who IS that 😍 😍 😍

There’s a hushed reverence in the way she gazes at him. The kind that comes with an honest level of ADORATION very few humans can touch - much less openly display as she does now. The smile that curls her plush lips holds all the warmth in the world. It’s a tease upon her delicate features, lighting up her petite frame.  

She doesn’t quite know how she wound up here. She never saw this place on her first tour of the LABYRINTH, but things had a funny way of BEING and NOT BEING here. ╭Her second trip to the goblin market and she’d lost Hoggle within the span of a blink╮ Booted feet carrying her along until seemingly familiar stone cast walls meet her gaze and then - LOST. 

But the garden was beyond beautiful. Lush greenery enveloped her until she could almost pretend she was back Aboveground. A rainbow of rich flowers winked at her along neatly trimmed hedges. Beyond the brush, a stone seraph seemed to sing across a large, glassy pool. 

Something TICKLED across her thoughts, seemingly calling her toward that pool. Petite frame stumbling in her haste to get to the water, an invisible siren’s song drilling into her marrow and YANKING like a marionette. Knees colliding painfully with the soil as emerald gaze finally peers into the depths.  ╭NARCISSUS HAD FALLEN FOR LESS╮

The pool began to froth and spit at the sight of her, rippling an image that swirled before her and SUNK into her skin. HER MOTHER. Suitcase by the door, loud voices arguing. Her own tiny hands beating at her locked bedroom door. LOCKED IN. Rain pouring. Her feet pounding into the pavement after a fleeing taxi. ABANDONED. UNWANTED. The pool was DROWNING her. The memory revived in technicolor and swallowing her in a vicious repeat. 

Delicate frame left untouched by water, still kneeling at its edge. Tears flowed in rivulets down her cheeks, unbidden sobs bleeding from her lips. Her nails dug into the grass at the shore, knuckles tension white. Her body TREMBLED as though she were ATLAS. The pool wouldn’t cease, to be STUCK forevermore with the worst of your memories - THAT was its game. 

         ❛  oh  ,  it’s  you  ...  ❜  what  to  ask  ?  you  have  made  a  stranger  of  me  goblin  king  .  ❛  that  eager  to  see  me  again  ,  aren’t  you  ?  ❜  all  that  juvenile  hostility  laid  to  rest  and  it  has  left  the  girl  cold  ━  defiance  had  become  a  fickle  fire  .   

survey like prey.       like the starving.       “  .. hm.  why,   appears that way,   doesn’t it ? ”      he gleams,  his madness a conflagration stitched in full.   together,  they make remnants of a being,    paradigms of a living,  breathing thing.   constellations plagued in decomposition,    𝙼𝚈𝚃𝙷𝚂.   the serpent shall perceive only morsels of what he’s allowed,   but never doubt his fangs gnaw against ashes and barricades.  molding the clay of him into the shape of chaos,  swooned by it in the way 𝚏𝚕𝚞𝚝𝚎𝚜 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚖 𝚜𝚗𝚊𝚔𝚎𝚜.  the goblin king plays the flutesong, swaddled in temptation and it guides the serpent.   silver tongue to lay bronzed  and still,   bark and brawn the same.   inhale and exhale with nerve pulled and taut,   his blood circulation vortex-like.   ardently.   he reduces the inches he inches between their terror,   a monumental delicacy.  his words are to be spoken as sweet as   𝚛𝚎𝚍, 𝚛𝚒𝚌𝚑 𝚠𝚒𝚗𝚎.    

“Care to explain why this was in my territory?” The monster demanded, a goblin snared within her clawed grasp was extended for the Fae King to see and was promptly dropped to his feet. The wretched creature was unharmed, bar a few bumps and bruises from the fall when released from her hold. She had found it causing quite the ruckus, attempting to set the trees alight. To say that Drathenia was miffed was an understatement. Luckily for the goblin, it’s attempts at arson had been unsuccessful.