spreading my wings in virtual photography

🩷💜🩵Have some Bisexuals sitting Bisexually on a Bench for your dash for these last days of pride month. 🩷💜🩵

Funnily enough I took these just before this post went around. So on display is Iggy doing just that. Lightly tickling Coran's chest as both a form of play but also in a way that highlights her appreciation of his masculinity, to uplift and reaffirm his gender without objectifying him. She loves his laugh and he's quite ticklish so easy enough to accomplish. The other pastime is a favorite. Coran being the ceaseless yapper storyteller that he is, Iggy takes great comfort and pleasure in simply listening to him. Often with her ear and hand to his chest to feel as well as hear him speak to her. She is a very sensory person and few places bring her as much joy as being curled up against Coran's chest while he softly recounts a tale or simply tells her about his day. 🥰 It also takes on so much more meaning in the AU where they are reunited and she is then mostly blind. 🥺😭

I always catch myself dreaming of you

With your hands caressing my face

Hands trailing downwards with feather like fingers.

You can feel me shiver beneath the armor

As you push me onto the mattress.

Our hands slowly intertwined

With your eyes meeting mine like something predatory, possessive,

Like nothing else matters.

Except for us in this exact moment.

*Tav gnawing on her finger completely lost in thought*

*Stratos being a sneak*

"WHAT THE FUC-" "Oh, it's just you..."

"Hmm... What are you thinking about right now, Tav?"

"Ugh, can't you see I was in my mind palace..?"

"It was just getting to the good part, too.."

"Hah! I can tell! Who am I to get in the way of you and your mind palace?"

"Wait, wha-?"

Halsin does not tell Deia where they are going. He simply asks if she would walk with him, and Deia, suspicious by habit and curious by nature, agrees. The path he chooses winds gently through the forest, away from the busier roads and deeper into that soft, humming kind of quiet that only old woods seem able to keep. Leaves shift overhead in green-gold layers. Somewhere nearby, water moves over stone. Birds speak to one another with the ease of creatures who have never once worried about propriety.

Deia walks beside him with her hands loose at her sides, black skirts brushing the grass, horns catching the occasional blade of sunlight when it slips through the canopy. She is quieter than usual. Not sad. Not distant. Simply listening. Halsin does not interrupt that. They speak now and then as they walk. Little things. Dry things. Deia remarks that Gale’s “birthday tenday” has become suspiciously organized for something allegedly heartfelt. Halsin says Gale’s affection appears to grow more detailed the longer it is indulged. Deia replies that this is, unfortunately, true. Halsin smiles.

Eventually, the trees open. It happens so gradually that for a moment it feels less like stepping into a clearing and more like being gently let into one. A great tree rises at the edge of a wide field, its roots thick and silver-brown, its branches stretched broad enough to make a small world beneath them. At the base of the tree sits a low stone, old and weathered, with two shallow bowls carved into its surface. Many candles have been set around it, some half-burned, some new. The stone looks less like an altar and more like a place someone once made sacred by returning to it over and over again.

Before them, the field spills outward in a riot of flowers. White and yellow and violet. Small blue stars close to the ground. Red wild roses climbing low among the grass. Butterflies drift lazily through the air as though the whole afternoon has been made only for them. The wind is soft. The light is softer. For a moment, Deia says nothing at all. She steps nearer the stone, eyes moving across the candles, the bowls, the roots of the great tree. Then she crouches and begins lighting the candles one by one, the little flames answering her hands with obedient warmth. Halsin watches her without speaking. When she is done, she straightens and looks out across the field.

The view seems to settle into her by slow degrees. Not all at once. Not like surprise. More like water finding a place it has always belonged. Halsin sits upon the stone and waits. He lets her have the silence. Lets the breeze touch her. Lets the scent of flowers and wax and warm bark do whatever quiet work they have come to do. After a while, while Deia is still looking outward, he reaches into the grass beside the stone and begins gathering flowers. Wild roses first. Then small pale blossoms with thin stems. Then a few blue ones, bright as scattered pieces of sky. He works them together with patient hands. Deia notices only when she turns back toward him.

“What are you doing?”

Halsin glances up.

“Something I suspect you will tolerate with more grace than you expect.”

“That is ominous.”

“It is a flower crown, not a curse.”

“Debatable.”

He smiles and continues weaving. Deia comes to sit beside him on the stone. The candles burn steadily at their knees. A butterfly drifts low between them, then wanders away again. After a moment, Halsin says:

“Gale told me about your chosen birthday.”

Deia’s mouth curves faintly.

“Did he?”

“He seemed rather pleased with the idea.”

“He has been insufferably pleased with all of this.”

“As I said.” Halsin’s fingers move carefully through the stems. “Detailed affection.”

Deia huffs. Halsin studies the field for a moment.

“Summer suits you," he adds.

That earns him a sidelong glance.

“Summer?”

“Yes.”

“Because I am loud and prone to setting things on fire?”

“Partly,” he says, untroubled. “But also because there is something of it in you. Warmth that does not always know its own reach. Beauty that grows more visible when it stops trying to defend itself. Life that has survived harsher seasons and still turns toward light.”

Deia is quiet at that.

"That was dangerously kind of you,” she says after a pause.

“I took the risk.”

They sit for a little longer, speaking here and there in the easy rhythm that Halsin seems able to create without effort. He tells her he used to come to places like this when he needed his thoughts sorted into smaller pieces. She says she usually resorts to stabbing things, which is faster. Halsin says both methods have merit. Deia laughs once beneath her breath. He adds another rose to the crown.

“Gale came to me for advice some time ago.”

Deia turns her head.

“Advice?”

“He wished to know whether certain flowers would survive in Waterdeep.” Halsin’s tone stays mild, almost absent, though there is a quiet fondness in it. “Whether the soil there could be persuaded to accept plants it is not used to. Whether a wisteria tree might be managed with patience. Whether a garden can be made to thrive without relying upon magic to force it.”

Deia goes still. Halsin does not look at her immediately. He gives her the dignity of a horizon first. Then he glances over.

“He is doing it for you,” he says.

For a moment, Deia says nothing. The field moves gently in the wind. The butterflies drift. A candle crackles faintly as wax gives way. When she speaks, her voice is softer than it has been all afternoon.

“After we fought,” she says, “about his... ambitions... I left for a few days.”

Halsin listens.

“I made sure the others could manage without me first,” her mouth tilts slightly. “I am not entirely reckless.”

“No,” Halsin says. “Only selectively.”

She almost smiles.

“I needed the distance,” she says. “I needed to be angry somewhere that was not full of his face.”

She looks out at the field again.

“And while I was gone, I wrote to him.”

Halsin waits.

“I told him that he had made me want things I had stopped allowing myself to want,” her fingers tighten lightly in her lap. “Simple things. A home. Stillness. A garden.”

The word seems to surprise her a little, even now.

“I always wanted one, I think. I simply never let myself dwell on it,” she exhales. “It seemed... indulgent. Absurd, for someone who never stayed in one place and never had anything that could truly be called hers.”

The wind shifts a loose strand of hair across her cheek. She does not brush it away.

“He wrote back,” she says. “Said he would build it for me. With his bare hands. No magic. Just... effort.”

Halsin’s eyes soften.

“That made you return.”

“Yes.”

The answer is immediate. Deia looks down at her own hands, almost as though they belong to someone else for a moment.

“I thought it was impossible,” she says quietly. “But then, a great many things Gale says and does once seemed impossible to me.”

She falls silent. When she speaks again, the words slip out with less armor than she meant to give them.

“I often think I am not worth all that effort.”

Halsin stills. The crown rests finished in his hands. For a breath, he says nothing. Not because he has no answer, but because some answers deserve to arrive without haste. Then he exhales slowly, warmth and sadness and understanding folded together in the sound. He lifts the flower crown.

“Come here,” he says gently.

Deia blinks, as if only just remembering he has been making it.

“Halsin.”

“Come here.”

There is no command in it. Only patience. She obeys anyway. He reaches forward and settles the crown upon her head, careful of her horns, careful of the silver adornments in her dark hair, careful of the woman beneath both. His large hands move with surprising delicacy, adjusting the flowers until the roses sit properly and the smaller blossoms rest like scattered stars between them. Deia lifts one hand, touching the crown lightly as if she is not quite certain it is really there. Halsin looks at her for a long moment.

“You speak of effort,” he says. “As though love were measured only by how hard one must labor to keep it alive.”

Deia holds his gaze.

“In nature, there are things that bloom for a season and vanish,” he continues. “Beautiful, but brief. And there are other things, trees, rivers, forests, that shape the land simply by existing long enough. Their roots split stone. Their shade changes what grows beneath them. Their passing leaves marks that remain long after they are gone.”

The wind lifts the edge of her sleeve.

“What you and Gale have,” Halsin says softly, “is not a passing bloom. It is the sort of love that alters the ground around it. The sort that leaves a mark upon time itself.”

Deia goes very still. His voice gentles further.

“Do not mistake receiving such love for a burden you have placed upon another. Some things are worth tending because they are rare. Some gardens are worth building because there is only one person in all the world for whom they would ever do.”

Her mouth parts slightly, though no words come. Halsin’s smile is calm and kind and touched, perhaps, by a little ache of his own.

“You are not unworthy because you were not taught how to be cherished,” he says. “The fault lies with those who failed to see you clearly. Not with the one who sees, and chooses, and builds.”

For a moment, Deia can only sit there beneath the huge tree, flower-crowned and quiet, with the field before her and the candles at her knees and too much tenderness pressing against old, defended places inside her. Then she lifts her gaze to him. Her fingers brush the roses lightly.

“Thank you,” she says.

It is not a large sentence. It does not need to be. Halsin inclines his head.

“You are welcome.”