[ Takes places in May. Continued from here. ]

And they drifted—

He floated in and out of dreams, in and out of consciousness, lost in the marbled, foggy halls of his mind (—her mind), in some kind of distant-reality that was wayyy too close for comfort. It hit so close to home, a certain kind of fear spurring him drunkenly on, fumbling past barriers and exhaustion and confidence issues and the simple, basic physics of life: past the foundation of his existence, his being, into a dream that was pleasant because it was simply a dream. He was detached, and in his detachment he desired, and without his inhibitions he reached for that. Found it, too, looping and coiling around him like a cloak, like fog, like thin, ethereal tendrils come down from the stars—rising from the mirror-surface of the lake.

He could not comprehend her. He could not look into the razor-like stars in her violet eyes and know if she desired because she was detached, too, or if something else powered her—he could simply look into her eyes and wonder how she came to be what she was; what shaped her at the birth of the world and made her into what she was.

He was floating—drifting—in that place which made no sense, in that place in which the line between thought and action was blurred to the point where all that remained was the most simple, mindless fact he had probably ever come across: it was pleasant. It was warm, satisfying in some way, like getting lost in her eyes and slipping away in a sunlit river, spinning in the center of her eye—

(But had he been sober, would he still have done it? Had he been sober, would he still have desired this—acted upon a thought which was good and fine as a thought, but meant little more than that? A floating, fleeting thought . . .)

Questions without answers, as he drifted away with her in the current, falling into darkness.

---

Dark eyelashes fluttered haphazardly, muscles struggling against memory and a lingering sluggishness, and each time his eyelids cracked open far enough to admit daylight he shut them fast. The light was bright, it stung his eyes, and with a faint sigh he collapsed back into the darkness.

A few moments later he tried again, struggling, struggling with something in his mind, and when his eyes flew open he groaned; closed them again. A morning breeze shifted through the stone structure, and the drapes shifted with a whispering, hushed sound; a smooth floor crushed against his folded body, but it was warm from his skin. Mauja furrowed his 'brows. He couldn't remember going to the Rotunda, but stranger things had probably happened, and—

Holy shit.

His eyes flew open again, and this time, they stayed open even as he cried out, lightly, when the light bit him deep. A warm flank was lodged against his side, his legs miraculously not beneath her folded bulk, and his neck had been draped over her back, head resting against her shoulder. And—

And—

The memories were a blur, of starlight (she drank starlight, fucking idiot), of razor-sharp edges in a violet gaze, of words and a sort of wobbling haze, of a slow, sluggish warmth seeping through his veins, of—of her pale muzzle so close to his, breaths mingling, sharing, and of.. well. Unspeakable things. Only the fucked-up fact that he was way too damn exhausted to move kept him from scrambling away from her in panic, because what else could he call the terrorized heartbeat pounding in his throat?

Shitshitshitshit—and his gaze roved everywhere, to every shadow, every corner, every crack and fine line in the marble floor, but it just kept creeping back to her, the neat way she'd tucked her limbs, the wine red stripes, the warm red hue of her back in its full glory now that the moon didn't steal the color from her—

The curve of her barrel, the smell of sweat and sex, the—

Fuck, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up—

Feeling like he had been rolled on by a mountain, Mauja groaned again and let his neck fall back into place over her back, muzzle buried in the long, silken strands of her mane. He hoped he could go back to sleep, or unconsciousness, or whatever the fuck state of mind he'd been in since sometime during the night—but with his heartbeat all riled up and his mind in confused shambles, he doubted it would happen, so with tears clogging up his eyes and throat he waited for her to wake.

Waited, for his silly, dumb-ass ways to catch up with him, and bite him—hard.

[ @Maren ... ]

lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet
walk him down the hall, repeat
and when he's strong enough to stand alone
you'll notice what big teeth . . .