#fanilleweek

Vanille seemed otherworldly to Fang. The way she moved was so fluid and gentle that it shocked Fang, sometimes, to remember how commanding she could be when she wanted to be. And she wanted to be.

Fang could lose herself to Vanille for the rest of her life and never tire of it. She longed for the way Vanille could work her up, tease her so easily and so quickly, drawing it out until neither of them could quite take it anymore. Fang lived for Vanille sitting on top of her, rolling her hips against her, moving her lips and whispering things against her skin Fang never could quite focus on enough to comprehend.

Vanille’s hands never could keep still against Fang, and Fang loved it. She craved it, the way Vanille’s hands traced shapes into the deep bronze of her skin, creating constellations in her freckles. Her hands never shook, never trembled against Fang’s skin; they were steady and sure as they worked at the tender skin with careful precision.

Fang couldn’t breathe underneath her. Vanille was an expert in Fang -- she knew how to touch her to make her stutter, to make her mind go blank. She knew every way to make Fang gasp when she wanted, to make her yell when she wanted.

Her lips marked a trail across Fang’s front: from her mouth to her throat, to one breast before the other. She took her time with Fang, reveling in the sounds she elicited as her mouth closed over one nipple and one of her hands found the other.

Fang knew how Vanille ticked, too, but it was nice, when they were alone, to change roles. To let Vanille call the shots.

Vanille took her hand from Fang’s chest and caressed her inner thigh, biting a moan into Fang’s skin at the warmth.

Vanille also remembered being born… somewhere else. Oerba, a voice in the back of her mind whispered. She remembered an orphanage and learning how to fight with a pair of rods. She remembered crafting beaded jewelry to pass the time, learning how to weave and sew and hunt and gather before she could properly read and write.

Sometimes, Vanille looked down at her hands and wondered why they were so soft when she spent so many years forced to provide for herself.

She wondered how she could look at a squirrel, or a rabbit, or even foxes and dingoes and be able to figure out the proper ways to incapacitate and capture them when she wasn’t raised around hunters.

She didn’t tell anyone about this past life she recalled. It was too weird, she decided. Reincarnation? Double lives? She liked being normal, especially since it felt like it was the first time ever she could call herself that.

Still, though, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. Something was missing. There was something just at the tip of her tongue that she couldn’t place, that was so close but always just far enough away that it disappeared the moment she reached for it.

When she could, Vanille traveled. She hopped around the continent with her father until she was old enough to do it herself, traveling by foot or by train when either required it of her. She couldn’t quite believe how easy it came to her, but she didn’t question it.

She moved everywhere. Staying in a few places for a few weeks, working a few jobs until she could move again. It felt never-ending. There was this pull in her chest that never eased, no matter how long she spent traveling – a sort of buzzing in the back of her mind that never ceased.

It wasn’t until she found herself in the outskirts of a desert town that the buzzing began to ebb away, the tug in her chest finally letting up. Suddenly, she began to feel as if she could breathe again. She wrapped a scarf around her face and kept walking, deeper into the desolate town until she entered what called itself Ruffian and, for almost the first time in her life, she could relax.

She supposed she should’ve been more suspicious of it. Ruffian, with its unofficial welcome center called Oasis and bar called Monoculus. The names rang in the back of her mind, but she dismissed it.

She stood just before the doorway and shut her eyes, breathing in the sudden peace of mind, until the unmistakable sound of someone dropping a glass echoed around the room.

Vanille opened her eyes and her mind went blank.

The voice in the back of her mind whispered her name.