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thrihyrneI get to share my natal day with two people I actually know this year, more than I've ever had (I've never had a friend with the same birthday before): ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
heidi8 and verdenia. I'm also 2 days late in wishing very festive and joyous birthdays to altariel1 and snottygrrl, who share a birthday on the 13th. I'm going to do a wrap-up tonight of thank yous, mostly that you all are in my life. (((grateful hugs)))
In hobbitish fashion, I'm giving out gifts on my birthday, in this case, the gift of fic. I have two offerings, one here and one over at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ginger_lust. The link to the one at ginger_lust is here: 'Cloudscape of Ravens'. (I'm linking directly to my website as the link on the comm is locked; the fic is adult and we have some under-18 watchers at the comm) It's the fic I'd had simmering in my head last fall when I first came up with the idea of a Ron-centric, prompt-driven fic community to post after the Christmas/holiday large fests and exchanges. Go there for details but it's adult and as I see it, DH-compliant, EWE. Ron/OMC, Ron/Severus and Ron/OMC/Harry.
The other fic is my first foray into Wraeththu fanfiction, so for any folks who come here fromraythoo, welcome, and I'd love your thoughts! Especially since only two people on my flist have read the series. ;) I'm still new enough to the fandom that I'm not sure of any particular canon-compliant notices, but this is the beginning of what I can tell will be a long gap filler, and is based on the first three Wraeththu novels and being more fleshed out as I now read the second trilogy. Also to be cross-posted over in the WIP Pinkboard at Forever, a Wraeththu fanfic archive. Also, Wraeththu fanfiction authors tend to have lots of original characters, so I'm not sure whether or not to warn for that, or how to announce such things. Ah, being a newbie again. Hopefully somebody will show me the ropes. For anyone else on my flist, feel free to read, though it'll probably seem like original fic. There are some pictures here to give you some idea of what hara may look like, though it's sadly lacking on this webpage in any pictures of Vaysh. This photo book would also make a great gift. ;) Sadly not available through Amazon or B&N or I'd get it myself.
Title: Maelstrom and Mage, Desire Thine Darkling
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: slash, WIP
Word Count: 6,000
Disclaimer: Ashmael, Vaysh, and the harish world all belong to Storm Constantine; I'm merely playing with great abandon in her sandbox.
Pairings: Vaysh/Ashmael, Ashmael/OHC (original har character)
Summary: Before they knew of Immanion, or Thiede, before death and despair, Ashmael and Vaysh knew and loved each other. This is one way their story may have been told.
Vaysh burned.
I'd watched him ride into our collective, and steered away as any sane sentient being, whether human or har, should do around open flame. He would burn and scorch; he was seared into the very marrow of this mutant blood that flowed in my veins; from sight alone my cells were branded. Of course I briefly tried to keep my distance, knowing as instinctively as a plant turns to the sun, or a drowning man clings to anything to keep him from dying in watery depths, that to get close to him would cause an elemental transfiguration.
I was stone: solid, yet porous when necessary.
But you know what happens when rock is punished by relentless heat. Lava. Liquid, destructive, transient.
Could anyone ever look back at our lives and not marvel at our exploits, our so un-refined, un-controlled, Wraeththu-anathema love for each other?
* * * * *
My first thought when the small entourage came riding in was that some har, somewhere, had made a grave error in judgment. All of us, we Wraeththu, are this mutated amalgam of the sexes, two combined into one, yet presumably not both at once. Ever the enthusiastic pioneer, however, I'd vowed to myself to try and find out, which I did, successfully.
The hara who approached wore leather of rich chestnut, designed scored into them that resembled constellations. They looked heavenly, quite easy on the eyes, but also as haughty and distant as the stars, radiant and far off. We'd known they were coming, as the one who seemed to be their leader had sent out a thought-call. Our clan head, Monarch, had replied and warily bid them approach. Wraeththu hadn't been in existence all that long then. We were still actively hunted down though of course we fought back with deadly vengeance.
Their horses were as well fashioned and groomed as their masters. I wondered if they had some kind of occult or spiritual connection to equines. Each tribe and splinter group I'd come across or heard about appeared to have taken on its own unique personality, passion, and/or perversion. I didn't know, philosophically, what I thought of that, as it reeked of humanity to me. We all came from different backgrounds, though, had been incepted in myriad ways with tales of bliss and horror (or both), so I supposed it made sense that each small stronghold would have a very different culture shaped by their respective leaders.
A willowy har with long hair the colour of burnished sand dismounted, his presence commanding despite his fetching, sinuous body movement. Before I had become har, I'd of course been a human male, with raging hormones that had churned and bruised me though I'd not had an outlet aside from solo release. My fantasies hadn't involved men, back when the decaying world still boasted of its male and female polarities. I'd had a love affair of sorts with the insatiable creature between my legs, dreaming of burying it in a silken heat of some secretive, foreign darkness. A flare of my former self, the insipid human part I'd hoped had been scoured away forever, raised its regressive head when confronted with Vaysh, as I soon learned this compelling har was named.
"He's flaming."
The ancient slur blindsided me, some dormant, pre-har wire in my brain tripped by the sight of him. Perhaps back in the past this Vaysh had favoured his own gender, and been flamboyant about it. It wasn't for me to ferret out of him, or care. We were Wraeththu now, beyond such banal and reductive concepts of she and he. This har evoked more of the feminine in outward display, but I soon discovered he had balls of steel. Vaysh was a sword, clothed as a sylph.
Our tribe leader met with Vaysh and the five har who had accompanied him while the rest of our group got back to what we needed to do, primarily ensuring that our enclave was safe, and our crops tended to. I had additional tasks: I was responsible for writing down in a somewhat organised fashion the lessons to be learned to move from Neoma to Brynie. We had only two Ulani in our tightly-knit group, two Pyralists. They were teaching what they could, but I saw in their eyes and heard in their occasionally strained voices that they knew we would need to seek outside resources. My closest companions, Euclase, Ondin and Belvac, had, like me, been older when incepted; sixteen, or seventeen. In our dead pasts, we'd been groomed for the euphemistically-called higher education; wise-arsed scholars to be, was our triumvirate. Now, as Wraeththu, we hungered ravenously for knowledge, constantly testing our new abilities much to the chagrin of our tribal leaders.
One balmy night a couple of weeks before Vaysh's arrival, I'd been mulling over some bit of telepathic arcana, puzzling over particular uses of controlling energy when I'd paused outside the open windows of Monarch's study.
"Fine. We we'll send for one of the Kakkahaar. Or, perhaps more wisely, enlist one of the Gelaming."
"We've got to do something," I heard my mentor, Kyrgian, say in exasperation. "They could nearly all move on to Ulani, and at least two, Ashmael and Belvac, could, in time, aspire to Nahir-Nuri."
I paused, wondering if they sensed my presence, but they appeared engrossed in their heated discussion.
"Kyrgian, you can't possibly see that in them."
"They're devastatingly intelligent!"
"Many are. It takes more than just brains to achieve those illustrious castes."
"I know that. But it's a crime for them to be stifled at any point in their progress. We've done well so far, but sooner than perhaps you expect, they'll be desperate for more knowledge, at any cost. You know that what I'm saying is the truth. We have an embarrassment of riches in our har, and if they're held back, they'll simply turn to darker, equally powerful conduits."
There was a pause, heavy with foreboding and resignation. My heart had sped up, both at hearing such unexpected praise, but also at the thought of studying the higher levels of instruction. Kyrgian indeed spoke the truth: we weren't particularly brutal or war-like; our sport was learning, seeing just how far we could test and expand our new bodies and energies. I was flattered that Kyrgian thought me capable of achieving such an elevated state within Wraeththu, and didn't doubt for a minute I wouldn't succeed if given the opportunity.
Monarch let out a sigh before taking a drink of something— wine, probably, as we had it in abundance.
"I concur. I've had a premonition, but have been loath to speak of it."
"We'll have visitors soon, won't we? I've had a sense of it as well, vague shadows on the outskirts of my dreams. They won't seek our ruin, at least those are the divinings I've had."
"No, they'll join our tribe, and we'll be stronger for it. But their coming will herald a profound change for us. And the outcome of that I can't envision."
I'd heard enough, and felt both exhilarated and guilty at having eavesdropped on their conversation. It had been an accident, walking by just then, but deep in my guts I'd never been one to think that anything truly happened by chance.
I was brought back from my musings about the premonitions of the arrival of our new guests when Ondin cornered me in the laundry. I'd been supervising the youngest in our clan while he found suitable clothes for the visiting har.
"What do you think? They seem awfully protective, and secretive. And a bit too pretty. I doubt they've ever had to cleanse a town before."
I turned on him, my mouth twisted to the side. "Looks are deceiving, as the pithy saying goes, especially with our kind. You're pretty," I said, a biting sting in my voice. "That didn't stop you from killing over a dozen men."
"It had to be done!" he insisted, hurt and prideful anger jostling for dominance on his expressive face. "And I'm not pretty. I wouldn't break a mirror looking at it, but we all know you're the most dashing har in our group."
"Flattery will get you everywhere," I teased, lightening the mood and grabbing at his admittedly shapely backside, tightly encased in leather trousers.
"Oh, bugger off." Ondin's umber eyes flashed mischievously. "Besides, I'm taken."
I groaned at that. "Are you har or not? This idea of possession, of 'mine' and exclusivity, that's human, Ondin."
"It was a joke," he protested, sitting down and beginning to plait a thin braid from long mahogany hair he tugged down from above his ear. It was a nervous habit, and he knew that I knew that. Still, I wasn't in the mood to rub his nose in it.
"You and Wyngarr are chesna. Fine. But you're not his, and he's not yours."
Ondin sneered, pleasantly. "You're one to talk, tiaharr-steady-aruna-diet-of-Euclase."
I rolled my eyes and heard Jaffa, the young har, snicker.
"Euclase and I have been friends for years. It's natural that we seek each other's company. But we're not all cloying about it."
Ondin's expression grew more grave. "In all seriousness, do you think now that these har have shown up, those changes—"
"Not now," I said meaningfully as I jerked my head toward Jaffa, who'd become still to listen more attentively to our conversation.
"Let's go for a walk, then. Jaffa, I know we don't have much that's spare, but you're bright and can figure something out. The nicest tunic and trousers should be given the Vaysh. He's the one who led them to us."
The youth stood, his gesticulating hands like the fluttering leaves of an aspen. "He looks female."
"For fuck's sake!" I exclaimed, beginning to lose my temper. "Is everyone regressing today?"
Jaffa shrank back, his already wide eyes now as large as saucers. I didn't often raise my voice.
"What are you?" I yelled at him.
Instead of buckling, he stood proudly, though fear still hung in his eyes like a diaphanous veil. "I'm Wraeththu."
"Damn straight. You're male and female, got it? Now quit thinking like the mortal youth you were nine months ago and please assure me that you've actually been paying attention to the life you're living."
"I have, honest. Sorry, Ashmael," he said, worrying his lower lip and shoving his hands into the pockets of his overvest. "He was just surprising, that's all. I'd forgotten, or, really, I'd just put my past out of my mind, and seeing him made some of it come back. I'm har, Vaysh is har. No difference."
My heart warmed at the boy's earnestness. He'd been lucky, and had it a hell of a lot easier than most of us. His inception and clan loyalties had been relatively peaceful.
"Yes. That's right. Ondin and I are going to take a walk, but we won't be long. After you've taken the clothes to the cloister where our guests are staying, please find Wycker and make sure that the visitors' horses have been tended to."
I strode over to him and he flinched, but stood his ground as firmly as a tall pine. Leaning down, I held him in a tight embrace until he softened against me. He snuck his wiry arms around my back and nestled his face against my chest for a moment, then eased away.
"I'll be honoured to take care of them," he said, nerve again in his voice.
"If I knew more about them, I'd tell you," I said. "I don't think they'll be strangers for long, to any of us."
Jaffa nodded as Ondin stood up, leading the way out of the warm confines of the laundry room into an equally sultry twilight. He offered me a cigarette from a silver case and I decided to indulge. Our bodies weren't negatively affected by it, and I'd discovered that my alcohol tolerance had skyrocketed. I didn't see the need to be a lush nor a chimney, however, just because I could.
I found myself wondering why I'd jumped to the defense of this — effeminate, yes — har who didn't know me from the Aghama's house cat. He had triggered something in me. It was unsettling. No, Vaysh's arrival to our enclave of scholarly hara was definitely more than unsettling, or unnerving. I would be changed; my foresight of it was axiomatic. My inner polarity churned, the idea of Strong or Proper or Companion spinning without direction. A part of me wondered, somewhat dazedly, if I would wake tomorrow to see the orb of the sun regally rising— from the West. Angered at my overactive imagination, I took a deep drag off of the cigarette and quashed my whirlwind thoughts.
"As I was saying," Ondin drawled, his Southern accent even more pronounced than mine. We'd all noticed that our speech had been tempered somewhat by our inception, but certainly not made completely neutral, either.
"You were about to go on with your fanciful ideas in front of Jaffa. It was uncalled for."
"You've just been there in your head," Ondin said matter of factly. "It's pretty obvious when you're thinking about things that are either really complex, or you'd prefer to keep secretively to yourself."
"So?" I snapped.
"Down, boy." Ondin put up his hands in mock surrender. "Didn't mean to touch a nerve. But these har, their coming— it's what Monarch and Kyrgian were talking about. Doesn't it have to be?"
"I should never have told you about that."
We ambled slowly, nearly shoulder to shoulder, the droning symphony of cicadas a shimmering backdrop of early evening.
"P'shaw. It's not as though I've not done my share of accidentally hearing things in advance of a Gathering. You and Belvac and me, and maybe Euclase— there's just not all that much left for us to master before we'll be ready to become Ulani. A few months, if that." He shrugged elegantly, taking a deep inhale of his cigarette.
"I don't have the feeling Vaysh and his group are any more advanced than we are," I hedged, wondering what Ondin's thoughts were about their caste. To be honest, it wasn't the caste and its title that interested me, though I'd had a few ridiculous daydreams of exalted status, being a hand-picked strategist for the legendary Gelaming, whomever and wherever they really were.
Ondin cocked his head and grinned wickedly. "If it has to do with aruna, something tells me they're far more advanced."
I snorted, trying to suppress the shudder of delight that had frissoned down my spine to lodge teasingly in my groin. I'd thought the same thing, of course. "And what exactly do you think Wyngarr will have to say about your soliciting of… that kind of instruction?"
My tongue tapped the bottom of my front teeth as Ondin's smile grew more feral, but then his enthusiasm for the sleek newcomers seemed to wane. "I don't know. He might consider letting one of them share our bed. Once. Or twice."
I gave him a calculated look, pausing to lean back against the trunk of an ancestral pine, its bark still warm from the heat of the day. "A ménage a trios? How adventurous."
"Surely there's another word for that now," he mused, his handsome face absorbed as he puzzled over the possible harish vocabulary.
"I'll admit it," I said, some drumbeat tapping a brazen tattoo in my chest. "I'd like to ride one of those horse-lords."
Ondin only shook his head, amused and slightly horrified. "Now look who's regressed. Aruna is far more than just a conquesting fuck, Ashmael."
"You're crass."
"I learned from a master."
* * * * *
Dinner was a much more elaborate affair than we usually experienced. Jaffa helped out Vox and Polaris, two Aralids who, thankfully for us, were quite handy at cooking. We sat at circular tables, as was our custom, one each of the visiting har interspersed with our tribe. Trying not to be overt about my undeniable pull to Vaysh, instead I found a place next to the har who seemed to be closest to him, Opequon. His oddly short hair was an intriguing colour; satiny black shot through with bright viridian. Seeing the luminous green strands lit by our torches made me think of the aurora borealis, and I was all set to tell him that until I was brought up short by the anguish harboured carefully behind his calm demeanour.
The others at my table and I made him welcome, trying to stick to updates of Megalithica and any news we could dig out from him, all without discussing the one topic we were so desperate to know: were they staying? What were their plans? That would be discussed at the Gathering, later in the evening.
The outside world appeared not to have changed too terribly much since we'd splintered off from the Unneah. The Varrs held their stronghold in the north, and apparently some Gelaming had caught wind of their conquests and begun voyaging across the sea, creating a protected realm of their own in the south, but these hara did not really know where. The Gelaming wished to remain hidden in plain sight, or so it seemed. There were still humans in existence; tiny, often fierce bands, grimly clawing at their fading numbers and striking out against Wraeththu when they could. Opequon and their small entourage had been ambushed a couple of months back and three of their hara slaughtered. Suddenly Opequon's shorn neck and haunted eyes made sense. None of us needed to ask; the loss he had suffered was lamented with each breath.
Though potentially deadly, our lives, it was exciting, too. We suffered from a human saying, doggedly lodged in my memory: verily, we were cursed to live in interesting times. Not infrequently in my early years as har I had to go off by myself for walks deep into the surrounding primeval forests. There I would scream out my fear and exaltation at traversing this irrevocably post-human terrain. I sometimes felt even my harish body wasn't strong enough to bear it all. I marveled that one day I'd simply fly apart into a dazzling shower of opalescent sentience before being absorbed back into the ceaseless song of the universe.
Aruna was good for getting me out of the galloping rampages of my mind and back into my corporeal self. I sought it out often.
Once we'd all cleaned up from the sumptuous meal — we were far more egalitarian than most tribes, especially back then — Monarch called us to Gather. Though it was a sticky, windless night, he lit a ceremonial fire regardless. Vaysh and Opequon stood slightly apart from the group, not speaking aloud, certainly communicating through mind touch. They approached to flank Monarch and Kyrgian, representing (so the gesture mandated) their integration to our clan, while observing and accepting the leadership already in place. I felt a knot in my stomach ease at the sight of it. It wasn't that I'd thought this honey-haired har and his few followers would com in and try to usurp Monarch and Kyrgian, but their actions showed an intuitive nod to how we functioned as a group. Their assimilation wouldn't be fraught with misunderstanding and strife. The night air caressed us, suffused with peace and the promise of an enterprising dawn.
I stayed up drinking half the night, my appetite for the stories of these new hara insatiable. In some ways all of our tales were variations on the same theme: in a metamorphosis of blood and pain, we'd struggled away from our human lives, abandoning family, so-called civility as it gasped its tormented, putrid last breaths, and embraced new visions, each of us spawned relentlessly by passion. If we were honest with ourselves, it was obvious that Wraeththu were children of desire. Some boys were incepted against their will; I'd heard of it and didn't doubt it for a second. But in those early years, at least as I believed it, to give the gift of becoming har was a sacred rite. I had been religious, back… before. The transformation from sniveling human to Wraeththu took my breath every time, as I humbly knelt before each new, divine manifestation of the inconceivable.
Vaysh had sat and listened to me blather on about my self-perceived profound thoughts on incarnation and inception for ages, matching me glass for glass of robust red wine. I was seized by the need for him to speak, to share with me, this otherworldly creature who was very nearly my age. Yet, he bore his complex harish self with the same inherent ease of being I'd witnessed at the Gathering. I was dying to impress him, though even in my alcohol sodden stupor I recognised I wasn't doing so. If anything, I was only amusing him as I chattered on into the night.
"Tell me about you," I pleaded, finally. "You should've told me to shut up my pompous mouth ages ago."
His grey eyes glinted with mischief. "Okay, Ashmael. I will, but not right this minute. It's been a long and stressful journey for us, and I think that I should heed the call to bed. Before I go," he said, leaning closer, drumming his long fingers on my leg, "you seem as though you have something else you want to tell me. What is it?"
I didn't even pause to think. "I want to share breath with you," I said helplessly.
"You want to do far more than that," he replied with a sly smile.
"Yes, of course I do." The words came out in a torrent, heedless and unchecked by the usual filters between my mind and mouth. "I can't find the words, but there's something about you, you're so compelling," I said, attempting a last-ditch seduction which, even to my ears, sounded pathetic and desperate.
He chuckled, a melodious baritone sound. "Oh, I am compelling. Aren't you chesna with Euclase? Or am I misinterpreting the way you act around him?"
"We're…" I fumbled. "We take aruna with each other, yes. He's been a close friend of mine, since boyhood. Human boyhood. But we're not like Ondin and Wyngarr. I don't know how I know, but you and I have a destiny together. I'm certain of it."
Vaysh spread out his fingers so the palm rested close to the juncture of my thigh and hip; I was sitting cross-legged. His expression had changed, no longer playful, but introspective and distant, his thoughts flying to a place I couldn't follow. I gazed at him, at the angle of his cheekbones, the curve of his jaw. Vaysh's face was a geometry of promise, the topography of desire.
"I'm not just trying to get between your legs," I whispered, feeling blood roar in my ears.
A feral, possessive smile bloomed on his lips. "When we first take aruna — and we will, Ashmael, have no doubt," he said, his voice roughened with cigarettes and palpable desire, "it is I who will seek out your depths. I'll sink into your mossy glens, and then you'll truly know the fullness of destiny."
A strangled cry escaped my mouth before my lips claimed his, sharing breath with a ferocity that made my heart stutter in my chest. Vaysh tasted of velvet and stormclouds; he withheld nothing as we kissed. I spun through parts of his past, whirling and dazzling like a hawk above mountains. His breath was sunsets and dew, dappled horses and the erotic tang of leather.
Eventually we parted. Vaysh reached tenderly into my mind. We each have partings to make.
I nodded, struggling to my feet and assisting Vaysh up from the ground. In my esoteric studies, I'd spent my energies on distant mind-calling, as well as shielding my thoughts. This speech was so intimate; why hadn't I been practising before now? I struggled for a moment, taming my swirling cacophony of thoughts and longings.
Ashmael, Vaysh chided, lovingly. Breathe.
I did, never losing contact with his gaze, his pupils dilated so only the faintest silver ringed the black.
I'm not used to this, I thought back, humbled.
You have a lot to teach me as well. This is only the beginning, Vaysh said reassuringly, inclining his head toward our small station of dwellings. "We should get back. No doubt our absence has been noted."
I took his hand, intertwined our fingers, and wondered at the smearing of damp against my palm. I glanced over at him, surprised when I saw embarrassment flicker in his expression.
"I was nervous," he admitted with a refreshingly awkward shrug. "You, this—" He gestured vaguely at me. "My mind's a jumble of puzzle pieces. I need to get to know you. It'll take time."
"All the time in the world," I bravely pledged, then unclasped his hand, smothering my face with my palms. "What the fuck is happening? We don't do this. We're supposed to have evolved beyond this, Vaysh." I turned on him, panic burbling up in me, a rare geyser set to burst with a catastrophic explosion. "Why me? You?"
I almost wanted to hit him, to wipe off the untroubled, accepting set to his face.
"Why not?"
His words weren't sarcastic, and now I could sense his feelings. Deep within himself, in fact, there was an undercurrent of wondrous fear. He would stay up the remainder of the few hours until dawn talking through things with Opequon and Zain, his confidantes and allies. I needed Euclase's understanding arms and perspective, too.
On the way to the cloister we'd passed a few har still chatting, and I noted that Wyngarr and Ondin had taken Opequon under their wing, Ondin massaging the new har's shoulders. Jaffa had fallen asleep near the fire, his sweaty ginger hair plastered to his forehead. The light from the burning embers played on his freckled skin. In my euphoric state, he looked like a seraph. Once at the door to his new residence, I paused. There were lights on inside; I suspected that Zain had waited up for him.
"I'm blind and stumbling," I said, trying to articulate my utter shock at my actions, much less my thoughts. I clawed for my usual eloquence. "I'm not supposed to have feelings like this, without purpose, or source. It's like something out of a human novel. A poorly-written one," I added with a harsh snort.
Vaysh leaned forward until our foreheads touched. "It's okay," he murmured. "This scares the shit out of me too. Good night, tiahaar."
I couldn't keep the smile from tugging at my lips as I took my time walking the short distance to my dwelling, a four-room house shared by my three close companions. Quite often only three rooms were actually used for sleeping, but especially since Euclase and I weren't bound by chesna — though our decades-long friendship brought me tremendous comfort — we slept alone at times, seeking solitude or even taking aruna with one of the others in our tribe. Once inside the house I cleaned my teeth and sought out my old friend. He was in his room, sprawled on his side in the dark. At first I assumed he was asleep, but I decided to test my newly-explored thought communication ability, tentatively seeking his mind. He started at my touch, though he'd been awake, his thoughts a turbulent stream of discontent and resignation. He sat up to face me, lips pursed as he, too, reached out solely through thought while trying to place a protective barrier to shield himself.
What do you want? he asked peevishly. Did you get tired of fawning over the lovely har and now you want to share my bed? Or did he turn you down?
His last thought was full of self-congratulation at first. As I shook my head and came to sit next to him, I could sense it change to restlessness. He cared for me a great deal; perhaps only now were we both realising how troublingly complex our interactions had become. I ran my hands through his tousled hair before sharing breath. He resisted just for a moment, but gave in to the comfort and familiarity of such a simple, yet profound exchange. I was enfolded in his warmth as we shared breath; Euclase as always, tasted of book-gilt and rustling leaves.
"I want to hold you," I said, for it was the truth.
"You look as though you need to be held," he said, taking on his usual role of companion more than lover, his unspoken questions hovering busily around him like moths. "Here, let me take off your boots."
I did and then lay on my back, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. From a small hook Euclase had hung a mobile, the fanciful birds hanging motionless in the still night. His artistry and imagination in carving and other woodwork never ceased to astonish me, as well as his intuition to understanding my moods. Euclase stretched out beside me, insinuating his arm under my back and gently nudging until I rolled half across him, my face pressed against the hard plane below his collarbone. With wide fingers, he drew sweeping paths on my back, the finger pads pressing gently on the linen of my tunic. I was at home here, brimming with gratitude and melancholy. Our past seemed so simple; now it was changed, impossible to be undone.
"I spent quite a while talking with their Abelard," he said, his voice low and pensive. "They've had a rougher time of it recently, but it's made them strong. If they'd chosen to attack, instead of join peacefully, well, certainly we'd not be lying here like this."
I made a rumbling sound of assent. They were lissome, but in watching them for as short a time as they'd been with us — mere hours! — it was obvious by their selected armaments and wariness that the world had turned them to warriors. Steely, and supple. No wonder our band of defensive philosophers was so enraptured.
"Did he want to take aruna with you?" I asked.
Like all Wraeththu, Euclase was a beauty; surely Abelard had noticed. Stockier than I was, Euclase's corded muscle was accentuated by olive skin, bronzed a deep tan at the end of a long summer. His ebony hair fell in loose ringlets down his back and he gazed out at this new world through startlingly pale green eyes.
"It wasn't brought up, but I wouldn't be surprised he asks in the future. I suspect I'll say yes. Would that trouble you?"
His fingers slowed, undulating and kneading as I pondered the question.
"Aruna keeps us whole, and nourishes our spirits. I want your happiness, I always have."
His rich, loamy scent wafted up from the heated hollow of his neck, the sweet acrid tang of sweat.
"That's not an answer." His tone was light, but I felt the grave seriousness behind it. "Are you really beyond jealousy? Or have your sights been swayed that quickly, even though I know you better than anyone?"
I scooted up onto an elbow so I could look into his dear, familiar face. "You know me best," I agreed, cupping his jaw with my other hand, brushing my thumb on his cheek. I drank in the handsome contours, the bewitching sparkle of his eyes that was now lacquered with sorrow. In looking into his eyes, I saw that we felt a similar perplexing weft and weave of wanting to rush forward into our diverging lives, and yet grasp tightly to the moment at hand. Our years together underlay it all, the pentimento only we could perceive in each other. That would change— Euclase did know me best, but that time was coming to its end.
"Anyone you deem worthy to hold in your arms, flesh to flesh, should consider himself exalted," I said, feeling my own flesh stir slowly to life as I rocked my growing arousal against his hip.
"Then you must be a demigod, you flatterer," he teased, canting his groin to further stimulate the stiffening flower that throbbed between my legs. I smiled seductively and was gifted with a predatory stare before our mouths drew together again. Our kisses grew more passionate until the need to remove the hindrance of clothing became overwhelming.
"Let me be behind you," I said, feeling that he was still fully flowered, our lengths sliding together with a delicious friction. Euclase and I had explored myriad avenues of pleasure once he'd become har. We had discovered much to our mutual satisfaction that our advanced bodies intuited when our ouana-lim wasn't in danger of possible injury and didn't retreat, even when soume.
I spooned behind him, my chest to his back, and slid deep into his welcoming body. We groaned together; I began to thrust into him, a rhythm slow and ancient as waves crashing on the beach. I sowed a blooming path of kisses on his neck and shoulders as he guided my hand to his ouana-lim, a jetting spire of bronze and orange. A near-steady stream of profanity interspersed with my name tumbled from his lips. The curled petals at his tip nudged my fingers as I took him in hand, stroking in tandem with my thrusts.
Euclase was a master of control and skill, both as ouana and soume and he was generous in heightening my pleasure. His body was a silken glove, the spiraling unstoppable in our increasingly frenzied pursuit of each other's completion.
"Mael, please, God, oh fuck," he groaned, clenching around me so that I swore a torrent in return. "Please, release me, so close," he babbled as I snapped my hips a few times and then arched into him, stopping my motions on his outer organ. Deep inside him, my butterfly tongue uncurled; it flickered against his hidden ember and he shouted his ecstasy. As though I were outside of myself, I sensed more than felt his jeweled drops on my fingers. My simultaneous release had catapulted me to another plain of being, diffused in a chorus of pounding heartbeats, the savoury musk of Euclase's devotion sparking on my tongue.
We lay coupled together for some time until our breathing at last evened out and I carefully withdrew from his warm hold. He shifted and turned over, an apple-red flush in his cheeks and curled, wet tendrils of hair stuck to his forehead.
"You've undone me," I rasped, my voice hoarse from our unusually vocal lovemaking.
Euclase regarded me for a few moments, and then pressed a swath of light kisses along my sweaty brow before he shared breath again. I tried to memorise his taste and the comforting landscape of his soul. We would be parting; perhaps not forever, but that was how it seemed at the time. I brimmed with perceived profundity back then, every action and decision, I felt, sent irrevocable ripples across the bottomless waters of our new race.
"It's you who's undone me," Euclase countered softly, wiping his face on a damp pillowcase. He snuggled against me in defiance of the heat and our sweat-slicked skin. "I may be sore tomorrow. Today. The sun will be up in not too long," he said, his voice plaintive and timid in a way I'd not heard in a long time.
"Think of it as a gift to the tribe. I wouldn't be surprised if the energy from our aruna created a protective aura around the camp," I suggested, half serious.
"We've never even attempted Grissecon," he scoffed, but then he slowly raised his head and used his fingers to move damp strands of hair from out of my eyes. "But maybe these new hara are versed in it. Beyond dry book knowledge, that is."
"That would be welcome, indeed."
I cocked my head before leaning in to press my lips chastely against Euclase's. I was spent in every way, and wanted nothing more than to drift off, sated and at peace. We held each other in weary but contented silence, though I didn't let myself truly relax until I heard his regular, feathery noises and was certain Euclase was asleep. I spared a thought to Vaysh and wondered what the upcoming day would reveal about him as well as the other five hara who were now a part of our tribe, and how we would all certainly be changed. A short time later, I followed Euclase into sleep.
* * * * *
TBC
heidi8 and verdenia. I'm also 2 days late in wishing very festive and joyous birthdays to altariel1 and snottygrrl, who share a birthday on the 13th. I'm going to do a wrap-up tonight of thank yous, mostly that you all are in my life. (((grateful hugs)))In hobbitish fashion, I'm giving out gifts on my birthday, in this case, the gift of fic. I have two offerings, one here and one over at
ginger_lust. The link to the one at ginger_lust is here: 'Cloudscape of Ravens'. (I'm linking directly to my website as the link on the comm is locked; the fic is adult and we have some under-18 watchers at the comm) It's the fic I'd had simmering in my head last fall when I first came up with the idea of a Ron-centric, prompt-driven fic community to post after the Christmas/holiday large fests and exchanges. Go there for details but it's adult and as I see it, DH-compliant, EWE. Ron/OMC, Ron/Severus and Ron/OMC/Harry.The other fic is my first foray into Wraeththu fanfiction, so for any folks who come here from
raythoo, welcome, and I'd love your thoughts! Especially since only two people on my flist have read the series. ;) I'm still new enough to the fandom that I'm not sure of any particular canon-compliant notices, but this is the beginning of what I can tell will be a long gap filler, and is based on the first three Wraeththu novels and being more fleshed out as I now read the second trilogy. Also to be cross-posted over in the WIP Pinkboard at Forever, a Wraeththu fanfic archive. Also, Wraeththu fanfiction authors tend to have lots of original characters, so I'm not sure whether or not to warn for that, or how to announce such things. Ah, being a newbie again. Hopefully somebody will show me the ropes. For anyone else on my flist, feel free to read, though it'll probably seem like original fic. There are some pictures here to give you some idea of what hara may look like, though it's sadly lacking on this webpage in any pictures of Vaysh. This photo book would also make a great gift. ;) Sadly not available through Amazon or B&N or I'd get it myself.Title: Maelstrom and Mage, Desire Thine Darkling
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: slash, WIP
Word Count: 6,000
Disclaimer: Ashmael, Vaysh, and the harish world all belong to Storm Constantine; I'm merely playing with great abandon in her sandbox.
Pairings: Vaysh/Ashmael, Ashmael/OHC (original har character)
Summary: Before they knew of Immanion, or Thiede, before death and despair, Ashmael and Vaysh knew and loved each other. This is one way their story may have been told.
Vaysh burned.
I'd watched him ride into our collective, and steered away as any sane sentient being, whether human or har, should do around open flame. He would burn and scorch; he was seared into the very marrow of this mutant blood that flowed in my veins; from sight alone my cells were branded. Of course I briefly tried to keep my distance, knowing as instinctively as a plant turns to the sun, or a drowning man clings to anything to keep him from dying in watery depths, that to get close to him would cause an elemental transfiguration.
I was stone: solid, yet porous when necessary.
But you know what happens when rock is punished by relentless heat. Lava. Liquid, destructive, transient.
Could anyone ever look back at our lives and not marvel at our exploits, our so un-refined, un-controlled, Wraeththu-anathema love for each other?
* * * * *
My first thought when the small entourage came riding in was that some har, somewhere, had made a grave error in judgment. All of us, we Wraeththu, are this mutated amalgam of the sexes, two combined into one, yet presumably not both at once. Ever the enthusiastic pioneer, however, I'd vowed to myself to try and find out, which I did, successfully.
The hara who approached wore leather of rich chestnut, designed scored into them that resembled constellations. They looked heavenly, quite easy on the eyes, but also as haughty and distant as the stars, radiant and far off. We'd known they were coming, as the one who seemed to be their leader had sent out a thought-call. Our clan head, Monarch, had replied and warily bid them approach. Wraeththu hadn't been in existence all that long then. We were still actively hunted down though of course we fought back with deadly vengeance.
Their horses were as well fashioned and groomed as their masters. I wondered if they had some kind of occult or spiritual connection to equines. Each tribe and splinter group I'd come across or heard about appeared to have taken on its own unique personality, passion, and/or perversion. I didn't know, philosophically, what I thought of that, as it reeked of humanity to me. We all came from different backgrounds, though, had been incepted in myriad ways with tales of bliss and horror (or both), so I supposed it made sense that each small stronghold would have a very different culture shaped by their respective leaders.
A willowy har with long hair the colour of burnished sand dismounted, his presence commanding despite his fetching, sinuous body movement. Before I had become har, I'd of course been a human male, with raging hormones that had churned and bruised me though I'd not had an outlet aside from solo release. My fantasies hadn't involved men, back when the decaying world still boasted of its male and female polarities. I'd had a love affair of sorts with the insatiable creature between my legs, dreaming of burying it in a silken heat of some secretive, foreign darkness. A flare of my former self, the insipid human part I'd hoped had been scoured away forever, raised its regressive head when confronted with Vaysh, as I soon learned this compelling har was named.
"He's flaming."
The ancient slur blindsided me, some dormant, pre-har wire in my brain tripped by the sight of him. Perhaps back in the past this Vaysh had favoured his own gender, and been flamboyant about it. It wasn't for me to ferret out of him, or care. We were Wraeththu now, beyond such banal and reductive concepts of she and he. This har evoked more of the feminine in outward display, but I soon discovered he had balls of steel. Vaysh was a sword, clothed as a sylph.
Our tribe leader met with Vaysh and the five har who had accompanied him while the rest of our group got back to what we needed to do, primarily ensuring that our enclave was safe, and our crops tended to. I had additional tasks: I was responsible for writing down in a somewhat organised fashion the lessons to be learned to move from Neoma to Brynie. We had only two Ulani in our tightly-knit group, two Pyralists. They were teaching what they could, but I saw in their eyes and heard in their occasionally strained voices that they knew we would need to seek outside resources. My closest companions, Euclase, Ondin and Belvac, had, like me, been older when incepted; sixteen, or seventeen. In our dead pasts, we'd been groomed for the euphemistically-called higher education; wise-arsed scholars to be, was our triumvirate. Now, as Wraeththu, we hungered ravenously for knowledge, constantly testing our new abilities much to the chagrin of our tribal leaders.
One balmy night a couple of weeks before Vaysh's arrival, I'd been mulling over some bit of telepathic arcana, puzzling over particular uses of controlling energy when I'd paused outside the open windows of Monarch's study.
"Fine. We we'll send for one of the Kakkahaar. Or, perhaps more wisely, enlist one of the Gelaming."
"We've got to do something," I heard my mentor, Kyrgian, say in exasperation. "They could nearly all move on to Ulani, and at least two, Ashmael and Belvac, could, in time, aspire to Nahir-Nuri."
I paused, wondering if they sensed my presence, but they appeared engrossed in their heated discussion.
"Kyrgian, you can't possibly see that in them."
"They're devastatingly intelligent!"
"Many are. It takes more than just brains to achieve those illustrious castes."
"I know that. But it's a crime for them to be stifled at any point in their progress. We've done well so far, but sooner than perhaps you expect, they'll be desperate for more knowledge, at any cost. You know that what I'm saying is the truth. We have an embarrassment of riches in our har, and if they're held back, they'll simply turn to darker, equally powerful conduits."
There was a pause, heavy with foreboding and resignation. My heart had sped up, both at hearing such unexpected praise, but also at the thought of studying the higher levels of instruction. Kyrgian indeed spoke the truth: we weren't particularly brutal or war-like; our sport was learning, seeing just how far we could test and expand our new bodies and energies. I was flattered that Kyrgian thought me capable of achieving such an elevated state within Wraeththu, and didn't doubt for a minute I wouldn't succeed if given the opportunity.
Monarch let out a sigh before taking a drink of something— wine, probably, as we had it in abundance.
"I concur. I've had a premonition, but have been loath to speak of it."
"We'll have visitors soon, won't we? I've had a sense of it as well, vague shadows on the outskirts of my dreams. They won't seek our ruin, at least those are the divinings I've had."
"No, they'll join our tribe, and we'll be stronger for it. But their coming will herald a profound change for us. And the outcome of that I can't envision."
I'd heard enough, and felt both exhilarated and guilty at having eavesdropped on their conversation. It had been an accident, walking by just then, but deep in my guts I'd never been one to think that anything truly happened by chance.
I was brought back from my musings about the premonitions of the arrival of our new guests when Ondin cornered me in the laundry. I'd been supervising the youngest in our clan while he found suitable clothes for the visiting har.
"What do you think? They seem awfully protective, and secretive. And a bit too pretty. I doubt they've ever had to cleanse a town before."
I turned on him, my mouth twisted to the side. "Looks are deceiving, as the pithy saying goes, especially with our kind. You're pretty," I said, a biting sting in my voice. "That didn't stop you from killing over a dozen men."
"It had to be done!" he insisted, hurt and prideful anger jostling for dominance on his expressive face. "And I'm not pretty. I wouldn't break a mirror looking at it, but we all know you're the most dashing har in our group."
"Flattery will get you everywhere," I teased, lightening the mood and grabbing at his admittedly shapely backside, tightly encased in leather trousers.
"Oh, bugger off." Ondin's umber eyes flashed mischievously. "Besides, I'm taken."
I groaned at that. "Are you har or not? This idea of possession, of 'mine' and exclusivity, that's human, Ondin."
"It was a joke," he protested, sitting down and beginning to plait a thin braid from long mahogany hair he tugged down from above his ear. It was a nervous habit, and he knew that I knew that. Still, I wasn't in the mood to rub his nose in it.
"You and Wyngarr are chesna. Fine. But you're not his, and he's not yours."
Ondin sneered, pleasantly. "You're one to talk, tiaharr-steady-aruna-diet-of-Euclase."
I rolled my eyes and heard Jaffa, the young har, snicker.
"Euclase and I have been friends for years. It's natural that we seek each other's company. But we're not all cloying about it."
Ondin's expression grew more grave. "In all seriousness, do you think now that these har have shown up, those changes—"
"Not now," I said meaningfully as I jerked my head toward Jaffa, who'd become still to listen more attentively to our conversation.
"Let's go for a walk, then. Jaffa, I know we don't have much that's spare, but you're bright and can figure something out. The nicest tunic and trousers should be given the Vaysh. He's the one who led them to us."
The youth stood, his gesticulating hands like the fluttering leaves of an aspen. "He looks female."
"For fuck's sake!" I exclaimed, beginning to lose my temper. "Is everyone regressing today?"
Jaffa shrank back, his already wide eyes now as large as saucers. I didn't often raise my voice.
"What are you?" I yelled at him.
Instead of buckling, he stood proudly, though fear still hung in his eyes like a diaphanous veil. "I'm Wraeththu."
"Damn straight. You're male and female, got it? Now quit thinking like the mortal youth you were nine months ago and please assure me that you've actually been paying attention to the life you're living."
"I have, honest. Sorry, Ashmael," he said, worrying his lower lip and shoving his hands into the pockets of his overvest. "He was just surprising, that's all. I'd forgotten, or, really, I'd just put my past out of my mind, and seeing him made some of it come back. I'm har, Vaysh is har. No difference."
My heart warmed at the boy's earnestness. He'd been lucky, and had it a hell of a lot easier than most of us. His inception and clan loyalties had been relatively peaceful.
"Yes. That's right. Ondin and I are going to take a walk, but we won't be long. After you've taken the clothes to the cloister where our guests are staying, please find Wycker and make sure that the visitors' horses have been tended to."
I strode over to him and he flinched, but stood his ground as firmly as a tall pine. Leaning down, I held him in a tight embrace until he softened against me. He snuck his wiry arms around my back and nestled his face against my chest for a moment, then eased away.
"I'll be honoured to take care of them," he said, nerve again in his voice.
"If I knew more about them, I'd tell you," I said. "I don't think they'll be strangers for long, to any of us."
Jaffa nodded as Ondin stood up, leading the way out of the warm confines of the laundry room into an equally sultry twilight. He offered me a cigarette from a silver case and I decided to indulge. Our bodies weren't negatively affected by it, and I'd discovered that my alcohol tolerance had skyrocketed. I didn't see the need to be a lush nor a chimney, however, just because I could.
I found myself wondering why I'd jumped to the defense of this — effeminate, yes — har who didn't know me from the Aghama's house cat. He had triggered something in me. It was unsettling. No, Vaysh's arrival to our enclave of scholarly hara was definitely more than unsettling, or unnerving. I would be changed; my foresight of it was axiomatic. My inner polarity churned, the idea of Strong or Proper or Companion spinning without direction. A part of me wondered, somewhat dazedly, if I would wake tomorrow to see the orb of the sun regally rising— from the West. Angered at my overactive imagination, I took a deep drag off of the cigarette and quashed my whirlwind thoughts.
"As I was saying," Ondin drawled, his Southern accent even more pronounced than mine. We'd all noticed that our speech had been tempered somewhat by our inception, but certainly not made completely neutral, either.
"You were about to go on with your fanciful ideas in front of Jaffa. It was uncalled for."
"You've just been there in your head," Ondin said matter of factly. "It's pretty obvious when you're thinking about things that are either really complex, or you'd prefer to keep secretively to yourself."
"So?" I snapped.
"Down, boy." Ondin put up his hands in mock surrender. "Didn't mean to touch a nerve. But these har, their coming— it's what Monarch and Kyrgian were talking about. Doesn't it have to be?"
"I should never have told you about that."
We ambled slowly, nearly shoulder to shoulder, the droning symphony of cicadas a shimmering backdrop of early evening.
"P'shaw. It's not as though I've not done my share of accidentally hearing things in advance of a Gathering. You and Belvac and me, and maybe Euclase— there's just not all that much left for us to master before we'll be ready to become Ulani. A few months, if that." He shrugged elegantly, taking a deep inhale of his cigarette.
"I don't have the feeling Vaysh and his group are any more advanced than we are," I hedged, wondering what Ondin's thoughts were about their caste. To be honest, it wasn't the caste and its title that interested me, though I'd had a few ridiculous daydreams of exalted status, being a hand-picked strategist for the legendary Gelaming, whomever and wherever they really were.
Ondin cocked his head and grinned wickedly. "If it has to do with aruna, something tells me they're far more advanced."
I snorted, trying to suppress the shudder of delight that had frissoned down my spine to lodge teasingly in my groin. I'd thought the same thing, of course. "And what exactly do you think Wyngarr will have to say about your soliciting of… that kind of instruction?"
My tongue tapped the bottom of my front teeth as Ondin's smile grew more feral, but then his enthusiasm for the sleek newcomers seemed to wane. "I don't know. He might consider letting one of them share our bed. Once. Or twice."
I gave him a calculated look, pausing to lean back against the trunk of an ancestral pine, its bark still warm from the heat of the day. "A ménage a trios? How adventurous."
"Surely there's another word for that now," he mused, his handsome face absorbed as he puzzled over the possible harish vocabulary.
"I'll admit it," I said, some drumbeat tapping a brazen tattoo in my chest. "I'd like to ride one of those horse-lords."
Ondin only shook his head, amused and slightly horrified. "Now look who's regressed. Aruna is far more than just a conquesting fuck, Ashmael."
"You're crass."
"I learned from a master."
* * * * *
Dinner was a much more elaborate affair than we usually experienced. Jaffa helped out Vox and Polaris, two Aralids who, thankfully for us, were quite handy at cooking. We sat at circular tables, as was our custom, one each of the visiting har interspersed with our tribe. Trying not to be overt about my undeniable pull to Vaysh, instead I found a place next to the har who seemed to be closest to him, Opequon. His oddly short hair was an intriguing colour; satiny black shot through with bright viridian. Seeing the luminous green strands lit by our torches made me think of the aurora borealis, and I was all set to tell him that until I was brought up short by the anguish harboured carefully behind his calm demeanour.
The others at my table and I made him welcome, trying to stick to updates of Megalithica and any news we could dig out from him, all without discussing the one topic we were so desperate to know: were they staying? What were their plans? That would be discussed at the Gathering, later in the evening.
The outside world appeared not to have changed too terribly much since we'd splintered off from the Unneah. The Varrs held their stronghold in the north, and apparently some Gelaming had caught wind of their conquests and begun voyaging across the sea, creating a protected realm of their own in the south, but these hara did not really know where. The Gelaming wished to remain hidden in plain sight, or so it seemed. There were still humans in existence; tiny, often fierce bands, grimly clawing at their fading numbers and striking out against Wraeththu when they could. Opequon and their small entourage had been ambushed a couple of months back and three of their hara slaughtered. Suddenly Opequon's shorn neck and haunted eyes made sense. None of us needed to ask; the loss he had suffered was lamented with each breath.
Though potentially deadly, our lives, it was exciting, too. We suffered from a human saying, doggedly lodged in my memory: verily, we were cursed to live in interesting times. Not infrequently in my early years as har I had to go off by myself for walks deep into the surrounding primeval forests. There I would scream out my fear and exaltation at traversing this irrevocably post-human terrain. I sometimes felt even my harish body wasn't strong enough to bear it all. I marveled that one day I'd simply fly apart into a dazzling shower of opalescent sentience before being absorbed back into the ceaseless song of the universe.
Aruna was good for getting me out of the galloping rampages of my mind and back into my corporeal self. I sought it out often.
Once we'd all cleaned up from the sumptuous meal — we were far more egalitarian than most tribes, especially back then — Monarch called us to Gather. Though it was a sticky, windless night, he lit a ceremonial fire regardless. Vaysh and Opequon stood slightly apart from the group, not speaking aloud, certainly communicating through mind touch. They approached to flank Monarch and Kyrgian, representing (so the gesture mandated) their integration to our clan, while observing and accepting the leadership already in place. I felt a knot in my stomach ease at the sight of it. It wasn't that I'd thought this honey-haired har and his few followers would com in and try to usurp Monarch and Kyrgian, but their actions showed an intuitive nod to how we functioned as a group. Their assimilation wouldn't be fraught with misunderstanding and strife. The night air caressed us, suffused with peace and the promise of an enterprising dawn.
I stayed up drinking half the night, my appetite for the stories of these new hara insatiable. In some ways all of our tales were variations on the same theme: in a metamorphosis of blood and pain, we'd struggled away from our human lives, abandoning family, so-called civility as it gasped its tormented, putrid last breaths, and embraced new visions, each of us spawned relentlessly by passion. If we were honest with ourselves, it was obvious that Wraeththu were children of desire. Some boys were incepted against their will; I'd heard of it and didn't doubt it for a second. But in those early years, at least as I believed it, to give the gift of becoming har was a sacred rite. I had been religious, back… before. The transformation from sniveling human to Wraeththu took my breath every time, as I humbly knelt before each new, divine manifestation of the inconceivable.
Vaysh had sat and listened to me blather on about my self-perceived profound thoughts on incarnation and inception for ages, matching me glass for glass of robust red wine. I was seized by the need for him to speak, to share with me, this otherworldly creature who was very nearly my age. Yet, he bore his complex harish self with the same inherent ease of being I'd witnessed at the Gathering. I was dying to impress him, though even in my alcohol sodden stupor I recognised I wasn't doing so. If anything, I was only amusing him as I chattered on into the night.
"Tell me about you," I pleaded, finally. "You should've told me to shut up my pompous mouth ages ago."
His grey eyes glinted with mischief. "Okay, Ashmael. I will, but not right this minute. It's been a long and stressful journey for us, and I think that I should heed the call to bed. Before I go," he said, leaning closer, drumming his long fingers on my leg, "you seem as though you have something else you want to tell me. What is it?"
I didn't even pause to think. "I want to share breath with you," I said helplessly.
"You want to do far more than that," he replied with a sly smile.
"Yes, of course I do." The words came out in a torrent, heedless and unchecked by the usual filters between my mind and mouth. "I can't find the words, but there's something about you, you're so compelling," I said, attempting a last-ditch seduction which, even to my ears, sounded pathetic and desperate.
He chuckled, a melodious baritone sound. "Oh, I am compelling. Aren't you chesna with Euclase? Or am I misinterpreting the way you act around him?"
"We're…" I fumbled. "We take aruna with each other, yes. He's been a close friend of mine, since boyhood. Human boyhood. But we're not like Ondin and Wyngarr. I don't know how I know, but you and I have a destiny together. I'm certain of it."
Vaysh spread out his fingers so the palm rested close to the juncture of my thigh and hip; I was sitting cross-legged. His expression had changed, no longer playful, but introspective and distant, his thoughts flying to a place I couldn't follow. I gazed at him, at the angle of his cheekbones, the curve of his jaw. Vaysh's face was a geometry of promise, the topography of desire.
"I'm not just trying to get between your legs," I whispered, feeling blood roar in my ears.
A feral, possessive smile bloomed on his lips. "When we first take aruna — and we will, Ashmael, have no doubt," he said, his voice roughened with cigarettes and palpable desire, "it is I who will seek out your depths. I'll sink into your mossy glens, and then you'll truly know the fullness of destiny."
A strangled cry escaped my mouth before my lips claimed his, sharing breath with a ferocity that made my heart stutter in my chest. Vaysh tasted of velvet and stormclouds; he withheld nothing as we kissed. I spun through parts of his past, whirling and dazzling like a hawk above mountains. His breath was sunsets and dew, dappled horses and the erotic tang of leather.
Eventually we parted. Vaysh reached tenderly into my mind. We each have partings to make.
I nodded, struggling to my feet and assisting Vaysh up from the ground. In my esoteric studies, I'd spent my energies on distant mind-calling, as well as shielding my thoughts. This speech was so intimate; why hadn't I been practising before now? I struggled for a moment, taming my swirling cacophony of thoughts and longings.
Ashmael, Vaysh chided, lovingly. Breathe.
I did, never losing contact with his gaze, his pupils dilated so only the faintest silver ringed the black.
I'm not used to this, I thought back, humbled.
You have a lot to teach me as well. This is only the beginning, Vaysh said reassuringly, inclining his head toward our small station of dwellings. "We should get back. No doubt our absence has been noted."
I took his hand, intertwined our fingers, and wondered at the smearing of damp against my palm. I glanced over at him, surprised when I saw embarrassment flicker in his expression.
"I was nervous," he admitted with a refreshingly awkward shrug. "You, this—" He gestured vaguely at me. "My mind's a jumble of puzzle pieces. I need to get to know you. It'll take time."
"All the time in the world," I bravely pledged, then unclasped his hand, smothering my face with my palms. "What the fuck is happening? We don't do this. We're supposed to have evolved beyond this, Vaysh." I turned on him, panic burbling up in me, a rare geyser set to burst with a catastrophic explosion. "Why me? You?"
I almost wanted to hit him, to wipe off the untroubled, accepting set to his face.
"Why not?"
His words weren't sarcastic, and now I could sense his feelings. Deep within himself, in fact, there was an undercurrent of wondrous fear. He would stay up the remainder of the few hours until dawn talking through things with Opequon and Zain, his confidantes and allies. I needed Euclase's understanding arms and perspective, too.
On the way to the cloister we'd passed a few har still chatting, and I noted that Wyngarr and Ondin had taken Opequon under their wing, Ondin massaging the new har's shoulders. Jaffa had fallen asleep near the fire, his sweaty ginger hair plastered to his forehead. The light from the burning embers played on his freckled skin. In my euphoric state, he looked like a seraph. Once at the door to his new residence, I paused. There were lights on inside; I suspected that Zain had waited up for him.
"I'm blind and stumbling," I said, trying to articulate my utter shock at my actions, much less my thoughts. I clawed for my usual eloquence. "I'm not supposed to have feelings like this, without purpose, or source. It's like something out of a human novel. A poorly-written one," I added with a harsh snort.
Vaysh leaned forward until our foreheads touched. "It's okay," he murmured. "This scares the shit out of me too. Good night, tiahaar."
I couldn't keep the smile from tugging at my lips as I took my time walking the short distance to my dwelling, a four-room house shared by my three close companions. Quite often only three rooms were actually used for sleeping, but especially since Euclase and I weren't bound by chesna — though our decades-long friendship brought me tremendous comfort — we slept alone at times, seeking solitude or even taking aruna with one of the others in our tribe. Once inside the house I cleaned my teeth and sought out my old friend. He was in his room, sprawled on his side in the dark. At first I assumed he was asleep, but I decided to test my newly-explored thought communication ability, tentatively seeking his mind. He started at my touch, though he'd been awake, his thoughts a turbulent stream of discontent and resignation. He sat up to face me, lips pursed as he, too, reached out solely through thought while trying to place a protective barrier to shield himself.
What do you want? he asked peevishly. Did you get tired of fawning over the lovely har and now you want to share my bed? Or did he turn you down?
His last thought was full of self-congratulation at first. As I shook my head and came to sit next to him, I could sense it change to restlessness. He cared for me a great deal; perhaps only now were we both realising how troublingly complex our interactions had become. I ran my hands through his tousled hair before sharing breath. He resisted just for a moment, but gave in to the comfort and familiarity of such a simple, yet profound exchange. I was enfolded in his warmth as we shared breath; Euclase as always, tasted of book-gilt and rustling leaves.
"I want to hold you," I said, for it was the truth.
"You look as though you need to be held," he said, taking on his usual role of companion more than lover, his unspoken questions hovering busily around him like moths. "Here, let me take off your boots."
I did and then lay on my back, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. From a small hook Euclase had hung a mobile, the fanciful birds hanging motionless in the still night. His artistry and imagination in carving and other woodwork never ceased to astonish me, as well as his intuition to understanding my moods. Euclase stretched out beside me, insinuating his arm under my back and gently nudging until I rolled half across him, my face pressed against the hard plane below his collarbone. With wide fingers, he drew sweeping paths on my back, the finger pads pressing gently on the linen of my tunic. I was at home here, brimming with gratitude and melancholy. Our past seemed so simple; now it was changed, impossible to be undone.
"I spent quite a while talking with their Abelard," he said, his voice low and pensive. "They've had a rougher time of it recently, but it's made them strong. If they'd chosen to attack, instead of join peacefully, well, certainly we'd not be lying here like this."
I made a rumbling sound of assent. They were lissome, but in watching them for as short a time as they'd been with us — mere hours! — it was obvious by their selected armaments and wariness that the world had turned them to warriors. Steely, and supple. No wonder our band of defensive philosophers was so enraptured.
"Did he want to take aruna with you?" I asked.
Like all Wraeththu, Euclase was a beauty; surely Abelard had noticed. Stockier than I was, Euclase's corded muscle was accentuated by olive skin, bronzed a deep tan at the end of a long summer. His ebony hair fell in loose ringlets down his back and he gazed out at this new world through startlingly pale green eyes.
"It wasn't brought up, but I wouldn't be surprised he asks in the future. I suspect I'll say yes. Would that trouble you?"
His fingers slowed, undulating and kneading as I pondered the question.
"Aruna keeps us whole, and nourishes our spirits. I want your happiness, I always have."
His rich, loamy scent wafted up from the heated hollow of his neck, the sweet acrid tang of sweat.
"That's not an answer." His tone was light, but I felt the grave seriousness behind it. "Are you really beyond jealousy? Or have your sights been swayed that quickly, even though I know you better than anyone?"
I scooted up onto an elbow so I could look into his dear, familiar face. "You know me best," I agreed, cupping his jaw with my other hand, brushing my thumb on his cheek. I drank in the handsome contours, the bewitching sparkle of his eyes that was now lacquered with sorrow. In looking into his eyes, I saw that we felt a similar perplexing weft and weave of wanting to rush forward into our diverging lives, and yet grasp tightly to the moment at hand. Our years together underlay it all, the pentimento only we could perceive in each other. That would change— Euclase did know me best, but that time was coming to its end.
"Anyone you deem worthy to hold in your arms, flesh to flesh, should consider himself exalted," I said, feeling my own flesh stir slowly to life as I rocked my growing arousal against his hip.
"Then you must be a demigod, you flatterer," he teased, canting his groin to further stimulate the stiffening flower that throbbed between my legs. I smiled seductively and was gifted with a predatory stare before our mouths drew together again. Our kisses grew more passionate until the need to remove the hindrance of clothing became overwhelming.
"Let me be behind you," I said, feeling that he was still fully flowered, our lengths sliding together with a delicious friction. Euclase and I had explored myriad avenues of pleasure once he'd become har. We had discovered much to our mutual satisfaction that our advanced bodies intuited when our ouana-lim wasn't in danger of possible injury and didn't retreat, even when soume.
I spooned behind him, my chest to his back, and slid deep into his welcoming body. We groaned together; I began to thrust into him, a rhythm slow and ancient as waves crashing on the beach. I sowed a blooming path of kisses on his neck and shoulders as he guided my hand to his ouana-lim, a jetting spire of bronze and orange. A near-steady stream of profanity interspersed with my name tumbled from his lips. The curled petals at his tip nudged my fingers as I took him in hand, stroking in tandem with my thrusts.
Euclase was a master of control and skill, both as ouana and soume and he was generous in heightening my pleasure. His body was a silken glove, the spiraling unstoppable in our increasingly frenzied pursuit of each other's completion.
"Mael, please, God, oh fuck," he groaned, clenching around me so that I swore a torrent in return. "Please, release me, so close," he babbled as I snapped my hips a few times and then arched into him, stopping my motions on his outer organ. Deep inside him, my butterfly tongue uncurled; it flickered against his hidden ember and he shouted his ecstasy. As though I were outside of myself, I sensed more than felt his jeweled drops on my fingers. My simultaneous release had catapulted me to another plain of being, diffused in a chorus of pounding heartbeats, the savoury musk of Euclase's devotion sparking on my tongue.
We lay coupled together for some time until our breathing at last evened out and I carefully withdrew from his warm hold. He shifted and turned over, an apple-red flush in his cheeks and curled, wet tendrils of hair stuck to his forehead.
"You've undone me," I rasped, my voice hoarse from our unusually vocal lovemaking.
Euclase regarded me for a few moments, and then pressed a swath of light kisses along my sweaty brow before he shared breath again. I tried to memorise his taste and the comforting landscape of his soul. We would be parting; perhaps not forever, but that was how it seemed at the time. I brimmed with perceived profundity back then, every action and decision, I felt, sent irrevocable ripples across the bottomless waters of our new race.
"It's you who's undone me," Euclase countered softly, wiping his face on a damp pillowcase. He snuggled against me in defiance of the heat and our sweat-slicked skin. "I may be sore tomorrow. Today. The sun will be up in not too long," he said, his voice plaintive and timid in a way I'd not heard in a long time.
"Think of it as a gift to the tribe. I wouldn't be surprised if the energy from our aruna created a protective aura around the camp," I suggested, half serious.
"We've never even attempted Grissecon," he scoffed, but then he slowly raised his head and used his fingers to move damp strands of hair from out of my eyes. "But maybe these new hara are versed in it. Beyond dry book knowledge, that is."
"That would be welcome, indeed."
I cocked my head before leaning in to press my lips chastely against Euclase's. I was spent in every way, and wanted nothing more than to drift off, sated and at peace. We held each other in weary but contented silence, though I didn't let myself truly relax until I heard his regular, feathery noises and was certain Euclase was asleep. I spared a thought to Vaysh and wondered what the upcoming day would reveal about him as well as the other five hara who were now a part of our tribe, and how we would all certainly be changed. A short time later, I followed Euclase into sleep.
* * * * *
TBC
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Date: 2008-03-05 07:28 pm (UTC)I'm adding all of the Maelstrom and Mage entries to my memories, so don't you go and delete anything!
Oh God, my head is spinning. I'm sorry I can't be more effusive, or coherent even, but I'm completely undone -- and this is only the beginning!
I won't delete it!! Promise! :D
I'm just so thrilled to have you with me as a reader. It's so different once you have the canon to go with it.