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No. 876
So this detour is a part of the story, and you need not worry. We will return to that cold dark reality, and know that yes this is vital, and just as true as any other part of the story. I'll stop less I lead you to spoilage.
I may never be done editing this. My ever error makes it hard to go back and work on this story. So if you find this enjoyable despite the contrast, or even enjoy the contrast as much as I do please tell me. I really, really need something to work out for me right now because I'm losing grip on that illusion of control I'd thought I had in my life.
If I'm in a good mood later there will be another sub-par picture of Shaylen posted here.
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Slowly I came back to that old life─the orange hue of a distant sunset looming through the green-brown leaves of the grand tree village I called home. I could hear the sounds of the boy I’d had over the night before trimming his hair with a flat blade. His name escaped me; something I really enjoyed about him.
“So someone from the mono~astery sent for you.”
He spoke as soon as he heard the rustling of me finding an outfit. When the words sank in I just sighed, tossed aside the comfortable wraps that were in my hands, and grabbed something easier to walk in. In one swift motion I seeded the the pale tan vinework shirt to my collar and seeded the skirt to a matching ridge belt before leaving without a word to him.
I’d never really worked a day in my life. I knew I’d no right to the rooms─no claim to contents of the rotating suites I’d live in throughout the year. I’d become rather neutral to all of it, I wanted more than anything to move forward, but every push I made forward inched me further from Attainment. I’d heard them talk about it once; how if my mark got any stronger my body would probably fail, a uniquely tragic death for someone with a split soul. Eventually I stopped caring, I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t really want to live out my life as a burden on everyone.
The thoughts of more pointless talks with the Oracles, and Gaea forbid another Elder, ran through my head as I walked. I wasn’t too far into the walk across the spire bridges before I felt my stomach churning. I could it feel it down to my bowels, like water flushing through me weighing down my core. That mixed with the distant memories of that nightmare made for a slow stumbling walk across the topps to the dropp’ vines.
Normally I’d have looked into the distance; past the drop vines to the edge of the dark green Elder and lighter yellow-green Grand trees. At the orange glow bouncing off the cut-away of interwoven treetops that ran past the horizon. Staring at the reflected sunset over the western brushwork. The trees would sway like waves over a windy lake. If you’d watch long enough you could even pinpoint the sway of the greater tree you stood on. Seeing that I could feel how the whole forest was part of a somber dance, and any day but this one I’d have been a part of it.
It was breath-taking even for someone broken and split like me. Somehow when I felt the world moving around me─somewhere deep down hidden away muted by the mark I felt what other fae felt, what any commoner felt day to day. The thing that linked all the other fae together.
But instead of watch I held my stomach and waved people aside, taking more breaks than I should have with a proper summons, but less perhaps than I would have taken in a honestly good mood.
As I stepped on the dark green fleshy leaf of the dropp vine from the Grand tree to the wire trees below I closed my eyes, again avoiding the beauty of that sunset for fear of vertigo.
After I’d made it to the underbrush of the wire trees, a bright familiar voice started to call out to me
“Ahe-” I waved away her words before she finished my name.
“Not… now. I’m still trying to recover hearing the last calling from my nightmare.”
I leaned most of my weight against the railing beside me as I spoke.
“You remembered?”
“They’re coming back-” I paused running a hand over my stomach well above the troubles, “but this dream─”
I couldn’t find the words with how my head was spinning, so I just stood there staring blankly at her.
Lhnlari. Her name shone through much stronger than before─now she looked so much younger and fuller. A boon of completing the trials is the new youth that many came into, and in rare occasions there'd be more drastic changes. Such as her new softer edges, shorter stature, and bright almost golden eyes that still managed to beam down at me. Perhaps it was how I was hunched over, but she seemed taller despite the youth.
Her name always had a touch of gold in it, rare trait for the fae. Pure and distant, but you could see now it in her eyes and bright, nearly glowing, locks of waves and curls she’d tried to hang up into a ponytail, but her long baings and stubborn locks found a way to frame her face and shoulders in a bright yellow hue.
I might have been jealous if I’d the strength to muster it. Instead I was just thankful I didn’t need to fake sincerity in congratulating her at the moment. I could see the look of worry in her eyes, and for once it was about my physical health.
“Perhaps it’s the pain, but you seem more expressive than usual.” Lhnlari remarked through the wide shimmering smile of her pale lips.
I shook my head trying to holding back a pained smile.
“I mean that truly, dreams and…” her eyes darted back and forth the yellow hue of her aura clouding the darkness of her pupils as they danced about.
She’d become a new creature in her attainment. Her every motion seemed softer, and that bitterness I’d always known her for had faded out of her voice.
“Feeling. You want to say I’m feeling.” I remarked with a bit of difficulty, I wasn’t in pain just extremely uncomfortable, “We’ll talk later I need to detour to a lady’s room.”
“Here. Follow me, I’ll escort you to my new chambers they’re on the way and closer than anything else.” She swept a hand under my arm and tried to support me into a steady walk.
However my bowls turned as she moved me and I fell to the ground as soon as she pulled me from the railing I’d been leaning on.
“I don’t-can’t-to─” I stuttered, “not risk standing right now.”
She gracefully moved us both to the trunk of the wire tree and played it off like we’d been watching the silhouettes of the the overbrush for the last ten minutes. No one payed us a second glance as they passed by.
“So~” Lhnlari paused with a slight tick to her word, “all we can do now is”, she paused again, biting her lip, “talk.”
“Yeah.”
“I always felt like you resented me,” she held a hand up to stop me from denying it, “I can see why you might have. I can’t put it into words but I was wrong to feel sorry for you -- even if I wasn’t really vindictive.”
“Why -this- now?”
“Because you keep dodging small talk, you want to change the subject feel free,” she paused for a while.
I thought about all the things really I didn’t care about, and then twirled my hand beckoning for her to continue.
“I feel how I was wrong, where I was coming from was petty. I was-” She paused and raised a pale almost silvery finger to her chin just below the golden sheen on her lips, “-immature. Which is strange with how much I regressed when I regained myself.”
“You’re surely different.” I replied, to be honest I didn’t want to be frank with my words, but I couldn’t find anything more.
All the sudden the dark reddish clay hue to my skin meeting the pale white of my palms had become the most interesting thing in the world. I couldn't pull my eyes away from those plans I had clapped over my knees, as I sat curled against that wire tree.
“You don’t need to sugar coat anything, I hated that game we played too.” She smiled widely her lips reflecting the orange hue of the setting sun, “The who could say the most hollow ‘nicety’.”
“Sometimes all I can do is reflect.”
Lhnlari just looked up, her eyes quite still and rested her head on the wood of the spire tree. For a moment she just gazed upward, and then she closed her eyes smiling gently.
Then calmly she nodded in reply.
“I hated myself too.” Lhnlair added.
“I don’t-”
“We both hated me.” she interrupted, “It was what was holding me back for so long.”
“So long,” I replied smiling and scantily shaking my head.
I’d have laughed if I didn’t fear jostling myself.
“I remember what it was like. They take away your light and the tell you to be a saint.”
“Sing─while we hold you voice.” I hummed in reply.
“Perhaps I’m just so close to it; so new that I remember how -- I know how hard it is.”
“And you’re normal.” I replied taking a foreign tone.
“I would have said that before.”
“But you weren’t being honest.”
“Exactly.”
She said it so plainly and the feeling washed away. For a brief moment I was physically received.
“I think I’m ready to head off now.” I replied getting to my feet, and the uneasy feeling began to return. This time almost too subtle to notice.
“You should come by and get washed up, I inist, the World Matrons can wait. It’s their thing.”
“You’d figure they’d be better at it.” I replied leaning against Lhnlari.
She wrapped an arm under my shoulders and held me up as inconspicuously as she could as she guided me down the tree spire.
I’d have normally made a point to admire the view and how the small gaps would open up between the wire trees as the Spires flexed with the greater trees; seeing the dance from down below the Titans. But today it was the last thing I wanted to see. Again I didn’t want to know how the world was moving.
Before I’d realized it we were walking though the threshold of her home. It was wide and nearly empty. She couldn’t have been there long with how little of her trophies had made it, yet the little bit of Weaving she’d done was remarkable.
The Weaving of an oracle is the moving of spirit-scapes into the living, such as the flesh of the spire tree surrounding us. She’d made dim-vines that dropped a soft light which fell like mist, the soft gold glow of them hanging in the air like a soft golden aurora. The new directed wood is called a chord, like that of a song, as most chords don’t actually leave the wood and can’t be seen by an untrained eye.
Her workings ran throughout the house. Furnished with wood drawn out from the walls in thin meshes, and thick flourishing rods. The house however was still quite empty, no art, or any non-spun furnishing. Everything was crafted and I could see the glow of her work in all the bare yet artful furnishings.
“Forgive the disarray I while I own it I only recovered today. So it’s my first time working the wood.”
“I didn’t know you’d had such a tranquil skill.” I replied the words felt more catty than I’d wanted them to be.
“I didn’t before. To be honest they’re not sure what to do with me anymore; I’d found an enlightenment in my rejoining.”
“That’s wonderful.” I choked on my words a bit trying to get them out over the surprise of the news.
My life’s goal in comparison was modest; attainment the reincorporation of my parted soul. I’d yet to even meet a soul who’d walked any fully awakened path. To put it simply an the Attained have found and named their very soul─mastered themselves, but the Enlightened are named by a calling from their soul to something greater than themselves.
“We’ll talk about that in a bit -- there’s a water room down that corridor,” She replied walking me down a hallway and turning around to head back by the welcoming room.
─I’m sorry if the bathroom trip intrigues you kitten, but I’m going to sprain that promise and spare the details of what happened in that water room. We will be sparse; I lost more fluid than I thought I had, and was frightened about how pleasant and relieving the ordeal was. I was left torpid and the following bath that melted away what was left of my strain─
After a few words and the strongest magic I could muster the water beaded off my skin and I clothed myself. Stumbuling I made my way back into the main room in a haze leaning limply against a wall. Lhnlari wordlessly carried me to one of her vine hammocks and I slipped away from that world again.
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I awoke to the darkened shade of that witch hovering over me. I could feel the pressure of hard smooth jointed -things- holding down my limp body. I could feel teeth behind her thin lipped smile.
She` crained her head down to my left ear, her long black hair tumbling down across my naked shoulder, “You may rest again pet. Clean and renewed-”
My body shook involuntarily as her breath hid the lining of my inner ear. My neck curled away from her voice, but she follow me, her lips over that stiff line of my ear.
She` paused and ran a hand across the bare skin of my chest planting her hand firmly beside me, the warmth of her skin pressing against my ribs as she moved over me. Her hair crawled across my collarbone and came to rest on my neck as she hung eye-to-eye over me.
“The once empty house has a new light─no more running pet,” again my body shook in response to her words.
She’ let out a slow cold breath over my lips after she finished speaking, a smell like petrified flowers hung over me and I fell out of her world.
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When I opened my eyes again Lhnlari was beside me. My hand cupped in hers.
“I took a moment to make a sending pool─told the Elders that you were feeling ill. Zhmar looked─” she paused for a few moments her eyes away in contemplation, “like he wanted to say something, but he know better than to ruin this day for me.”
“This day? Today?” I asked her words prior to my sleep sinking into my now clear mind.
“Well I ‘finished’ my trail about two days ago but─” she paused her face blank and distant for a moment, “I’ve taken a while to recover.”
“So you’re spending your first─your day of triumph” I paused turning my head to stare at her, “─tending to me?”
“I was making chairs till I sensed you bumbling by.”
I just smiled at her.
“I’ve yet to see you unable to hold such a something back.” she said softly and before I’d realized her lips had met mine.
I’d never kissed another Acolyte, let alone an Oracle and Lhnlari was arguably greater than that. The experience was an all encompassing overwhelming kind of passion.
I’d never known myself, even before the mark. I’d never truly seen myself, heard, or felt. But when she kissed me I felt what she felt, I tasted my lips, I felt the burning image in her mind. I heard the soft whimper of surprise muffled under her lips.
It was also deeper than that, I felt` myself; how I was a storm of repression─a bundle of knots -- I felt it though her and I felt how she was dawn in more by it -- I felt how much she enjoyed my greatest flaws. How she wanted to conquer that numbness, how she wanted to warm the cold, and yet how she never cared if I truly changed.
I felt how drawn in she was by that mystery of me, by my cold lips, dark eyes, muted hair. I saw the image of my supplied eyes rolling back as I gave into her─I felt how she treasured the image burned into her mind.
The spinning in my head multiplied with the warmth of her pushing that soft thick gloss across my lips spreading it further and deeper. The sensation of how she was spreading herself over me; marking me.
For once I wasn’t catching half-herd doubts and worries of those ignorant to what I was, or worse the half-hearted pity of those who did know me. I felt loved, and I don’t mean to say exclusive romantic longing; I felt how she adored-cared-lusted over everything I was. I felt accepted, and wanted.
Like two reflections peering into each other I felt her seeing into me, and how affermind she was knowing that I’d only ever known her, that I might only ever know her. How she adored my cynical defenses, my willpower tying me into knots, and through her I felt something in me. Something immense buried deep down beneath the knots and fear, I felt her curiosity match my own, I was inverted and feeling everything. Through her I was alive, and I drank in a lifetimes worth of feeling.
Then I forgot─I forgot everything but her lips, her pale gold lips pushing down and gliding across mine like fine silk covered in the slick of enchanter’s blam. As the gloss spread I felt even more of our exchange, I felt my cold firm lips below hers trembling and giving into her caress. I even saw glimpses of my dark eyes rolling around blinded by my first true pleasure, and the burning hue of blushing skin and how the heat from my nose to the tips of my ears.
There were no lingering thoughts in my head; no words, no worry. My body moved without plan or though as I tugged at the silken sash of her dress pulling her over me and onto the hammock. She swung in hard over me, but with an unnatural grace stabilized herself her hips straddling me, her uncovered legs curled under mine. She didn’t leave my lips for a second.
I could feel the flooding warmth of her whole body and the storm of mine underneath her. I wished softly that I’d worn those “comfortable” clothes and her hand responsively found their ways under my shirt, her nails pushing across my skin. They felt as heavy as ivory and polished only barely able to dig in, just barely long enough flex against the pressure of her grip. I curled under her─more and more of her skin and silken dress running over me. Her legs tightening around with each turn of my hips.
She ran a hand of nails down to the small of my back, and the other up across my ribs and back below my shoulder blade softly pushing me up into her sliken embrace. My body my hands limply grasping for more of her, turning, curling, and squeezing to her command.
I murmured and groaned as the tension gave way to the pressure building up inside me. Her hands as soft as her lips, and her nails sent shockwaves across my skin as they raked across me. She pushed her hands hard against the toned muscles of my back, memorizing the patterns of them with her nails. I groaned again as she found a particularly sensitive demple and with the slipping strength of my lips her tongue softly worked it’s way between my lips.
My head was spinning, every coil of tension let itself go and I was lost in the pressure building up─the pressure rushing through my body and flushing up into my skin. The only thoughts were of her skin, her nails, and all the places I wanted her tongue.
Just one more slip of her tongue and I was nearly over the edge─I needed more, but she pulled back as her hands ran down to my waist. Her nails carving soft while lines as they made their way across my dark skin. I felt her legs lock hard around me and one of her hands came up my back her soft nails opening the seam and the collar cracked open my open shirt as she wrapped her hand across the back of my neck. I felt my eyes roll back as her nails slid across my spine, and up into my hair.
Then she gave me what I’d wanted; her tongue slipped inside meeting mine, softly running over it and deeper into my mouth. She might as well have been my first, I fell limp under her grip, but she only got more dominant leading me into a dance of a kiss. I could taste the balm on her tongue, smell it on our breath. It was like a potion taking her sent and mine and merging them, and the taste of her across my tongue drove me wild.
I could feel my body under hers struring and twisting in closer, pushing hard against her impossibly soft skin. I felt like we could have merged─we might as well have. I could feel that typhoon in me through her, and I could feel her though that reflection. We were both lost in that storm of everything, I had more control over her actions than my own, and neither of us were fighting it.
She guided me in, and her other hand moved further down from the small of my back and the brace holding my skirt gave way to her commanding touch. I couldn’t make a sound to respond, but she knew how much further this was going to go, and her hands tightened around me.
I barely realized that she’d even turned me over before we were on the floor, my shirt and skirt lost somewhere on the way, her on top of me pointlessly pinning down my hands with the most genuine and sloppy smile I’d ever seen plastered across her face.
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