Mother

Ira didn’t linger, he remained a passing smell upon the breeze through the many long years of his life, and he didn’t settle, his home sat entangled in furs and string upon his back; yet here he’d stayed. Destovin, a silent village tucked between the mountain of fairies and the hills of Geash, forgotten by the map makers and the quest takers. It was nothing, a little string of huts alongside the riverbed that curled down from the mountain and pressed beyond the valley, and yet here he’d stayed. He moved alone, lived alone, and happened about the village by chance, a wrong turn down the path that split at the willow tree, a stumble across the riverbed, and there it stood. He hated it. He loathed the way the people chattered amongst themselves like hornets in the humidity, hated how they dressed like pilgrims hiding away from the pleasures of life, hated how they looked at him like some monster as if another creature just like him didn’t stand fifteen feet behind them, hated the isolation, the silence, the fear, and he hated more than anything that he stayed.

As though he couldn’t leave, trapped between the pulls of destiny and the shoves of those around him, and so he didn’t. For the first time in his life, Ira allowed himself to linger, to wait. Wait for what? Damn, if that question didn’t drive him crazy. If the hushed whispers against his head didn’t make his bones itch, if the silence of the back room of the inn in which he slept didn’t make his heart bleed, if the dreams of someone he knew not, remembered not, didn’t make his eyes burn. He was going mad, and yet he stayed.

Why did he stay? He could never begin to fathom an answer, not until the storm brewed high above his head, not until the touch of lighting upon his soul, not until destiny brought her to him.

He rose from the silence of his straw mat with a crack and a following grunt of pain, he slipped the rank covering of his shirt back over his head and grimaced at the smell, he stood at the front counter of the inn in oppressing silence, harassing the gossiping wives and old farmers with his existence, until a plate of burnt meat and wet eggs fell down in front of him and he took it with an ever charming soundlessness, just as he had every morning for the past two, maybe three now?, months. He sat in the place he always had, started with the meat as he preferred to do, washed back the stale beer with a practiced hiss, and sunk down into the splintered wood of his seat in the way that popped his tailbone best. As it always was, an ever correct clock of misery and silence, an unflinching style of life he’d found himself drowned in.

Yet he stayed. And for what? Some bullshit call of destiny he felt stirring in his bones, some inkling feeling in the back of his mind, a whisper of plea in the wind? Fuck no. He wasn’t some little boy scared of the thunder and the world beyond the walls of his mothers cave, he would never be that boy again, he would never shudder against a “bad feeling”, against “fate”, he would never surrender his own life to something like destiny. What horse shit.

The chair cracked down against the floor behind him, frightening each pair of eyes that had been turned to him in gossip or judgement, as he spun up to his feet and slammed across the damp floor of the inn. He enjoyed slamming doors and, damn, if he didn’t revel in the sound of the inn door splintering against its frame behind him. A bitter, and in no way sweet, goodbye to the dusty stench and soggy food. The morning market bustled across the main road, the smell of hot metal and fresh linen burnt up through his nose, and he threw his way forward through the crowd. Where others walked side-by-side, happy to chatter and see one another, welcome to friendly touch and forgiving of an arm or leg touching theirs, the crowd split like water in the way of Ira’s path.

He wasn’t so different from any of them and as a matter of fact, when his eyes cut up into the diamond stare of the crimson dragoness behind the spiced goods stall, he felt he fit in quite nicely. Only a handful of humans flittered between the stalls, reaching up high to handle the orc’s hanging pottery or squatting down low to pay the gardener fairy for her time, but even they, so deeply engaged in the life of this village, stood out less than him. A silent, oppressive stranger, unfriendly in the grimace that lived upon his face and dangerous in the heavy axe that hung from his belt. If Ira stood in the midst of a horde of dragons and nagas, water fairies and Icks, all deep scales and hard eyes, he’d still strike out against the rest.

His suffocating height, even the cyclops blacksmith tilted his head back to meet Ira’s eyes, the sharp plates against the ridge of his spine, little kids screamed away from the back of him, frightened of the monster in the woods, the empty hue of his brown stare, void of something all life needed to be complete. His soul, hidden beneath the wild flowers of a plant he’d never begin to be able to imagine, lay someplace far away from him, someplace he didn’t even begin to know how to find. He’d spent his life searching beneath every stone he’d stumbled across, traveling til the soles of his feet bled pools in his wake, fighting until he couldn’t see through the scars upon his face and the bodies scattered before him. He’d thought maybe this village had been the answer, perhaps he’d allowed himself to be trapped within the stuffy confines of that inn for months because he’d felt a pull of something he’d never known before in his chest, maybe he believed that, if he found it, his soul, he wouldn’t be alone any longer.

That had been ridiculous, a complete child’s fantasy, and he chastised himself for having allowed it too fester in his heart, fog his mind, for so long. Souls were not things to be found, they existed within the body, an inseparable piece of every living creature upon the earth. He could not ‘find’ his soul, but perhaps it could find him, would find him; and, as a rumble of thunder pounded across the sky, as a dark cloud stretched across the horizon and reached its curled fingers after him, its search had already begun.

The crowd that floated around him had grown restless, their chatter quiet, concerned as they all moved away to the shelter of their homes under the sweltering pressure of the rising storm. Yet Ira moved forward, he would no longer find excuse to stay in this hovel town, he would not linger further on the strings of destiny that seemed to tie his very bones to this village, to the mountains just beyond them. The storm screamed deep through the dark clouds above him, echoing far back into his skull, and he could not help the falter of his step, could not help the fear and the anger that it brought him. He was not his mother, he feared not the ways of nature nor the hidden meanings she found in every curl of the sky, every bend of a flowers head. She feared life, his life, and he would not be the same.

A soft rain had begun to patter across the bridge of Ira’s head and shoulders, he idly hoped the water would wash the stink and filth out of his clothes, and the sound of boyish laughter startled Ira from his tromping gait. A small, golden boy, shaped much like Ira himself, chased past him after a small, deer-esque fairy, whose wild squeals echoed back across the quickly emptying stalls. He’d never been exactly fond of children, their voices too high and their levels of energy too extensive for his personal speed, but Ira fostered a small smile beneath his glower all the same. He’d always longed to know someone so closely, had longed to play and be played with as a boy, dreamt of escaping the silence of his mother’s home only to trap himself in the silence of his own life. Ira envied them.

Thought cast itself far back into his mind, though, when a threatening boom of thunder trembled the ground beneath his feet and a sweltering energy tapped bitterly against the roof of his mouth. Ira’s head cast itself sharply back into the sky, and he watched a whirling pool of death bloom in the sky above him, watched the way the sky sucked up into itself, felt the drop of dread in the depths of his stomach when it surged back outwards. Time grew still, empty, and Ira lurched forward wildly, desperate to act before his mind had even decided what exactly it was he needed to do. The girls shirt felt soft along Ira’s palm, much softer than the scratch of the boys stitched vest, and her weight flew up into his arms quickly, even faster than the boys.

Ira felt a hard pop low in his back, felt a concerning tear in the joint of his left elbow, felt an indescribable calm at the sound of their bodies landing far away, at the splatter of mud up into their faces, at the wide, frightened stare of the boy upon his face. He was terrified, but he was alive, and that was the only consolation Ira would need as the energy of the heavens flew down upon his head, as the force of it shot his heart down into his feet, as a twin arm of lightning stretched across the sky and kissed a little plot of land Ira had never known. He felt each tendon and joint within his body crack, broken and fused back together in a flash of pain so powerful Ira felt every orifice in his body fight to gain control over it.

A deep, powerful sear of power built up beneath Ira’s skin; it brewed behind the busted vessels of his eyes, tingled within the crimson cry that split forth from his lips, erupted from the spines across his back in an electrical surge of blue energy. Each atom, every fiber, it all bent beneath the kiss of the lightning atop his head, fused into something new and frightening, until not even his skin felt the same. Through a surge that felt like his bones had been ripped up from beneath his skin, Ira saw white, and then blue, and then a face he’d never seen before but longed to hold in his hands flashed behind his bloody eyelids; and then. Darkness.

Ira’s ribs ached and he coughed thick, crimson and blue blood up along the side of the stall he’d been blown into. He wailed against the pierce of each rib in his body into his organs, and he cried for her. For who? Whose name was this? He’d never heard it before, never known anyone to be named anything like it, and yet the taste of it, the feel of it upon his tongue, was perfection. It filled the hollow ache of his heart and tickled along the edges of his empty soul, promising to fill the void that had been born in his chest the moment he’d cried life into his body centuries ago. He felt it, the strings of destiny that name wove between himself and its owner, and she felt it too, curled up against it from the depths of nature’s womb.

He could not find his soul, but perhaps it could find him. Perhaps it would.

The rumble of thunder across the hills bounced down through the depths of the pond hidden beneath the trees of the mountain of fairies, tucked between the marshes and the rocky pass that led down into the valley below. In the center of the pond, it’s roots spread up between the pebbled shore and down into the brown earth below, a flower of the deepest blue bobbed against the current brought in from the stream that ran through its bed. With each pound of thunder, each promise of lightning, the petals of the flower seemed to fall open farther, pulsing up against the energy brewing in the air and reaching the frosted tips of its hands up to stir in the blackening clouds. Life pulsed from the core of the plant, awoken by the hum of electricity creeping closer, and every creature in the forest fled to escape it.

A deep black cloud stretched over the valley below, hiding the brown roofs and sprawled dirt road from the view cut up from between the forests branches, and a wild brew of danger stirred in its depths. Cracking across the air between the mountains and hills, drawing closer the beast and the beauty, tying the strings of their destiny within its darkness, sealing their fates against Evil without remorse, without question. The contract had been written, and the broken pound of lightning through the air sealed it in fire.

As the bolt tapped down across Ira’s head, its brother stretched up from the valley, it wove up between the branches and thorns of the forest, and drove straight between the falling petals of the bloom. As power surged beneath Ira’s skin, welled up in the back of his throat, fire erupted up from beneath the roots of the flower and ripped through the grass, tore up through the trees, and scalded down into the depths of eternity. It grew wild, a burst of inescapable danger, before it fell still, hummed, and surged back down into depths of the pond beneath the flower; the grass untouched, the trees alight with life, the dirt full of gold and life; before death fell forward.

The span of minutes spun into seconds as a deep blue fire spit across the forest, flattening all life beneath its thumb without guilt. Where the forest grew green and ancient, it stood now desolate, blackened by destiny. It’s life given to fate, taken up from the veins of the world and fed into the heart of The Moss, into the heart of her.

The bloom of the flower twisted up hideously, charred from the heat of its own power, its black fingers agape within the air as though it searched for deliverance in the heavens, and yet none came. Where no hands stretched down to take it, to save it, two little arms ripped up from the depths of its death and found life. They felt the fading brush of the storms power against their hand, caressed the sounds of his cries in their palms like a heartbeat, fingers flinching against the pain found there. As Ira cried, so did she; to mourn his sorrow, his agony, she wailed. Beneath the black ichor from which it was born, a head burst forward, long hair spilling down from the snap of the tar against her flesh, and she cried from small, cracked lips.

The sound of a child whose favorite person had been lost, had been harmed. When Ira’s eyes sunk closed, when darkness fell upon him, the depths of her eyes snapped forward, and darkness grew distant. The pond had vanished beneath the kiss of the fire, and in its placed gurgled the black placenta of the womb of the earth. It licked against her skin, sucked back against her trembling legs, sunk down across her shoulders as she slunk forward; a promise of destiny, of peace. Ira had grown silent, his heart quiet and the thrum of his life distant in her veins, and at the edge of the melted pond she stood, listening, waiting.

She waited for the sound of his life, the rush of his breathe against the hands of the villagers, the loud beats of his heart against her head as the healer wiped the blood from his mouth, the promise of his being down in the village below; and, as it bloomed forward, as the new, blue hue of his eyes struck up into the black circle of forest atop the mountain, as the beat of his heart fell into sync with hers, she moved forward. The whisper of ash against the bottoms of her feet as she moved, the crumble of the forest behind her head, the creak of new, green life bursting up from the depths of the death she had left behind— a promise that, in the end of all, life would survive, life would win— pushed you forward into the lies webs of your, of his, destiny.

The splintered wood of the bench dug up into Ira’s back and legs, itching against the skin exposed from the flames of the lightning; the heat of its touch had eaten down through every seam, leaving Ira burnt and exposed to the peering eyes of the world around him. The entire village seemed to crowd around his pulsing head, the weight of their stares seeping down into the blue power that fused his bones together, the lay hidden, waiting in the back of his mouth. As elderly women and doe-eyed children crowded around him, chattering above one another in a growing swarm of sound, Ira slowly moved to cover the exposed apex of his legs and faintly, desperately, wished the storm had just killed him.

A gentle hand fell across Ira’s bloody shoulder, its fingers cold and sharp, and the entire crowd flinched away from the danger of the hiss that rumbled from his throat. The beast tore himself to the side, away from the sting of the strangers touch, and met the golden stare of the dragoness he’d seen tucked behind the spiced goods stall. His eyes danced up across the arch of her skull, the golden dust of color that laid there, and the smooth arch of her spine and tail curled up across her leg. She was like him, diamond eyes and dangerous hands, but she wasn’t like him at all, her back void of the spines upon his and her belly empty of fire; she was like him, a dragon, and yet she was nothing like him at all, a monster.

“Foreigner.” Her voice held a wisdom beyond his years and spoke of a gentle heart beneath walls of poison and hands like stones.

“Ira.” He corrected, the smallest bit cross that, even after so many months spent harassing the villagers of this town, bringing upon their silent wrath for simply existing, she didn’t even know his name.

“Boy.” That, Ira decided, was very much worse. “You’re bleeding. Let me help.”

Ira wanted to teach her a few new words, a little colorful in nature, that he thought she’d really enjoy, but he saw the corked bottle in her hand and felt the tremble of exhaustion in his knees, he fell still. Even if he could get up and walk away, abandon this hovel far behind him as he’d meant to months ago, a woman educated in the ways of medicine was more dangerous than even him; and so, in likely one of the smartest bouts of thinking Ira had ever done, he hung his head and raised his arm up to the woman’s hands. “You’re smarter than you look, boy.”

“Ira.”

“Infant.”

He almost wanted to cry at that. Ira struggled with words on his best of days, incapable of expressing himself in much the same way his mother was, unable to read the emotions within himself and place them into life, dumb to the beat of his own heart. Anger turned to violence and tears in his throat, happiness to stoney silence, and sorrow into emptiness. He didn’t want to be that way, that emotionally constipated creature he’d grown up watching cower behind the walls of her cave, but he couldn’t help it, trapped behind centuries of behavior and an inescapable instinct to hide from the light of the world, lest he be found by that which haunted his mothers nightmares. The beast. Destus.

From the depths of his self wallow, his monologue of his own incapability to exist, the dragonness pulled Ira and into a warm place he’d seldom known she put him. “Those children you saved, they were mine. I’m sorry they caused you such trouble, but I thank you. From the bottom of my heart.” The golden hue of her eyes flew up into Ira’s own ice blue stare, and he remembered, even for the briefest of moments, why he’d become this man, this mercenary.

To save, to heal from the darkness which his own mind could never escape. Even if his body lay broken and rotting beneath the earth, left by those he’d called his own, as long as one person had been spared from eternity, from silence, from loneliness then it was worth it. To punish the darkness, the evil, he, a force of evil of its very own, was born. The blood across his mouth cracked apart as a soft smile found his face, “I’m glad they’re okay.”

The dragonness; done of wiping the blood from his shoulder and now rubbing, more like ‘assaulting’ Ira thought with a wince, a watery, burning paste into the open wound; gave him a brief smile of her own before she turned and called two names into the ground, her voice boomed across Ira’s already trembling head like a death sentence, and he found himself desperately wishing she would be done with him already. “Orah, Newa, come here now!”

Murmurs rose up through the crowd like small waves against the sands of beaches Ira knew they’d never, and likely would never, see as two little bodies pushed their way up from the back of the crowd to stand, heads cast and hands folded, before the hard stare of their mother. Ira recognized them quickly, the golden head and trembling tail of the little boy, the flattened ears and nervous hooves of the little girl, and sympathized with them immediately. If she had been his mother growing up, he likely would’ve shaken like a leaf before her scolding too. Hell, he, a grown man many feet taller and mountains stronger than her, almost shook too.

“I want you both to apologize and thank Mister Ira immediately.” So now his name was Ira, not ‘boy’ or ‘infant’ or fucking ‘pitiful little baby’ or some shit. Yet he watched it slide by, a mother in the midst of teaching children lessons should never be interrupted, a deep cut on his neck from a broken wine glass told him that little secret.

The little girl stepped forward first, nervously reaching forward and wrapping her tiny hands around Ira’s bloodied finger, the tip of it nearly taking up the entirety of her hold. “I’m thorry mithter.” Fuck, not a lispy little kid. Ira understood she couldn’t help it, but, damnit, if it didn’t get on his nerves. “Thank you for thaving me.”

“Yeah.” The little boy whispered from his place behind his sister, his golden little claws ran nervous against one another as he flashed his golden stare up from Ira’s face and down into the ground again. “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have been running around in the storm. We could’ve died. Thank you.”

Ira took a long breath, admiring the soft fur along the girls hands and adoring the spitey little tone of the boys voice, enjoying the proof of their life, before he blew out a hot cloud of air into the dry wind and leant back into the wall behind his mast uncomfortable bench gently. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“And you?” The little girl pulled down against his hand demandingly. “Are you okay, mithter?”

“I-“

“Mister Ira will be fine, especially once you two run along and leave him be.” The dragonness finished spreading the medicine across the bend of his shoulder with a lot ‘pap’ atop the irritated flesh, Ira grunted loudly and knocked his head back against the wall twice at the pain, before she shooed the pair away with a push of her tail and a call after them to be home for dinner. She turned to him, using her clean hand to pull the cork out of another canister strapped to her waist, and a subtle yet menacing grin stretched across her face. “Alright, mithter,” Ira grimaced, “let’s finish this. You were just headed out, weren’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

As she shook thick, red paste from the opened bottle at her belt and pressed it down into the split crown of Ira’s head, as he fought to stay still and silent lest she verbally abuse him again, he pondered her not-question. She’d watched him enter the town, her diamond eyes followed along his every move just as everyone else’s had, her heart clouded with distrust and judgement just as it always did, she helped him because he had helped her. She was not grateful, she did not like him, enjoy his company, think he was funny; she was in debt to him, his life for the lives of her children, as so she had begun to pay it back. To get him out of the lives of the villagers, to send him on his way as the entire population had hoped from the moment they’d met him. A stranger, a beast, a lingering sent on the passing breeze. That was Ira.

He had overstayed his welcome, lingered long behind the traveling winds, and he would remain no longer. They wanted him gone, a frightening sight along the edge of the crowd that dampened their afternoon and soiled their breakfast, and so he would go.

So why, as he felt the burning cool of the ointment atop his head, along his lip, as he caught a wisp of movement along the edge of his vision, as he turned his head to stare down the curve of the stream that stretched down from the mountains and wove between the houses of the village, as he watched her move forward between the gurgle of its life, as the face he’d watched in his dreams formed through the glare of the sun, as the name he’d cried for in the midst of his terror rose to his mouth, did he feel as though that task had now become impossible.

He could never leave, not for good, not anymore, not if this is where she stayed, where she lived, where she awaited him. One could never dream to find their own soul, yet ones soul could spend its entire being trying to find them. Perhaps his soul could find him, perhaps it would, perhaps it had.

The gurgle of the stream between your ankles and the clatter of the pebbles beneath the surface of the water, it was all so strange, so new, so beautiful. Life was so bright, the glitter of the sun in the clearing sky, the skitter of clouds behind the mountains, the rolling hills beyond the cover of the mountain of fairies. It all glimmered behind your eyes and you nearly couldn’t breath against it, it was endless, the lives of millions of creatures murmured all around you and yet you only heard the beat of one. Ira. Ira. Ira.

Who was that, exactly? This name, this faceless weight drilled down into your very bones, you knew not anything of the world and yet you knew everything of him. He was the blood within your veins, the pound of your heart, the body of your soul. Ira. Ira. Ira.

A sharp stone hidden beneath the polished shine of the pebbles around it cut up into the heel of your foot, red and blue blood hurried down the stream ahead of you, fingers stretching out to bleed against its bed, to tickle up against the dirt pathways of the village through which it stretched. Yet you felt nothing, only the drive of him pushing you forward, only the whisper of his name upon destiny’s tongue. Beyond a bend in the stream, across a fallen tree, and down into the valley, there the village stood. The glare of the sun up from the surface of the water burnt across your eyes, but you flinched not, could not dare miss the soft stones from which the houses were built, could not dare forget the tickle of dust within your nose, could not dare look away from the beauty of him.

The kiss of the sun atop his head, the glimmer of hidden power, soundless danger, between the spines across his back, the overwhelming stagger of him even when he sat low, hunched down into himself, the widen of his blue eyes upon yours. He was beauty.

You moved faster now, the length of your hair, born fresh from the womb of nature, spilled down across your shoulders and tickled over your back, and nearly cried as you watched him stand, as you watched the way he stepped forward, the ripple across his arms as he fought the pull of the strings of destiny. Ira. Ira. Ira.

The eyes of the villagers fell upon your flesh, wondered across the small, barren frame of you, and yet you felt them not, felt not their judgment, not their fear of the stranger. Neither did he; for the first time since he’d found that place, since he’d met the stare of the people around him, since their expectations flew up upon him, Ira felt none of it. He felt not like a stranger nor a monster, he was not the beast that lurked in the shadows of the night, he was light, a kiss from your lips upon the morning glories. Between the stretch of days, of years, centuries, you moved across the dirt to reach him, the mud hugged up beneath your toes and around your ankles. You held the contract forged within the storm between your fingers, traced the seal from the fire along its top, and, when your fingers brushed against his, when his shadow fell across your face and your head fell back against your shoulders to see him, when your soul found him; you signed your names along the bottom in blood.

Destiny had found you, had woven you together from the beginnings of time, had written your fate in the stars, and you had found him. His life, his soul.

“I found you.” A voice the whispered along the edges of his dreams, a face he’d longed to hold within his hands, the touch of hands he’d known since the dawn of his life. It’s was his everything, just as he was yours, and then it was nothing.

Your eyes cracked back up into your head as you crumbled forward against him, darkness falling across the span of your mind, a veil falling down between the two of you, a curse of silence, ignorance. No one may know the fate of the world, not even the saviors of it, and so you did not. The moment of light, of spiritual clarity which had found you, ended with the press of your weight into his arms, and the both of you grew foreign to the world, to one another, once again.

Ira held you gently between his hands, something so small and delicate did not belong in the claws of something as dangerous as him. Where the village had frozen in the moment of their destiny, existence surged back into being once more and the entire world fell down upon the both of you. The small waves against the sand became an endless cry of the deep ocean, loud voices fighting to be heard over the next, desperate hands stretching to feel the one who survived the storm and the one that had been born from him. As a hand brushed over the back of your head, Ira broke forward from the stone of his shock and, before the movement of his brain and the action of his body could align, he’d taken the wrist of the older woman in an unforgiving crush.

She cried desperately and pulled against the iron of his fingers around her, and to her struggle he rose tall, the quiver in his legs forgotten as he fell down into the woman’s face, tucking you tightly against his chest. “Do not ever touch her again.”

The woman crashed down against the dirt in a cloud of brown and gray, and she scrambled away between the startled sea of the fish that surrounded him, the scramble of her feet a scream against the crushing silence of the crowd. Ira watched her go but for a moment more, cast his glare upon the surrounded spectators and reveled in their fear, before he fell back down against the bench, and cradled you up against him. He ran a deadly claw against the arch of your brow, the stretch of your nose, in admiration; beauty in everything you were, perfection, the soul he’d ached to know all his life. He would die for you, and for him you would sacrifice anything. The destiny you shared, a fate of which you had yet to know.

A hand cautiously found Ira’s upon your face, taking the reach of his fingers away from your nose, and he nearly trembled with rage. A deep hum of energy flew up between his spines and a danger brewed in the back of his throat, deep blue eyes growing impossibly deeper as he found the diamond stare of the healer. “Ira.” She spoke his name gently, as though he was a bomb that would explode any moment from even the gentlest brush of the wind. “Do you know this girl? Who is she?”

“(Y/n).” Your name a whisper between his ears, he’d dreamt of the sound of it and cried out the syllables of each part in the midst of his pain, his death. As soon as he’d spoken it, it left his head again, as though the veil had lifted for hut a moment before the lace of it crashed back down into the floor.

The dragonness repeated the name softly, her golden eyes a gentle caress upon your face, the care of a mother between the furrow of her brows. “Will you still leave, Ira? Despite this?”

Ira didn’t know. This town suffocated every atom in his body, tore down into the ache of his heart, and pushed against his back like an endless storm. He’d hated it, he’d waited only for you, for this child born from the womb of nature, this soul of his body. With him. Yes, you could move with him, travel across the plains of the world by his side, learn of the ways of the sword, of the adventure beyond the sea and across the Icek. He could teach you, but could he raise you? The thought fell down upon the back of his neck like a kiss of death, it burned beneath his chest, and he held you tighter against him.

“Will you take her?” The dragonness pondered quietly. “Will you raise her? Can you?”

Ira hated this woman, hated the way she seemed to read deep beneath his skin, hated the way she seemed to know the answer to every question he had before he did, hated the way he reminded him of the way his mother once was, before her madness, before her death.

“A life for a life.” She murmured softly, her head bowed down against her chest for but a moment before she met his desperate stare once more. “I can. You saved my children, both of them. Two lives, two debts. She will be mine,” Ira fought the rumble of hatred that brewed in his throat, “my daughter to raise, and love. Your health, and her safety. My debts are paid, and so you must go.”

“Why?” Ira whispered against the tears that burned behind his eyes, a frightened child beneath the stare of his mother once more, unable to understand why he must go, why he must leave her.

“You know why, Ira.”

He did. He knew exactly why. He knew the chaos he caused in this village, the danger he had brought by simply existing, the empty feeling of his pockets before they’d burnt off of him in the fire. In a place where he could only be seen as a monster, where the only weight of him lingered in the back of the villagers minds alongside the rumors, the creatures in the shadows, he could not stay. He would never be welcome to live here; however, Ira could not fight the grin that crept across his face, he could never be turned away as a traveller, as a patron either. He used every ounce of money he’d had in months of his stay here, buying food, housing, unnecessary accessories to decorate his weapons with.

Where was his axe anyway? He’d find it later, blown up into the roof of a little hut along the edge of the stream.

He could never live here, but you could; and, if you did, you were guaranteed safety, acceptance, a home where he could always find you. He knew not why that pleased him so, could not fathom why the thought of losing you plagued him so deeply, could not comprehend why he held you so tightly, could not fight the way his heart pounded at the sight of you.

Ira meant his head forward and pressed the long of his mouth across the top of your head for just a moment, memorized the soft smell of lavender and grass within your hair, before he rose to his feet and closed the space between him and the healer. Each flinch, each murmur of desperate fear that ran through the crowd, filled Ira’s heart with a twisted joy, it promised that they knew his strength, ensured that they knew the danger that came from his claim on you, sealed your safety in stone. It burnt like a bad taste in his mouth as the dragonness took you from his arms, it ached deep in his chest at the soft way you curled against her warmth.

“I’ll keep her safe, Ira. I protect all children here.”

“You’d better, hag.” Ira had grown tired of calling her ‘dragonness’ and ‘healer’, and he felt his nickname to be both fitting and very clever, though, from the twitch of her eye and the drag of her tail across the dirt, he had to say that ‘hag’ didn’t exactly agree.

“Miki.”

“Hag.”

Damn, giving her a taste of her own medicine felt good. A rumbled breath of laughter left his chest at the pure hatred that flitted across her face, and he cracked a knuckle loudly with his thumb before he look down into her face once again. “Get her dressed, fed, warm. Whatever she needs, yeah? I’ll leave tonight.” Miki’s eyebrows furrowed forward once again, and Ira had half a mind to tell her that it made the wrinkles across her brow far worse when she did. “What? You don’t expect me to climb the mountain buck-fucking-naked, do you? You a pervert, hag?”

“Hah!” Miki threw her shoulders back and kicked an open wound across Ira’s thigh with a laugh, watching him stagger to a knee and traumatize the surrounding children with his mouth. “You’ll find some clothes at the smith’s house, they should fit you, fuckin’ fat ass.” She hissed the insult beneath her breath as she turned and disappeared between the stalls, cradling your cold body between her arms.

“Bitch.” Ira cursed after her, his swear a breathless whisper as he pulled himself up to his feet through the throbbing pain in his legs. He watched the length of her crimson tail disappear around the curve of a small, wooden stall, and he desperately began to miss you already. The bond forged between you in the storm, the pull of your soul deep within his body, it all ache in a pain more ancient than anything Ira had ever known. He longed to take back his words, his promise to leave, he dreamt of taking your small self back against him and vanishing from the face of the earth, from the eyes of any who might see you and wish to take you from him. He’d never felt a desire so strong, a bond so deep, a need to maim all life and hide you away. Possession wasn’t a word strong enough, obsession fit closer yet still failed him, and you’d only ever spoken three words to him, words he could barely remember beyond the sound of your voice and the feel of your hand along his.

Fuck. He was in deep, deep shit.

Thunder rumbled between the black clouds of the heavens and echoed in the twisted guts of the wailing beast; she cried against the pull in her womb and the blood between her legs. The weight of the child inside of her grew heavy and tight as it pushed its way forward; stone crumbled beneath the knifes of her hands and the walls of her home trembled beneath the wails of her lungs. Her blood crept back beneath her thighs, hot and sticky and suffocating, and she pushed through the ick all the same.

The storm waged its war along the outside of the cave, pulling stones and dirt up from the hollow of it and sending them down into the valleys below. To bear children beneath the roar of thunder was an ill omen, a curse upon the child’s head to bring misfortune and gloom, but this couldn’t, wouldn’t be stopped. Should she try to hold him for even one day more, she knew he would die within her. She had fought to beat the storm, and it had been a battle destined to lose from the start. He couldn’t wait any longer.

The crackle of lightening against the stones above her head hummed within her ears and her head rung as a new scream tore up from within the depths of her body. The spit of electricity down the sides of the cave licked against her flesh, but the sensation of a life ripping out from her cast the sensation to the back of her mind, eliminated the burn of power against her skin, building in her stomach. He was near, right against her and ready to cry his life; the scream of her agony, the deafening crack of lightening against the sky, the twin streaks of white across the darkness of the storm.

She felt not the fire of the lightening against her skin, nor did she see the blue surge of energy building within her spine and growing along the new life sat beneath her legs. The fire ended before it began, pulled from the veins beneath her skin and taken deep within the heart of the wailing life hidden beneath the blood and ick. Her hands trembled as she reached for him, as she took her son into her arms. A breathless laugh and the trickle of a tear across the scales of her face, she ran the tips of her fingers across the distraught face of her son and forgot the pain he’d brought as she felt his life against her.

A hum of blue energy grew against the red across his face, and his mother grew still. Her gentle thumb took the blood away and she studied the mark atop his head, bounced him against her chest to end his screams, and her worst fears began to bloom before her eyes. The blue symbol pulsed against her fingers, the image of his curse seared across his flesh forever, and she wailed against the wild of the fading thunder. She cursed the omen it had placed on her child, she hated the world that would scourge his life, she screamed against the sound of his pitiful cries. Why had destiny cursed him in such a way? Condemned him to a life of sorrow and war, it had taken away his world before he’d even had a chance to see it for himself.

Why had The Moss taken him from her? Why had it chosen such a small and helpless creature to be its host, so soft and precious against her? Why did it have to be her son? Was it her curse? For loving a creature of destruction and death. For laying with the very thing The Moss had been created to destroy. Her sins had damned him, she had taken her own sons life away, and she could only sob against her regret and fear.

The winged beast carved into his skin stared back up at her as their cries faded away, the cool of her tears seemed to soothe his hot, little face and he found peace in the end of the storm. The soft claws at the top of his fingers brushed his mother’s nose and she could barely stifle the sob building in her chest. He gurgled sweetly to the press of her nose against his head, and she trembled against the wild crash of his small hands against her face.

꧂

The burn of lightening across the sky illuminated the wild flowers along the ponds edge, highlighted the empty white hue of them like an ominous painting. The fish in the pond trembled against the overwhelming energy building in the rolling, black clouds; sunk deep into the mud against the hum of its power and listened to the sound of the entire forest retreating. The sound of rabbits burrowing beneath the earth, of deers running across the field over the valley, of wolves howling against the surge of energy against their skin. Not one understood and yet they all knew: Knew to flee.

The fate of the balance of the world grew in the drum of thunder and struck across the world with purpose. Two arms of lightening stretched across the sky; they found the hidden walls of the cave of beasts, and the lifeless little flowers by the ponds edge. A blinding blue flame burst beneath the touch of the energy and spread across the field, consuming the flowers and grass beneath its merciless touch.

In the wake of destiny’s wrath and purpose, a ring of dirt and ash lay against the ponds edge, gently sinking into the water that lapped at its edge. It sat still, silent, empty for a moment more, before The Moss began to bloom.

The earth seemed to sink down into itself for just a moment, before it flew forward in a burst of power and life. Wild, blue petals pulsed up from the ground and twisted against the new air around it, stretching high above the width of the pond and burying their roots into the depths of it. Deep green and brown limbs tore up through the ash and dug themselves into the roots and brush of the forest around it. It moved as though it was alive, and that it likely was, and it grew like a wildfire.

When the forest and the beast grew still, the bulb of an enormous cerulean flower sat in the midst of the forgotten pond; absorbing the water and life of the forest into itself. Almost like a parasite, but not quite. This creature wasn’t nearly so evil, so murderous. It borrowed the life from its home and in exchange it seemed to be offering something even more precious, important, but what? The earth herself didn’t know, but she caressed her fingers against the velvet of the flower anyway, and she wished its safety, its life so that it might one day save hers.

The wail of a wild dragon tore across the sky, full of sorrow and despair and regret, and the bulb trembled against the sound of it. The very roots and limbs of it seemed to twist towards the sound desperately, as though its very heart lay hidden away beneath the burning tears of the dragon, before it grew still against the pond once again. Watching for a bend in the very strings of eternity, waiting for its moment to bloom and bring forward the life within its core, listening for the rumble of the storm of destiny.

꧂

NSFW

The first time you’d made love to Artúr, he had been so gentle and slow. His kisses worshipping and his hands warm, the feel and weight of him against you, within you. It had been a dream come true.

The bounce of him beneath you, the reach of him into you when you rode him. He’d guided your pace, his hold tight and bruising and pleading. And, when you pulled his hair back, desperate to kiss him, the moan pulled from his chest made you stop dead.

His submission only spiraled forward from there. He encouraged the pulling, the biting and the scratching. Many mornings, you’d awaken to find more damage upon his skin than yours— and that said VERY much.

He hadn’t verbalized a desire to be dominated as much as he’d shown it. The owner of his family’s shop, the provider for his elderly parents, the protector of his siblings, the leader of everyone around him. It was always the Titans who craved to fall lower than dirt, and you were more than happy to put him there.

A blowjob turned into soft assplay, which turned into the highest peak of his submission. Pegging:

The strap-on’s started small and the sex gentle; however, he wanted, needed more, and so did you. It was a desire you never knew you craved. To dominate, to be so small compared to someone so big, to be an ant holding the power over the lions head. It was addicting, it was so hot.

His moans, the heat of him, the mindless babbling and pleading, the cumming. To watch him come undone without a single touch to his cock, it was something you could watch every moment of the day without growing bored.

He still held the control on plenty of other nights, but the neither of you could deny the rush of pleasure and excitement you would feel when the day would come closer. Neither of you could deny the heat of the moment, nor how hard the play made the both of you cum.

How you craved to taste one another’s weaknesses like honey on your tongues, how you craved the rushing sensation of the other inside you. The balance you shared between you, the love that blossomed so deep in your hearts it made you cry in moments of serenity snd peace.

You babbled mindlessly into the air; a slew of pleas and whines fell from the aching hollow of your throat, where thick, ivory tusks pressed against the flesh. The thick silk of his braids knotted between your fingers as you pulled him tighter against you, crying his name lamely.

Urk’Hal grunted loudly against the bluing skin of your neck, his tusks pressing darker, harder bruises into you. He crushed the fat of your thigh between the thick of his left hand and cradled you against him with the hand at your back, the span of his fingers brushing past each shoulder blade. He whispered your name desperately against you, his breath hot and heavy along your collarbones.

You could barely move against his rhythm, boneless and pliant in his hands as you felt him surge up into you. Your nose rested against the side of his cheek, and you dug your nails into the arch of his back and shoulders. Your hands slipped against the damp flesh of his deep green skin and you buried your nails deeper under his muscle, wrenching a heady grown from the depths of Urk’Hal’s barrel of a chest.

The wet smack of your thighs against the corded muscle of his hips grew louder, faster, and a dribble of drool slipped past your lips. It pooled against the hollow of your throat and Urk’Hal drug his hot tongue against it before he began to suck a black bruise against the skin there. With a violent swivel and thump of his hips, he sat himself tight against the entrance of your womb. You practically screamed at the sensation, the line of pain and pleasure so thin a simple breathe could’ve broken it.

With a desperate breath and a keen against his skin, you managed, “N-n-n-n… Al-al! Cuuum~, nbghh.”

“I know,” Urk’Hal moaned, dipping his head down to kiss the top of your breast, his spine a near-complete arch now and, in the deepest recesses of your mind, you wondered how his back didn’t hurt. “Me too, dove, me-me, AHH…!”

With a groan like rocks tumbling down a mountain, a thrust of savage and beautiful hips, and a bruising pop, Urk’Hal pushed himself up into you and threw his head back with a howl. Like a bolt of electricity across your skin, you burst beneath your skin and threw yourself up and down his cock. The waves of your orgasm swelled and faded away; and, with your head slack against your shoulders, you missed the way Urk’Hal watched you ride through the pleasure he’d given you, as though you were the most beautiful thing to exist. To him, you were, you truly were.

You didn’t miss, however, the slide of his hand up to your face, or the way he cupped your chin and pulled your face down to the bushfire of his eyes. You pulled your nails from the skin of his back and cupped the knotted warmth of his palm against you. Pressing a gentle kiss against the worn skin there, you slumped forward against him and relished the warmth of his hands running up your back to soothe your aches.

“My dove? Are you alright?” He breathed against the top of your head, and he marveled in that moment how small you were. How dainty you were in his arms, how small the expanse of you felt in his hands, and he almost missed your mumbled response of ‘mmm’. Urk’Hal laughed gently to himself then and closed his eyes against the sensation of you pressing small kisses against his chest, up against his throat.

“Hmmm!” You grumbled against his chin, and he turned down to stare into the ocean of colors in your eyes, he mimicked the sound back at you and you smiled softly. “I can’t kiss you all the way up there.”

“Oh, how terrible! Forgive me, dearest.” Urk’Hal grinned at you, the golden band of his tusk gleaming down teasingly at you. With a pout and a whimper, you pulled yourself up and off of him, taking pride in the way Urk’Hal murmured mournfully against you, before you pressed a tight kiss against his lips. The ivory of his tusks rubbed your cheeks and you turned to kiss the both of them softly. Urk’Hal brought his hand forward to cup the back of your head and neck as you kissed across his face and neck.

“I love you.” He whispered to himself, almost unaware of the words leaving his own mouth, lost in the feel of you. However, when your eyes grew wide and met the lidded dream of his own, he realized what he’d said. The first ‘I love you’ and he hadn’t even meant to say it, he’d wanted it to be grander, with roses and candles, not like this.

But, when he watched the tears pool within your eyes and the skin-splitting smile bloom across your face, he grinned too, despite himself. “I love you too.” You whispered before you kissed him firmly. “I love you, I love you.”

You repeated the phrase with each kiss, sliding down the impressive length of his body; pressing the soft of your lips against every inch of skin you could find, the phrase a constant whisper. Urk’Hal moaned hard then, the feel of your adoration, the sound of it, it pulled the muscles of his cock tight again.

“I love you.” You said once more before you pressed a firm kiss against the heat of his cock head. A new type of smile grew across your face then, Urk’Hal wanted to whimper at the sight of it, and you leaned back nefariously against the weight of his hand on your head. “I love you, Urk’Hal. I love you more than anyone I’ve ever loved before, so… Let me show you, hmm?”