Down the Whispering Well, Vaysh, post 1
Mar. 17th, 2008 09:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thrihyrneTitle: Down the Whispering Well
This post rating: adult
Warnings: catastrophic Thiede aruna, rooning
Word Count: 6000
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 (historic); Vaysh/OC
Summary: Being brought back from the dead doesn't mean happily ever after, especially if you're Vaysh. Life has its costs, and he pays dearly. An exploration of Vaysh's character in the years before and through Pellaz's transformation, and the burdens he endures, because he must.
Yes, here's the first post for the sequel to Maelstrom and Mage. I'm not going to put angst as a warning; the whole thing is going to be full of it. Enjoy! :P Or something. It won't be totally relentless, but as we know, Vaysh is pretty tragic.
Succor my skin, beloved,
in sizzling drops of musky happenstance.
Lick gauzy flames, sear my bones,
Bathe me in fecund tears of myrrh and exaltation—
gnaw, ravenous, on my transmogrified soul.
I'll dance with you, my firebrand,
Down the whispering well.
There, enrapt, we libertines
Will sing the stars indivisible, you and I,
suckling on voracious delight.
My heart, my drum—
Immortal, beat in me the tattoo of forever.
* * * * *
The air was different that day. Unseen wings beat a thrill of anticipation into the usual stillness; the wind-chimes tintinnabulated in silvery agitation. I was lifted from my cocoon, held up for the duration of the short walk to the bath. I couldn't stand unaided, my legs had transformed from slender but muscled to white spindles. I grimaced as I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, though my heart seized with anguished joy each time I was able to do so. I had died. I knew it. My brain hadn't surrendered the memory of the excruciating pain of the branch as it had crushed me, my sight and feeling seeping away, of Ashmael's voice, so wild and full of hurt…
I let the warm tears spill over, as they always did, now that I'd recovered enough for these new eyes to work. I was here, and not-here; the silent, efficient hara kept me drugged after my initial screams of agony had been too much for them and my other keeper to bear. Thiede would bring order to this impossibility. He would come in with a serving-tray of coral, he would drape an amulet around my neck, a chambered nautilus like my hollowed soul and he would breathe life into this husk, this miraculous aberration, my somatic re-creation.
"Why?" I asked the unspeaking hara through my tears, but they didn't pause. They bathed my weak body, rubbing my near-useless limbs with oil before artfully arranging my hair with ribbons of white, and tiny opalescent beads. I begged for more drugs, for anything to slow the panicked tattoo which threatened to overwhelm my re-made heart. Pity me, for God's sake, the Aghama's sake, pity…?
A quicksilver slide of the needle and my breath no longer thundered in my lungs like a thoroughbred racing across a field. Perhaps Tassia could bear me away…
I was an abomination, and yet, as I drifted into the languid haze of disembodied thought, I couldn't help but love myself and the demiurge who had made me again. Head lolling, I peered dazedly at my arm— tears meandered down my face at the sight of flawless, pale skin. No inception scar marred my forearm; no vibrant braid of ink to boldly proclaim my love for my chesnari remained. Apparently the voice of all physical flaws was to have been silenced. This body, this mute skin, this was Thiede's doing.
Did I captivate him only when voiceless?
Soft footsteps padded through the open doorway. He stood at the end of the bed, his palms pressed together, his long, steepled fingers pressed against his cheek. With his head tilted as it was, he looked for an instant like a child about to say his prayers. His eyes— a thousand sunlit mornings glowed there; I flinched under the shimmering, proud lanterns that shone in his face.
"You shall be above all others," he promised, approaching me with the lethal, captivating grace of a lynx. There was no softness in his tone; the words rang in the air, a regal pronouncement. I was brushed with the scent of saffron dawn as attendants removed his clothes and I was laid bare for him.
"Thank you," I croaked, my voice an elegy in dust. I was un-dead. I was moulded clay. I lifted my eyes as his lips hovered above mine, the faint scent of his breath enough to kindle an explosion of sparks in my groin.
"You were extraordinary, even before," he murmured against my parched mouth. "You will pass through fire as a phoenix, rising from destruction to become beauty beyond measure. Taste me. Savour the mystical bittersweet, the grand mystery of our kind."
Thiede was a swooping hawk, a plunging crane. I flew with him, his taloned fingers in my hair, his words and sighs keening through me, teasing forth the bloom of my resurrection. He was molten air, a demonic angel as he joined our bodies. Cataclysmic eruptions of fiery quakes burst my limbs, they tore at the marrow in my fragile bones.
I was consumed. I burned, and the pain went so far beyond anything I could bear that my sense tried to flee. From deep within me, below my simmering organs, I felt my soume-lam liquefying. My veins bubbled with lava. The lambent, molten gold of Thiede's essence purified and incinerated me. I screamed, but the sound came from a ruined throat, drifting off like a mote dancing for a moment in sunlight. I left my body for a time, relieved at being able to escape its scorched remains. Even in the midst of his passion, however, Thiede's presence was aware. He knew I was away, trying to sever my soul from myself, and with the thundering wings of his spirit, he pulled me back. The scent of incense had been overtaken by that of charred flesh; I ached to surrender, to die again, to blaze like a comet and vanish into the cold, bodiless quiet.
As I dully registered the end of the ordeal, of curtains drawn and cleansing air, I clawed at the ravishing nothingness, but it was taken from me. Thiede was too much. I was only a har; how could I truly survive such an assault? From the beginning of time, the joining of mortal and immortal has brought only ruin. The sun itself had penetrated me, or so it felt. I begged for the elusive gift of death with hoarse gasps of mind-touch.
"You will be perfect."
Thiede's words hung, incandescent in the air, before I was allowed to pass into oblivion.
* * * * *
The walls, I finally decided, were celadon. Countless days had whispered quietly past, much like the hara who continued to take care of this immobile, marionette body I now inhabited. Thiede held the strings, but given his absence, I'd guessed mordantly that he'd found another plaything. I was a crumpled, broken puppet, condemned to die — again! — this time within the pacifying, light green walls of my sepulchre. It had been many days since Thiede had taken aruna with me, though aruna couldn't begin to describe the trauma and devastation of that act. Despite how reconciled I was to the obvious fact that Thiede's lovemaking was mutilating and toxic, I continued to hope that in my final hours, he'd sit at my side. I longed for him to blow into me with his breath of refining fire, and at last release my spirit. For good.
Ah, the blessed slip of the needle. Icy fingers traced every path within my ruined frame and I drifted into the caress of a damasked void.
* * * * *
"I… this…"
With the eloquence of an imbecile I stared at my reflection, the murmured words stumbling past lips full and desirous. My skin glowed as though in the night I'd been rubbed down by angels, burnished with celestial dust. Slightly unsteady on my feet, I grabbed at the edges of the heavy frame of the looking glass. I couldn't stop staring at the gorgeous, unearthly beauty that regarded me with such wide, laughably starstruck eyes.
"God, you're vain!" I said, breathless, but how could I not be? I was perfection; I'd lain with a god — he needn't try and hide that from me, he'd burned away so much of my ignorance — and like a snake shedding dull, dead skin, I glistened, shining and reflecting sunlight from some mystical, unseen realm. In the midst of this narcissistic orgy, I began to flex my spiritual muscles, carefully evaluating my auralic energies from head to foot. I came to my powerful sexual pool, the source of such former pride. Once I'd realised I'd not died, and jumped out of bed to become ensnared by my own reflection, I'd thought immediately of Ashmael. I'd had an explosion of erotic images, all to do with him and our joy filled reunion, showering gifts of my ascended caste and newfound generative…
I shrank back from the mirror in blistering shock. My legs were suddenly not strong enough to hold me up. Tentatively I reached into that core, tried to tap into the procreative realm I'd come to know the few months before my first death. I cried out at the unresponsive touch. It was horrific, like discovering my arm had been cut off, yet I could sense it there. Choking, crying, the euphoria of former moments blew away as insubstantial and fleeting as smoke when a candle is snuffed out.
I screamed my anguish, a roaring cannonball of thought and despair. "Thiede! Thiede, I— Ashmael, Ash, my heart, my only, Ash, oh fucking god…"
Sobbing, I collapsed in a heap. Moments later, a flock of hara rushed in, hoisting me up from the floor that I'd battered with my fists, tears running down my face. I felt Thiede walking toward the room and a frisson of fear blazed down my spine. I pulled myself together, still clawing at my hair and letting the hara wipe my nose.
"Vaysh," Thiede said sternly and I broke down again. He carded his fingers through my hair, his luminous eyes boring into me, assessing my condition. Perhaps he'd known as soon as this new form had emerged from its grey chrysalis.
"Vaysh, I know you almost better than myself," he said, the warm tones of his voice resonating in my shattered spirit like the radiant notes of a cello. "Do you know what I've accomplished? Do you have any idea how much I poured into you, to make you from the inside out? The hours, and days I spent watching you, knowing you, as you strutted around Castlegar like a baron."
I didn't believe he meant any harm by the words, he was simply putting me in my place, reminding me that had I not been deemed worthy, I'd be dead, truly dead, mouldering in the ground on the mountain…
"No more of that," he chided, his expression more inscrutable and less inviting, though his voice still held affection. I leaned into it, desperate for his validation, for more proof of his devotion, as though all that he'd given me wasn't enough!
"You are dead to him. He went quite mad with grief, and I allowed it, but he is now in my employ. I have encouraged him, through gentle methods, to put you in his past. You are also to remain as an exalted member of my house, but I do admit, your role has changed due to your condition."
Fear and rejection churned through me, a crashing waterfall of failure. "You haven't told him?" The words were rusty nails, dragging, bloody, on my tongue.
Thiede's eyes flashed sparks of annoyance. "No. I will not. It is of no relevance to him. You are mine, Vaysh. Only mine, until I see fit for you to be with another. Do I make myself quite clear?"
I nodded, though how I had the strength to do so, I didn't know. The world was a freezing rain of disbelief.
"I'm not heartless, my dear," Thiede crooned, enfolding me in his arms, a rare, spontaneous act of affection. He drew abstract, fluid patterns on my back as I stood immobile in his arms. "I have many plans for you, and I won't make you do them alone. I've decided that two of your companions from your isolated haven can be with you, for a time."
I felt dull and unnecessary, a pretty but useless fragment of shell, washed up on a beach.
"Aren't you going to thank me?"
I pulled myself back from him, bereft and mourning, but I straightened my spine to gaze at him as best I could. Even now I find it nearly impossible to look into his eyes for very long.
"Thank you, Thiede," I whispered, viciously suppressing the unexpected barrage of memories of his aruna. I'd been tormented by the licking flames of his passion; they had seared me with wildfires of pleasure as well as the pyres of destruction. He expected me to let go of my past; I realised that I had to, or go utterly mad holding out hope for a reunion with my chesnari. I sensed a warning in my thoughts. Thiede could feel my tenacious heart wanting to reach out for Ash, even though it was impossible. Thiede had said not to; therefore, I mustn't. The desire to reunite with him guttered feebly as Thiede's fingers held me fast. I forced a silent snarl, and it went out.
* * * * *
A few days went by, and then a few more, drifting like the soft snowflakes so often visible from the window. I thought I would go insane. The glow faded from my skin, but it still held more lustre than before. My hair was vibrant red, but Thiede hadn't changed it forever. He'd chosen not to re-create my tattoo when he'd somehow made me this second time, but in an oversight, perhaps, he'd left me with the blond interlopers forever ready to reclaim their position. I began truly questionning my sanity after a time; Thiede was gone, though he'd promised to return after he dealt with an 'unfortunate occurrence.'
For him, of course, that could have been a squabble amongst his engineers at Immanion— or it could have been notice of a Wraeththu-created holocaust. I wasn't to know.
The attendants in this frigid hideaway kept mostly to themselves, though I did unearth a tiger lily among the docile orchids. One held my gaze; he seemed more substance than shadow. He came to my rooms one day when I had applied the infernal red dye to my hair, my scarlet badge of self-defined individuality. He hung in the doorway of my bathroom, watching, his leonine hair tamed into a thick braid currently draped over the front of his shoulder.
"What?" I snapped. It was one thing for me to know I remained in some way under Thiede's constant vigilance, quite another to have no bodily privacy from his snooping servants. I was a viper that day, ready to sink my fangs into whomever dared to get too close. It made me reckless and coarse. I let my heavy bathrobe fall open, caught the har's eyes, and inexorably guided the path to my soft ouana-lim in its thicket of butter yellow curls.
"I'm not a natural redhead," I snarled. To my surprise, the har with his proud, Nordic features grinned lasciviously.
"This I already know," he said. The crisp, sweet tone filled my senses with the memory of a mouthful of tart apple. "Most of you I know well. The red, is good. Shall I clean out for you?"
I was so taken aback at his friendliness and foreign syntax that it took me a moment to follow the logic of his stilted conversation. "Oh. Rinse it out of my hair, you mean?"
"Yes."
"I suppose. Yes."
He strode into the room, the long hem of his robes fluttering at his ankles, unwilling to move far away from their shapely architecture. He was no Ashmael; that gash in my heart could never be healed. But he knew what I was, and despite that, didn't flinch as he eased my head back against the sink, rinsing away the dye. I purred quietly at his strong fingers working against my scalp.
"Shall wash too, yes?" he asked, hope nestled in the glacier green of his eyes.
"I'd love that," I said without shame. It felt like a lifetime since I'd been touched and not suffered agony as a result. He lathered up my hair, the pleasant mix of sandalwood and pine a sublime unction. By the time he'd finished his ministrations, my stinging anger was gone. With gentle but commanding motions, he sat me in a chair and towel-dried my hair, then began combing out the tangles with a conditioning balm.
"What's your name?" I asked, regrettably tardy in the question.
"Feslavit, I am," he replied, sliding the comb from my head down my back.
"You're different."
"How? I am har, I serve Thiede. I make sure you, new butterfly, don't fly into walls and get hurt. Or try to fly away." He placed the comb on the marble sink, moving around to kneel between my legs, creating a harbour for himself by draping my bathrobe around his back.
"There's nowhere for me to go." I left my hands clasped in my lap. "No one here has dared to get this close to me, not voluntarily," I said thickly.
It felt like betrayal, the way my body reacted to his proximity, but how could I resist? Ashmael had buried me. Thiede wasn't going to tell him I lived, and he seemed determined I should never see Ash again. I had to start thinking like Thiede, or the Wraeththu ruler I'd been initially christened, even if the crown had been yanked away before it had ever been put on my head. The thin layer of ice I had for protection cracked as Feslavit continued to regard me with concern.
"You are beautiful," he mused. "And you have suffered, here." He placed his palm just above my groin; I closed my eyes for a moment, willing away the anguish at the truth of his words. "We should go for a walk outside. Too long you stay cooped up, like bear in winter. A very thin bear," he said with a melodious laugh as he stood up, walking away and into my chambers.
I followed, tugging my robe closer around me. A fire crackled merrily in the hearth and I went to stand in front of it while Feslavit summoned and then dispatched a fellow serving-hara.
"It's spring!" Feslavit announced, pulling open the milky velvet curtains so that sunlight sprang into every corner of the room. The light was muted; crossing my arms across my chest, I joined the sturdy har at the window. I'd never thought to look outside until now— apparently I was in a tower. A forest perched along the border of a stone wall, the dark green sentries standing in at least a foot of snow.
"Spring?" I exclaimed. "Where the hell are we?"
Feslavit chuckled again, seeming more and more to me like a Viking from human lore. I gravitated to him; I've always been drawn to those whose strength complements rather than challenges my own. He respected my instinctive need for distance, however. Instead of drawing me to him, which I could tell he wanted to do, he inclined his head and cautiously approached me via mind-touch.
Do you mind if I speak with you like this? he asked, all at once able to communicate with the subtlety we couldn't while using my native tongue.
No, but thank you for asking.
The serving-hara arrived and spread out clothes for me on the bed: silken leggings and undertunic, woolen trousers and overrobe; a pair of fur-lined boots and a fur-lined cape with a hood completed the ensemble.
My coat and boots are downstairs, near the front entrance, Feslavit explained as I began putting on the layers of clothing for our walk. We're in the North, as you can tell. Not right next to the Freyhellans, but across the waters from my people. No geysers here, he said with an amused shrug. No earthquakes, but also no banshees or watchers in the mists above the steaming pools. Maybe one day I can take you there, but for now, you need to get some fresh air. It'll be good for you.
Does the snow ever melt? I asked with some trepidation.
Yes. For a while in summer and autumn. The stars at night are amazing as well. Dancing flames in the heavens, the auroras. I saw them at my birthplace, too.
We walked through the fortress, as I could now tell it was, a mixture of human and harish enginering and design. Feslavit was right; I did need to get out. My brain and body had been in such shock, I'd been functioning on only the most basic of levels. Thanks to this har with an impish smile and no fear in his heart, I was able to breathe in the air of this new world, cold and bracing with the sharp clarity of a dagger point. Feslavit's breath hung in front of him with each exhale, his cheeks and nose pink with the bright chill.
How do you feel about horses? he asked as we clomped along a cleared-off path that headed to what were obviously stables.
I glanced up at the cornflower blue sky, shielding my eyes from the dazzling expanse and breathing in deeply. The faint tang of hay and equine musk reached me and I let out a sigh.
"I love horses," I admitted, revelling in my body, at the pleasure of stretching my limbs— until I thought of Tassia, and Ash, and Immanion. The wounds will never heal, I thought wildly to myself in despair.
"Vaysh," Feslavit said aloud as I cobbled my feelings together, wrestling them back under control. I hadn't even known that Thiede had told them my name.
"Vaysh," he repeated and I stopped my strides.
"What?" I was cross, but didn't apologise.
"Look at me."
I did, turning, my gloved hands shoved into the pockets of my coat. His face was a symphony of caring, but an undercurrent of sorrow flickered under the surface.
"Life gives surprises. Some good, some terrible. Today, we ride. Be here, yes?" he intoned, resting his own gloved hand splayed above his heart.
"I'll try."
A slow smile lit on his lips, but didn't journey fully to his eyes. "It is enough for now."
In the stables he let me pick a horse, which I did after seeing which one was his choice. We rode for an hour or so through the hushed woods to a mostly frozen lake, though he pointed out darker smears on the surface where patches out in the centre would soon melt. He pulled out a flask of some kind of brandy as we let the horses wander at the lake's edge. They drank the water which lapped with a sussurative tongue at the black earth of the shore.
"I'm sore!" I said with a laugh after I took a drink and handed the flask back to him. "I was used to riding, before, but my muscles are out of practise."
"I shall give you rub down, after we take care of horses," he said slyly.
I arched an eyebrow at him. "You'd best be careful. You're spoiling me," I said, running my tongue over my lips and enjoying the spark of lust that lit up the ice-like green of his eyes. As quickly as it had come, my playfulness vanished. I was no longer made for the delights of aruna; I had somehow to freeze that part of me away, or at least my soume aspect. I gestured at Feslavit for the flask again, looking out at the lake and imagining myself like it: barren, frozen, imprenetrable. I would need a lot of liquor before I tried to allow even this attentive har anywhere near me in an erotic sense.
I was so caught up in my inner turmoil and revulsion at the uncertain condition of my inner sexual organs that I didn't notice Feslavit had moved until he'd wrapped his arms around me. He stood behind me, a solid, comforting body. It made me want to cry, but I was determined not to. I was stronger than this. I would learn to master myself; it was that or a lifetime spent like a snivelling, lovelorn pathetic excuse for a har. Vivisected heart or no, my pride would have to serve as my source of strength.
Let's go back, Feslavit said in mind-touch, pressing his face gently next to mine; I'd lowered my hood once we'd stopped at the lake. I don't want to get in trouble for you having over-exerted yourself, unless it's through pleasure, he said, his voice almost as intoxicating as the brandy.
I can't make you any promises, Feslavit. I may be cold as stone, I replied softly, hearing his low sigh in response.
I've been told I have a fiery tongue, he said, provocative and full of longing.
No promises, I repeated before disengaging from his embrace and clicking my tongue at my horse.
That evening after dinner, I settled down with a book. I'd not been like Ashmael; even as a human I hadn't spent much time in studies of any kind, but with my new awareness brought on by my caste ascension, I felt drawn to learn. After a little while I threw the book down in frustration. I wanted a heavy tome of harish wisdom, but such things simply didn't exist then.
"Feslavit?" I called.
Silence.
Feslavit? I tried again. I'd decided that with paper and ink and apparently all the time in the world, I could write down what I knew. The Kakkahaar, especially, had taught me much that I knew I should commit somewhere other than my own memory.
Yes, my firefly?
I wrinkled my face at the endearment, and pitied him for falling for me, if indeed he had. I didn't believe that Thiede had given his blessing to any kind of lasting bond with one of his serving-hara, no matter how deep the rivers of Feslavit's kindness.
I'd love to get my hands on some paper and something to write with. Could you bring that to me, as well as a bottle of the strongest liquor you can find in this fortress?
I sensed his hesitancy, his worried caution. I'll be there with what you ask in a few minutes, he finally responded.
Thank you.
I sank into the chair, the soles of my bare feet propped up in front of the fire. Feslavit arrived after a short while, dressed in a sky blue tunic and tight leggings, his hair unbound. He was stunning, and he knew it. His sights were set on me; once he unpacked his satchel I saw he'd brought all that I'd requested, as well as a phial of oil and two sprigs of purifying sage. He placed the papers and rag-tag collection of writing implements on a side table before unscrewing the top off of a slender bottle of a clear liquid and pouring a tumbler full for me. He let his fingers rest on mine as he handed the glass to me, and I smiled in gratitude.
"May I close door?" he asked, pulling some errant hair out of his eyes and behind his ear. "I would still like to give you massage."
"Sure," I said, taking a mouthfull of what was, indeed, potent alcohol. I coughed at the burn, chasing it down with even more so that the warmth spread as quickly as possible.
"No getting drunk!" Feslavit chastened as he lit the dried sage, murmuring faint prayers under his breath in a language I couldn't begin to comprehend, sanctifying the perimeter of the entire room. He then waved it in a series of patterns over my bed before blowing it out. It was a heady, pungent scent, one I was glad to smell again.
"What do you want to write?" he asked, pulling over a chair and helping himself to a moderate serving of liquor.
"The lessons I was taught."
"May I?" he asked, gesturing at my feet and his lap.
I nodded, and another phial of oil came out of a hidden pocket in his tunic. He rubbed the fragrant clove-infused oil into my feet as I talked and talked. I told him all about the practices the Kakkahaar had taught our small group, about energies of earth and celestial motions, of focussing the mind and spirit, to reach out in strength, or anger, if one needed to cause harm. I started to speak about Grissecon — by this point, he'd massaged up my calves and his deft fingers were making their way past my knees — but I stumbled to a stop. Hastily I rebuilt the walls against my inner pain, though it scraped at them, crying to get out, wanting this har to take it from me.
"Vaysh, please," Feslavit pleaded as he kneeled between my legs for the second time that day. His warm, softened hands crept up behind my pelvis, his thumbs held tightly to my hipbones, covered only in the heavy bathrobe.
"Share breath with me," he murmured. "I want to worship you. Please. I am not your other, I know, but I can bring you pleasure…"
I didn't resist. We tumbled onto the floor, sinking into the thick, large rug in front of the fire. I felt like a voyeur of myself, rather than an active participant. We shared breath, and I was filled with the soaring arctic sky and the beating heart of the sea. I found that I was docile, my body willing to react to his touch as long as I kept all emotion locked away. I could give him nothing but tears, and I couldn't bear the thought of drowning him in my sorrow.
I'm stronger than you think, he said, nudging gently at me through direct thoughts. I won't continue on unless you're with me, sharing yourself, no matter how bleak you think you are. Anything else would be pelki, and I'm not that much a slave to my desires. I won't force you, never. But I—
Feslavit. I ran my thumb across his high cheekbones, noticing the smattering of faint freckles that dotted the bridge of his nose, making him even more endearing despite my wishes that he weren't so earnest. All I have is pain. It isn't right. I don't want to give it to you any more than I want to feel it.
Let me try. You're too beautiful to be locked away, a butterfly under glass.
I prefer to be soume, I said to him directly, swallowing down the bitter gall that threatened up my throat. It was my strength. I had such control, such deep reaches of power. Now, nothing.
I beg to differ. He'd pulled me so we lay on our sides, his questing fingers stroking my ouana-lim. He breathed warmly into my ear, sent his tongue around my sensitive earlobe, trying to see if he could stir to life my petaled organ. His own ouana-lim was quite stiff; I wasn't sure what to make of that, since it had been obvious from our exchange earlier this morning that he knew I was damaged. There is strength in your ouana side as well. You're not dead to aruna, Vaysh. I'll show you.
I had never been passive in aruna. As Feslavit kissed down my body, pushing my dressing gown aside so my torso was bared to him, I found that I had to engage myself. He mapped the terrain of my chest and abdomen with trails of kisses and wet licks until he buried his face at the juncture of my thighs. For the first time since I'd become har, I wished I'd only known what it was like to be solely male… even as I knew I didn't wish that at all. He pleasured the soft sacs below my ouana-lim, making contented, humming sounds as he sucked them into his mouth one at a time like plums. His fingers tugged gently in my blond curls before grasping at the base of my shaft, which finally responded to his insistent attentions.
"I want to taste you, too," I said, unsurprised at the tears that welled in my eyes. I might have been able to take physical pleasure in this, but the psychological cost was profoundly dear. "You're wearing too many clothes."
"Vaysh," he said reverently, placing a kiss to the rounded head of my ouana-lim before sitting back on his heels. He pulled the tunic over his head to reveal a well-muscled upper body and nipples of tawny brown. They each sported small gold bars through them. It looked barbaric— and titillating, even through my tears. He saw that the piercings had caught my attention and he smiled seductively, licking his thumbs and rubbing at the nubs until they hardened on his chest. He made short work of removing his house-shoes, socks and leggings, standing for my inspection. For a moment he looked lost, and tentative.
"Do you like?"
I glanced down at my ouana-lim, so often retracted and not prominent in my fond memories of aruna, and saw it twitch slightly. It engorged even more as Feslavit turned predatory, slinking down to the floor to lie on his side, kissing my tear-stained cheeks.
"I do. This is tearing me apart, but I'll do it," I said, choking on the words, bittersweet and crumbling on my tongue. "I want to. Turn around so I can taste you at the same time," I said, my voice ragged.
We feasted on each other. Feslavit was right; I did still have a tremendous reserve of pleasure and strength in my flowering ouana-lim. He was attentive and skilled, coaxing it to life until the petals unfurled and he was able to plunder the hidden fruit, to suckle on the fleshy crown. I cried out around my own mouthful; like Parallax, his ouana-lim was quite wide in girth and I had to soften my throat to take him fully. The fluid that seeped from the top was like honey, without a trace of bitterness. My soul ached. My usual pounding core of passion was muted, but I felt that I needed to know what it would be like from now on… if I ever did this again.
You're nectar, so exotic and delicious a meal, Feslavit panted in my head. Will you fill me? I want to be soume for you. Just feel how ready I am.
Licking around his vivid ouana-lim, still savouring the musk, peaty flavour of his soft skin over hard rod, I cried. I'd said that all I had was tears; I was a sea of conflicting feelings crashing into each other, desire and loss. I eased two fingers past the slick folds of his soume-lam and he gasped. My shaft slid from his mouth as he got up on an elbow to gaze, wild-eyed at me.
I nodded, and we shifted. Through his will, and due to his enormous control, his ouana-lim sank gracefully down; I bit at his nipples, rolling the metal bars against my tongue. With a blind ferocity I'd not known I possessed, I thrust into him and began rocking deeply, digging into his body again and again. Feslavit growled his approval and grabbed my hands, pulling me down to share breath. It was a crazed, savage coupling. He milked pleasure from me even as I was wracked with ecstatic guilt. His body thundered; I was tossed and battered until we were catapulted to completion. Together we crashed into our release, shattering in spumous magnificence before collapsing in a sweaty jumble of limbs and matted hair. Trembling, I eased from the tight confines of his soume-lam, my own organ throbbing. It was, as I thought later, the first time in this new body that my stalk had been enveloped. Through a haze of bliss and exhaustion, I decided it would be the last.
In the dark of night I awoke suddenly. I was alone, though Feslavit had been loath to return to his own chambers. My head ached; I'd drunk myself into a stupor before stumbling into bed. Teeth chattering, I got up and paced to the window to see the waxing moon: beaming, luminous and unreachable.
"You'll be my only lover," I said softly, hugging my arms around my chest until the cold quickly drove me back to my bed where I huddled under the sheets and furs. Uneasily, and with dreams haunted by Ashmael and, strangely enough, Arahal brandishing a sword draped in ivy, I slept.
This post rating: adult
Warnings: catastrophic Thiede aruna, rooning
Word Count: 6000
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 (historic); Vaysh/OC
Summary: Being brought back from the dead doesn't mean happily ever after, especially if you're Vaysh. Life has its costs, and he pays dearly. An exploration of Vaysh's character in the years before and through Pellaz's transformation, and the burdens he endures, because he must.
Yes, here's the first post for the sequel to Maelstrom and Mage. I'm not going to put angst as a warning; the whole thing is going to be full of it. Enjoy! :P Or something. It won't be totally relentless, but as we know, Vaysh is pretty tragic.
Succor my skin, beloved,
in sizzling drops of musky happenstance.
Lick gauzy flames, sear my bones,
Bathe me in fecund tears of myrrh and exaltation—
gnaw, ravenous, on my transmogrified soul.
I'll dance with you, my firebrand,
Down the whispering well.
There, enrapt, we libertines
Will sing the stars indivisible, you and I,
suckling on voracious delight.
My heart, my drum—
Immortal, beat in me the tattoo of forever.
* * * * *
The air was different that day. Unseen wings beat a thrill of anticipation into the usual stillness; the wind-chimes tintinnabulated in silvery agitation. I was lifted from my cocoon, held up for the duration of the short walk to the bath. I couldn't stand unaided, my legs had transformed from slender but muscled to white spindles. I grimaced as I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, though my heart seized with anguished joy each time I was able to do so. I had died. I knew it. My brain hadn't surrendered the memory of the excruciating pain of the branch as it had crushed me, my sight and feeling seeping away, of Ashmael's voice, so wild and full of hurt…
I let the warm tears spill over, as they always did, now that I'd recovered enough for these new eyes to work. I was here, and not-here; the silent, efficient hara kept me drugged after my initial screams of agony had been too much for them and my other keeper to bear. Thiede would bring order to this impossibility. He would come in with a serving-tray of coral, he would drape an amulet around my neck, a chambered nautilus like my hollowed soul and he would breathe life into this husk, this miraculous aberration, my somatic re-creation.
"Why?" I asked the unspeaking hara through my tears, but they didn't pause. They bathed my weak body, rubbing my near-useless limbs with oil before artfully arranging my hair with ribbons of white, and tiny opalescent beads. I begged for more drugs, for anything to slow the panicked tattoo which threatened to overwhelm my re-made heart. Pity me, for God's sake, the Aghama's sake, pity…?
A quicksilver slide of the needle and my breath no longer thundered in my lungs like a thoroughbred racing across a field. Perhaps Tassia could bear me away…
I was an abomination, and yet, as I drifted into the languid haze of disembodied thought, I couldn't help but love myself and the demiurge who had made me again. Head lolling, I peered dazedly at my arm— tears meandered down my face at the sight of flawless, pale skin. No inception scar marred my forearm; no vibrant braid of ink to boldly proclaim my love for my chesnari remained. Apparently the voice of all physical flaws was to have been silenced. This body, this mute skin, this was Thiede's doing.
Did I captivate him only when voiceless?
Soft footsteps padded through the open doorway. He stood at the end of the bed, his palms pressed together, his long, steepled fingers pressed against his cheek. With his head tilted as it was, he looked for an instant like a child about to say his prayers. His eyes— a thousand sunlit mornings glowed there; I flinched under the shimmering, proud lanterns that shone in his face.
"You shall be above all others," he promised, approaching me with the lethal, captivating grace of a lynx. There was no softness in his tone; the words rang in the air, a regal pronouncement. I was brushed with the scent of saffron dawn as attendants removed his clothes and I was laid bare for him.
"Thank you," I croaked, my voice an elegy in dust. I was un-dead. I was moulded clay. I lifted my eyes as his lips hovered above mine, the faint scent of his breath enough to kindle an explosion of sparks in my groin.
"You were extraordinary, even before," he murmured against my parched mouth. "You will pass through fire as a phoenix, rising from destruction to become beauty beyond measure. Taste me. Savour the mystical bittersweet, the grand mystery of our kind."
Thiede was a swooping hawk, a plunging crane. I flew with him, his taloned fingers in my hair, his words and sighs keening through me, teasing forth the bloom of my resurrection. He was molten air, a demonic angel as he joined our bodies. Cataclysmic eruptions of fiery quakes burst my limbs, they tore at the marrow in my fragile bones.
I was consumed. I burned, and the pain went so far beyond anything I could bear that my sense tried to flee. From deep within me, below my simmering organs, I felt my soume-lam liquefying. My veins bubbled with lava. The lambent, molten gold of Thiede's essence purified and incinerated me. I screamed, but the sound came from a ruined throat, drifting off like a mote dancing for a moment in sunlight. I left my body for a time, relieved at being able to escape its scorched remains. Even in the midst of his passion, however, Thiede's presence was aware. He knew I was away, trying to sever my soul from myself, and with the thundering wings of his spirit, he pulled me back. The scent of incense had been overtaken by that of charred flesh; I ached to surrender, to die again, to blaze like a comet and vanish into the cold, bodiless quiet.
As I dully registered the end of the ordeal, of curtains drawn and cleansing air, I clawed at the ravishing nothingness, but it was taken from me. Thiede was too much. I was only a har; how could I truly survive such an assault? From the beginning of time, the joining of mortal and immortal has brought only ruin. The sun itself had penetrated me, or so it felt. I begged for the elusive gift of death with hoarse gasps of mind-touch.
"You will be perfect."
Thiede's words hung, incandescent in the air, before I was allowed to pass into oblivion.
* * * * *
The walls, I finally decided, were celadon. Countless days had whispered quietly past, much like the hara who continued to take care of this immobile, marionette body I now inhabited. Thiede held the strings, but given his absence, I'd guessed mordantly that he'd found another plaything. I was a crumpled, broken puppet, condemned to die — again! — this time within the pacifying, light green walls of my sepulchre. It had been many days since Thiede had taken aruna with me, though aruna couldn't begin to describe the trauma and devastation of that act. Despite how reconciled I was to the obvious fact that Thiede's lovemaking was mutilating and toxic, I continued to hope that in my final hours, he'd sit at my side. I longed for him to blow into me with his breath of refining fire, and at last release my spirit. For good.
Ah, the blessed slip of the needle. Icy fingers traced every path within my ruined frame and I drifted into the caress of a damasked void.
* * * * *
"I… this…"
With the eloquence of an imbecile I stared at my reflection, the murmured words stumbling past lips full and desirous. My skin glowed as though in the night I'd been rubbed down by angels, burnished with celestial dust. Slightly unsteady on my feet, I grabbed at the edges of the heavy frame of the looking glass. I couldn't stop staring at the gorgeous, unearthly beauty that regarded me with such wide, laughably starstruck eyes.
"God, you're vain!" I said, breathless, but how could I not be? I was perfection; I'd lain with a god — he needn't try and hide that from me, he'd burned away so much of my ignorance — and like a snake shedding dull, dead skin, I glistened, shining and reflecting sunlight from some mystical, unseen realm. In the midst of this narcissistic orgy, I began to flex my spiritual muscles, carefully evaluating my auralic energies from head to foot. I came to my powerful sexual pool, the source of such former pride. Once I'd realised I'd not died, and jumped out of bed to become ensnared by my own reflection, I'd thought immediately of Ashmael. I'd had an explosion of erotic images, all to do with him and our joy filled reunion, showering gifts of my ascended caste and newfound generative…
I shrank back from the mirror in blistering shock. My legs were suddenly not strong enough to hold me up. Tentatively I reached into that core, tried to tap into the procreative realm I'd come to know the few months before my first death. I cried out at the unresponsive touch. It was horrific, like discovering my arm had been cut off, yet I could sense it there. Choking, crying, the euphoria of former moments blew away as insubstantial and fleeting as smoke when a candle is snuffed out.
I screamed my anguish, a roaring cannonball of thought and despair. "Thiede! Thiede, I— Ashmael, Ash, my heart, my only, Ash, oh fucking god…"
Sobbing, I collapsed in a heap. Moments later, a flock of hara rushed in, hoisting me up from the floor that I'd battered with my fists, tears running down my face. I felt Thiede walking toward the room and a frisson of fear blazed down my spine. I pulled myself together, still clawing at my hair and letting the hara wipe my nose.
"Vaysh," Thiede said sternly and I broke down again. He carded his fingers through my hair, his luminous eyes boring into me, assessing my condition. Perhaps he'd known as soon as this new form had emerged from its grey chrysalis.
"Vaysh, I know you almost better than myself," he said, the warm tones of his voice resonating in my shattered spirit like the radiant notes of a cello. "Do you know what I've accomplished? Do you have any idea how much I poured into you, to make you from the inside out? The hours, and days I spent watching you, knowing you, as you strutted around Castlegar like a baron."
I didn't believe he meant any harm by the words, he was simply putting me in my place, reminding me that had I not been deemed worthy, I'd be dead, truly dead, mouldering in the ground on the mountain…
"No more of that," he chided, his expression more inscrutable and less inviting, though his voice still held affection. I leaned into it, desperate for his validation, for more proof of his devotion, as though all that he'd given me wasn't enough!
"You are dead to him. He went quite mad with grief, and I allowed it, but he is now in my employ. I have encouraged him, through gentle methods, to put you in his past. You are also to remain as an exalted member of my house, but I do admit, your role has changed due to your condition."
Fear and rejection churned through me, a crashing waterfall of failure. "You haven't told him?" The words were rusty nails, dragging, bloody, on my tongue.
Thiede's eyes flashed sparks of annoyance. "No. I will not. It is of no relevance to him. You are mine, Vaysh. Only mine, until I see fit for you to be with another. Do I make myself quite clear?"
I nodded, though how I had the strength to do so, I didn't know. The world was a freezing rain of disbelief.
"I'm not heartless, my dear," Thiede crooned, enfolding me in his arms, a rare, spontaneous act of affection. He drew abstract, fluid patterns on my back as I stood immobile in his arms. "I have many plans for you, and I won't make you do them alone. I've decided that two of your companions from your isolated haven can be with you, for a time."
I felt dull and unnecessary, a pretty but useless fragment of shell, washed up on a beach.
"Aren't you going to thank me?"
I pulled myself back from him, bereft and mourning, but I straightened my spine to gaze at him as best I could. Even now I find it nearly impossible to look into his eyes for very long.
"Thank you, Thiede," I whispered, viciously suppressing the unexpected barrage of memories of his aruna. I'd been tormented by the licking flames of his passion; they had seared me with wildfires of pleasure as well as the pyres of destruction. He expected me to let go of my past; I realised that I had to, or go utterly mad holding out hope for a reunion with my chesnari. I sensed a warning in my thoughts. Thiede could feel my tenacious heart wanting to reach out for Ash, even though it was impossible. Thiede had said not to; therefore, I mustn't. The desire to reunite with him guttered feebly as Thiede's fingers held me fast. I forced a silent snarl, and it went out.
* * * * *
A few days went by, and then a few more, drifting like the soft snowflakes so often visible from the window. I thought I would go insane. The glow faded from my skin, but it still held more lustre than before. My hair was vibrant red, but Thiede hadn't changed it forever. He'd chosen not to re-create my tattoo when he'd somehow made me this second time, but in an oversight, perhaps, he'd left me with the blond interlopers forever ready to reclaim their position. I began truly questionning my sanity after a time; Thiede was gone, though he'd promised to return after he dealt with an 'unfortunate occurrence.'
For him, of course, that could have been a squabble amongst his engineers at Immanion— or it could have been notice of a Wraeththu-created holocaust. I wasn't to know.
The attendants in this frigid hideaway kept mostly to themselves, though I did unearth a tiger lily among the docile orchids. One held my gaze; he seemed more substance than shadow. He came to my rooms one day when I had applied the infernal red dye to my hair, my scarlet badge of self-defined individuality. He hung in the doorway of my bathroom, watching, his leonine hair tamed into a thick braid currently draped over the front of his shoulder.
"What?" I snapped. It was one thing for me to know I remained in some way under Thiede's constant vigilance, quite another to have no bodily privacy from his snooping servants. I was a viper that day, ready to sink my fangs into whomever dared to get too close. It made me reckless and coarse. I let my heavy bathrobe fall open, caught the har's eyes, and inexorably guided the path to my soft ouana-lim in its thicket of butter yellow curls.
"I'm not a natural redhead," I snarled. To my surprise, the har with his proud, Nordic features grinned lasciviously.
"This I already know," he said. The crisp, sweet tone filled my senses with the memory of a mouthful of tart apple. "Most of you I know well. The red, is good. Shall I clean out for you?"
I was so taken aback at his friendliness and foreign syntax that it took me a moment to follow the logic of his stilted conversation. "Oh. Rinse it out of my hair, you mean?"
"Yes."
"I suppose. Yes."
He strode into the room, the long hem of his robes fluttering at his ankles, unwilling to move far away from their shapely architecture. He was no Ashmael; that gash in my heart could never be healed. But he knew what I was, and despite that, didn't flinch as he eased my head back against the sink, rinsing away the dye. I purred quietly at his strong fingers working against my scalp.
"Shall wash too, yes?" he asked, hope nestled in the glacier green of his eyes.
"I'd love that," I said without shame. It felt like a lifetime since I'd been touched and not suffered agony as a result. He lathered up my hair, the pleasant mix of sandalwood and pine a sublime unction. By the time he'd finished his ministrations, my stinging anger was gone. With gentle but commanding motions, he sat me in a chair and towel-dried my hair, then began combing out the tangles with a conditioning balm.
"What's your name?" I asked, regrettably tardy in the question.
"Feslavit, I am," he replied, sliding the comb from my head down my back.
"You're different."
"How? I am har, I serve Thiede. I make sure you, new butterfly, don't fly into walls and get hurt. Or try to fly away." He placed the comb on the marble sink, moving around to kneel between my legs, creating a harbour for himself by draping my bathrobe around his back.
"There's nowhere for me to go." I left my hands clasped in my lap. "No one here has dared to get this close to me, not voluntarily," I said thickly.
It felt like betrayal, the way my body reacted to his proximity, but how could I resist? Ashmael had buried me. Thiede wasn't going to tell him I lived, and he seemed determined I should never see Ash again. I had to start thinking like Thiede, or the Wraeththu ruler I'd been initially christened, even if the crown had been yanked away before it had ever been put on my head. The thin layer of ice I had for protection cracked as Feslavit continued to regard me with concern.
"You are beautiful," he mused. "And you have suffered, here." He placed his palm just above my groin; I closed my eyes for a moment, willing away the anguish at the truth of his words. "We should go for a walk outside. Too long you stay cooped up, like bear in winter. A very thin bear," he said with a melodious laugh as he stood up, walking away and into my chambers.
I followed, tugging my robe closer around me. A fire crackled merrily in the hearth and I went to stand in front of it while Feslavit summoned and then dispatched a fellow serving-hara.
"It's spring!" Feslavit announced, pulling open the milky velvet curtains so that sunlight sprang into every corner of the room. The light was muted; crossing my arms across my chest, I joined the sturdy har at the window. I'd never thought to look outside until now— apparently I was in a tower. A forest perched along the border of a stone wall, the dark green sentries standing in at least a foot of snow.
"Spring?" I exclaimed. "Where the hell are we?"
Feslavit chuckled again, seeming more and more to me like a Viking from human lore. I gravitated to him; I've always been drawn to those whose strength complements rather than challenges my own. He respected my instinctive need for distance, however. Instead of drawing me to him, which I could tell he wanted to do, he inclined his head and cautiously approached me via mind-touch.
Do you mind if I speak with you like this? he asked, all at once able to communicate with the subtlety we couldn't while using my native tongue.
No, but thank you for asking.
The serving-hara arrived and spread out clothes for me on the bed: silken leggings and undertunic, woolen trousers and overrobe; a pair of fur-lined boots and a fur-lined cape with a hood completed the ensemble.
My coat and boots are downstairs, near the front entrance, Feslavit explained as I began putting on the layers of clothing for our walk. We're in the North, as you can tell. Not right next to the Freyhellans, but across the waters from my people. No geysers here, he said with an amused shrug. No earthquakes, but also no banshees or watchers in the mists above the steaming pools. Maybe one day I can take you there, but for now, you need to get some fresh air. It'll be good for you.
Does the snow ever melt? I asked with some trepidation.
Yes. For a while in summer and autumn. The stars at night are amazing as well. Dancing flames in the heavens, the auroras. I saw them at my birthplace, too.
We walked through the fortress, as I could now tell it was, a mixture of human and harish enginering and design. Feslavit was right; I did need to get out. My brain and body had been in such shock, I'd been functioning on only the most basic of levels. Thanks to this har with an impish smile and no fear in his heart, I was able to breathe in the air of this new world, cold and bracing with the sharp clarity of a dagger point. Feslavit's breath hung in front of him with each exhale, his cheeks and nose pink with the bright chill.
How do you feel about horses? he asked as we clomped along a cleared-off path that headed to what were obviously stables.
I glanced up at the cornflower blue sky, shielding my eyes from the dazzling expanse and breathing in deeply. The faint tang of hay and equine musk reached me and I let out a sigh.
"I love horses," I admitted, revelling in my body, at the pleasure of stretching my limbs— until I thought of Tassia, and Ash, and Immanion. The wounds will never heal, I thought wildly to myself in despair.
"Vaysh," Feslavit said aloud as I cobbled my feelings together, wrestling them back under control. I hadn't even known that Thiede had told them my name.
"Vaysh," he repeated and I stopped my strides.
"What?" I was cross, but didn't apologise.
"Look at me."
I did, turning, my gloved hands shoved into the pockets of my coat. His face was a symphony of caring, but an undercurrent of sorrow flickered under the surface.
"Life gives surprises. Some good, some terrible. Today, we ride. Be here, yes?" he intoned, resting his own gloved hand splayed above his heart.
"I'll try."
A slow smile lit on his lips, but didn't journey fully to his eyes. "It is enough for now."
In the stables he let me pick a horse, which I did after seeing which one was his choice. We rode for an hour or so through the hushed woods to a mostly frozen lake, though he pointed out darker smears on the surface where patches out in the centre would soon melt. He pulled out a flask of some kind of brandy as we let the horses wander at the lake's edge. They drank the water which lapped with a sussurative tongue at the black earth of the shore.
"I'm sore!" I said with a laugh after I took a drink and handed the flask back to him. "I was used to riding, before, but my muscles are out of practise."
"I shall give you rub down, after we take care of horses," he said slyly.
I arched an eyebrow at him. "You'd best be careful. You're spoiling me," I said, running my tongue over my lips and enjoying the spark of lust that lit up the ice-like green of his eyes. As quickly as it had come, my playfulness vanished. I was no longer made for the delights of aruna; I had somehow to freeze that part of me away, or at least my soume aspect. I gestured at Feslavit for the flask again, looking out at the lake and imagining myself like it: barren, frozen, imprenetrable. I would need a lot of liquor before I tried to allow even this attentive har anywhere near me in an erotic sense.
I was so caught up in my inner turmoil and revulsion at the uncertain condition of my inner sexual organs that I didn't notice Feslavit had moved until he'd wrapped his arms around me. He stood behind me, a solid, comforting body. It made me want to cry, but I was determined not to. I was stronger than this. I would learn to master myself; it was that or a lifetime spent like a snivelling, lovelorn pathetic excuse for a har. Vivisected heart or no, my pride would have to serve as my source of strength.
Let's go back, Feslavit said in mind-touch, pressing his face gently next to mine; I'd lowered my hood once we'd stopped at the lake. I don't want to get in trouble for you having over-exerted yourself, unless it's through pleasure, he said, his voice almost as intoxicating as the brandy.
I can't make you any promises, Feslavit. I may be cold as stone, I replied softly, hearing his low sigh in response.
I've been told I have a fiery tongue, he said, provocative and full of longing.
No promises, I repeated before disengaging from his embrace and clicking my tongue at my horse.
That evening after dinner, I settled down with a book. I'd not been like Ashmael; even as a human I hadn't spent much time in studies of any kind, but with my new awareness brought on by my caste ascension, I felt drawn to learn. After a little while I threw the book down in frustration. I wanted a heavy tome of harish wisdom, but such things simply didn't exist then.
"Feslavit?" I called.
Silence.
Feslavit? I tried again. I'd decided that with paper and ink and apparently all the time in the world, I could write down what I knew. The Kakkahaar, especially, had taught me much that I knew I should commit somewhere other than my own memory.
Yes, my firefly?
I wrinkled my face at the endearment, and pitied him for falling for me, if indeed he had. I didn't believe that Thiede had given his blessing to any kind of lasting bond with one of his serving-hara, no matter how deep the rivers of Feslavit's kindness.
I'd love to get my hands on some paper and something to write with. Could you bring that to me, as well as a bottle of the strongest liquor you can find in this fortress?
I sensed his hesitancy, his worried caution. I'll be there with what you ask in a few minutes, he finally responded.
Thank you.
I sank into the chair, the soles of my bare feet propped up in front of the fire. Feslavit arrived after a short while, dressed in a sky blue tunic and tight leggings, his hair unbound. He was stunning, and he knew it. His sights were set on me; once he unpacked his satchel I saw he'd brought all that I'd requested, as well as a phial of oil and two sprigs of purifying sage. He placed the papers and rag-tag collection of writing implements on a side table before unscrewing the top off of a slender bottle of a clear liquid and pouring a tumbler full for me. He let his fingers rest on mine as he handed the glass to me, and I smiled in gratitude.
"May I close door?" he asked, pulling some errant hair out of his eyes and behind his ear. "I would still like to give you massage."
"Sure," I said, taking a mouthfull of what was, indeed, potent alcohol. I coughed at the burn, chasing it down with even more so that the warmth spread as quickly as possible.
"No getting drunk!" Feslavit chastened as he lit the dried sage, murmuring faint prayers under his breath in a language I couldn't begin to comprehend, sanctifying the perimeter of the entire room. He then waved it in a series of patterns over my bed before blowing it out. It was a heady, pungent scent, one I was glad to smell again.
"What do you want to write?" he asked, pulling over a chair and helping himself to a moderate serving of liquor.
"The lessons I was taught."
"May I?" he asked, gesturing at my feet and his lap.
I nodded, and another phial of oil came out of a hidden pocket in his tunic. He rubbed the fragrant clove-infused oil into my feet as I talked and talked. I told him all about the practices the Kakkahaar had taught our small group, about energies of earth and celestial motions, of focussing the mind and spirit, to reach out in strength, or anger, if one needed to cause harm. I started to speak about Grissecon — by this point, he'd massaged up my calves and his deft fingers were making their way past my knees — but I stumbled to a stop. Hastily I rebuilt the walls against my inner pain, though it scraped at them, crying to get out, wanting this har to take it from me.
"Vaysh, please," Feslavit pleaded as he kneeled between my legs for the second time that day. His warm, softened hands crept up behind my pelvis, his thumbs held tightly to my hipbones, covered only in the heavy bathrobe.
"Share breath with me," he murmured. "I want to worship you. Please. I am not your other, I know, but I can bring you pleasure…"
I didn't resist. We tumbled onto the floor, sinking into the thick, large rug in front of the fire. I felt like a voyeur of myself, rather than an active participant. We shared breath, and I was filled with the soaring arctic sky and the beating heart of the sea. I found that I was docile, my body willing to react to his touch as long as I kept all emotion locked away. I could give him nothing but tears, and I couldn't bear the thought of drowning him in my sorrow.
I'm stronger than you think, he said, nudging gently at me through direct thoughts. I won't continue on unless you're with me, sharing yourself, no matter how bleak you think you are. Anything else would be pelki, and I'm not that much a slave to my desires. I won't force you, never. But I—
Feslavit. I ran my thumb across his high cheekbones, noticing the smattering of faint freckles that dotted the bridge of his nose, making him even more endearing despite my wishes that he weren't so earnest. All I have is pain. It isn't right. I don't want to give it to you any more than I want to feel it.
Let me try. You're too beautiful to be locked away, a butterfly under glass.
I prefer to be soume, I said to him directly, swallowing down the bitter gall that threatened up my throat. It was my strength. I had such control, such deep reaches of power. Now, nothing.
I beg to differ. He'd pulled me so we lay on our sides, his questing fingers stroking my ouana-lim. He breathed warmly into my ear, sent his tongue around my sensitive earlobe, trying to see if he could stir to life my petaled organ. His own ouana-lim was quite stiff; I wasn't sure what to make of that, since it had been obvious from our exchange earlier this morning that he knew I was damaged. There is strength in your ouana side as well. You're not dead to aruna, Vaysh. I'll show you.
I had never been passive in aruna. As Feslavit kissed down my body, pushing my dressing gown aside so my torso was bared to him, I found that I had to engage myself. He mapped the terrain of my chest and abdomen with trails of kisses and wet licks until he buried his face at the juncture of my thighs. For the first time since I'd become har, I wished I'd only known what it was like to be solely male… even as I knew I didn't wish that at all. He pleasured the soft sacs below my ouana-lim, making contented, humming sounds as he sucked them into his mouth one at a time like plums. His fingers tugged gently in my blond curls before grasping at the base of my shaft, which finally responded to his insistent attentions.
"I want to taste you, too," I said, unsurprised at the tears that welled in my eyes. I might have been able to take physical pleasure in this, but the psychological cost was profoundly dear. "You're wearing too many clothes."
"Vaysh," he said reverently, placing a kiss to the rounded head of my ouana-lim before sitting back on his heels. He pulled the tunic over his head to reveal a well-muscled upper body and nipples of tawny brown. They each sported small gold bars through them. It looked barbaric— and titillating, even through my tears. He saw that the piercings had caught my attention and he smiled seductively, licking his thumbs and rubbing at the nubs until they hardened on his chest. He made short work of removing his house-shoes, socks and leggings, standing for my inspection. For a moment he looked lost, and tentative.
"Do you like?"
I glanced down at my ouana-lim, so often retracted and not prominent in my fond memories of aruna, and saw it twitch slightly. It engorged even more as Feslavit turned predatory, slinking down to the floor to lie on his side, kissing my tear-stained cheeks.
"I do. This is tearing me apart, but I'll do it," I said, choking on the words, bittersweet and crumbling on my tongue. "I want to. Turn around so I can taste you at the same time," I said, my voice ragged.
We feasted on each other. Feslavit was right; I did still have a tremendous reserve of pleasure and strength in my flowering ouana-lim. He was attentive and skilled, coaxing it to life until the petals unfurled and he was able to plunder the hidden fruit, to suckle on the fleshy crown. I cried out around my own mouthful; like Parallax, his ouana-lim was quite wide in girth and I had to soften my throat to take him fully. The fluid that seeped from the top was like honey, without a trace of bitterness. My soul ached. My usual pounding core of passion was muted, but I felt that I needed to know what it would be like from now on… if I ever did this again.
You're nectar, so exotic and delicious a meal, Feslavit panted in my head. Will you fill me? I want to be soume for you. Just feel how ready I am.
Licking around his vivid ouana-lim, still savouring the musk, peaty flavour of his soft skin over hard rod, I cried. I'd said that all I had was tears; I was a sea of conflicting feelings crashing into each other, desire and loss. I eased two fingers past the slick folds of his soume-lam and he gasped. My shaft slid from his mouth as he got up on an elbow to gaze, wild-eyed at me.
I nodded, and we shifted. Through his will, and due to his enormous control, his ouana-lim sank gracefully down; I bit at his nipples, rolling the metal bars against my tongue. With a blind ferocity I'd not known I possessed, I thrust into him and began rocking deeply, digging into his body again and again. Feslavit growled his approval and grabbed my hands, pulling me down to share breath. It was a crazed, savage coupling. He milked pleasure from me even as I was wracked with ecstatic guilt. His body thundered; I was tossed and battered until we were catapulted to completion. Together we crashed into our release, shattering in spumous magnificence before collapsing in a sweaty jumble of limbs and matted hair. Trembling, I eased from the tight confines of his soume-lam, my own organ throbbing. It was, as I thought later, the first time in this new body that my stalk had been enveloped. Through a haze of bliss and exhaustion, I decided it would be the last.
In the dark of night I awoke suddenly. I was alone, though Feslavit had been loath to return to his own chambers. My head ached; I'd drunk myself into a stupor before stumbling into bed. Teeth chattering, I got up and paced to the window to see the waxing moon: beaming, luminous and unreachable.
"You'll be my only lover," I said softly, hugging my arms around my chest until the cold quickly drove me back to my bed where I huddled under the sheets and furs. Uneasily, and with dreams haunted by Ashmael and, strangely enough, Arahal brandishing a sword draped in ivy, I slept.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
:filled with writer's envy:
Date: 2008-03-17 03:56 pm (UTC)You thrown me from heart-breaking angst to searing aruna and back again. I loved canon!Vaysh, but I think I love yours even more, because you've given him some of the history so desperately needed. I haven't read the Histories yet, so I don't know what Storm touches on in those.
Even if she does fill in gaps for Vaysh and Ashmael, I don't know that even she could weave a tale like you've done here.
I felt dull and unnecessary, a pretty but useless fragment of shell, washed up on a beach.
That line fills me with such melancholy; just wanted to point it out.
Gorgeous, lush, scorching prose. I. DIE.
Hee! You used "tintinnabulate!" ;)
Re: :filled with writer's envy:
Date: 2008-03-19 12:15 am (UTC)So glad you're enjoying! And yes, when I saw that word in the 'ol "word a day," I thought, "that's far better that 'tinkle'", LOLOL!! ((hugs))
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-18 07:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-19 12:17 am (UTC)Poor Vaysh!!
Date: 2008-03-19 11:19 am (UTC)Re: Poor Vaysh!!
Date: 2008-03-19 01:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-19 03:10 pm (UTC)Poor Vaysh, what is Thiede thinking to tell him not to try to contact Ashmael?
You will have to exolain his reasons later. But for now I thin that he is only possessive, and maybe, a bit fearful too? I mean; what would Ash's reaction be, to know what really happened?
He needs Ashmael right now, distractions would do his general nothing good and so, Thiede also not.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 04:16 pm (UTC)Glad to have you along reading this novella, too!!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 09:59 pm (UTC)I like how you've caught Vaysh's ambivalent feelings towards Thiede. Most of the characters in the book seem to experience this sort of schizophrenic reaction to him - they are angry about what he does to them, but they are still drawn to him. Some people simply ascribe this to the fact that he is so powerful that he can manipulate anyone's thoughts and feelings, and that is true - Vaysh himself says as much, in Enchantments, but I think there is also some aspect of the fact that they all feel connected to him as the progenitor of their race, and they find it impossible to reject him entirely.
It occured to me that perhaps you hadn't come across Wendy (
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-21 07:05 pm (UTC)Still don't like him very much, though in your hands, I find a sliver of sympathy.
I'd not read any of her stories; I'll bookmark her story and when I have my own vision of Vaysh out of my system, I'll definitely go in and read her stories. Thanks for that!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-22 03:29 pm (UTC)The result, after the starry-eyed honeymoon period, is that two people who really have nothing in common with each other end up "married". Seel has to go and live in Galhea with the mother-in-law-from-hell (aka Cobweb ;-) and Swift has to spend the rest of his life actually getting to know the object of his obsession. I think it's very telling that they never actually have another child.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-24 01:06 am (UTC)a cranky one perhaps.... but still
LOL
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-24 11:04 pm (UTC)because he deserves it*I hope
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-24 11:20 pm (UTC)Seel doesn't deserve it! He can't help what Thiede did to manipulate him; he did put up a bit of a fight, it seems. But, as
the BorgThiede notes, resistance is futile.(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-24 11:37 pm (UTC)he behaves appallingly when Flick and Ulaume show up at Galhea.
Seel deserves every poke that Cobweb gives him with those voodoo dolly needles...LOL
I actually feel sorry for Theide - he's alone and rejected by his family then "accidentally" ends up a progenitor for an entire race. He himself is manipulated pretty well by the sedim and whoever was manipulating them...
He's sort of like an overbearing parent - "mother knows best"
and I love Cobweb, just cuz... he's got constant PMS and you never know what to expect.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-24 11:57 pm (UTC)I'm still not convinced about Thiede, especially not in the earliest days. A bit later on, he seems a bit more sympathetic, but during this time period I'm dealing with, he seems quite the dispassionate deity, playing with his mortals, trying to improve them, but not paying that much attention to their plights, either.
I feel like Swift does about Cobweb: he's unpredictable. I sure wouldn't want to be in a relationship with him!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-25 12:05 am (UTC)It's in the short story collection "The Crow, Shattered Lives and broken Dreams". It by Storm and it is about Thiede "before".
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-26 10:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-25 12:03 am (UTC)(I have an entirely unsupported theory that Seel is based on some miscreant ex of SC, because she drools all over him in "Enchantments" and "Bewitchments", but by the second series his character has been assasinated with quite ruthless professionalism ;-) /theory)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-25 05:37 pm (UTC)And I love your Totally Unsupported Theory™. That makes sense to me, because he does come across very differently in the second trilogy, written nearly 2 decades later, than he did in the first trilogy.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-23 07:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-24 11:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-24 01:09 am (UTC)I'm loving it.... but I still adore Theide... and Cobweb (despite his being described as the mother-in-law from hell) LOL
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-24 11:25 pm (UTC)Still. That's okay, as long as you're still reading. ::pets and offers chocolate brownies::
I am looking forward to being a few posts from now when Vaysh and Pellaz' lives begin to intertwine; I really enjoy the canon characters, though it's also so much fun incorporating my original hara. Cobweb I find almost as incomprehensible as Thiede. In fact, when I got to Bewitchments, I thought he must have been a different Cobweb from the person who showed up in Enchantments. He seemed quite different, much like Caeru's change, actually!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-25 02:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-25 05:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-25 07:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-26 10:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-24 10:08 am (UTC)young guysrecently incepted Wraeththu in M&M to people who are more settled and accepting of who and what they are. In the prequel, Vaysh was always one of those most comfortable in his own skin (a large part of what was so irresistible about him to Ashmael, undoubtedly what drew Thiede to single him out, and what is so heartbreaking about what is happening to him in this sequel). Love the ambivalence of his feelings for Thiede (of course, you are ripping my heart out here). This also was foreshadowed in M&M where little alarm bells went off for me when he was so fascinated by Thiede, although I did not know the story. How accessible and believable you make this world to me. (Still waiting for my Amazon order so I can read these books!)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-24 01:48 pm (UTC)Yes, there was foreshadowing, and I can't wait to hear your thoughts as you go through this. Vaysh pretty much is in the top 5 tragic characters in Wraeththu.
And what a lovely icon you have. :sighs happily:
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-24 05:22 pm (UTC)Oh, my. I think that would have totally set me off also when I read it. And you completely convey Ashmael's sense of that in M&M.
Yes, there was foreshadowing, and I can't wait to hear your thoughts as you go through this.
You will definitely get my thoughts. You've really captured my imagination with this story. And, woohoo, I just got a notice that my books were shipped from Long Island, NY today (and I am in Brooklyn; so I should get them in a day or two, just in time to ruin my own writing plans for the weekend I'll bet).
Vaysh pretty much is in the top 5 tragic characters in Wraeththu.
This is probably the key to why you so captured me with this story (that and your great writing and wonderful sensibility). I write Silmarillion fanfiction primarily and try to do with its tragic characters what you are doing here, convey a sense of layering and sympathy for them without writing just black and white heroes and villains and relentless grim, I-think-I'll-just-go-slit-my-wrists tragedy. Tragic is not tragic for me without contrast. I've read all seven of your posted chapters now (I'll try to comment one-by-one). But I still have that sense. Your angst warnings almost scared me off, because I'm tender-hearted, but you are doing a beautiful job of balancing, although I can see it's not ever going to be a happy story.
And what a lovely icon you have. :sighs happily:
Shame on me! I stole someone's Harry/Draco icon and clumsily (I really should clean it up a little) turned it into one for my Fingon/Maedhros fics. But it could just as easily be two pretty Wraeththu sharing breath couldn't it?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-25 03:17 am (UTC)You write Silmarillion fics? Where are your stories housed? Since
Thank you, so much, for your effusive and thoughtful commentary to my story.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-25 03:57 am (UTC)Thank you, so much, for your effusive and thoughtful commentary to my story.
You are more than welcome. It certainly deserves it. Just read No. 8. Wow!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-26 02:05 am (UTC)Thanks for your link; I read one of your stories (a lovely set of vignettes with Autumn in the title with an oh-so-young Glorfindel and Ecthelion) and absolutely loved it. I'll need to make a username so I can leave you comments properly, but it was 1 a.m. when I finished it and I needed to crawl into bed. I actually got about 10 pages into a Silmarillion/HP crossover with Amrad and a red-haired line that traversed down to the Weasleys. ;) Anyway, looking forward to getting to know you better!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-26 05:49 am (UTC)Very interesting to me that you never sought to write elves in Tolkien fanfiction. Your interpretation of the Wraeththu is so intuitive. And the Wraeththu remind me very much of the elves in The Silmarillion, nearly perfect in body and mind, replete with special gifts and powers. Yet, unlike the placid, ethereal and wise ancient elves of LotR, their younger incarnations are so flawed and yet still appealing, often incompletely aware of their own motives, impelled by passion and rash in action. Those younger versions of the elves are also manipulated behind the scenes, seemingly randomly helped, abandoned or betrayed by the Valar. The Valar themselves in The Silmarillion appear well-meaning but capable of stunning mistakes and indifference, and deal with the elves in a manner strikingly similar to the way in which Thiede deals with the Wraeththu.