#iroksa's threads

Kai twitches, instinctively twisting his wrists away from Iroska's eyes. The netting of scars carefully hidden under a dark tattoo was broken and marred by a few bright red, half-healed slashes.

"It's." Brown eyes flash with a glimmer of fire-flickering gold. "It's none of your business, Iro. I'm fine." And he needed it. The power he had held in the palm of his hands was slowly bleeding out. Weakening. Spent and dying.

And the rush of power and love made his soul laugh, bright and vivid and alive. Every ruby red drop burned on his skin, searing his veins as it rushed through him, charging every part of his body and making his heart beat brightly until he can hear it, feel it, sing in perfect harmony with the music of the world. Every bleeding drop made everything right and perfect and good and beautiful.

So why would he stop? He doesn't want to think about what he would be, what he would do, how weak and useless he'd become without it. He runs his palm over the scars, the open wounds with a hum. His fingers twitch as the sparks of his magic shimmer over his skin, wrapping his wrist in a quiet illusion.

Kai grins- sharp around the edges- and holds it up. "It's fine. See?" Don't ask me about this don't press it don't don't don't--- Please.

There was no mistaking what Iroksa saw. Kai cringed like a servant caught stealing, and lied just as poorly. A pity. A servant was, after all, just another form of family, and a good one closer still, an extension of one's own body. It was the duty of the master, should a part act awry, to gently and firmly correct it.

But Kai was no servant, and Iroksa was no fool. He would be wise to remember that.

Iroksa caught Kai's wrist and rubbed their thumb over it. As the leather passed over his skin, it left behind a faint, sparkling chill that crept into his veins through the open wounds before fading as rapidly as it appeared. I know. They released him.

Iroksa had awoken ragged and panting. Their hair stuck to their face; their sweat soaked into the sheets, and they threw them off as they stood, unable to stand the sterile, foreign strangeness of the room boxing them in. Panic from a dream they could not remember clawed in their chest, and they wanted nothing more than the comforting darkness of their goddess--stopping only long enough to pull on slippers--as they went outside.

But all that awaited them was the cruel light of the sun. Her, in a way, they tried to remember, thinking of Kai. But not Her in the way they wanted Her. The wind blew their loose hair around them. They bit their bare, scarred thumb. They walked anyway, just to walk, just to find some fragment of Her, somewhere in the shadows of the garden.

"Oh, I-rok-sa, darling, you are too much." Her hand gently slides across the table, strokes one soft, slim finger along their knuckles.

"It's Mah-lin-ney-ah, not Mah-lee-enn-ah. Malyneia." She touches her chest as she demonstrates, wags a finger at the incorrect pronunciation, and then gestures towards the other, clearly wanting to hear them say it Correctly.

Iroksa leans their cheek into their hand, resting their elbow on the table as a lazy smile spreads across their face. They flip over their hand as her finger passes over it, their gloved fingertips sliding across her palm.

pride themed starter [accepting]

Iroksa twisted and turned in front of the mirror. The evidence was there before their eyes, yet they still struggled to comprehend how very different they looked. The tank top on its own had been utterly obscene, completely unacceptable, but now, with this... Kai had called it a binder. Instead of padding them out the way their typical attire did, it slimmed them down, and they ran their hand over their flattened chest. It was still strange to have their arms bare--and it wasn't quite long enough for their midriff--but this? They could get used to this.