but somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams

And she will devour you, this beast of violets and stars;
she will swallow your soul,
and leave you in a hall of gold—

His mind was busy making poetry (—she drinks starlight), and his eyes were lost in hers. The gold in them seemed silver in the darkness, and each time his breath flared up in a white cloud the light intensified, a warm, soft glow cast upon her face. It never reached her eyes, so they remained silver, a mystery to which he had no solution; a secret without a key, a map without logic, where the lines ran as they wished and changed on a whim. Few times that he could recall had he met someone like her—someone who sent shivers down his spine, someone with a thin shield laying just behind her eyes, someone whose thoughts he could not read. He could only guess, and guesses were dangerous, and thus, she was dangerous.

She was elegant, and cold, and deadly, the distance in her eyes so at odds with the closeness of her body; the touch of her breath. It was a warmth that fell against his marble skin, a warmth he did not know where she housed, for by nature white is a cold color, and in moonlight the red upon her back grew dull, and also cold. And yet, her breath was soft and warm, a mortal in the body of a goddess breathing through her nose.

Or perhaps it was the other way around? A fallen star trapped in a mortal cage, burning up within the prison of her soul.

It was a sad thought, but she laughed, and it was full of things—of lightness, of the same razor edge she seemed to possess, a pain in him as her laugh touched his face with tiny needles and slipped like poison into his veins.

Did she laugh at him? His insides twisted and turned, coiled, fangs eating deeper and deeper—what had he even said, what had he even breathed, what secret had he given to this angelic demon (—demonic angel?)? What little piece of his soul had come loose and floated down her throat to her lungs, and from her lungs into her heart? Yours, the night whispered in a hushed voice, and with a hot shame burning through him he lowered his eyes from hers.

He missed the stars in them. They were beautiful.

(She is beautiful—)

But she was frightening and he was fearsome, and together they were what—white-winged angels in shining armor, and with eyes of the coldest, palest fire?

She was too beautiful to be a creature of the darkness; surely she was pure, even if her flame .. purified. Wiped the world clean. The ground by her feet swam before his vision, or maybe that was her hooves shifting like something sluggish from a dream (—is this a dream?), because it sure felt like dreaming. Distantly, he felt the echo of an echo, Irma's amusement.

But she, the angel, did not cast him from her heaven; she did not punish him for his mortal fallibility, did not tell him he was a fool for that little secret resting in her heart now. She simply breathed against him, something hot in the chilly air, a contrast that ran along his skin like fever—he felt like weeping, for surely, surely, she would disappear soon. Find him lacking. Not perfect enough, because his gaze was not full of stars, and his body was scarred, his mind flawed, his soul a barren wasteland of ice and the secrets and blood buried in it.

She didn't. She was like a dream except she was real, a solid and tangible thing, her breath pushing against his skin, muzzle against that point where head met neck, and he felt beheaded—like she had slid a fine knife into him and severed something.

Maybe just the weights holding him down.

He shifted, and the world shifted too, a sickening blur as the heavens spun and realigned themselves, grinning. He shifted, so that his nose could touch her cheek, her neck, her silken mane, and the touch that had meant to be hesitant became firm, because—well, just because. Because she was stardust yet solid, her halo shedding light on him, so surely, surely—

He didn't know. He didn't know what he had meant to think, what assurance he wanted from the light, so he just stood there dumbly, nose pressed against a wine red stripe (—scars, he still thought, scars of something divine, scars of life). It surprised him that she was soft, and warm; he had expected cold hard stone.

“I wouldn’t mind that,” she whispered, and he failed to wonder when he had begun dreaming. The slow, lazy warmth in his veins was thicker, sluggish like tar; she was saying things that he could not believe, because—well, because he was he?

Who the actual fuck would want him to be theirs?

Who would want to give themselves to him?

What was he even talking about?

But the evening had a certain chill to it that demanded warmth, and the fact that he was not cold was lost to the haze—so he began to press the side of his neck against hers, reducing the space between their hearts. She was a goddess and he was a slave—that had to be it. The truth. The truth because the things unfolding in his heart couldn't be—that trembling hesitancy, the question lingering on his lips, that part of him that wished, desperately, to fall against her and feel her catch his weight—

Because it had to mean that. It—no, well, maybe—his mind chased itself in circles full of shadows and lights, golden and blue, a storm he could not comprehend nor tame. There were things in it he could put no words on, emotions he could not find a way to bring past his veins and onto his lips—she was a savior he did not deserve nor could get, because, because—because he was he and she was she. There had to be something—

But it was so at odds with the intimacy of her touch, the intimacy of her sigh in his faulted memory. She frightened him; he was fearsome; he didn't want to be fearsome anymore. Did she want to be fearsome? She said he was afraid of himself—

"Then take me," he was saying, whispering, tongue faster than his brain; the logic had registered before he had known it had, courage he did not know where it came from putting the words out into her soft skin.

A dare in the darkness.

[ @Maren <3 ]

man, I ain't changed, but I know I ain't the same