame that burned with passion undiminished. She shifted subtly as he knelt on the carpet beside her, felt his eyes burning her skin in a manner both pleasant and not. He'd seen her in nothing but her skin dozens of times, why it should bother her now she couldn't fathom. Was it because of the way she felt about herself that had changed everything?

    Unwillingly the woman forced herself to turn her eyes from the light, told herself once again that the tears spilling silently over her cheeks were nothing more than a reaction to the sun. It was like bleeding a sickness. The sadness was the sickness, and she must try to rid herself of it, lest it consume her utterly. Only she could not...how did one fight against the tide of tears suppressed for a lifetime? A race that does not love, has no compassion, rarely experienced such things. What had she done to herself in order to change so much? Did he feel sadness for what had happened? What was it like? She couldn't begin to understand this depth of emotion that had so long been denied.

    Fear, yes. All of them learned that at an early age. Anger, yes. But not sadness, nor pity, and not love. Each time she looked back at herself she had to wonder how much more she would alter herself, would allow herself to slide into something that she was not. But then perhaps it was what she was meant to be, was always meant to be. The moments of hesitation, of uncertainty when issuing a command were always taken for weakness. Perhaps it had only been the beginning.

    Is this what humans had to go through every day? She wasn't sure she could bear it, this alien emotion that now held her in its clutches and denied her every shred of dignity. Her tongue felt like sandpaper, her throat dry yet full of water, wobbling unsteadily as a newborn. Even the thought of that made her draw a sharp breath, cold and slick through her nose to hit the back of her throat. Her voice cracked when she spoke, as if she hadn't used it in a century or more.
    "Ani..."
    Shrista turned her head, unable to look at his warm smile any longer, eyes the colour of honey, of a hunting bird. With some effort she dropped the hand from her horn and laid it in his. It was warm, and far more comforting than she would have thought. Almost as it had been before, as it should have been when they returned. His skin was clammy, as though he'd been clenching his fists hard for too long, and she wover her own cool dry digits between his, settling in the familiar spaces where they belonged. She should have stayed, instead of running. It had only made it worse in the end. So much worse. She'd wanted to hurt him then when they argued, wanted him to understand, her frustration getting the better of her. No, that wasn't true...she wanted him to hurt, but not to be the one to do it. For him to feel as she did, trapped like some little prey creature in the claws of a predator with no way out, waiting, waiting for a damned opportunity to arise, only to be snatched up again. She would have stayed had Kaahn not dropped his muzzle on her, drawing her to him with the promise of flesh again, even as she had fought the noose.

    She didn't want him to hurt now, only to hold her and absolve her. Yet they stayed apart like statues, aching and wanting, no longer functioning correctly. She regretted the outburst, and the deliberate avoiding him. She didn't regret the child, only its death.
    "I...I'm sorry I threw the bed at you."
    Disjointed, uncertain that it was what she wanted to say, the thoughts clattered in her head like wooden blocks tumbling from a perfect formation to nothing.
    I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry...
    "I just wanted...for you to be safe. And I failed in that as well."
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    Aniketos
    Member Avatar
    Unter friedlichen Umständen fällt der kriegerische Mensch über sich selber her.

    Shrista's voice was like the opening of some unexplored tomb. He felt himself standing in the doorway of that tomb, feeling the ancient, damp breath of the earth wafting up from the dark. He had been in much the same place when he stood at the top of the stairs and heard her voice tremulously ask about death from the darkness below. And that had been so long ago. They had spent ages not passing through that doorway.

    Her hand settled into his, dry and cold with inactivity. It was hard to believe that she was really there, that she truly touched him after he had spent so long pouring his libations to her, to the goddess who wasn't there. He had dreamed of this sort of touch in those long winter months, he had tried to find it in a great many other people and had not succeeded. So how could it be that she was here, now, not floating with him in the waters of some dream but truly winding her fine bones with his?

    Gently, Aniketos kissed Shrista's hand and peered at her while he listened to her apologies. He knew that she apologised for a lot more than a broken bed, though really the image of a broken bed described everything that had happened in a tidy little metaphor. Somehow, he still smiled. Now that he was here and not sweating outside her door, he found himself surprisingly lacking in tears. He had spent a lot of time crying over this, he supposed, though he a lot of that crying had happened when he was too drunk to remember. Still, the effort had been put forth: he had already mourned the loss of a child that he had fathered and he had believed her to be gone. In the end, he supposed he had gained more than he thought he would.

    "Oh, Shrista, don't be sorry. You don't have to be. We're here now, aren't we? I thought it might not be and now I'm just so...happy. You're here. I can't explain..." So maybe the thing about not having many tears was a lie, because he could feel them gumming the corners of his eyes now. His heart thrust against the edge of the mattress; he could have sworn it was causing the whole bed to shake and that Shrista could feel it quake beneath her. He was supposed to hold himself back but his body had forgotten such rules and instead remembered the rules by which they had once lived. It got up and led him, dizzy and swooning, to the end of the bed, where he crawled beside her on all fours and wriggled under the blankets with her.

    Then, more tentatively, his hands creeped towards her, one sliding under the back of her neck and the other resting on her upper arm. He felt like an unsteady teenager all over again, reliving the nights of carousing under the moon, the inexperienced touches and the nervous advances. Slipping closer, he folded his arms around her, his hands caressing her wherever they found themselves to be, though ready to fall away should she suddenly try to escape. "I understand now. It took me a long time to figure out that what happened was not out of hatred. I suppose I was pretty convinced that there were a lot of reasons to hate me if I felt that way. But we're not dead at least, so now I know how it really is. Now you know too. The love I felt never died away; no apologies were ever needed, Shrista."
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    Shrista
    Member Avatar
    Pariah, Apostate, Heretic

    "No. I must be sorry. I can never be sorry enough."
    Despite the fact that Kaahn was now gone, banished back to his realm for the time being, or until she caved and called him back, it didn't feel any safer to be near him. But she didn't know what else to do, where to turn now, where to go, how to exist. She should have been overjoyed, using the time she had to distance herself further from the daemon and eventually separate their twisted relationship enough that she could make some bid for freedom. It wouldn't come to allowing them both to walk away from it unharmed, she knew that, and he'd harmed her plenty in the last year alone, psychologically more than any. The distance she'd put between Aniketos and herself however had only served to keep his attentions away so long as she was willing to feed herself to the monster. Had she even birthed a live child, she had no idea how she'd have kept it safe from Kaahn either. Not in her weakened state, and then what would have happened? She wouldn't have let him have it, and he'd somehow lure her into breaking their bond, and killing them both.

    No, now he was a discontented beast pacing in his prison, reaching out whenever she closed her eyes and slid towards sleep, which always inevitably came. How long before he began clawing and prying at Aniketos again? Had he been doing it already? It was easier to get at her, linked as they were, but she knew she couldn't feed him of her body and soul forever. It had always been a temporary solution to a greater problem. Even not wanting to think of him he crept into her thoughts, killing off a small part of her within, walling herself off emotionally until she was just a shell. It was easier that way, and only now was she quaking as the man before her reached out and pried those icy bricks away, brushing the crumbling mortar away and kicking out the foundations she'd built to keep the hurt in.

    Her grip tightened as his lips brushed her hand, and she wished fervently that things could just go back to how they'd been before she'd even made the mistake of the summoning. Heated looks and stolen kisses pressed against the cool marble in the dark of the hall, even the blaze of jealousy when that green fop had laid his hands upon him, she would welcome it all, if only she knew how.

    Shrista tensed as he clambered around and rolled up under the blanket with her, as it was, bunched about her waist where she'd fought it off during the uneasy sleep, baring her naked torso to the light. How long had they sat there then? The bar had already moved, burning white across her skin, so warm. It had no right to be so pleasant when she was so much the opposite, filthy and defiled. For all the things, the people she'd put an end to, why did this one matter more than any other? She'd killed those of her own flesh and blood before and felt nothing, nothing as she was supposed to.
    Her body fought, trembling under Aniketos' touch as he folded her in his arms and simply held her there, soothing and safe. She was safe, wasn't she? The trembling she could not explain to herself, it was not quite fear, nor anticipation, nor even emotional exhaustion. It was nothing, the shadow of nothing, but grief that she couldn't comprehend, that would not go away, as if she'd held it for the last century close to her breast in a death grip. Her vision blurred, and she found herself disturbed to know that the broken gasping came from herself once more, wracked with this inescapable sadness that crushed her under its weight with each rise and fall of her shoulders.

    After a time she fell silent, slowly raised a hand to push into her eye socket to wipe away the tears, pushed until white lights popped behind her eyelids, then drew them away.
    "I don't hate you. I could never hate you. That is...part of the problem."
    Carefully she rolled, twisting her body until she faced him, almost touching nose to nose, but not quite. How strange to have spent so long running away from that face, just to know that it was kept whole and perfect. Strange to think all the time she spent dreaming, all the time wandering lost only to return where she thought her feet were not to tread again, to lie in his arms and feel the warmth of his absolution wash over her, pick her up and carry her out to sea. She lifted her hand, resting it against his cheek and running her thumb across his skin, remembering how the first time she'd done that, marveling at the texture. Not the first time, but the first time that the gesture really meant something other than the physical. She tilted her face, resting her forehead against his, and murmured the words that she'd never been able to before, that she'd said once, and only once, and then in dreaming.
    "I love you, Aniketos Heperés."
    Her smile wavered, uncertain, and she closed her eyes, relief at the admission, and the damnation of herself. There was no point denying what was there, and though he knew it, she had wanted to say it, as masochistic as it felt, a fresh sharp pain that was not wholly bad in itself.
    "My people do not love. We do not love our families, our mates, and we do not love our children. It is a sign of great weakness, and...I...I don't understand..." a tear leaked from the corner of her eye, trickling across the bridge of her nose and tracing the scar there until she crinkled them shut again, struggling to push the rising emotion back down. "How am I supposed to...to exist with this? What happened to me that I have become...this? What am I? I am not one of my people anymore. I am not even a woman, I could not do the simplest thing...I could not protect myself. I killed my own child."
    How far had she fallen, what had she become that she had moved so far away that she would open her heart so easily to the touch of one human, where before she would not have even spoken such to one of her own? But in this, she wanted to. She'd not lied, but neither had she given him anything about herself before, and he'd not asked. For that she'd loved him, but there was only so long one could go on before they realized they knew nothing about the person they had come to feel for.

    "I gave myself to him, to stop him from taking you instead. And still he comes...I can't sleep, can't breathe without him there, even gone so far. There is no end...no escape, and I am become nothing."
    Perhaps not entirely nothing, she was a ghost of how she'd once been, all snark and scathing attitude, biting remarks damped down like a dying fire. She ached with inactivity, yet refused to rise, allowing the unfamiliar emotions press her back into the sheets each time, to wind herself in them and hide from the sun where she once proudly walked. Now all she had was a sickening fear and sorrow that kept her wallowing in self pity and confusion, drawing in tighter and tighter on herself and slowly easing the gap between them wider. The bruises beginning to flourish on her skin again as a result of the dream would fade just as quickly within the hour, but the memories never did.
    "I wanted it...it would be mine, my baby, and I'd care for it...and now even that is taken from me. I never wanted anything to love for my own so much, when I couldn't have you. I would have kept him and raised him. He was mine. Can you understand that, Aniketos? And now he is...gone. I curse the day Neriasis stepped into my path. Curse him!"
    The last escaped as a low and steady threat, carefully void of the anger she expected to hear in her own worn tone, but it was there, her eyes opened, chips of ice to freeze the blood, venom on her tongue. The next time she saw him, she'd kill him. She'd already decided that much.
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    Aniketos
    Member Avatar
    Unter friedlichen Umständen fällt der kriegerische Mensch über sich selber her.

    (I apologise for the weirdness of this post. My computer made it disappear so I had to rewrite it and everything felt weird.)

    Shrista's body shook as if with fever. The shaking became tears and the tears become sobs. Aniketos held her gently, listening to this noise that was more like the cries of a dying animal than the grief of a living person. He laid against her, his heart beating against her back, his hands swirling across her hot skin just like they always had before everything had happened.

    Aniketos felt torn about this moment. Part of him wanted to turn away in self-conscious embarrassment, to leave her in privacy, to abandon her for his own comfort. He knew the sound of such sobs too well: he had heard them from himself in those darker months. Often he was too drunk to clearly remember those tears later, but just listening to her made him think of one time when he crumpled and cried, his head on his bedroom floor, his ears full of his own noises in the same repulsive way that one's nostrils can be full of one's own scent.

    He'd hated himself for what he was doing and how he had sounded, but then again, hadn't he just wanted her to be there and not give a damn about what he sounded like? So part of him didn't give a damn about the ugliness of her sorrow and in fact treasured it. Such experiences were like glue to bind them together in all their weakness and foulness.

    Slowly, her sobs faded away. Aniketos loosened his hold on her, pulling his throbbing chest away from her back. She brought a hand up to meet her eyes and then spoke: "I don't hate you. I could never hate you. That is...part of the problem."

    Aniketos' hands spasmed a little with emotion, as if she had spoken a truth he had not expected. His chest felt full, as if his heart was a ripened fruit ready to burst. She began to move and his hands flew away nervously. She squirmed about in her tangled nest of blankets and came to face him, so close that her breath mingled with his. His eyes wandered about her face, focusing on one eye, then the other, on her tattoos and her scar and the light falling smoothly on her skin. The activity was delightfully familiar. They had laid in this position before, on silent afternoons and breezy evenings, just looking at each other.

    But then again, her hair was longer and her eyes were more shadowed. Her cheeks were wet and swollen with tears and she looked oh-so-sore. Her face full of context, of their sad story. Once he noticed it, the context filled the spaces in between them and within them and around them, thick as miasma. Was that how he looked to her? Did he also look familiar and unfamiliar, subtly bloated and distorted with their shared context? But it didn't matter if he did, for she spoke the one fact that had held true throughout this ordeal: "I love you, Aniketos Heperés."

    He'd said that he didn't want to cry before but that was a lie, or else his body broke the promise that his mind had made. He closed his eyes and his long lashes were glued together by tears. He blinked those tears onto his cheeks and spoke past the thickness of his throat: "I love you, Shrista Ssapavin Barriurden." His hand was on her upper arm, clutching her flesh.

    She went on to speak of the context, or at least her side of it. He wanted to speak of his side too, to respond to her with: "I failed too. I failed as a man: aren't we told not to feel as much as drow are? Or at least I wasn't supposed to let the emotions break me down. I used to look at people in my position and think that they were foolish but look what I did, Shrista. And I failed as a Councillor, as a Sotoan. I abandoned my country for drink, I abandoned my duties for you when you weren't even there. How can I live with any of that?" But how could she speak such things when he didn't believe in Shrista's supposed failures? He would make himself a hypocrite by those words.

    Nor could he tell her something so inane as: "We can always try again, Shrista. What happened was not your fault; there is so much time." Such promises were like trying to replace a broken toy with a new one when that really wasn't the issue at all. Such words were hollow and hypocritical, but so easy, so tempting to say.

    So he stayed silent. Her curse against Neriasis came without melodrama; it was so sincere that he felt he couldn't say anything to agree. He just clutched at her arm, vaguely aware of the hardness of her bone under her lax muscles. He wetted his lips, blinking a few more tears out onto his skin. Somehow, he found the voice to speak:

    "What happened to the...our child is his fault, not yours. You didn't fail, Shrista. What if emotion and love complete us? So many philosophers say they do. They say love is like wings unfolding, or that correct emotion is better guidance than judgement. You've ascended, Shrista. We both have. Wouldn't that make sense? The gods would not make love so beautiful, even when it is in pain, if it was not meant to be a great good. And even after all of this, I am made good by you. I would be so little worth anything if I had never met you."

    He let go of her arm and used one finger to push her hair out of her icy eyes. He chewed his lip, finding that his words fell flatter than he wanted them to and that they would probably continue to do so. He wanted to kiss her but it was hard to break through the pliable but firm space they had placed between themselves. How could he kiss her if she didn't believe in what it meant, in the importance of their shared context?

    "I wish..." What did he wish? He felt the silencing hovering like a pause in a song, the moment before what was hopefully a resolution. He didn't expect resolution. "I wish I could just put my mind right next to yours and then I could explain why you can't blame yourself or call yourself a failure. But I don't know how. But look, I can show you something. It's a start, right? What I have done means more than semantics. Maybe it'll help, even just a little. I hope it does."
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    Shrista
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    The sound of her own ragged sobbing, half swallowed gulps of grief, drowning on her own misery chased her down into the dark in that moment, and she felt then that she might never escape it. But for the constant presence at her back, the ease of allowing herself to sink into him once more, she might have let herself slide back into sweet oblivion again, and her own personal hell. She had been certain he'd leave her again then to wallow in her sorrow, to ensnare in those sheets until they squeezed the life from her like some foul constrictor.
    But he did not, only stayed, his hands gliding over her dark flesh, soothing, and it passed as an errant storm. For that she loved him, perhaps more than any other thing at that moment, for the distance between them had only been put there by herself in the first place.

    She studied him in that interminable moment, shed tears coalescing like precious stones on his heavy lashes, spilling silently and tracking across the bridge of his nose. He looked tired, more tired than she'd ever seen him, but for the time when he'd suffered under fever. Then she thought she would lose him, reduced to her knees, either sleeping nor eating in her fervent prayers to any and all ears turned her way. She'd known then the depths of her feelings, and denied them, refused to explore the possibility that she gave a damn about someone else. To think that she had probably been the one to cause it made her insides wrench painfully against the soaring joyous return of the sentiment.
    She wanted to kiss him then, hesitated, and it was gone. Like a caged bird suddenly given freedom the moment slipped between her fingers...like smoke...so much smoke. The hesitation cost, and the distance was there again, pregnant with things unsaid hanging between them, leaving her uncertain as to how to reach across and breach the walls rebuilding between them.

    She wanted to look away, unable to voice her doubts.
    But what if they don't? The child was an accident, but a beautiful one, early before its time. I would still not have cast it aside for anything.
    Emotion had been enough before, and she wanted to believe that they could reclaim what had been thrown down in haste by the roadside, rebuild and make something of it. No, that was wrong, they could do it, if they wanted to. They were still together after what had happened, and that had to mean something. And there was still Neriasis. She felt tied in knots over it, wanting to rise and go immediately to Madrid, to leave now while the simmering anger was still at hand. For her, it would probably never die now until they had their decisive confrontation. But to act upon it when near enough everyone knew that Shrista was associated with Aniketos, could, and likely would, land him in the deep end. They could slap bounties on her if that was what they wanted, she was certain that she could handle herself just fine. But not him...she couldn't jeopardize his reputation, his standing like that.

    Shrista finally let her gaze fall away from his, focusing instead on his mouth as he spoke, his chin, the collar of his shirt, anything...shivering as his hand left her arm to push her hair about, tickling, pleasant.
    "Don't say that."
    She pushed herself upright, the coverlet pooling around her waist as she looked down on him with a mixture of unhappiness and perplexity.
    "You could have ended up with someone..."
    What exactly? Better? She still had that superior attitude enough to sneer at it. No maybe not better, just different. Less troublesome perhaps?
    "...someone else. And you would share your duty, she would carry your children to you in sunlight. You would be happy."
    Happier than now?
    And what if she hadn't met him? She'd probably still be tracking and beating on things for hire. Would she have had different feelings, perhaps for Tekun? Their conflict jumped to the forefront of her mind and she swivelled, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and running a hand through her hair. Would she have felt enough for him that she might have consented to his pressing affections on her? Or would she have just spurned him all the same? Would it have gone differently at all, knowing that there might not be a daemon in the picture?

    Why bother wondering on the what if's...it isn't now. This is what there is.

    Slowly she rose, limbs protesting with the fatigue from lack of use, the sluggishness and deep seated ache that said she'd been lying there too long. Slowly she stretched, raising her arms high above her head, interlocking fingers and tensing herself up on her tiptoes, taut as a strung bow. Then she released, feeling them eased somewhat, and unusually self consciously, swept up the fallen sheet lying beside the bed and wound herself in white, a stately train behind her as she picked her way across the room to the basin to wash away the sleep.
    "I have no such power." She murmured, thinking of that last time, as they both grabbed at her and the vision dragged her under, dragged him with her. It wasn't like that...there was no control, no private space to hold for an infinite time to converse. Dimly she wondered if he could...after all, he always managed to surprise her in the strangest of ways. Perhaps that was why she loved him so. Upending water from her jug, she soaked the cloth and began running it across a shoulder, watching her glum expression in the looking glass, still dirty with fingerprints where she'd been touching it obsessively before. It was a rare commodity where she came from, yet here there was an abundance of similar things.
    "What do you want to show me?"
    The faintest of smiles twitched at her lips, like days of old, her grip slackening until the sheet collapsed, rumpled around her ankles, showing him herself. There was no need to be afraid of him. But how much had he changed?
    Edited by Shrista, Jun 13 2014, 02:02 PM.
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    Aniketos
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    Unter friedlichen Umständen fällt der kriegerische Mensch über sich selber her.

    Aniketos looked at her seriously. "If getting married and procreating was all I wanted, I would have done it years ago. After all, it's what my mother wants of me. I tried to drown myself in other people anyways, though not in my mother's way. If they had made me happy, we wouldn't be here." He remembered their faces: the kitsune in the theatre, the demon woman with her tentacles, the nobles of all ages and genders, the people he couldn't quite remember in his drunkenness. They were so forgettable, even the ones he most remembered. Even when with them, he hadn't been able to forget her. After his pensive moment, he spoke again, "Perhaps, in some farflung country, there could have been another person. But even if there is, I can't imagine them. No one could be better than you."

    Shrista stood, the sheets sliding away from her body and leaving her bare. She stood before the dust swirling in the sunlight and stretched. He knew that he probably shouldn't stare at someone so vulnerable, but she entranced him. His eyes ran grooves along that familiar body, that body that was still beautiful even after the scars of her pregnancy. A younger Aniketos would have sneered at such a thing, saying "That's disgusting, what's wrong with you?" But even those scars, by themselves, with their context of pain and labour, were beautiful. It took time in love, not lust to understand such sublime beauties.

    Her body relaxed and she began to turn. Aniketos abruptly turned his gaze away, shifting his gaze to his own hands, which stuck out from under the blankets like a pair of limp fish. She pulled the sheet from the bed and wrapped herself in it. As she trod away again, Aniketos looked upon her again to see her swirled up in white, so elegant and spontaneous that she could not have been more lovely in a dress tailored for her.

    As she cleaned herself before the mirror, Aniketos hoped she wouldn't see his eyes flickering over her flesh. It used to be the opposite, he realised: he once feared that she would know exactly how much she meant but he never hid his lust and his admiration of her body. But now he wished to suppress that admiration, if only to make her more comfortable.

    He peered into the mirror and caught a glimpse of her phantom smile. He smiled back, more fully, and said, "Well, what if I want to surprise you? Perhaps you can figure it out anyways; I began this work a long time ago." The gown rustled to the floor. This was an obvious invitation. Aniketos rolled back a little, the better to view her, his face warmed by that strip of light as he continued to smile. "You are so beautiful, Shrista," he said, so quietly that he worried that she might not hear.
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    Shrista
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    Shrista fell silent at his words, chastened by his serious tone. Truthfully, she still didn't understand what a marriage was, and wondered about his mother. What was she like? Did she rule her house with an iron hand as her own did? But they lived differently, had different ideas of hierarchy. She couldn't begin to imagine what sort of influence his mother had on him. It wasn't as though they bred their children as agents to continue the work in their name, awaiting the day for the strongest, the firstborn to turn and claim that title from them, still weeping with their blood.
    And the other thing too...she made a mental note to find someone else and ask them in detail at some point. In their time apart, she hadn't exactly had much company, and none that she cared to expend her breath on. Better to do it in the underhanded fashion that she was so familiar with, and surprise him with her knowledge.
    "We all believe that at first..."
    She didn't want to bring his love crashing down around her ears and trailed off into silence, unsure as to whether the fact he'd slid down the slippery trail of hedonism in her wake was what bothered her, or his devotion to her. It was...not uncomfortable, flattering yes, but indescribably awkward, like wearing clothes that didn't fit quite right. he had always been so expressive, so much better at relating his feelings, and she felt more than a little closed off. No, it was definitely the return of such love that threw her. It had been when she'd seen it in his silent looks, moon turning his skin to silver through the glass panes of the windows, in each sighing caress, the softness of breath shared between lips, and the firmness of his grip on her skin. They hadn't needed the words then, so why was it that the words made it strange?

    There was a sliver of jealousy when he spoke of others, but monogamy had never bothered her before either. If he had wanted to go out in search of someone else, she wouldn't have stopped him. It was the jealousy that bothered her, the decisive possessiveness that had made her feel so vile and wrong as when he'd kissed Hemlock that one time. Had she not left then to confront the new unsettling sensation, she might have torn him to shreds right there in the room, still raw with the sting of his lips on her lover's neck.

    "Do you really think so?"
    Her smile grew as she caught his from the bed, and shared in it, lowering her hands once she'd finished to caress down over the swell of her hip, to cup a breast, to rub the back of her neck wryly. She swayed gently, undulating her stomach muscles as if she would dance for him, hesitating. Her reflection grinned back at her, almost lasciviously leering in the slightly feral vulpine smirk that startled herself into sobriety again, hands dropping to her sides. Appealing to her vanity was an easy way of drawing her out for some, but she knew it for sincerity when he spoke, and not just a thing to admire.
    "You too, are beautiful, Ssinjin. The strength in your arm when you draw a bow, the focus when you write, the music in your laugh..." She watched his reflection through a screen of white lashes from hooded eyes, voice lowering to match the quiet tones of his. "I would be lost without you."

    "I thought I was in love with someone once...a long time ago. I was wrong."
    She picked up a brush and began tugging it through her tangled hair, past her shoulders now and twisting naturally of its own accord into loose ringlets. The brush caught and she winced, teasing the knot loose patiently against the will to just rip at it and drag it out.
    "It was not like us. I am glad I did not know better, it was bad enough then."
    Shrista paused, her hands falling still, then returned to sit on the edge of the bed, watching him over her shoulder with a half smile.
    "I do not mean that what we have is bad...on the contrary...I had much affection for a female, and allowed her to abuse my senses with it. I should have known better. I...it is not a weakness to feel such here. I just wanted you to know...I was born a Drow. I do not think I am a child of Lolth any longer."
    She lowered her gaze to frown at the brush she clutched between her hands, knuckles light with pressure.
    "I have lost my faith..."
    To him she could confide in, if no other. To him perhaps it wouldn't matter. He'd accepted her without knowing anything at all, and she'd stayed at first because he asked no intrusive questions, because it didn't matter. Later she stayed because her fondness grew, though she made up a hundred other reasons to come back all the time, to delay going anywhere without him. Even did she still consider herself Drow, she'd long since lost any ambition when it came to potentially stabbing him in the back, literally or figuratively. That didn't mean the same for anyone else of course...but for him, no. She'd seen her mother do it to her chosen mate, patron of the house once. She'd whipped him to death right there in front of her daughters, six headed snake whip striking again and again until bloody froth appeared on his lips, torn and punctured from venomous bites again and again. It didn't matter that they'd shared a bed and a history. She'd chewed him out as quickly as any slave.

    She lifted the brush, pulling it between the horns on her head and snagging again, tugging fruitlessly. It balked her to ask for any help of course, she brushed her hair often enough on her own...and never had she asked anyone else to for the sheer pleasure of the sensation but for Faeluna.
    "Ani...would you brush my hair?"
    She turned to look at him sitting there, twisting the brush in her hands, then tentatively offered it out, like a branch of peace.
    "Something you started a long time ago..." Her mind danced back and forth over the memories of brighter days, wondering, before she realized she was unconsciously eliminating things like a game. "May I have a clue? Or are you going to tease me to the ends of the earth?"
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    Aniketos
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    "Of course I think so," he breathed, his eyes following her hands as they skated over her dark skin. Her arms fell limp and his gaze flicked back up to the flat reflection of her face in the mirror. Their eyes met in the glass. Aniketos had the sense that the intimacy they could not manage when facing each other was mitigated by the mirror. She spoke of him and he wanted to leap up to his feet and wrap his arms around her, so lacking in words was he. He knew she could see his face in the glass, but he could not. He had no idea what he looked like; his face buzzed in the way it sometimes does just after waking and he did not know what his mouth did.

    "And if I was lost without you, then what are we now? Walking with a map or lost together?" Aniketos had no answer to that. He wasn't even sure how he managed to say it past the slack numbness of his face. He doubted that Shrista had an answer at this point, but perhaps it didn't really matter whether they knew just yet. They would find out, surely, once they had repaired their burnt bridges and could look each other in the eyes again.

    The buzzing in his face slowly faded away as Shrista talked. Details of her life had always been scant for him; he held each little one close. She had lived in the mysterious Underdark. There has been a sister. Shrista had gotten her magic late. And now this, the mention of a woman she had thought she had loved, bound up in vague phrases and sprouting loose ends. Aniketos had somehow intuited that there was someone in her past, but he had never asked. Why didn't he ask? Why did he pre-empt himself with the assumption that Shrista would not want to answer? Why didn't he know more about the drow, the clear meaning of Ssinjin and who exactly Lloth was supposed to be?

    In a moment's silence, Aniketos told himself that he had to learn more. How could he claim to understand this woman, his love, if he didn't know where she came from? His mind fluttered about the task of contemplating books on the subject. How would he find them and when could he go do that? Tomorrow, perhaps, or the day after. His determination surged and he sat up, the blankets falling off his chest.

    "Then what do you consider yourself now?" he asked carefully, deciding he had found a question that put his ignorance aside. He watched her struggle with her hair, his eyes slowly glazing as he thought again of those hypothetical books he should read. He snapped back to attention when she approached, her brush held out to him.

    Aniketos' eyes went to the handle of the brush, then up to her white-rimmed eyes, a slow smile spreading over his face. "I would love to brush your hair." He took the brush and gestured for her to sit down, guiding her into position with a tentative hand on her waist. He sat behind her with his legs folded atop each other and started at the top of her head, gently holding a hank of hair with one hand while he tugged gently at the knots with the brush. They came apart little by little as Aniketos said smilingly, "Well, I do enjoy teasing you. The suspense, then the surprise, is well worth it, if only for the look on your face. Though I don't expect to see the look on your face where we'll be going."

    He hesitated, the brush still meshed in her hair. "Well, that came out worse than I expected." He laughed, then gently tilted Shrista's head to this side with a few firm fingers. As he pulled out the last few tangles in this particular clump, he said, "Well, suffice to say that it is a gift to you from a gift you gave me." He started on another gnarl, his jaw jutting out in concentration for a few silent moments. This one came out easier, and the rest were small, so he ran the brush through her hair, pulling out the smaller knots as he went along. His face loosened for a moment as he said, "If you've figured it out, don't tell me. I'd like to at least pretend that you'll be surprised."

    Soon, the brush ran cleanly through her hair. He continued for a few moments anyways, then relaxed away from her, letting the brush roll onto the bedspread. "All done," he said, and he peered into the mirror, seeing his face half-hidden by hers. With careful hands, he tucked loose strands behind her pointed ears and tumbled the rest over her right shoulder. Habit took over then, and he did it before he meant to: he leaned forward and kissed the curve of her neck gently, his eyes fluttering shut like butterfly wings. A soft sigh rolled warmly over her flesh, and he peeled gently away from her, feeling the swollen fruit of his heart beginning to split.
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    Shrista
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    Pariah, Apostate, Heretic

    Pained emotion twisted his reflection, unreadable, as she watched. Her hands ached to smooth the lines from his brow and draw a smile onto his lips again, but she couldn't think of a single thing that made her think that it was warranted. There was nothing that she could give him, nothing left of her at all but what he saw then. Past, present, and future, it was all there in the form of flesh and blood, a bundle of conflicting emotions and half formed decisions.

    "Rather lost together, than alone."
    The words fell thickly from her tongue to lie decaying at her feet, worthless mumbling. Lost perhaps, but for all their talk of being together, they had yet to make a good job of it. So far she'd led him a merry dance, loops and all, dragging his affections back and forth and it felt now, looking back on the whole thing, that she'd given little in return but for hushed kisses in the dark of night, soft laughs in summer afternoons behind drawn curtains. Always she was wandering away, tearing the fabric of the air asunder and leaving without a guarantee that she'd even return. How had that felt, not knowing if they'd ever see one another again? Why had she not thought of it until now?
    Then again, she'd had plenty of time to think in the last year. Perhaps it was time to change, to become something else, if not herself. Time to seek herself among other things, to alter, to become...more human. It seemed with her emotions checking her, she was well on the way.

    "I don't know." She fell silent, staring at her hands, splaying her slender digits and knotting them about one another over her bare thighs. "I left with her disfavor heavy on my shoulders. In such light, I lost everything I had, my family, my clerical magic..." her hands disentagled, rested calmly atop her legs, only to drift back to the bedspread again, cool under her palms. "I have since found something better. Whatever I may be, it is of my choosing."
    She'd asked herself once if a child that grew up outside of the influence of that dark goddess would still grow to become the same as the rest. Would they still inherit those malicious traits, the suspicions and distrust bred from generations of a thinly veiled chaos? Or would they truly escape? Was it the society and the religion that shaped them thus, or was it inbred into their genes as strongly as any fear of the unknown?
    She wanted to believe that it wasn't so, but lacked the surety of the notion. Humans were so different, so versatile, if she had another child with him, would it grow up to be like him, or would it be like her? She'd never even deemed to consider that her views might be wrong, or skewed until she'd come here. Not wrong possibly, just different, another end of the vast spectrum they lie on. If only it didn't seem that they were on opposites so often...

    Shrista tilted her head back as he made himself comfortable and began brushing at her knotty and unkempt mane, well past her shoulders now, a soft groan of pleasure burbling in her throat at the sensation. It wasn't likely that she'd keep it long, after having it short for a handful of years, she'd grown used to not having to spend the time maintaining it. And you never knew where you slept, what sort of state you'd wake up in. The last thing she wanted was parasites or somesuch, or giving a good reason for someone to grab her by the hair in a fight. It had happened once, shortly after she found the surface, and the reverse of the matriarchal society she was so acclimatized to. She hadn't known that the males were stronger than the females here. Hadn't expected the brutality she received though she should have. He hadn't expected her knife splitting him open either.

    She paused, unconsciously leaning back into him as he hesitated, a twinge of alarm registering at the remark.
    "I don't understand."
    She hoped he wasn't intending some sort of dangerous theatrics. Not that she didn't find it thrilling that he'd do such an alien thing, but there were easier ways to make his intent known that to throw himself into danger.
    She chewed on the information slowly as he continued to pull the brush carefully through her snowy tresses until it hung straight as it was ever going to, with all its kinks. She remembered giving him the weapon, and the quiver, handfuls of flowers from the garden, stupid trinkets and things from her travels with no particular meaning...none of them fit however. Whatever it was, it was too long, maybe, a blank that she knew would soon be filled.
    "I don't remember."

    A shiver rolled through her flesh as his lips found her neck, longing and desire, a slow coiling tightness, aching in her breast that burned for him to touch her everywhere and gifts be damned, they'd never leave the room again. She inclined her head, feeling his hair brush her cheek, exhaled shakily through her nose as he peeled away from her, with some amount of disappointment, and shamefully, relief. There had been the barest tremor of fear then, but not for him, the touch of another still staining her skin with terror and making her breath quicken painfully as she unclenched her fists from the bedding, pushed herself from the bed. She was torn between letting him see her fear, and her desire all at once. Would he revel in that fear as Kaahn had? Suddenly she felt wrong, the doors slammed shut and the walls back up. How well did they really know each other, having stumbled in off the street and easily into his bed?
    "I will...find something to wear."
    Her fingers brushed the tiny silver sword nestling between her breasts, then loped away and pulled wide the doors of the armoire, surveying the pitiful array of clothing inside, all of it having sat there for the better part of the last year. A handful of garments worn once or twice and replaced, no more than that. Some of them she'd never even worn yet, but had been here waiting, apparently. One unfamiliar to her nestled among the others, and she eased it out, admiring the smoky colour, the material far lighter than silk, finer, but just as smooth, and she knew from experience, undoubtedly a high price upon it. She didn't recall ever making any bargains for a spider silk dress however. It flowed through her fingers as she drew them through it, ran a thumb over the tiny flowers with the star shaped petals not unlike the brooch she'd once sold to furnish herself with enough money to buy the bow for him.

    Wordlessly she dressed herself in it, cut in a similar Sotoan style, it was not unlike the simple white dress she'd worn that day on the beach, the wind catching it and molding the thin fabric to her skin. This however left one shoulder bare, the folds gathering beneath her breasts and falling to the floor to mask the rest of her body. She smoothed it with her hands, tying the laces in the small of her back to hold it in place close to herself, like the last, and turned uncertainly to face Aniketos, a phantom smile hovering about her mouth.
    "Now come to me and tell me what you think of your gift. I did not buy this one, therefore it must be yours...and I don't think somehow you'd wear it...or would you?" Her smile grew at the blasphemous thought. If she had ever been in disfavor before, then it was just as well she no longer had faith, lest the Goddess see her thoughts about sharing undergarments with the councillor.
    "You will take me to your surprise now?" Eager, she reached a hand for him to take his, her eyes lighting with anticipation.
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    Aniketos
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    Shrista shivered and then shot up to her feet. Aniketos felt, with a slight guilt, the headiness of internal conflict that weighed the air around her. His impulse had come too soon for her to deal with. Still, he told himself, she hasn't died or run out of the room screaming so I can't have done everything wrong.

    His eyes tracked her to the wardrobe and he was honestly not sure what she would find in there. He had let his servants set up Shrista's room, not wanting to reach into her life and control it like a god. There had been some clothes she'd left behind after her departure and somehow they'd lingered at the house this entire time, so undoubtedly those were in there somewhere.

    Aniketos kept his eyes averted as she dressed, thinking that he ought to be more cautious after that little slip-up. He only looked up when she spoke, and his eyes widened when he saw her in a familiar robe the colour of smoke off incense, while her skin was the colour of smoke from a forest-fire. Of course! How could he forget? He stood up, a sheepish smile on his face as he said, "Ah, that. I'd forgotten about it. I bought it before your...departure. I thought to use it as an anniversary gift, or something, though I could never quite remember the day of our first meeting. I think I simply saw it and thought of you and so of course I had to have it."

    He stood before her, beaming. "So I suppose the servants thought it was already yours and put it in the wardrobe for you. What a mis-step! I was hoping to wear it out tonight. It does look good on you though...not as good as it looks on me, of course. This pretty thing brings out my arms, you see." He flexed an arm at her, though his biceps were but vague impressions on his sleeve. "Though you honestly look beautiful, my love. Come, I will show you the surprise."

    He took her pliant hand in his and led her through the house and outside. The last warmth of summer was still withering in the air though one could smell the driest hint of autumn coming on. He led her through the kitchen garden, which overflowed with brittle herbs and the lacy fronds of carrots and salsify. At the other side of the kitchen garden was a small, unassuming building. It was built from grey stone and had no windows, only a single, heavy wood door.

    This is where Aniketos led Shrista, his face glimmering with a restrained smile. He pulled a key from his sleeve and slipped into the lock of the door, then heaved it open with his shoulder. The air inside was dark and still. He let Shrista in and carefully closed the door, which was lined with rubber guards and so made a strange scuffing noise on the dirt floor. With the door closed there was no light whatsoever in the room and Aniketos let him feel that absolute darkness for just a moment. His eyes invented billowing clouds just to have something to do and he heard every breath and shifting of cloth between the. He inhaled and closed his eyes to the nothingness, then flipped his mind outwards to feel the space around him. He carefully stepped around Shrista and reached for the handle of a second door. It opened outwards, scuffing along the floor, to the chamber where the Star-Lanterns were kept.

    He turned to her, though he looked at nothing with his eyes and felt her shape only in his mind."You gave me Star-Lantern seeds on the same night I found our kittens. I built the Darkhouse to grow them and as far as I know, I'm the only person above ground to have ever tried it. In such a way I suppose I give your gift back to you."
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    Shrista
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    Pariah, Apostate, Heretic

    ((I'm sorry this is so redonkulously long. :c))

    Unfamiliar with the meaning of the term anniversary, the Drow merely nodded, and made a mental note to find out later. There was still so much that she didn't know, words and peculiar customs that had no meaning or feature in her life up to now. It only made her consider how long she'd known the Councillor. Two years at least. Had it really slipped by that fast? It didn't seem possible, and yet they'd been living up to the point when she ran away from him, as though each day were the last. Spare moments and stolen kisses, the lightest of touches masked in a mundane act in company, the charged silence of simply sitting in the same room together. Why should it be any different now? But did either of them want things to just go back the way they were, could they even do that now?

    "It's beautiful. I haven't seen one of these since..." She murmured, letting the words fall from her lips to smash on the carpet heavily, barely a whisper. "Never mind. I'll tell you some other time, now would only stain the moment."
    The taste of blood in her mouth and layers of silk swept over her body in a death shroud before the flames would lick up her legs and consume her. But how she'd wished herself dead then and not simply lying there like a marionette with the strings cut, unable to function but for the shuddering rise and fall of her chest and the pain that throbbed in broken limbs and torn muscles.
    She wanted to spit, to rid the taste of acid from her mouth, coppery and raw. Instead she swallowed, smoothing her furrowed brow into a troubled smile at his humor. Such talk would have had him clapped in irons and likely tortured just for insinuating impersonating a female. Her own mirth in it was hesitant, not quite fearful but had yet to lose the edge of nervousness. For all the lack of faith, the gods were real, and the punishments concrete. She didn't wish to bring ire down upon them...yet it was as though she were split in two. Part of her would like nothing more than to turn and spit in the eye of the goddess, to rise up and defy her, strike her down and take that power for her own. It had been done before, though the lesser goddess was not spoken of, living in shadow and always running, lest she be caught out and destroyed. The rest of her was too much a coward, years of ingrained servitude binding her actions and limiting them to within herself, a caged dog frothing to be let loose, but too afraid to leave the tiny prison it had come to know as home.

    Her hand half raised, as if she would touch his arm when he raised it, but it was dropped all too soon, her lips twisting as her face settled into an unreadable expression. She wouldn't reprimand him for such behavior, though she wouldn't at all have minded seeing him in the dress. Might have been a little tight on the chest though.
    Excitement welled in her again and mingled with the pride, the delight at his compliment, as he plucked her hand like a dead and deflated bird, so careful, and lead her along like any wooden toy on a string, pulled reluctantly behind an enthusiastic child. Gifts had never been something she'd gotten used to, and they were few and far between. He'd given her gifts before, each one more overwhelming than the last, leaving her to wonder if he knew just the effect such a gesture had upon her. Of course it was wonderful to have such things given...that he thought on it, that it might be something she wanted...her stomach flipped over, more for the thought that someone thought of her in a manner that went past base desires or connivance.

    A deep unwilling fear rose in her at the daylight, and she felt her chest constrict, breathing speed slightly as they stepped into the sun, her hand closing in the reflex of fear. It felt like she'd been running from the sun forever, or was it running towards it? For all that she loved the warmth it gave to her skin, the brightness was still nigh unbearable, made the tears spring to her light-weakened eyes and squeeze the lids so close together she might as well have been blind. His hand was a reassuring presence, and she stuck to it like a lifeline, letting her feet pick the path unsteadily, leaves rustling and tickling, scratching at her ankles.
    Autumn was coming, the heat was fading and with it the wondrous change that overcame the world. It washed with colour, the dry crunching browns and golds, permeated by splashes of red and late green, touched with fiery orange or laced with purple. And following that there would be winter again...when everything slept, curled in on itself and retreated. She could remember the first time she'd tasted frost on the air, had caught her first snowflake, and the event still never ceased to amaze her, as any young child at their first winter. A faint smile worked its way onto her lips at the thought, anticipation for the seasons to come.

    Dashing the side of her hand across her eyes, she looked to Aniketos in the moment of clarity, her eyes darting even as they watered again, and took in as much of the surroundings as possible. The little herb garden she recognized, but the building they headed towards now was different. No, in fact it had not existed at all...if she could remember...or had it? Why were her memories of the last year so mashed, coloured wax in the sun, running together to form a senseless mess. She thought there had been a smile on his face, barely hidden, sun struggling through cloud.
    "What is this?"

    The darkness was a blessed respite, and the woman closed her aching eyes, pressing the heel of her hand into one eye socket, unwilling to let go the hand that grasped her so confidently. Shrista opened her eyes to nothing but the press of black heavy on her eyelids, ears straining as she picked out the sound of his breath, the comforting throb of his heart filling the spaces left behind by her own in each passing second. She resisted the urge for the moment to see, to share that blindness with him. She found her eyes straining to pick out something, anything, and instead closed them, if only to ease the discomfort of the void that presented itself to her.

    Her lids snapped up, points of softly glowing red at his voice, turned towards him and angled up to his face. Everything stood in gentle shades of crimson, variations of heat. Cool stone walls and the warmth of his body standing shoulder to shoulder with hers. A dirt floor, blank and yearning for life to grow out of it, as it had out of her. A stab of grief lanced through her guts and she drew in a shaky breath, averting her mind from thoughts of the little body, and how she'd adamantly refused to bury it like an animal, but burned it to ashes. If there was one strangeness she had never understood about humans, it was their need to entomb the dead. If they were ash, they wouldn't get back up again.
    "I had forgotten...I...hadn't really expected to ever see a place where they might survive..."
    Stupid really. And why not? It wasn't impossible to create an island of darkness in a sea of light, just as the reverse was possible. Perhaps she had only seen so much turmoil in her own future that there was no time for peace, no time to sit and enjoy the bloom of flowers. Even those in complete darkness.

    "This is...Aniketos this is more than I could have ever asked. It is wonderful, truly. Thank you." She raised his knuckles to her lips, and pressed them to her cheek, pale lashes brushing against his skin. It just looked like a stone shell from the outside, but it was so much more, and she felt the rock in her throat sink once more, wiped her hand across her eyes, searching his own, blind here for...what exactly? Though the building was here, the seeds nestling beneath their feet, they would take many years to grow before either of them saw anything. She'd only seen them bloom twice before in her life, over a span of some eighty years. It pained her to think that after all this...he might not see them. What if they didn't grow after all? If they didn't like the soil, or grew in the wrong direction or didn't bloom, reproduce...
    Shrista's heart plummeted. They had been a gift, meant for his eyes, something humans had never had. Years she had spent developing them, for them to go to waste...
    Her hand found his cheek, running her thumb over the contours of his cheekbone, disappointment germinating like any vile seed in her breast. But...
    "It takes a long, long time for them to grow. I meant them for you, and you have given them to us. So...I would see that you get to see them at least once..."

    She removed her hand from his flesh, a tiny globe of incandescence forming above her fingertips where she held them pinched together, directed it to hang above them, excruciatingly bright after the brief stint of darkness, despite that it was a dim red. She flinched on its creation, too bright to look upon with her infravision, eyes staining back to their regular blue. It felt unbelievably good to feel that power trickling through her blood again, the scents of damp earth and stone sharpening in her nostrils, of their own unique individual scents, of sweat and dusky perfume overlaying them, the coppery tang of magic slowly swelling as she dragged more to her fragile form.
    Carefully so as not to disturb the sleeping seeds, she directed a series of thin fluted spines to pierce from the ground, spears of bone, twisted as an old woman's fingers to interlock overhead. They could always come back later and replace them with something less grisly, she thought. Though what was wood but the cadaver of another plant? Looking at it like that, it was all rather grim.
    When she was done, they formed a smooth ivory archway before them, a small circle each leaning to the left to spiral together like a crown of swords overhead, enclosing them in an open cage. Abruptly she extinguished the light, the magic sighing as it dissipated. Her hand still in his, she guided him by touch to the center, her fingers curling about a narrow bone shaft, cold under her palm. The next she wasn't sure would work. She'd not tried on plants in many years, and since her clerical powers had been stripped, only relying on her sorcery, it was a risk, she supposed. But if it worked on humans, why not a flower? It was just as complex, just in an entirely different way.

    "Stay," she breathed, then released his hand, and sank to her knees, worming her brittle fingers into the soft earth, questing, a dozen skinny threads of magic hunting for the unborn. On finding them she split them, sent out more, bled strength from herself into the tiny seeds, using the threads of her magic like so many umbilical cords. Her concentration deepened, shuddered as the first casing split and ruptured, the heart sending its own tentative root upwards, towards the air, then another, another, more of them, a tiny forest of activity. She was the central hub in a wheel of life, providing them all the artificial needs, feeding from her, children to mother. And were they not her children, in a way? She'd developed them, cared for them and nurtured them, and even buried them in a sense, thinking of the popping, fracturing rock as she left with only the pouch of seeds.

    Sprouts germinated, slowly inched upwards and grew the dark, spearhead leaves she was so familiar with. Sweat beaded upon her forehead, brow furrowed. Grey, they were grey, shot through with lustrous purple, that would only deepen once they matured. Inch by inch they snaked upwards, crawled across the ground in a rustling carpet, seeking something to grasp, until they found the arches of bone, and began to climb. The limbs thickened, leaves flourishing in abundance and still they raced, filling the space with the scent of life, and tearing the breath from her lungs as though she'd run several miles in only a minute.

    Gradually the buds appeared, swelling to a fullness and splitting, peeling back, damp petals curling, stamens and anthers creeping from within, a thousand tiny stars, pinpricks of violet and indigo light that did little to illuminate the room but for the immediate inch around each bloom. Shrista sank back, rocked on her heels and cracked a tired smile, her joy bubbling up in a laugh that seemed too loud in the dark, confined space with its mysterious star speckled arch. Her limbs burned with tiredness as she rose, using one of the bone struts to support herself, then pulled a handful of the long serpentine leaves through her fingers.
    "It worked..." she mumbled, stating the obvious, her eyes flitting from one cluster of buds to another, to Aniketos, to the arches, back to him again and settled. Shrista moved to his side, twining her hand through his again, the light tremors of exertion passing through her flesh to his as they stood side by side. He was beautiful in the violet hues, the washed out and gently pulsating light casting his skin in silver, his eyes to amethyst, shadows throwing his features into stark relief.
    "Do you like them?"
    She searched his face eagerly, drinking him in as if it was the first and last time she'd see him. It was only that she sought to fix it in her mind, that she might not forget.
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    Aniketos
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    Unter friedlichen Umständen fällt der kriegerische Mensch über sich selber her.

    Shrista lifted his hand and pressed her lips to his knuckles, then to her cheek. His breath staggered out of him; he hadn't realised that he'd been holding the air in his lungs, waiting. Until he breathed again, he hadn't realised the importance of this moment: unlike the forgotten dress, he had been hoping to give her this gift for so long, to receive her approval of it. It was like when he gave her the Hesperés armour, except that then he had pretended it didn't matter. He had denied the swellings of anxiety and warm relief that disrupted his insides, insisting to himself that they meant something else. Now he felt that same succession of bulging emotions, but greater, for he and Shrista hid nothing and stated their thoughts plainly. At her thanks, Aniketos was light-headed and his nostrils flared with his deep breaths. In this moment, more than in any preceding it, he felt like his months of lonely brooding for Shrista had finally come to something.

    "I would give you so much more, Shrista," he murmured, his grasp tightening sweatily on her fingers, "I would, just to see you happy."

    With his mind, he could feel her malleable face flicker from open-lipped joy to a tense disappointment. Those feelings scented the black air and wound into Aniketos' mind. His heart coiled up into a hot little ball until she put up her hand and touched his face. At her words he opened his mouth to explain that he knew he would probably never see them flower and he didn't care, but she had already peeled her hand away and conjured up a sanguine point of energy between her fingers. Aniketos' eyes fell on Shrista's face, lit in rare spots by this murky light. She was furrowed with concentration, facing the patch where the seeds waited to grow.

    Aniketos pulled his eyes away from the few patches of brightness on her face and watched a brief glimmering beyond the veil of shadow. He did not understand what little his eyes told him, so he closed his eyes and sought out the objects with his mind, and felt the knobbled rods of bone as they twined together into an archway. He was perplexed but he did not ask. When he opened his eyes, the light was gone, and Shrista led him to to stand under the arbor, her touch gentle. She told him to stay, so he did, feeling out with his mind as she worked her magic upon the silent earth.

    He did not feel the magic's effects at first, not until the cotyledons flung themselves open, dropping the seed casings to the ground. He felt this stirring and gasped, then forgot to breathe as the creepers came searching across the ground. They found the archway and coiled up the bone rods, unfolding new leaves that breathed the cool, fresh scent of flourishing plant life. Then light pricked his eyes from a hundred different points. He craned his neck back to see the star-scattered sky being grown above him, his mouth open. The lights stretched themselves and then, just as the leaves had done, they threw their arms open in bloom.

    Aniketos' mind went blank; it lacked the words for this, it lacked the ability to comprehend that he had witnessed something that few humans had ever seen, if any. Slowly, he came to understand that he had witnessed a secret that the earth had kept hidden in her depths, clutched like a treasure. What surrounded him was more precious to nature than gold, and for different reasons, it was so to him. He would show no one, he decided: this was for him and Shrista alone, not to be tainted by the eyes and bumbling ingratitude of others.

    He had forgotten Shrista was on the ground, and he dove down a moment too late to help her. She trembled as she stood, but seemed content with the subtle stability gained by holding his hand. He tilted his head back again, taking in the glowing anatomy of these flowers, then turned his gaze back onto Shrista. The light painted itself on Shrista's face: indigo on her cheeks, her snowy brow, her lips and her moist eyes. "Could I not?" he whispered, his eyes dancing slowly across Shrista's face as he searched her for the right words to say, "Surely this is a beauty stolen from the gardens of the Gods, whichever Gods they might be. Surely this was not meant for any mortal eyes, or maybe it was not meant for any human's eyes, especially not for a man's eyes, especially not mine. But you have done it." He let out a small, shuddering breath, his hands knotting tighter with hers. "I was content to build a home for these plants even if I never would see them, even if they bloomed long after my death. I thought that if you got to see them, even so many years later, even if I was not there, it would be enough for me. I never expected it to be a gift for me as well, a gift for both of us."

    He looked around again, feeling a weight press behind his eyes. He wanted to cry even though he was smiling, and he couldn't find a word to put on anything he felt. Once more, Aniketos looked at Shrista's light-daubed face, that cracked, wavering smile on his lips. He had a question that he had never needed to ask before, or rather he'd imagined he hadn't needed to ask it before. But his feelings for Shrista now were careful ones, and he wished to handle her as delicately as he had the seeds when he'd planted them in the sleeping soil. Though it was comical to ask, thought it put him in the place of an awkward youth once again, he asked her, "May I kiss you?"
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    Shrista
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    Pariah, Apostate, Heretic

    (tw - light sexual themes?)

    Part of her wanted to ask him why, to make him say it again and again to sate her own selfish needs. Just hearing it once was enough, really, her chest swelling with the same feelings that she'd refused before any of it had happened. They'd sat there still like some bloated corpse, floating face down, ever present. Yet she was unwilling to turn it over and examine the evidence for itself. Now it was out, it was if so much clean water had washed her soul, scoured it with sand and freed it again. As much as she had lived and grown in secrecy, it did not need to be forever so.
    They could change that.

    They could.

    And hadn't they already? There was nothing left to bury between them but the ashes of their child, burned in sacred fire. It would make them stronger, in the end.

    His joy was enough absolution for her for a lifetime as the buds opened above, casting their scant light down on the pair, and illuminating them in curves and edges. She wanted then to remember him as he was, to make a better memory than clutching at rumpled bedsheets and begging whichever gods might listen for his soul. Better than snatched kisses and hot flashes of jealousy. Better even than lazy afternoons, lounging in and out of sunlight colouring them gold, of moonlight that painted them silver. Now she had one in indigo, his favorite.
    A languid smile split her lips apart, teased them with a soft smoky laugh and she bound her hands tighter with his, drifted closer.
    "For you it might have been enough. For me...no. I wanted this for you, to share with you and only you. I would steal the stars for you, were it in my power. I would challenge your gods and steal you if it should be so."
    Shrista averted her eyes, the silence between them grown pregnant with unborn words and intentions. She half wanted to tell him of the argument that felt eons ago, when she had almost killed Tekun in her anger for questioning her decision. How long had it been made for? She'd known for a long time then, even. Had known it would be a struggle, but done it anyway. Kaahn's question merged with his then, made her draw her gaze back to his shadowed face, amber eyes gone blue-green as only the light under a glacier was, and had her answer. What made him better than any other, but for the fact that he was himself? He'd never pretended to be anything else for her, and for that she loved him.

    Never though could she remember him having ever asked for permission, found it strange, her hands tensing in his. Did she want him to? Yes, oh yes very much so. What then, was she afraid of? The fact he'd asked? Or the carnal feelings within herself that she felt were yet the marks of her demonic companion, deeper than any bruise and sunken into her flesh, lurking beneath the surface. While the acceptance of her feelings for him had left her feeling relieved that it was open between them, the stain on her skin from those claws she still felt, would not, could not be forgotten so soon. Was it that then, just the fear that he'd reject her and leave her bitter and windtorn, a whirlwind of romance that swept her away and threw her carelessly aside afterwards?
    Pale eyes lifted under snowy lashes, the shadow of an older smile ghosting about her mouth.
    "You never needed to ask before..."

    Her hands trembled, tight as she clasped his, could feel her own anxiety winding tighter in her chest, against her resistance. This was no battle in perfect darkness, knives whining and the vibrations tickling her skin, yet the tension was just as bad. But like a battle, it would calm, the waters settling smooth as glass even amidst the chaos. Her throat clicked as she swallowed against the familiar feeling, blinking away the moisture pressing at her eyes as she disentangled her fingers from his. Hesitantly Shrista lifted them, slid her palms across his cheeks, exploring the achingly familiar lines of his jaw, his neck, rested her forehead against his chin, the breath shuddering in her lungs. How could she express her happiness, that he still wanted her after everything? That he still came for her, even when she'd distanced herself, had given up praying that the gods would do something about it? If it were her, she'd have probably abandoned him for walking out on her. What did that say about them? The depths of his love was humbling.
    "I'm nothing without you."
    She sought his lips with her own, fingers tangling in his hair, his collar, momentarily drowning in her own emotions, letting them drag her under. The words were not enough, could never be enough. Not even the actions of her body would be enough, as if she could make up for the lack of understanding him. She dropped her arms, slipping southwards to catch his and guide his fingers to the ties at her back, her voice husky between burdening him with kisses. It was easier than her fear suggested it would be.
    "Show me how to live again."
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    Aniketos
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    Unter friedlichen Umständen fällt der kriegerische Mensch über sich selber her.

    Their hands got all tangled together, clammy with nerves, and it was as if their emotions passed from one to the other through the conduit of touch. They both wanted to cry, stupidly, for it was to be a happy moment in the end, but the tears were stinging their eyes nonetheless. Aniketos smiled against that feeling, the curve of his cheek squeezing out a wayward tear. "Yes, but this isn't before. This is...new."

    Indeed it was, though the love itself was not. The way she held his face was as much a reminder as it was an unfamiliar hope. For all that they were the same two people, at least in their flesh, they had never been this way before. Aniketos waited, his throat hard with emotion, his breath tickling across the top of Shrista's head. He did not truly know what was to happen next, as Shrista thought her way through this question, so he waited. Then his mind, cast about him like a net in search of emotion, caught something rising up from the waters between them. What was this foreign creature? For a moment he could not comprehend it, but when Shrista looked up at him, he felt the forgotten treasure swimming its way up through his own chest, and he remembered that its name was happiness.

    "I am nothing without you," she said, and he replied in the only way that was natural: "And I am nothing without you. But together, what aren't we?"

    He had forgotten how it felt to be much of anything, given that he'd spent so much time trying to not be at all. But had he not once burned bright as a star in her grasp, held tight even as he held her? So much had felt possible in those days, before he'd whittled down those possibilities to a few dreary options, like so many twigs in the bitter ground. Now these hopes lived again, unfolding new leaves and exhaling green, hopeful air. Something had came out of next to nothing, just how a garden had burst from sleeping seeds and again it was under Shrista's touch.

    Aniketos had forgotten how kisses could make one feel weak at the knees, the way they could make the mind think of nothing else in the world. He'd shared so many distracted kisses with strangers, so often thinking of how little he was and more often thinking of the woman now clasped in his arms. What was the worth of love? he had asked himself, What was the worth of intimacy except as a passing entertainment. But since she was here, in his arms rather than only in his mind, what else was there for him to think of? Aniketos breathed Shrista in deeply, inhaling a scent which was at once Shrista as he had once known her and Shrista as he had never known her: skin, sandalwood perhaps, the sourness of sleep, but now also blooming flowers, the grassy shade under a tree and the warm, indescribable smell that somehow always meant home.

    Aniketos fumbled with the ties at her back, realising from the difficulty of this task that his entire body shook like a garden in a storm. "Show me how to live again," she told him, and he only laughed, his smile quavering and drowning in kisses. If he'd kept possession of himself, or if she'd been any less earnest, he would have had something suave to say, an empty laugh to give, but he was waiting for her to show him as well, to remind him that a deep love could be exchanged through the machinations of the body, through the touch of skin on skin.

    He brought her hands to the buttons laid across his chest, then turned half his giddy attention back to her dress, half to her kisses. The clothes came away somehow, and though Aniketos had seen her naked just a little while before, this was something else: the difference was the one between seeing a relic in a collection and digging it up himself. Down to the earth they shivered, their bodies clothed only in the light of those divine flowers. Through dreary days and dreams they had come, through despairing tears and wasted blood but this moment shared in near-darkness made all the suffering worth it, as it had finally brought them back together, closer than ever before.
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